Photo: Work by Elodie Pong at Habitat
Sonja Schenkel
On Mind and Matter.
Photo: Work by Elodie Pong at Habitat
We cannot only rely on technology but need according narrative and aesthetic explorations to match our cultural shift. Habitat was a space and series of exhibitions co-curated between Sonja Schenkel and Damian Christinger at the Wyss Academy for Nature in Bern, which was a combination of an art exhibition with a multidisciplinary debate and experience, called Science Kitchen with people from science, business and civil society.
“Just as biodiversity is key to a healthy biospheric ecosystem, so too is substantive aesthetic, semiotic, and art language variation crucial to the development of an embodied and impact oriented knowledge system. Habitat aims to develop a new form of intercultural narration, by developing different languages of art, design and space as one of the most potent tools we have as a species to affectively connect with what is happening to us.”
(excerpt from the Habitat concept paper)
At the core of “Habitat” stood the idea of designing a space that would become a semipermeable membrane inviting exchange between art and science, the Wyss Academy for Nature and the public in Berne and beyond.
Photo: Reflection of a work by Monica Ursina Jäger
Habitat
– a semipermeable membrane between art, science and the public
The Habitat – Series at the Wyss Academy for Nature aimed to host experiences, that expand on the idea that nature and culture are one continuum if not an integrative concept. Sensuality and experiments supporting sense-making and transformation. The Habitat opened its space guest artists and innovators who work in the same core fields as the foundation.
It unfolded along a collaboration between Sonja Schenkel and Damian Christinger and included three chapters over the course of one year.
Chapter 1 – Forest Tales and Emerald Fictions with works by Monica Ursina Jäger
Chapter 2 – Morphologies: A Tale of Two Suns
with works of Badel/Sarbach, Donna Conlon, Melanie Guggelman, Elodie Pong, Andreas Züst
Chapter 3 – Ancestral Futures with works by Jonatas de Andrade and Veronica Spierenburg
Habitat at Wyss Academy from December 2020 to October 2021
in collaboration with the Wyss Academy for Nature, Tatjana von Steiger
“A Culture of Transformation”, article by Sonja Schenkel for the Wyss Academy Annual Report, 2020
Chapter 1
Indentity and Legacy
What are we leaving behind?
Forest Tales and Emerald Fictions approaches the forest as a spatially complex structure, as a place of multi-layered contexts and inter-dependencies, as well as a place of imagination, narration and memory.
Chapter 2
Awe and Wonder
What drives us? What are we amazed by?
Amazement and curiosity, wonder, moments of surprise, rapture, emotion, and gratitude are experiences that rarely occur in our everyday lives and that we are more likely to associate with childhood or mysticism than with our “adult” relationship with nature.
But they are, as it were, the roots of science and art, research and poetry. If we want to fundamentally change our relationship with nature, it may be useful to take a closer look at these roots.
Chapter 3
Ancestral Futures
Where have been before? How can we learn from the past?
Previous generations had knowledge we might reconnect
to to address the current challenges. What are these? How can they find an embedding in the present