DEEN

Crespo Foundation

‘THE GLENKEEN VARIATIONS: ARTNATURE/NATUREART’

THE ARTISTS OF THE EXHIBITION

The biographies and works of the artists in the Glenkeen Garden artist-in-residence programme from 2021 to 2023.

THE ARTISTS OF THE RESIDENCY 1 – AUTUMN 2021

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Markus Huemer

Markus Huemer’s artistic practice navigates between traditional painting and media art. His observations of nature, which have led to an extensive series of 22 paintings, centre on the question of how painting can be continued in the digital age. In Glenkeen Garden, Huemer explored the hidden world of cryptogams — small plants like liverworts and ferns that have populated West Cork since the dawn of time. Using digital tools, a limited range of colours, bold lines, and by setting plant parts within a wider context, Huemer touches upon the ancient relationships between these organisms and their environment.

First presentation of the work as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: Composing Landscapes’ at the Goethe Institute Dublin, 08.05.—08.06.2024.

Markus Huemer probes the essence of painting within the digital era, exploring the interplay between images and their digital manipulation. Studying at the Academy of Arts, Düsseldorf and the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Markus is currently holding a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts, New Media I, in Prague. By delving into the complexities of digital media, Huemer challenges per ceptions of reality versus visual representation, fostering a dialogue on the evolving nature of artistic expression in the digital age. His works are featured in international exhibitions and collections.

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Tania Rubio

During her residency at Glenkeen Garden, Tania Rubio, a sound artist and biomusic researcher, immersed herself in the garden’s subtle soundscapes. She captured the natural sounds of raindrops, gentle waves, bird calls, buzzing insects, distant cattle, and rhythmic beats from improvised percussion.

Her work, ‘The Language of Water’ (2021), is a two-part sonic tapestry reflecting her experience with diverse Irish landscapes and water’s essential role in shaping them. It invites listeners on a journey through imaginary acoustic environments.

The electroacoustic version, featured in the exhibition, incorporates field recordings from Glenkeen Garden alongside sounds from a homemade instrument. The second version, for string, brass, and percussion en semble with electronics, is inspired by the varied flows of water, evoking soundscapes, colors, and textures.

First presentation of the work as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: Composing Landscapes’ at the Goethe Institute Dublin, 08.05.—08.06.2024.

Tania Rubio is a composer, researcher, sound artist, and field recordist focused on bio music. Her work explores environmental sounds through the lens of acoustic ecology, with a particular interest in the interaction between sound art, biology, and ethnology from an ecocritical perspective. Her artistic work engages in diverse concert formats, music theatre, chamber music, immersive multi channel sound installations, and hybrid formats. She is currently a PhD student at Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität.

THE ARTISTS OF THE RESIDENCY 2 – SPRING 2022

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Moritz Fehr

In his captivating video work, artist, researcher and composer Moritz Fehr deals with the notion of plant stress — a term borrowed from scientific discourse, denoting unfavourable conditions or the impact of substances that disrupt the metabolism and growth of plants. The antagonist in this instance is excessive UV radiation, a prevalent factor in environmental pollution. Filmed exclusively in the ultraviolet light spectrum, Fehr’s work shows the act of applying SPF 50 sunscreen to various plants, thus creating a peculiar, shimmering black shield against the relentless effect of UV rays on the flora, resulting in the image itself slowly starting to disappear. This encounter creates a nuanced narrative around the implications of human influence on the natural world.

First presentation of the work as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: Disquieting Frequencies’ at the Goethe Institute Dublin, 07.03.—06.04.2024.

Moritz Fehr is a Berlin-based artist, researcher, and composer exploring constellations of objectivity and emotion, technology and nature, and psychological aspects of hearing and seeing. His works, encompassing sound and moving images, are often site-specific installations or environments. Fehr studied at Bauhaus University Weimar and Tokyo National University of the Arts. Also in Weimar, he completed a PhD in Fine Arts. His projects have been showcased globally, including venues like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston) and Kunstverein Hildesheim.

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Carolin Liebl & Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler

How does plastic die? Deep in the compost piles of Glenkeen Garden, Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler pioneered artistic research on plastic ageing. Immersing themselves in the heeps of naturally heated flora waste, they delved into the biodegradability of specific plastics, aiming to depict the explored transformations visually. Composing a sort of indexical photography of de-composing processes, Liebl and Schmid-Pfähler represent processes of micro-narratives, crafting maps that reveal the hidden yet vibrant worlds of decay and rot as well as the discrepancy between eco logical promise and actual deterioration.

Further presentation of the work from 8 November to 7 December 2024 as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: With or Without You’ at the Goethe Institut Dublin.

Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler create unusual plastic sculptures in collaboration with quirky robots. Through these and other sculptural and installation works, the duo investigates the interplay between the natural and artificial, human and non-human, material and ideology. Both are graduates of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, where they founded the interdisciplinary art space Atelier Wäscherei in 2019 and have since served as artistic directors. Their works are represented in prominent collections, including ZKM in Karlsruhe and the WRO Art Center in Wroclaw, Poland. In 2022, their monograph hello world was published by Distanz Verlag Berlin.

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Marcus Maeder

Marcus Maeder works as an artist, researcher and composer of electronic music. His extensive project ‘Imeall an Chosta’ (Irish for: coastline), which he has developed for over two years in Glenkeen, investigates the impact of climate change in Roaringwater Bay, focusing on biodiversity in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. Using acoustic methods, Maeder placed automatic audio recorders and sensors in transition areas from water to land, capturing the local soundscape in air, underwater, and in the soil. The recordings reveal temporal and spatial dynamics of biodiversity and the weakening Gulf Stream (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). Combining scientific and artistic research, ‘Imeall an Chosta’ offers new insights into the ecological transformations occurring on the Irish coast.

First presentation of the work as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: Disquieting Frequencies’ at the Goethe Institute Dublin, 07.03.—06.04.2024.

Marcus Maeder is a Berlin-based artist, researcher, and composer focusing on electronic music. He holds degrees in Fine Arts, Philosophy, and a PhD in Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zürich. Since 2005, he has been a researcher at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) at Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK. In his research, Maeder is working on ecoacoustic investigations of areas, communities, and organisms under the influence of climate change and other environmental issues.

THE ARTISTS OF THE RESIDENCY 3 – AUTUMN 2022

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Christina Chiranagnostaki & Konstanza Kapsali

Athens-based artists Christiana Chiranagnostaki and Konstanza Kapsali were attracted during their time in West Cork to the seemingly primordial structures of the dry walls that contour the land. Departing from traditional views of these structures as mere boundaries, the artists discovered a complex relationship between the walls and their environment, characterised by notions of embodiment, shelter and allotment. Drawing on anthropomorphic language used by stone wall masons, such as referring to the walls as ‘she,’ the artists delve into the multifaceted roles these structures play through two complimentary video works created by material filmed together during numerous journeys across the land. From providing habitat for various species to embodying a fusion of human labour and natural elements, the artists present multifaceted narratives of reciprocal interconnectedness, of resilience, craftsmanship and property.

First presentation of the work as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: Composing Landscapes’ at the Goethe Institute Dublin, 08.05.—08.06.2024.

Christiana Cheiranagnostaki is an Athensbased filmmaker working for many years on social issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis and the Greek financial crisis as a producer. Notable projects include directing the interactive documentary The Beggar and the short films The Day Humans Left and June Notes. Currently, she is immersed in crafting her debut feature-length documentary, Dear Future, supported by the Greek Film Centre and the Greek broadcaster ERT. She recently screened her new work, Here Again, at the In Situ Realities Eleusis Documentary Festival.

Konstanza Kapsali is an Athens-based filmmaker. She completed her studies in History and Archaeology and went on to acquire an MA in Heritage Management (NL) and an MSc in Documentary Filmmaking (DE). Her films have been featured in international conferences and international film festivals and were included in academic journals. Her first short film, Girls In Flower, was awarded the NIGHT AWARD at the 18th Signos da Noite Film Festival in Lisbon. She is a PhD candidate at LUCA School of Arts (BE), and she has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).

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Filippa Pettersson & Kristin Reiman

With plastic resources nearing depletion since the early 36,000s p.o. (post-organic), the termites and their alliance with the Cockroach Kind are entering a new era. The Royal Museum of Termitology hosts an exhibit showcasing cutting-edge discoveries in drill-scanning, excroprinting, and Hu-man research, highlighting their remarkable journey to revive synthetic polymer production and reclaim their sustenance.

During their three-month residency in Glenkeen Garden, Filippa Pettersson and Kristin Reiman envisioned a post-human world where termites learn to eat and process plastics. As a non-renewable resource, the dwindling supply of plastics now poses the gravest concern to termite civilisation.

Further presentation of the work from 8 November to 7 December 2024 as part of the exhibition ‘The Glenkeen Variations: With or Without You’ at the Goethe Institut Dublin.

Filippa Pettersson lives in Frankfurt am Main. From 2009 to 2015, she was a student of fine arts at the Städelschule. Since then, she has her own studio and works in the fields of installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Her works are built on narrative structures, either by using already existing stories or by making them up on her own.

Kristin Reiman works with the notion of discomfort, malfunctions, and the skewing of perception using sound, speech, and writing. Their works often take the form of audio plays or mock-versions of bigger musical forms, where one or multiple voices lament trivial problems and cyclical thoughts. Reiman graduated from St.delschule and the Estonian Academy of Arts with additional studies at the Royal Academy of Arts Antwerp. Their latest works include choir pieces How to unfocus completely (2022, B15, Linz) and Artist’s Lament (2021, CEAAC, Strasbourg), as well as several music releases as Man Rei. As a resident of Noods Radio, Reiman runs a bi-monthly radio show called An Awkward Guest.

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Jan Wagner

‘Notes from the Bay of Roaring Water’ was written by Jan Wagner following his time spent in Glenkeen Garden and developed during walks in the surrounding areas. The writer, who has always had a fondness for Limericks, found himself particularly tempted to compose them while travelling through Ireland. Memories from the extended trip were woven into the text, contributing to a broader panorama of Ireland, with a focus on Roaringwater Bay.

Jan Wagner is a poet, translator of English poetry, and essayist living in Berlin. In addition to poetry collections – including Regentonnenvariationen (2014), Selbstporträt mit Bienenschwarm: Ausgewählte Gedichte (2016) and Steine & Erden (2023) (all published by Hanser Verlag Berlin) – he has also published the essay collections Die Sandale des Propheten (Berlin Verlag 2011), Der verschlossene Raum (Hanser Berlin 2016), and Der glückliche Augenblick (Hanser Berlin 2021). He has been awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (2015) and the Georg Büchner Prize (2017), among others.

DIE KÜNSTLER:INNEN DER RESIDENCY 4 – FRÜHLING 2023

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Yulia Carolin Kothe, Max Brück & Katerina Sidorova

During their stay in Ireland, the artists Yulia Carolin Kothe, Katerina Sidorova and Max Brück researched various socio-political, mythical and ecological aspects of layers of the boggy moorland, the ‘Wild Lands’, part of the Glenkeen Garden property. On site, they collected personal, historical, and mythical stories about the bog. Within this context, they explored the process of producing the so-called ‘bog butter’ — moor butter that is crea ted by a fermentation process triggered by sinking ceramic and wooden vessel into the boggy soil. Based on their research, Kothe, Sidorova and Brück created sculptural objects that mimic these tra ditional ‘bog butter’ vessels. Embed ded in an installative (moor) landscape, the recordings of the stories echo from the vessellike sculptures. In this way, the artists translate the various layers of the moorland itself and the relationship between humans and the bog into a polyphonic, multimedia structure with open pathways that welcome individual exploration.

Yulia Carolin Kothe is a visual artist based between Glasgow and Frankfurt am Main. Her practice moves between sculpture, sound, writing, installation, and performance, often responding to archival material, queer feminist theory, personal, and oral histories. The processual nature of her practice breaks away from the notion of a singular, finished work and leads to site-specific and contextual modes of display. Kothe has completed a master’s degree at the Glasgow School of Art and the Kunsthochschule Mainz. Recent works have been shown at Kunstverein Bellevue-Saal, Wiesbaden (2024), David Dale Gallery, Glasgow (2023), Neuer Kunstverein Mittelrhein, Neuwied (2023), French Street, Glasgow (2023), Rosa Stern, München (2022), Atletika Gallery, Vilnius (2020).

Max Brück grew up in a small village in Hesse. He studied Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. After graduating in 2019, he received the a work stipend from the Kunstfonds Foundation in Bonn and an upcoming young talent award from the Frankfurter Künstlerhilfe. In 2022, he was awarded a travel grant from the Hessian Cultural Foundation, which allowed him to explore industrial sites in Poland. Since 2023, Brück has been a research assistant in the Experimental Space Concepts department at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach. His work focuses on personal and site-specific memory. Recently, his work has been presented at various venues, including Rondo Sztuki (Katowice), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt), Berlin Art Week (Berlin), and Bistro 21 (Leipzig).

Katerina Sidorova is a visual artist and researcher based in The Hague. Working with installation, performance, and text, she looks at multiple facets of mortality and necropolitics in her practice. She obtained a BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University, Russia, an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and a PhD from the Philosophy department of Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University. Recent group exhibitions include Bottleneck at West, The Hague, As a Pile of Ash at 16 Nicholson Street, Glasgow and Gläserner Mensch at Dürst Britt and Mayhew, The Hague. Her latest publications are Martyrdom Body State Manifesting Power (2020) and The Game of Knives (2022).

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STRWÜÜ — Jo Wanneng & Lukas Fütterer

With their multi-species organisms, the artist duo STRWÜÜ challenges the supposedly linear demarcation between living and inanimate subjects, thereby significantly destabilising the dualistic notions of nature and culture, humans and technology. The protagonist of their latest work is a boulder from Glenkeen Garden. As one of innumerable rocks, it characterised and structured the Irish landscape. In the course of human appropriation and cultivation of the land, boulders of this kind were piled up on the edges of fields to form enclosing walls. For centuries, they have also marked privatised land or nationstates — border architectures that function like biomembranes. Both are semi-permeable filters that only allow certain substances or subjects to enter. Nowadays, a more complex system is required: satellites that allow an all-encompassing view from the skies. The robotic arms detect them and freeze the moment they themselves become visible. They refuse to be observed. As soon as the robotic arms are out of the satellite’s field of vision, they continue to scratch the rock’s surface.

STRWÜÜ (Jo Wanneng and Lukas Fütterer) is an artist duo founded in 2014. They kidnapped a plant, ate for a stop-motion animation, and performed together with a giant water lily in a pond. They had inaudible sound objects concealed, used each other as marionettes and spent a long time moving a small stick slowly forward. They layered animals into ever-changing patterns, provided old printers with prostheses, and made Chinese pigeon whistles circle in a huge hall. They tied strings to shape sounds, let insects rain, and constructed noise as unstably as possible. They bridged time to generate space, accompanied industrial buildings while oscillating, and forced air to dance. They deprived fans of their cooling effect, cooked rosin to engender friction, and sank mycelium in dirges. They soldered a low-frequency flock ritually for days and stole your choice with captured wind

THE ARTISTS OF THE RESIDENCY 5 – AUTUMN 2023

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Doireann O’Malley & Elisa T. Bertuzzo

Doireann O’Malley’s work merges cinematic imagery, ethnographic film, and community engagement across West Cork, Glenkeen, and Clare Island to create a complex reflection on contemporary rural Ireland. The multipart film intertwines real and speculative conversations with various actors — animals, activists, poets, farmers, and members of the O’Malley clan, including O’Malley’s younger self, their grandmother, and ancestor, Grainne Mhaol ‘The Pirate Queen’. Captured through drone shots and cinematic observations, the Irish landscape acts as a portal to past, present, and future experiences, revealing repressed or lost histories.

A biographical and biopolitical layer addresses the complexities of ‘coming home’ and the feeling of not being ‘at home’ in one’s body, family, or country. O’Malley critiques the simplification of trans* identity and the Western separation of body and self, suggesting that true belonging involves exploring fluid, socially influenced gender identities.

Doireann O’Malley lives and works in Berlin and nomadically in Ireland. Primarily experimenting with moving images, film, digital and analogue, CGI, 3D, and VR as tools to explore the conditions of embodiment. Exploring the complex relationship to time, gender, healing, community, and nonhuman kinship. Stylistically their work could be characterised by the term ‘ancestral futurism’, where the technological tools for conjuring these interdependent relationships between past, present, and future are used as shamanic mediums.

Elisa T. Bertuzzo is an urban ethnographer and theorist. Bridging discourses of the environmental humanities, visual anthropology, migration studies, and postcolonial studies, and committed to the feminist project of validating practices of care, community economies, as well as epistemologies oppressed by colonial, extractivist, and patriarchal logics, her work applies anthropological and sociological methods, including mapping, to investigating the everyday life facets of solidarity, resistance, and self-organisation, especially in cities in Asia and Europe.

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Lorenzo Rebediani, Vera Scaccabarozzi, Luca Trevisani & Francesca Verga

The work of Francesca Verga, Vera Saccabarozzi, Luca Trevisani, and Lorenzo Rebediani originates from their explorations of Glenkeen Garden, where they examined the threshold where sea and land ecosystems converge. This transitional area, known as ecotone, exists in its own unique temporal and spatial reality — one that transcends conventional notions of space and time, erasing measurable distances and intervals. In West Cork, this space is marked by a smooth, moist carpet of algae, which became the focal point of their work. The artists collected, dried, photographed, and printed the algae onto large fabric pieces. The algae, along with other ecotone dwellers, are flattened like specimens in a herbarium, in an ironic and counter-intuitive gesture that challenges Western scientific paradigms.

Lorenzo Rebediani and Vera Scaccabarozzi are landscape architects. Together they founded the Rebediani Scaccabarozzi Landscapes practice in 2018 in Milano. The studio works on the complex entanglement of the processes that define a landscape. Their gardens aspire to be living systems capable of growing and evolving with the people who inhabit them. They collaborate with international architectural firms and are lecturers at universities and cultural institutions. Their projects range from private gardens, community environments, and ex perimental cultural projects, to museum landscapes.

Luca Trevisani is a visual artist. His multi disciplinary practice has been exhibited internationally in museums and institutions. His research ranges between sculpture and video, and crosses borderline disciplines such as performing arts, graphics, design, experimental cinema, and architecture, in a perpetual magnetic and mutant condition. In his works, the historical characteristics of sculpture are questioned or even subverted, in an incessant investigation of matter and its narratives.

Francesca Verga works on curating, management, and research in visual and performing arts. Currently, she is co-artistic director at Ar/Ge Kunst, Kunstverein in Bolzano-Bozen, and Assistant Curator at the Italian Pavilion (Venice Biennale, 2024). She holds a PhD in Arts and Culture at the University of Amsterdam (2022). With a master’s degree in Museums Management (Milan, 2013), she held the position of General Coordinator for Manifesta 12 (Palermo, 2018) and was Curatorial Coordinator at the biennial Manifesta 13 (Marseille, 2020).

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The Glenkeen Variations: ArtNature/NatureArt

Partners

Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, Frankfurt | University College Cork, Environmental Research Institute, Cork | The Glucksman, Cork | Working Artists Studios, Ballydehob | Goethe-Institut Irland, Dublin

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Contact

Ben Livne Weitzman
Crespo Foundation