Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Twenty performing artists and dancers embedded themselves in sites with different dynamics between nature and culture: the Berlin Botanical Garden, a cultural site focused on nature; a power plant, where nature is burned to make culture; a landfill and recycling center where the detritus of culture re-enters nature; a spy station built on a hill of rubble from the second world war; and a nature paradise impacted by climate change. Contaminations is an outdoor, experimental educational programme for people who want to work with their bodies (floating-berlin.org/contaminations). This short film shows scenes from Contaminations 2022. In this film, you see roads washed out by floods induced by climate change, with their guardrails floating in midair. There are metal structures newly constructed to prevent landslides in a forest impacted by forest fires worsened by climate change. When trees burn, their roots no longer hold the soil, and landslides further destroy the forest and homes.

Sebastian Díaz de León lives in Berlin with a spatial practice at the interface of architecture, film, photography and research. He examines existing structures to imagine a social and climate-just future, combining a variety of disciplines to address contemporary spatial challenges. As part of the collective ufoufo - urban fragment observatory they edited and published the book „VISITING - inken baller & hinrich baller, berlin 1966-89" (2022), including the accompanying exhibition at DAZ berlin (2022), Freie Akademie der Künste in hamburg (2023) and Kunsthochschule Kassel (2024). With ABRISSSTOP! (2023) they fight against the demolition of buildings in Berlin through film, performance and exhibitions. IVRY-AFFAIRES (2023) is a 3-channel video installation displayed in the public spaces of Ivry-sur-Seine and berlin. It shows the stories of Ivry-sur-Seine’s inhabitants and unfolds collective imaginaries emerging from the multi level terrace housing by Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie. After teaching architectural design at the chair of Jean-Philippe Vassal, he is currently teaching at the chair of Stéphanie Bru at Universität der Künste berlin. Katherine Ball is a habitat for fungi and bacteria located on planet Earth. Katherine is a member of Floating University e.V., runs the program Contaminations, and is part of the Hybrid Infrastructure Working group there. Their art practice includes things like: living in an off-grid floating island building mushroom filters to clean a polluted lake and coordinating a national day of action to halt business at banks and corporations influencing state laws. Katherine has a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University School of the Environment (2022), a Master’s in Fine Arts in Social Practice from Portland State University (2012), and studied at the School of Walls and Space in Copenhagen (2011, 2015). Katherine has exhibited and performed at Smackmellon (NY), apexart (NY), Kampnagel Hamburg (DE), Schauspiel Dortmund Theater (DE), Wien Woche (AT), Wiener Festwochen (AT) and their work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA, NY). Their books include Not Broken Yet: Life in the Mojave Desert (High Desert Test Sites, 2014) and Utopia Walks Away: Infrastructure in Copenhagen, Denmark (LikeLichen Press, 2014). Katherine has been a Fulbright Fellow in Copenhagen, a German Chancellor Fellow (Bundeskanzler-Stipendium), a Macdowell Fellow, an artist in residence at Andrea Zittel's High Desert Test Sites in the Mojave Desert, an observer delegate at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Mexico, and a member of the inflatable sculpture collective Tools for Action (2014-2017). Originally from Detroit, Katherine lives between Colorado, Berlin and Hawaii.