Artists in Dialog. Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots

Alex Toland

Myriel Milicevic

Photos 5 and 8 by Art Laboratory Berlin

All other photos by Olga Shmakova. Copyright 2010

Artists in Dialog: Alex Toland und Myriel Milicevic - Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots

Opening 27 August 2010, 8PM

28 August 2010 - 26 September 2010,
Fri-Sun 2-6PM and by appointment

Workshop 4 September 2010, 2-6PM
(registration necessary - info@artlaboratory-berlin. org)

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots by the artists Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic - the second exhibition in our ongoing series Artists in Dialog. Each exhibition in Artists in Dialog takes the form of a discourse between two artists, whose work has a common point of contact (e.g. aesthetics, theme or process). Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic both work on the border between art and life and environmental sciences. Toland considers the project 'habitat hacking' and Milicevic describes the project as 'reconstructing cross-species life worlds'. Together they have chosen the immediate area around Art Laboratory Berlin (the Soldiner Kiez) as a place to investigate interactions between the local human population and urban flora and fauna. The exhibition space will function as a laboratory for mapping, sketching, modelling and prototyping.

Wunschgarten is a series of dialogues: betweenthe artists and the local community, between city dwellers and nature, between urban planning and urban wilderness. As cities creep further into wild landscapes, the wild moves into cities. Urban habitats are places where plants and animals take up residence alongside people. Too often though, space for nature is sealed off by concrete constructions, resulting in a marked divide between the space occupied by humans and the rest of the biotic community. The Wunschgarten is an exploration of the city's wild features and creatures, and a vision of utopian measures that reach beyond existing mitigation schemes and municipal green-space planning. The city becomes a garden of unexpected edible opportunities and ideas to incubate and explode. The first offshoots of the Wunschgarten are found poking out of sidewalks and courtyards in Berlin's Soldiner Kiez, where the artists have redrawn the natural and urban landscape as a map that connects the area's human, animal, and plant populations. A common ground for interspecies exchange is found along the Panke and its lush riverbanks that spill out into the surrounding neighbourhood. (more information)