Habima Fuchs. Photo: Katalin Deér
Kunsthall Trondheim is hosting a visit by the artist Habima Fuchs, who will have a residency at Stokkøya, as part of the Kunsthall's collaboration with the Czech curatorial organization Are on their project WOODS.
The residency is part of the Woods project supported by the EEA Grants 2014-2021 under the Culture Programme, the European Union – Next Generation EU, the Czech Recovery Plan, and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
On Tuesday 16 May, Habima Fuchs will come to Kunsthall Trondheim to talk about her practice, and to show the films EQUINOX (2022) and STORRADA (2011), by Markus Selg.
Habima Fuchs is a Czech visual artist whose work has long been revising the established mechanisms and traditional existential, philosophical or metaphysical turns that we rely on to understand the world we live in. The symbols and motifs she reflects and materializes in this process come from different cultures and periods, from the framework of Christian iconography and oriental religious contexts. The result is exceptionally compelling imagery, seductive and subversive, but also deeply self-critical.
Warmlt welcome!
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WOODS – Community for Cultivation, Theory and Art is a space linking creation, research, agricultural work, activism, and rest. The 2.8-hectare plot of forest and meadow in Orlické Mountains, in the Czech Republic, was purchased with a vision to create a sustainable biodiverse forest amenable to a wide variety of life forms from microorganisms, bacteria, plants, mushrooms, and animals all the way to humans. A farm is gradually being created on the plot, as is a garden founded on permaculture principles and a year-long program of educational and cultural activities, including annual summer symposiums. The project is actively responding to climate change, the accelerating processes associated with it, and the need to maintain a healthy relationship between the land and those who use it, human and non-human. We would like to gradually change the ways in which the countryside is used for agriculture, forestry, and leisure activities, moving towards a more interconnected relationship between the land and the people in it. By sharing and collaborating with local and artistic communities, we aim to protect diversity of flora and fauna on the planet, in the soil, and in the gut. We aim to accomplish this through active care for the land, academic studies, and joint actions of all types and orientations, both for the community and for the public. Speakers: Edith Jeřábková, curator and art writer, founder of WOODS and Tereza Porybná, creative producer, founding member of WOODS.
Woods: More-than-Human Curiosity
One part of humankind is dependent on technologies that help us maintain a responsible relationship between our present, past, and future. Another part fears a future in which superintelligence will take over running the world. Through the lens of speciesism, we study how human beings have divided the family of animals, singled themselves out, and put themselves on top. They have also put the artificial intelligence they created into the domain of the “other”. How does research on the neuroplasticity of the brain (not just human, but also animal), memory, creativity, neuro- and roboethics, and neuroethology fit into processes of return to the more-than-human community? This is the subject of the two-year project Woods: More-than-Human Curiosity.
The project will be carried out in the form of an international symposium, art residencies, workshops, lectures, travel for curators, video interviews, online formats, an anthology of texts, a documentary film, and newly created works of art.
Woods: More-than-Human Curiosity is one of the activities of Woods – Community for Cultivation, Theory, and Art, whose main regular activity is an annual forest symposium. The fourth edition of this interdisciplinary gathering will take place on July 28–30, 2023. The symposium’s program will include three areas of research: neuroplasticity and memory, creativity, and the animal brain and speciesism. The fourth component is the Children’s Forest Group, which addresses these topics using methods accessible to young people.
The symposium uses a range of artistic and theoretical formats and methods of communication: lectures, panel discussions, outdoor movie screenings and concerts, landscape and architectural interventions, workshops, collective imagination, walks, group reading, performances, and other artistic approaches. It takes place in an open space in a meadow and in a forest in the Orlické Mountains.
The symposium programme will be published in May and registrations will open in June 2023.
The property is owned and cared for by the curatorial organization Are, which started Woods – Community for Cultivation, Theory, and Art in 2019. The initiative operates at the intersection of contemporary art, the landscape, human health, and interspecies coexistence.
Woods: More-than-Human Curiosity is curated by Zuzana Blochová, Edith Jeřábková, and Tereza Porybná, who are collaborating with people from the fields of art, activism, science, ecology, and permaculture.
Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen collaborates on the dramaturgy of the programme section dedicated to memory, and anto_nie, Denisa Langrová, Ruta Putramentaite and Alex Sihelsk* collaborate on the section concerning animal brains and speciesism. The forest cinema programme is prepared by Lucia Pietroiusti. The symposium film and video interviews are directed by Tomáš Bojar and Marek Meduna.
The project’s partners are the contemporary art institution Kunsthall Trondheim and the residency centres Røst AiR and Ovenecká 33.
The Woods project is funded by EEA Grants 2014-2021 under the Programme Culture, the European Union – Next Generation EU, the Czech Recovery Plan, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Prague City Hall, and the City of Oslo.