Außer Balance – Out of Balance

Vernissage Thursday, April 27, 2023, 6-10 p.m.

Exhibition hours April 28 to May 2, 2023, 1-8 p.m.

Can humans learn from mushrooms and their subterranean networks? Together with sound and film artists, we have created Außer Balance (Out of Balance) – an installative space for the artistic exploration of communication networks, their threads, positions and possible configurations, as we can find them in mushrooms and plants and in the forest contrasted with and/or in interaction with animal and human modes of organization. Can fungi be political? What do sociality, identity, power, and hierarchy mean in the face of a system of hyphal filaments that seems to consist only of connections? What can be imagined utopically and dystopically, even when we think about, for example, the properties of lichens that form individuals as ecosystems of different species (fungi, algae, bacteria)? What shifts in previous ways of looking at the social become possible, also with regard to the question of who else this affects, things, animals, plants, fungi?

These are not the only questions that have led us into Brandenburg’s forests and to conversations with foresters and researchers (from the fields of mycology and lichenology, organizational theory, philosophy, human-animal studies, social economics) as well as indigenous experts from Colombia and Brazil, who open up a non-Western perspective on the relationship between humans and nature.

Außer Balance gathers different perspectives on the ways humans relate to nature. Using the Brandenburg Forest as an example, the installation takes a close look at the effectiveness of fungi, reflects on human intervention in the forest ecosystem, and sheds light on lichens, humus, mycelia, and the importance of time. A sound mycelium of interview excerpts explores economic, (micro)biological, administrative, symbolic as well as holistic perspectives in the relationship between humans and forests.

In the exhibition space of the Flutgraben, you can encounter mold and tinder fungus, listen to audio and original sound collages, linger in front of abstract and documentary video works, or immerse yourself in a radio play to enter into a network of association, connection, learning, and exploration.

What place belongs to the mushroom? What place belongs to the human being?

Vernissage Thursday, April 27, 2023, 6-10 p.m.

Exhibition hours April 28 to May 2, 2023, 1-8 p.m.

Location Flutgraben e. V., Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin-Treptow (behind the Festsaal Kreuzberg).

Price 5,- Euro

Tickets at contact@futur-ii-konjunktiv.de & on the spot

Information https://futur-ii-konjunktiv.de/ & https://flutgraben.org/en/

Concept and artistic direction Futur II Konjunktiv (Matthias Naumann, Cristina Nyffeler, Johannes Wenzel)

With interviews with Frank Adloff, Martin Bartelmus, Robert Lücking, Florian Manns, Monique Müller, Adana Omagua, Eva von Redecker, Mamo Shibulata, Heike Walk, Aline Wenning

Production management Judith König

Film, Camera, Editing, Postproduction Leona Goldstein

Editing Audio Elena Zieser, Moritz Hanfgarn

Programming Audio Georg Werner

Composition Soundscape/Space Friedrich Greiling

Audio description for blind and visually impaired people.

A production by Futur II Konjunktiv

Funded by the Prozessförderung des Fonds Darstellende Künste and the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.