Wild Garden Utopia Workshop
with Kitti Gosztola & Bence György Pálinkás
Meeting point: Lendkai 19, 8020 Graz at the bridge to the Murinsel
Saturday, July 20th 2024, 14:00

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The two Budapest artists Kitti Gosztola and Bence György Pálinkás lead an exercise to sharpen the imagination and carry out collective activities in a Japanese knotweed colony that address both sensory perception and physical experience. One of the aims is to practise radical empathy with a plant that is so alien to us that we even deny its suffering.

The workshop will begin with a simple contemplation of the plant and a dialogue about it among the workshop participants. Afterwards, a specific part of the plant can be tasted. The workshop continues with the imagination of a future in which the Japanese knotweed dominates the land. The rights of plants will be discussed and, finally, music will be played with simple instruments made from the plant.

In a long-term series of works, Kitti Gosztola & Bence György Pálinkás deal with a plant species labelled as invasive or alien. In the 1840s, one tiny stem of a female Japanese knotweed plant was brought from Asia to a botanical garden in Leiden in the Netherlands. Today, Japanese knotweed covers large areas in Europe.

Everyone is welcome to participate. Registration is requested but not obligatory: rotor@mur.at, 0316/688306

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