How can we re-entangle ourselves with the intelligence, beauty and complexity of the more than human world and its inherent intelligence? Garden of Duets is a research project intended to share and develop 'co-creative' working methods between Nature and artists.

 

In September 2020, I invited 4 musicians, Marc Lohr, Anja Müller, Tian Rotteveel and Claire Vivianne Sobbotke to choose or be chosen by a plant in the Impossible Forest with the intent to develop an intimate relationship. They chose Grape, Monkey Puzzle, Clover and Wisteria respectively. After 6 months, this encounter shifted to a co-creative act of music making. Each human/plant pair developed a unique musical process/proposition that grew out of their intimate encounters, intuitive acts and interspecies communication. This was a practice of deep listening that was searching for honesty and humbleness in its outcome. Each musical piece is its own garden, its own dream and its own manifestation of a co-creative act with Nature. As an extension to this research, five writers, Shelley Etkin, Astrid Kaminski, Sandra Man, Liz Rosenfeld and Angela Schubot were invited to follow a similar process to write with the Garden as their partner (5 months).

 

This research asks how we can seek a new language of the earth that is not about the earth, a research that sets out to meet and learn to perceive the intelligence of the living world and to develop a co-creative partnership that will inherently reweave our place back into the living breathing sentient fabric from which we come.