The Requiem in Non-Human Minor (POD STOL, The Feast, Planetary Gardener)

The garden, as an active verb of doing, the process of activity in space and time—cultivating, spreading, arranging, but also preparing a person for burial after their death—can be seen in its complexity as a symbol of the colonial past, authority, power, but also as a reflection of the macrocosm in the microcosm, a place of different sensual and spiritual experiences and the potential of healing. The very origin of gardening— the activity composed of sowing, planting, fixing, placing and maintaining—occurs when a wall is built around an orchard, this physical separation of a particular space from space in general, which prepares what once was a cultivation ground for its conversion into a space of delights. Pairidaeza is a form of garden of ancient Persian origin. The term is compounded of "pari" meaning "around" and "daeza" meaning "built wall". In the Persian desert, such gardens were enclosed places of a mythical origin defined by a wall around them and divided by water channels into four smaller paradises. HORTUS LUDI—the garden of spectacle and ecstasy, a social space for games and play—is defined as a place of pleasure and a scene of dining, dancing, music-making. The experimental quality of the garden—let the garden be completely free—brings the destabilization and destruction of the geopolitical encoding of territorial borders, obsession with vertical accumulation of power and hegemonic domination over the air, water, and soil, fossil fuel-based industry regime, atmospheric pollution, and suffering of the multi-species. The role of all forms in nature is the symbiotic relationship, "sumbios" or "living together", from micro to macro level, the coexistence between the species for mutual benefit. The bodies of most organisms are multi-species landscapes, and no one can become itself without the assistance of other species. Even your body has an interspecies relationship with a million bacteria. We humans are colonized by fungi, bacteria, viruses, just as we colonize our rooms, buildings, cities, and planets. You are deeply part of nature, a community that is not separate from this planet. There is communication between organisms, there are languages between them, and if you destroy them, you will destroy yourself! This project immerses audiences in an interactive experience that combines gameplay, performance, and installation within the intangible walls of the Earthly Paradise Hortus Ludi, reconnecting humans and non-humans through ludic communication. By inviting the audience to go 'UNDER THE TABLE |POD STOL|' - beneath one of the most fundamental architectural elements of human private space, including the house, room, floor, and table - the project creates a hidden and protective space for dreams, imagination, utopia, and creative collaboration. Through this experience, the audience and non-humans together create an ecstatic soundscape. „The nonhuman is the cause of the multiplicity of life forms not only in space but also in time and history“ (Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture)