Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond

The interdisciplinary 4A_Lab Academy “Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond” is organized by Dr. Hannah Baader and the team of 4A_Lab and is part of the Berlin Science Week. The 4A_Lab is a cooperation between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
The academy is held from 4-8 November 2024 at different venues in Berlin, namely Forschungscampus Dahlem (Lansstraße 8, 14195 Berlin), Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart (Invalidenstraße 50, 10557 Berlin), Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Potsdamer Str. 37, 10785 Berlin), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Potsdamer Str. 33, 10785 Berlin), Kulturforum (Kunstgewerbemuseum, Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Gemäldegalerie) (Matthäikirchplatz, 10785 Berlin) and Museum für Fotografie (Jebensstraße 2, 10623 Berlin).
The academy explores the role of plant life in artistic and aesthetic practice, in human knowledge production and in theoretical-critical thinking across different time periods, communities and geographies. The concept note (below) provides some context to the research aims and vision of the academy.
All events and lectures will be held in English, take place on-site, and are free and open to the public. Each panel or event can be attended individually. All academy lectures and panels will be accessible online – excluding onsite visits and tours. Please join us via Zoom and register through the link.
A selected number of workshops and events are held in German and have a limited number of participants. For more information, please visit Events in German.
Please find workshop program HERE.

Questions? Contact: Antje Paul, 4a_lab@khi.fi.it
The interdisciplinary 4A_Lab Academy Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond builds on the ecocritical turn in the humanities and invites to collectively (re)think human entanglements with vegetal/non-human life—with and against the Berlin collections, with and against their meaning and manifestation as repositories for vegetal/non-human life. As much as plants have contributed to the making of human worlds, human intervention has also had a deep impact on vegetal ecosystems: the plant-human relationship is one of reciprocal interplay and mutual exchange, with humans existentially depending on plant life. Recent studies have highlighted how these organisms, far from being passive receivers at the other end of the life spectrum, are endowed with active forms of sensory perception. For all these reasons, vegetal life constitutes a privileged field of investigation and knowledge production, be it in terms of applied technologies, theoretical thinking, or through practices of reciprocity. This new awareness calls for novel paradigms of historical and transhistorical inquiry, focusing on the wide range of interactions between humans and plants across time and space. In particular, there is a need for transdisciplinary and transregional approaches to the interactions of plant biodiversity and human ecologies that can help to retrace the Anthropocene, and think beyond it.
The academy Ecological Entanglements across Collections—Plant Lives and Beyond explores the role of plant life in artistic and aesthetic practices, human knowledge production, and theoretical critical thinking across histories, communities and geographies. It will include public guided tours (in English and German), a live performance by radio artists, and a recital by baroque harp player Margret Koell.
Day one will open the discussions with a critical reassessment of environmental thought as inseparable from religious and political constellations, racial and colonial dominations, the arts, the history of science, and plant biology—reflected in Discourses, Imaginaries, and Common Sense. Day two will focus on the critical appraisal of the colonial legacies in Environmentalism in Contemporary Art after 1970. Day three is dedicated to the nexus of Vegetability, Power and Resistance in and across Asia 1600–1850, as Paradise Drama. Here, scholars discuss the making of gardens as religious, spiritual, and power structures, in search of resilience, with a special session dedicated on the collections of the Oriental Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Day four will consider communication between vegetal/non-human life forms and Plants, Sensory Interactions and Language in Early Modern Europe, that will reflect on perceptions, the senses, sound, smell, music, and feelings in and through plant natures before Modernity. It will lead into the collections of Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie and the holdings of the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung and the Musikinstrumenten-Museum. Day five will be looking into Plant Photography, Coloniality, and Art in and after the 1920s and again will include a presentation of selected materials from the collections. A round table critically discussing Disciplines, Systems of Knowledge, and Curatorial Practice will conclude the event.
Participants:
Giovanni Aloi (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Birgitta Augustin (Museum für Asiatische Kunst, SPK, Berlin)
Hannah Baader (4A_Lab/Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, MPI)
Sussan Babaie (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
Etienne Benson (Max PIanck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)
Anna Blume (State University of New York, FIT)
Eric de Bruyn (Freie Universität Berlin)
Linn Burchert (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich)
Zachary Caple (Aarhus University/Duke University, Durham)
Sinem Casale (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, MPI/University of Minnesota)
Carlotta Castellani (Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo)
Sria Chatterjee (Paul Mellon Centre, London)
Thiago Lopes da Costa Oliveira (Ethnologisches Museum, SPK, Berlin)
Kate Donovan (Artist and Academic, Berlin)
Friederike Eden (Collection of Photography, Kunstbibliothek, SPK, Berlin)
Ella Finer (Artist and Academic, London)
Monica Gagliano (Southern Cross University, Lismore)
Barbara Göbel (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, SPK, Berlin)
Liliana Goméz (Universität Kassel)
Daniela Hacke (Freie Universität Berlin)
Dagmar Hirschfelder (Gemäldegalerie, SPK, Berlin)
Monica Juneja (Heidelberg University)
Stephan Kemperdick (Gemäldegalerie, SPK, Berlin)
Sunil Khilnani (Ashoka University, Sonipat)
Gabriele Knapstein (Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, SPK, Berlin)
Margret Koell (Harpist, Historical Harps)
Christine Kühn (Collection of Photography, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin)
Ludwig Luthardt ((Paleo-)botanical collection, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)
Maurice Mengel (Head of Media, Ethnologisches Museum and Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin)
Jasmin Mersmann (Freie Universität Berlin)
Ulrike Meyer Stump (Zurich University of the Arts)
Mahroo Moosavi (4A_Lab, Berlin)
Stefan Neuner (Universität der Künste Berlin)
Kärin Nickelsen (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München/Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin)
James Nisbet (University of California, Irvine)
Franziska Nori (Frankfurter Kunstverein)
Hermann Parzinger (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)
Margrit Pernau (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin)
Alexis von Poser (Ethnologisches Museum and Museum für Asiatische Kunst, SPK, Berlin)
Wenyi Qian (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, MPI)
Patricia Rahemipour (Institut für Museumsforschung, SPK, Berlin)
Christoph Rauch (Oriental Department, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, SPK)
André Rottmann (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt/O.)
Peter J. Schneemann (Universität Bern)
Feng Schöneweiß (4A_Lab, Berlin)
Parul Singh (4A_Lab, Berlin)
Robert Stock (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Jason C. J. Terry (Freie Universität Berlin)
Lea Viehweger (4A_Lab, Berlin)
Julia Voss (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin/Leuphana University, Lüneburg)
Stefan Weber (Museum für Islamische Kunst, SPK, Berlin)
Ulrike G. K. Wegst (Northeastern University, Boston)
Albrecht Wiedmann (Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, Ethnologisches Museum, SPK, Berlin)
Christopher Williams-Wynn (4A_Lab, Berlin)
Gerhard Wolf (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, MPI)
Rebecca Wolf (Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, SPK, Berlin)
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (October 31, 2024). Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved March 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12lkh