HFBK

Ecosystems typically describe the interaction between organisms and their environment. The dynamics of these relationships are in a state of constant flux, repetition, and negotiation. The relationship between humans and nature has long served as a motif for artistic exploration and is continually being redefined. The exhibition at ICAT aims to explore both interspecies and interpersonal relationships and to present ecosystems as symbols of interconnected networks of coexistence. Botanical imagery and human-animal constellations, in particular, prove to be rich metaphors for encounters, kinships, and collaborations. Likewise, all other forms of living beings (or “creatures,” cf. Haraway) are part of these relationships and structures.

The science theorist Donna Haraway explores the coexistence of species in depth and writes: “Creatures—human and nonhuman—become one with one another, composing and decomposing one another, across all scales and registers of temporality and materiality; in sympoietic entanglements, in ecological, evolutionary, and developmental earthly secularizations and desecularizations.”

Seven students at the HFBK Hamburg are exploring different areas within the branching network of interpersonal and interspecific ecologies and are finding various aesthetic expressions in the form of installation, sculpture, culinary art, graphic design, and film. The exhibition space adapts the idea of a system that is constantly in motion and changing, and, through the use of magenta-colored light, evokes the atmosphere of a greenhouse.

Curated by Anne Meerpohl