Guiding Spirits is a research-based art project exploring the Elbe River’s myths and ecosystems from Dresden to Hamburg. Through a four-day journey, Symbiotic Lab collected stories of human and non-human life, resulting in a hybrid creature folding screen, an audio piece, and a journey-marked flag. The project reflects on interdependence, resilience, and the hidden connections within the river’s ecosystem.

‍The Diplomatic Suitcase is a traveling exhibition piece symbolizing the collective voices of European water bodies. It holds artifacts contributed by grassroots communities, representing seas, rivers, lakes, and lagoons across Europe. These items embody the spirit of care, activism, and the urgent call to protect our interconnected water ecosystems.

Spore Initiative and Symbiotic Lab invite you to the river walk "SpreeVision - Sensing the River" as part of the project "Wasserspiegel - Water Bodies". Together we will explore with all our senses how the water crisis affects the river that is supposed to secure the city's drinking water.

Three site-specific interventions form a tour through the eastern part of Branitz Park. These focus on various aspects that present Branitz and its Tree University as a laboratory for the future. Topics include trees in a changing climate, the park ecosystem, the preservation of the garden monument and the pioneering role of the Branitz University of Trees in this area.

Live Performance Installation at Toni Areal Orgel Saal in Zürich for the School of Commons program and at the AKM Istanbul for the Digital Art Festival in Istanbul.

Europe’s pristine river sounds, manipulated in real-time by Pietro Dossena with a modular synthesizer, creates a unique sonic landscape. Audience interaction, guided by a gyroscopic sensor, allows personalized spatial manipulation. The installation raises awareness for river conservation, blending natural and electronic sounds, accompanied by visual art from Jakob Kukula and live acoustic music interactions.
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Curators: Jasmine Alakari & Ric Acciarino ‍
‍Supported by the School of Commons

WeWater brings together perspectives from design, art and science around the theme of water at Berlin's Paul Lincke Ufer.
The baseline for the exhibition is the urban design "SpreeVision-Osthafen", which was developed by the SpreeBerlin initiative. The design shows the scenario of a socially and ecologically transformed Spree in the section of the Osthafen basin.

Using various digital media, Pascal Marcel Dreier assembles an activist, an NGO, a major record company, and a well-known musician into an unlikely crew. In the interactive video installation, they enter a thrilling vortex of facts and fictions, appropriations and counter-appropriations, in which their roles ceaselessly reconfigure.

The Spree is home to a unique diversity of living creatures
and is also one of the most threatened ecosystems in Berlin.
In order to promote the potential of the river and its banks, different usage scenarios and urban designs are being developed by Jakob Kukula and Jan Colomer

The MetaMorphosis project, initiated in 2021 by artist Jakob Kukula and developed with artist Xaver Hirsch, composer Ben Meerwein, and ecologist Esteban Menares, explores the habitat of insects through interdisciplinary collaboration.
They researched insect life in the Ammersee region during a residency, creating an artistic ritual that combined acoustic and visual impressions in an immersive audio-visual performance. The project's method, consisting of a scientific lecture, workshop, and performance, now unfolds at different locations like the Berlin environmental education center
"Im Nirgendwo" and Art Biesenthal in Brandenburg (2022).

The starting point for the publication project MetaMorphosis is an understanding of humans as part of an assemblage of human and non-human actors that is always already in the process of becoming. In addition to concrete ideas on how to counteract the fatal species extinction of insects, this volume brings together contributions that spark the curiosity of readers in artistic, poetic, or philosophical ways and offer diverse approaches to the topic of metamorphosis.

In the artistic project "Living with Uncertainties" at the Ebenböckhaus Residency in Munich, Florentin Aisslinger, Leonardo Pellegrino and Jakob Kukula address the question of how we can deal with today's uncertainties. Fear, uncertainty and discomfort serve as a compass. Amidst closely intertwined environmental, socio-political, and economic phenomena, we are experiencing a crisis of meaning, sense, and narrative. To confront this crisis, new forms of unified engagement and conscious persistence in uncertainty are needed.

Soil sealing reduces ecological functions and alters the exchange of energy, water and gases between the area below and above a soil sealing layer. This has a direct negative impact on plant and animal biodiversity, such as the loss of plants and animals and their natural habitats. Plant biodiversity stimulates soil biodiversity and leads to increased soil function. Loss of natural habitat has been identified as one of the main reasons for recent declines in insect populations. The project is an “unsealing campaign” that invites the guests of a techno open air to while enjoying the music unseal a 12m2 area of a huge parking lot.

Which strategies can help to promote transformative processes of becoming-with? How do we create a mode of being in which all species co-exist equally? Which tools can help to look, listen and feel more closely? The participating urbanists, artists, designers and scientists present planet-centeric formats, ideas and projects that use all senses to investigate urban futures. The SynchroniCities exhibition invites you on an adventurous journey towards possible answers.

In the context of the climate crisis and the accompanying social change, the project by Jakob Kukula examines the relationship between Berlin and the Spree, the urban space, the citizens and the body of water. How can the river be given its own "political" voice, and what can help to create more awareness for the Spree and the influence of humans?

Peatland Forensics engages the phenomenon of environmental mourning through a site-specific design and grieving process. What does it mean to grieve for a landscape? The term ecological grief describes negative emotions brought on by experiencing indirect or direct consequences of the climate crisis.