Weaving Roots

With the beginning of spring, “Weaving Roots” brings together two artistic individuals and practices who explore the idea of the garden and its social function as a place of community building in different ways. Weaving and roots, interweaving and rooting are thereby experienced as concrete actions.

Jared Gradinger co-creates a garden that will blossom and flourish on the outdoor terraces of the Bärenzwinger. In collaboration with Nature as a partner, choreographer Jared Gradinger creates a participatory place for development, participation and transformation.

Claudia Hill brings a 125-year-old high loom for tapestry weaving to the Bärenzwinger. The loom acts as a social sculpture, a site for networking and thus not only as a production instrument of textile material, but above all as a physical medium of communication.

Claudia Hill is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist working with performance art, costume and stage design, textile materials and somatic practices. Her work has been presented internationally in both performing and visual arts contexts, including at Paris Internationale, Mumok in Vienna during the ImPulsTanz Festival and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Her artistic practice is based on her deep-rooted relationship with textiles and crafts made by women. She explores collective ways of communicating through multi-sensory experiences, as described in her book Social Fabric Earth Return. The book is published by BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE. Her short film Kŏn′voi′ screened at numerous film festivals, e.g. Les Rencontres Intl., Paris and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Hill has a background in contemporary dance and fashion design. Her collections have been presented internationally, including in Japan and New York, where she lived for many years. She has designed costumes for choreographer William Forsythe and The Wooster Group and has worked frequently with choreographer Meg Stuart. She was admitted to the United Scenic Artists of America. In addition, her work increasingly focuses on the healing potential of textile objects and transformative rituals.

www.claudiahill.com 

Jared Gradinger is an interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of performance, dance, social art and ecology. Since moving to Berlin in 2002, he has been developing long-term collaborations and unique artistic practices, connecting community and Nature, while exploring different forms of co-existence and asking, ‘What can we do together that we cannot do alone? He has a long term artistic collaboration with Angela Schubot, with whom he creates extremely physical work dedicated to exploring the dissolution of self through an unconditional togetherness; most recently in collaboration with Nature and plants. He co-created his first garden in the Uferstudios (Berlin) called The ‘Impossible Forest’, which is a 240m2 garden dedicated to the non humans and unseens. His most recent research, ‘Garden of Duets’, was a year long project partnering musicians and writers with their own plant partner in the Impossible Forest, with the intention to develop an intimate relationship and in time an artistic duet.

Currently, he is working on a long term project in and with the village of Coqui, Colombia; helping to transform the Museum of Lost Knowledge into a School of Lost Knowledge through tender touch, artistic thinking and plant partners with the village of Coqui, Organizmo, Angela Schubot and the Goethe Institut. This is a part of a bigger project called ‘Herbarium’ with Angela Schubot; continuing their search to dissolve the Nature Human dichotomy while working with plants as mediators for knowledge transference, co-creative strategies and artistic offerings. This project will take place in Coqui. Colombia, Helsinki, Finland and Berlin, Germany. He is a co-founding member of Constanza Macras Dorky Park (2002-2009) and has ongoing work relationships with Meg Stuart, Claudia Hill, Shelley Etkin, Stefan Rusconi, HAU, Uferstudios. Jared has worked with William Forsythe, Jeremy Wade, Aleesa Cohene and others. He continues to teach and offers mentoring to artists, groups and students. 

www.jaredgradinger.com

25/3/2022, 4 – 6pm

Co-Weaving Session with Claudia Hill

More Sessions on 31/3, 9/4, 16/4, 21/4, 28/4, 5/5/2022,
each from 5 – 7 pm

Please bring proof of a negative Corona-Antigentest result of the same day.

During the period from March 24 to May 5, seven public Co-Weaving Sessions with Claudia Hill will be offered at the Bärenzwinger. During the Co-Weaving Sessions, Claudia Hill shares her experience of weaving with interested visitors on a weekly basis and invites them to weave together. The starting material is silk fabric that has been plant-dyed on site and stretched across the room, as well as other materials from Hill’s textile collection.

Claudia Hill sees the loom not only as a weaving machine, but also as a somatic, physical communication tool; the conversations held and texts read aloud while weaving together flow into the fabric as immaterial components. The loom acts as a social sculpture, as a playground for networking. Weaving and growing roots, interweaving and rooting can be experienced as concrete actions.

Saturday

30/4/2022, 2 – 6 pm

Co-Weaving with Claudia Hill

Co-Gardening and Memory Garden with Jared Gradinger

“I invite you to close your eyes and remember out loud, a garden from your childhood. It can be any garden. Your neighbor’s garden, your grandparent’s garden, a garden you passed by every day on your way to school, your family’s garden, even the one potted plant in your childhood home can be considered a garden. With your eyes closed, take five minutes to describe that garden in whatever ways you remember. Start your timer (5 minutes), press record, state your first name, close your eyes and remember a garden out loud. When timer ends, please press stop on the recorder. Love, Jared”

During the upcoming weekend we we will be continuing to weave a carpet and a hammock with and guided by Claudia Hill, gardening at the Bärenzwinger Garden co-created by Jared Gradinger with Nature and collecting intimate recordings of your childhood garden memories. A voice recorder will be provided on site.

Join us for a springtime drink on Saturday (30/04) between 2 and 6 pm.

Thursday

12/05/2022, 6 – 9 pm

Music Performance & Release of texts

Music starts at 6 and 7 pm

With Marc Lohr and Grape, Anja Müller and Monkey Puzzle, Tian Rotteveel and Clover, Shelley Etkin, Astrid Kaminski, Sandra Man, Liz Rosenfeld, Angela Schubot, The Impossible Forest and The Bärenzwinger Garden. In co-creation with Nature. 

Garden of Duets is the current result of one year of encounters between Grape and Marc, Tian and Clover, Monkey Puzzle and Anja and Wisteria and Claire. For over a year these plant/human partnerships have been developing and deepening into a musical proposal, each co-created by the two partners. The plant partners were originally found in the Impossible Forest, a garden in Uferstudios, Berlin-Wedding. They have now been planted in the new Bärenzwinger Garden as an energetic link and portal of support between the two physical gardens in Berlin and the performative Garden of Duets. 

This project is first and foremost dedicated to the encounter between plant and human and the co-creative process that supports the possibility to work with Nature as a partner and go beyond habitual thinking born out of human-centric decision making and thought patterns.

The invited musicians have been asked to devote to developing an intimate and then artistic relationship with a particular plant over the course of one year. The practice was to cultivate an internal stillness in order to direct their attention outwards towards their plant partner to cultivate a loop of reciprocity.

Five writers were also invited to work with this co-creative practice by writing WITH the garden. These unique texts by Shelley Etkin, Astrid Kaminski, Sandra Man, Liz Rosenfeld and Angela Schubot will be shared in print.

The Bärenzwinger Garden will be the host of revitalizing these encounters and partnerships. The music is a gift to the garden and its inhabitants, and we invite the humans to bear witness to these acts of devotion and interspecies communication.

The carpet and hamoock woven by Claudia Hill together with the visitors of Bärenzwinger will be published during the event.