Workshop 2023
Atelier du 20 au 28 juillet au Design Campus du Kunstgewerbemuseum de Dresde (Schloss Pillnitz, Allemagne). Dans le cadre d'une série d'ateliers intitulée "School of Phyto-centred Design" organisée par le studio Dots.
Recherche autour du vêtement, de l'accessoire et du textile à partir de plantes brutes récoltées dans les environs du musée. Matériaux sauvages ou cultivés, nous avons particulièrement expérimenté la paille, que j'ai beaucoup travaillée au fil des années. Tressage, cordage, filage, crochet, tissage... Nous avons glané et appris à transformer notre récolte pour en faire des vêtements et des accessoires. Ensemble, nous avons imaginé un costume folklorique lié au territoire où se déroule l'atelier, puis nous l'avons mis en scène. A partir d'un travail de recherche et de documentation, nous avons tenté de redéfinir le rôle du folklore aujourd'hui, d'imaginer ses formes et de célébrer à la fois sa nature et sa culture.
I.Composition
The Elbe River passes a castle. The Elbe River passes underneath a castle, hears the murmurs inside its walls, passes to the other side into the gardens that lay beyond. The Elbe River is welcomed into the homes of endless families of fungi, bunches of bacteria, and so the river learns. Learns to crawl, to dig, to wrap, to nudge, to slink, to slither, to wriggle and writhe, to drag, to trail, to feed. The Elbe River meets a patient seed from a patient tree, who wonders what might be above the world underneath. They learn to move together, first to root down and then to climb up.
We, brief dwellers of the world above, have not noticed anything yet. When she emerges from the soil, we remain distracted by our lives in the castle. She keeps climbing up, as we are born and grow and grow and die. It takes us a few lifetimes to notice her grace. It is around this time that she starts to feel a soft yearning to return to the underworld.
II.Decomposition
The tree is not a metaphor. The tree is rooted and real. The tree is really dying. The tree is dying at a pace both incredibly fast and terribly slow.
Looking out from the castle, the dying is so slow that most confuse it for stillness. The castle dwellers paint her limbs white to elongate her serenity. The white redirects the sun elsewhere, and so the tree starts to forget the warmth of the world above. The yearning to return to the world she once came from grows more prominent with each passing ebb and flow. With each flow, the River returns a little less abundantly than before. With each ebb, the River pulls at her limbs a little more.
So let the receding water pull you into the underworld. You will find yourself at an unforgettable feast, where the River flows joyfully across parties of maggots and worms, fungi and slime molds, colonies of bacteria, nematodes and mites, and some solo travellers that happened to be in the right place at the right time. All are gathered to celebrate this seemingly endless harvest, all are singing songs of her return. They are songs of dying and dining, of rebirth and rot, of frolic and farewell. Our language has not found a word that contains all this yet. Perhaps the closest translation would be the harvest.
III.Recomposition
To harvest: to collect: to gather: to assemble: to take as you are given, to give as you have taken.
Let us join in with this funeral, this harvest festival.
Let us learn the ways of the harvest as the roots remember them.
Let us nurture as we have been nurtured, and give as we have been given.
Let us rejoice in our shared bodies, and let us dress her in a gown for her passing.
Let us prepare and join her in the delights of decomposition.
Let us return to the water which connects us.
Let us stop trying to convey it in language.
Let us metamorphose into the harvest.
Let us show you.
Participants
Davide Balda, Deborah Tina Egger, Zahra Jajarmi, Sujia, Ano Jishkariani, Jaqueline Lododda, Phuong Chi Tran Nguyen, Dana Zoutman
Photographes
Sahra Jajarmi khayat
Olly Cruise
Texte
Dana Zoutman
