What grows around Alexanderplatz? How do we perceive plants and how does the spatial environment influence this perception? What is our relationship to plant life when we observe or touch it? How can we learn to understand the ways plant express themselves?

A walk, a color workshop, an exercise in listening and a conversation explore personal encounters with the plant world.

Rostorange, Chlorophyll, Transparentgelb

Walk and Workshop with Dunja Krcek

The artist Dunja Krcek draws attention to plant biodiversity in urban contexts. In her pictures and participatory formats, she makes correspondences with plants visible and playfully opens up a space to focus on the perspectives and dignity of non-human life forms.

It grows everywhere around Alexanderplatz: a variety of grasses rise up between concrete cracks, chestnut trees and blood plums planted by humans adorn park areas, a former sports field is overgrown by a thicket. Hundreds of shades of green are offered to the viewer. Variations of yellow, red, purple and blue can also be discovered and placed in relation to each other. Plants use their colors as a means of communication: as an attractant for insects, but also as protection from them and other animals; for humans, to ensure the spread of their own species, and perhaps also for each other as a signal of a shared affinity.

During a joint walk in the outside surroundings of the nGbK, plants are observed that have created their own habitat in urban, largely man-made structures, where they coexist – often unnoticed – with humans and live their own narratives. In a poetic examination of the color compositions of these living beings and their changes between wet and dry conditions, color palettes with plant components are created and attention is sensitized to nuances and the complexity of the immediate environmental contexts. The question of what a color palette illustrates and how it can be read forms the framework of the workshop. An experimental approach invites the participants to go on a short excursion with their senses and possibly dare to look at Berlin from the perspective of a plant.

Please register by sending an e-mail to: anmeldung@ngbk.de

Dunja Krcek works with painting, textiles, and site-specific installations. She is interested in the visual exploration of the relations between human and non-human life forms and the concept of a “felt sense.” With her holistic, process-oriented approach, she also develops workshops on producing and using plant dyes, as well as community-building formats with Dunjiva Kollektiv that use artistic means to heighten awareness of the biodiversity of various landscapes. She lives in Vienna.