An exhibition by Laura Skehan, curated by Eamonn Maxwell. The research-led project evolves as a moving image, sound, and sculptural installation at ZK/U.

VERNISSAGE ON 15 NOV 2024, OPEN FROM 15–29 NOV 2024, WEDNESDAY–SATURDAY, 3–8 PM

ZK/U BerlinSiemensstr. 27, 10551, Berlin, Germany

INTERZONE reflects on urban planning through a geolocated soundwalk, along with a video installation using post-punk meditations to invite the viewer to consider green spaces as realms of rite and rituals. Referencing the philosophy of Rousseau and the influence his writings on the garden had on 18th century landscape and political struggles of the time, Skehan uses this research long her socially engaged work to reference the nature/culture collective.

Ceramic sculptural works examine indigenous irrigation systems and seed banks, while text based textile works use poetic murmurings to explore gentrification as a fungus that feeds away on cultural memory. Recipes and a publication explore the sharing of information and community building through solidarity as a resistance to current geopolitical tensions.

Throughout the exhibition, Skehan contemplates and navigates parallels between the diversity of the queer community and the biodiversity of urban green space, in particular the contested spaces of community gardens as places of growth and memory. In particular, she conflates the use of land with queer visibility, the collective archive through local memory and the history of these spaces as refuge for marginalised communities, in particular working class, migrants and LGBTQIA+ people. She proposes these places as performative, with protest inclusivity, anti-capitalist activity and countercultural movements at their very core of reason.

The research opens up a new and exciting prospect of an ongoing five-year project that includes a seed bank for ZK/U to be used by the residency, skill sharing workshops and support around seed saving, germinating, planting and harvesting while working with the community garden with an aim to sustain a small urban agricultural plot with the different residents at different times of the year. Through this project, Skehan proposes and initiates acts of solidarity between the different residents throughout the time of the project at ZK/U, the local community and the Moabit Stadtgarten.