[Concept – Postproduction – STaging]
Playing on the fine line between fiction and reality, the 3:35 minute film "Plant Circus" portrays a typical day in the Pillnitz Park and Castle in Dresden [GER], a place for people to admire nature that is so perfect it seems artificial. The repetitive, seemingly absurd performative acts of the gardeners to maintain this spectacle testify to their intimate closeness to the plants while raising the question: Who is the performer and who is the spectator?
The film was realized during a workshop by the curatorial duo Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts [studio d-o-t-s] in collaboration with the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden [GER]. For the 2023 edition of the Design Campus Dresden, d-o-t-s asked the participating curators, designers, and researchers in their "School of Phyto-centered Design" to take a critical look at their relationship with nature and to question old presumptions and structures. The results - including "Plant Circus" - are experimental explorations that form new narratives that go beyond a purely human-centered view of the world.
Photo: © Leonie Hochstrasser 2023
After being featured at the "Pleasure Garden" exhibition at Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden [GER] and the "Room for Change" at Vienna Design Week [AUT] in 2023, the film is currently screened again at Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden [GER] as part of the "Plant Fever" exhibition.
Related Projects:
Team
Katharina Mludek, Katrin Schwarz, Julia Sulikowska
Partners
