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Reflecting Nature
2021
Spreepark Berlin
Reflecting Nature was an audio walk through the surroundings of Spreepark Berlin. The participants were invited to engage their bodies in the question ‘what is nature?’ while walking in the park. Through somatic and movement tasks they explored affective interactions between human bodies and the ones of plants, stones or other beings. The collective walk enabled a sensorial journey through the park and the participant’s own body tissues. Among different tasks, the audio guide explored the resemblance between the roots and the human vascular system, regarding their function of transporting and delivering precious nutrients and how plants absorb the energy of the sun and soil providing human bodies with nourishment. Through bodily experience, the participants were able to understand and relate emotionally to the cycles of interdependence between human and plant bodies. The walk concluded in a playful invocation with mirror objects while using the gaze and the mirrors to create abstracted images of the park’s surroundings.
The work aimed to engage in somatic practice as a tool for reconnecting with non-human beings and creating a poetic dialog of bodies with that what we call ‘nature’. Somatic tasks, objects and soundscapes came together in a participatory site-specific format, enabling a broader public to question our understanding of nature through the body.
Reflecting Nature was commissioned by Sasha Waltz & Guests, Berlin Mondiale (Kulturnetzwerk Neukölln e.V.) and Spreepark Art Space.
Paola Bascón