Japanese knotweed proliferates on the banks of the Chemnitz, in allotments and along railway tracks. What consequences does a self-evolving nature have for our understanding of ‘native’ and ‘foreign’? What do we mean by nature and culture when agricultural land is farmed monoculturally and animals retreat to urban centres?

The artist Tue Greenfort has been dealing with our environment for years. In the form of sculptures, interventions and archival exhibition strategies, he has explored cultivated grains, polluted lakes and the relationship between humans and animals. Instead of saving our idea of a healed and untouched nature, he shows which ideologies are hidden in our view of nature and where humans intervene in supposedly unaffected nature. In Chemnitz, he has created a sculpture that refers to the ambivalent plant Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica). He will be presenting his artistic approach on the 14th of September.

Cord Riechelmann is a biologist, lecturer, publicist and author and has written several books on nature and the human relationship to it. In ‘Krähen. Ein Portrait’ (Matthes & Seitz, 2023), he focuses on the myth-laden, clever bird species. ‘Wald’ (Merve, 2019) asks why, in the Roman Empire, philosophy and political underground groups, the forest was often understood as something radically different, but rarely actually visited. In ‘Wilde Tiere in der Großstadt’ (Nicolai, 2004), he traces new animal habitats. In Chemnitz, he will talk about the problem of invasive or so-called ‘’foreign‘’ species and their current ideological utilisation.

Language: German