On Friday 16th and Saturday 17th May, an international meeting of creators and supporters of the broad cultural-ecological field took place in Berlin. The event, entitled Moving through the Land we organized together with American interspecies musician and philosopher David Rothenberg from the USA and Benjamin Rodriguez Kafka from Atelier Gardens.
The first evening saw the so-called “Salon”. On the roof of the former BUFA film studios in the setting sun, not only local artists but also Atelier Gardens and their unique center of culture and nature also attracts a variety of guests.
Above all, several interesting personalities from Berlin: Mirjam Schaub, a philosopher from the Hamburg University of the Arts, author of a new two-part book on the topic of Radicality; Ines Theileis, a singer and theater director who also sang, or Hendrik Klatte, a musician and curator of the online series Re:Nature, which is based on the sounds of nature. David Rothenberg talked about his playing with the Berlin Nightingales and showed excerpts from the film Nightingales in Berlin. And Bára Kinkalová outlined the activities of the Czech association Pilgrim-The Wandering University of Nature, both in terms of summer seminars, book production and Prague lectures, and above all various wanderings. Thanks to excerpts from the film by Karel Čtveráček Pilgrimage of the Giant Mountains (we thank producer Jarmila Poláková for lending them) Berlin guests were able to briefly be transported to one of Pilgrim's journeys and experience a few enchanting moments in the Czech countryside with the film's actors (Jiří Zemánek and co.).
Interesting visitors from the audience also came to the "Salon" at Atelier Gardens, so the topics discussed and further acquaintances continued during the refreshments - which also included three liters of Czech Únětický beer. Finally, around midnight, a small group of the most persistent moved out of Atelier Gardens to listen to the nightingales. About six bird singers were immediately identified in the opposite area of the Bahlsen biscuit factory, where a kind doorman let us in, and David Rothenberg showed us live what interspecies music looks like.
The next day we went into the field: at the former Tempelhofer Feld airport, a group of seasoned pilgrims gathered in the rain and wind, who set out on a walk through deep time under the leadership of Bára Kinkalová, on whose 4.6 kilometers of route they followed the 4.6 billion-year story of the Earth's evolution: 1 meter of the walk represented 1 million years of evolution. We imagined the key milestones of the development of our planet and its main events and manifestations: the birth of the oceans and atmosphere, the development of simple organisms in the seas and then the development of more complex multicellular forms, and finally the turbulent, complex and dramatic development of life on land from plants, trees and flowers to insects, dinosaurs and mammals to humans. Even though five large-scale extinctions of species occurred during this time, life did not stop evolving in terms of its complexity and creativity. However, as a result of the immense development of human civilization in the last century, we have reached the threshold of a planetary ecological and civilizational crisis. And today we ask ourselves the questions: How to rediscover wisdom and restore balance with natural systems? Where to go next?
A big thank you for helping to implement the walk – for collectively co-creating the experience – goes primarily to Veronika Chvátalová and David Rothenberg, but also to all the rare participants (the great musician Jeffrey Goldberg, photographer and visual artist Hanna Mattes, etc.) who were not afraid to come during a huge downpour, so that the rain miraculously stopped a few minutes after the event began.
