Waiting a Garden

Footnotes:

We imagine the garden to come as a space that creates relational and exchange networks between people, earth, plants, water, fungi, insects, worms, the stories of the place, the area and its changes, the microclimate, the colonial and migrational histories of Bremen, as well as our stomachs and their bacteria. This vision extends beyond mere physical elements; it encircles the cultivation of collective knowledge. Gardens serve as dynamic classrooms where diverse perspectives merge and concentrate, fostering conversations that transcend disciplinary boundaries.

Speicher XI, where the Art and Design department of the University of Arts Bremen is located, was built between 1908 and 1912 as a cotton warehouse. The erection of such a building was necessary after the opening of the port Europahafen and then Überseehafen in 1906. Both Überseehafen and Europahafen functioned as traditional general cargo ports, mostly receiving colonial goods from overseas. The colonial past of this location has been stored and archived in its soil.

W/GARTEN raises questions such as: What is a garden and why? What alternative forms can gardens take? Which art historical examples of gardens can we find and how have they been conceived in transcultural processes? Together with W/GARTEN, we burrow into this investigation, examining historical, social and cultural layers woven into our garden’s soil, while reimagining relationships with non-human entities in our immediate environment and beyond.

With the formation of a garden we embed ourselves in an already existing choreography of organisms and built things. In the former train tracks a multiplicity of entities, stories, lived memories exist side by side. A garden is a site of intended exchange - a network of relations with what happens inside and outside of the site. At the same time, a garden can enable, very practically, to develop a different understanding of artistic and creative work, authorship and collective forms of working - forms of artistic practice in a changing life world.

W/GARTEN was initiated during the COVID-19 lockdown and emerged as a flourishing replacement for rather traditional university seminar rooms and quite immediately adopted the role of a facilitator (1). We could experience caregiving in a direct, tangible way—tending to plants and nurturing their growth. The enforced stillness of the lockdowns fostered a greater appreciation for patience and the act of waiting, as reflected in nature's slow, deliberate rhythms.

WARTEN/GARTEN, located in the former railway tracks in front of Speicher XI has been growing since 2021. As a garden for/with/in the University of the Arts Bremen, it is envisioned as 

a space for listening, 

a platform for encounter,

a habitat of rewilding, 

a studio for (artistic) experimentation.