“Haptic Hortus” plays with two very different sites in Berlin. Both hold their very own (hi)stories of touch and hapticality: the Botanical Gardens in Berlin and a derelict nail salon, now the Studio Nagelneu, next to Prinzessinnengärten Berlin. You can watch a short documentary shot during Berlin Science Week here .
Haptic Hortus is a “phytographic” (Cheryl McEwan) take on the everyday encounters of plants and humans at the Botanical Gardens in Berlin, telling stories through very human places and finding that they are, indeed, not as human as we think we are. Centered around two larger video works and less obvious pathways of smell, UV lights, and tastes, the installation took up vignettes and encounters that reflect back on a collaboration with the ethnographic research project “Touching Plants” (SFB Affective Societ
The journey through Haptic Hortus began with a projection of a giant aquarium into the shopwindow of the Studio Nagelneu - both marking a threshold and lowering it - and asked visitors to be conscious and concerned movers, not spectators, through a rang of multi sensorial propositions. Following and appropriating those invitations, visitors created and experienced the multiple layers and overlaps of the two sites narrated along a thread of touch and accountability, plant time, and the political potential of