Can we hear plants or feel the energy flow of microorganisms in the earth’s soil? What happens when we no longer primarily rely on our sense of sight to orientate ourselves in the world? What shifts in our perception and self-conception as human beings are necessary to achieve this? On a performative excursion to the Zollverein colliery slagheap, visitors are invited to encounter the plant and bacterial inhabitants of this man-made, and now densely overgrown, hill formed with waste matter from coal mining.

Close by PACT, artists Deter/Müller/Martini attempt to make contact with plants while the bacilli collective from Japan share artistic methods for harvesting alternative energy, and dancer and choreographer Márcio Kerber Canabarro and his team explore the possibilities of a practice of »seeing« that involves tactile and auditory perception and all our receptive faculties.

https://www.pact-zollverein.de/en/programme/plants-walks

The Japanese artist collective bacilli nurture active spaces for living with dirt, people, food, microbes and spirits. Through artistic engagement with earth, they build hopeful models for how we can live in co-habitation with more than human life. While in residency at PACT, bacilli are artistically investigating the energy created from microbes inside dirt in Essen and questioning whether we can live synergistically together with energy currents flowing through the earth? Starting through geological research on coal histories in the Ruhr area, the three artists are conducting interviews with residents about shifting energy models currently in progress and connecting power currents past and present through imaginative thinking. At their picnic, bacilli invite visitors to share their own stories, exchange ideas, or simply enjoy the conversation. bacilli will also offer insights into their work and share artistic methods for harvesting alternative energy to bring it back into the hands of citizens for their creative enjoyment in the creative format of ›Dirt Radio‹.

6:00-19:00 h ongoing
Close to PACT
bacilli collective
›Dirt Currents‹
Picnic / Talk / Residency Insights
Admission free