During the Summer Lab we would like to focus on our relation to trees in the city, trees that are not part of big parks and green areas, not supported by a community of other trees, but that are standing, sometimes forgotten or invisible, on squares, on the corners of streets… and are part of the daily life of other inhabitants.

The Summer Lab is an invitation to design a collective Tool Kit Zine, as an experiment to imagine how we can transform a city into an interconnected system where trees weave a new social system based on interconnectedness, kinship and symbiosis. How can we imagine a society from the perspective of trees, as a way to imagine impactful actions in tackling climate change? Our questions for the Summer Lab: How to inhabit the nature/culture-dichotomy by connecting to a tree? How do we, artists, imagine acts of care as a way to acknowledge our dependence on trees?

We would like to imagine this Summer Lab as a moving “table” that goes around in public space searching for trees in the city. Locations are decided in collaboration with the invited artists and guests. The locations are places where we can weave our mutual relation with trees.

During the lab, every participant will choose a tree as their ally. The final presentation of the Summer Lab will be a Fanzine, consisting of a map of the ally-trees and a toolkit on how a connection with trees can be shaped. We will walk an audience along the ‘ally’-trees and share our experiences.

Each artist will choose a tree in the city and imagine a protocol of tools to dialogue with trees – of being and living together- and relating to other trees in the city.

Every participant brings one book about trees – moving library – to introduce the relation of their work with the concept of trees.

The Summer lab is moderated by Gosie Vervloessem (the toxic detective) and Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (the guardian of nature).

Concept: Maria Lucia Cruz Correia & Gosie Vervloessem
Participating Artists: Azahara ubera Biedma (Kaaitheater – Belgium), Elena Štrok (Domino – Croatia), Filip Jovanovski (Lokomotiva – North Macedonia), Iveta Pole (NTIL – Latvia), Malaika Cunningham (ArtsAdmin – UK), Mathieu Charles (Theater Rotterdam – The Netherlands), Sinéad Hargan (ArtsAdmin – UK), Tery Žeželj (Bunker – Slovenia), Victor Remère (COAL – France)
ACT observant: Lua Vollard

Produced by: Bunker, Ljubljana & Forensic Plant Lab
Executive producer: Maja Vižin
Lab producer: Polona Vozel
Supported by: Evropska unija – Program Ustvarjalna Evropa, Kultura, ACT – Art, Climate, Transition
Partner: Botanični vrt Univerze v Ljubljani
Photo by: Forensic Plant Lab