Symposium with Alex Viteri and Shuntaro Yoshida as part of the gardens & plots series, initiated by Annika Haas

Feral Encounters is a cross-disciplinary community-building weekend exploring dance and performance art practices devoted to a scientific sensual approach to the environment. Lake Studios Berlin will host the encounter, providing a framework for collective speculation. We wish to share knowledge, experiences, and life-affirming practices with fellow artists, choreographers, dancers, activists, journalists, critics, and scientists in the field. Guest artists Camila Nobrega, Jared Gradinger, Promona Sengupta, Roni Katz, Siegmar Zacharias, Yuni Chung (Chōri Dance Collective) and Catalina Fernández & Alex Viteri Arturo (Violeta) will share provocations, inviting us to delve into specific aspects of the overarching theme. We welcome students from various disciplines to activate these hybrid practices. To participate, please complete this form until 31 August 2023.

The gardens & plots series brings together four artistic research projects at the Berlin University of the Arts that evolve from (urban) gardens and plots as sites of research and collaboration with both plants and humans. The projects draw attention to the plot as a site of conflict and resistance, and intervene in romantic imageries of the garden as a hermetic refuge and innocent “hortus conclusus.” The artists are dealing with struggles around land use and food sovereignty as well as with the oppressive heritage of cultivation techniques, botanical architectures, plant taxonomies, and the ways that humans relate to plants. Departing from different plots and gardens, the projects draw connections between agri- and horticultural ecosystems, environmental and political struggles, and related questions of community from various regions and times.

The series is part of the colloquium at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS) of Berlin University of the Arts.