Vegetal Companions: Arts, Sciences and Temporalities of Co-Existence

Exhibition and event series, ＿matter Festival 2025, Späth-Arboretum, botanical garden of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity,” 13.5.2025–28.6.2025

Focusing on the agency of plant and tree collectives and their ability to shape entire ecologies, artists and researchers aim to critically reposition conventional human-centered concepts that highlight control and mastery over nature. »Vegetal Companions« features curated workshops, seminars, reading sessions, experimental installations, audio walks, and video screenings. They explore plant life and arboreal agency, related knowledges and sensing technologies as well as their cultural imaginaries, representations, and aesthetics.

By understanding these nonhuman organisms as vegetal companions, our aim is to trouble linear timescales and cultural imaginaries. In times of global uncertainty, such vegetal companions – including the sites and soils where they dwell – urge us to speculate about possible future scenarios of sustainable coexistence. In a close dialog with our venue, the botanical garden of the Späth-Arboretum and its human and vegetal collaborators, we use »Vegetal Companions« to reflect on the possibilities of different medial formats as forms of knowledge creation, be it soil as archive, art as research or philosophy as gardening.

“Vegetal Companions” is a collaboration of Späth-Aboretum with the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity” at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as part of the ＿matter Festival 2025.

Concept & Coordination: Robert Stock, Rahel Kesselring, Anika Dreilich (Späth-Arboretum), Assisted by Maja Avnat

With Contributions by: Maja Avnat, Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten, Rahel Kesselring, Emma Sicher

More information on>>> https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/activities/16062/vegetal-companions-arts-sciences-and-temporalities-of-co-existence <<<

Image: Maja Avnat