a series of participatory performances, discussions and workshops
in a wild garden in Alt-Hohenschönhausen
presents:
SOILKIN: Relational Exercises with Soil and Stones
a workshop with Alexandra Toland
Sunday 15 OCTOBER 2 – 5 pm
“What modes of passionate immersion – or love, or intimacy could a stone afford?” Hugo Reinert, 2016
Inspired by this question, the workshop introduces a series of Fluxus-inspired relational exercises that invite reflection on the individual and collective agency of mineral and more-than mineral intimacies and the boundaries of what it means to be alive.
The exercises are envisaged as embodied thought-experiments for conceptualizing stones and soil as kin, to be developed and tested in different ecologies with different actors.
Together, we will explore concepts of geo-ontology, geomorphic aesthetics, soil weathering, and multispecies kinship, to formulate terms of creative reciprocity between humans and soils that is attentive to the slowed-down timescale of events in which soil-beings live and operate.
The workshop will take approximately 3 hours.
Dr. Alexandra Regan Toland is Associate Professor for Arts and Research at the Bauhaus University Weimar.
With a background in German cultural studies, theatre studies, visual arts, and landscape planning, Alex is a transdisciplinary scholar with research interests in urban soils, plants, dust and multispecies relationships. She has published widely on artistic (research) practices as they relate to soil and air pollution in cities, including the co-edited book, Field to Palette – Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene (Taylor and Francis, 2018).
Together with Anna Krzywoszynska, she is currently co-chair of the Commission on the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Soils of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS).
ROOTS IN THE RUINS is generously funded by Bezirksamt Lichtenberg Berlin:
