Workshop: Living Sculptures and Planting Trees as an Artistic Strategy

Why do we still work and for which social benefit? We invite you to participate in a worldbuilding experience, inspired by the principle of LARP (Live Action Role Play) to discover how the development of an alternative reality can transform the way we look at works of art and the aesthetic and political analysis that emerges from them.

Grégory Chollet and Elisabete Fernandes have made a documentary film about the climate and the future of our planet. The project was realised thanks to crowdfunding. The film "Demain Genève" was presented at the vernissage of the exhibition (re)connecting.earth in the cultural space at the "Auberge des Vergers".

Analysis of urban biodiversity using the example of green roofs

On the special day everyone on planet earth is invited to go out on the streets and water the weeds

In the fifth Breaking Patterns, performance artist Isabel Lewis adapted her practice for the digital and invited participants to discover their environment by smelling, approaching and playing with their webcams, scrutinizing the technological surfaces, and engaging with another user by stripping in private. Lewis framed the session with a lecture accompanied by music in which she laid out Roslyn Bologh’s feminist theory of erotic sociability. With that vantage point, Lewis developed the concept of the "unambitious stripper."

The recent lockdown forced a moment of reflection on Western living conditions, inequalities exposed by the quarantine, and the potential relief that such a moment might provide for the global environment. Many realized that they didn't need to fly as much, or to consume as intensely. But how can we imagine continuing to change this destructive and unsustainable economic system when the global mechanisms fully restart? [...]

In the third Breaking Patterns, artist Basim Magdy, in conversation with curator Irene Campolmi, reflected on the possibilities of visual poetry obtained by juxtaposing diverse contexts into a fictional narrative. Revisiting Magdy's research and his recent film M.A.G.N.E.T, in which he developed a way to combine poetry, image and sound introduced the challenge they planned for the participants: designing fictional narratives using seemingly disparate keywords – magnetic poetry. [...]

During the COVID-19 local lockdowns, from Beijing to Milan, there were reports that the sky was of an unprecedented blue. The color of the sky can be seen both as an aesthetic and a political topic. Asking if we don’t want to go back to the old normal, what kind of measures can we take?, Zurich based artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller began by presenting in conversation with Mirjam Varadinis a conceptual multimedia research project. [...]

What lessons can we learn from plants and their medicinal powers? Artist Uriel Orlow (Lisbon/London/Zürich) and curator Andrea Thal (CiC Cairo) prepared a mission for the participants of the masterclass that led them to share in small groups (in the so-called breakout rooms) their intimate experiences with plants, which resulted in a series of drawings, photographs and narratives. [...]

In the two-day workshops, three teams of six people composed of citizens, scientists and artists create prototypes of sustainable solutions.

A reflection on the dependency on technology, the potential of a transhumanist future, and the meaning of free will facing the urgency of environmental change.