Tending to Elusive Matter

A living potato decomposes over time. A seemingly alchemical process transforms living matter into a supple, atemporal, odorless piece. How durable is bioplastic? Who negotiates the degree of solubility? Is non-toxicity the criterium? In her research, Gülşah investigates the thermoplasticity of starch. Plants store energy in the form of starch. Animal bodies can’t make starch; they digest it to obtain energy. Humans learned to transform it outside of their bodies, too, to make fuel or different materials.

Sina Ribak

Extract of the text featured in Gülşah Mursaloğlu’s catalogue:

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Around a Tree – A marathon of voices to connect plants and people

From the perspective of plant life, what does climate justice mean?

Más Arte Más Acción (MAMA) presents an artistic public intervention in the Edinburgh Art Festival in partnership with Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Together with the Colombian cultural foundation MAMA I will host encounters between visitors, artists and scientists co-creating a space to experience and discuss interconnections between humans and plants in times of rapid biodiversity loss.

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Around a Tree

What can plants teach us? “Around a Tree” – a project initiated by Fernando Arias, James Richardson, Jonathan Colin, Lucia Lohmann, Mateo Suarez, Miguel Navas, Paola Pérez, Sina Ribak – wants to learn about the work of Plant Science research how it can contribute to understand better the relations of plants and climate change.

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What about Bug Rights?

This walk through Hasenheide is an invitation to practice kinship as a way to approach the idea of nature rights. Environmental laws are based on a binary concept of nature separate from the human.

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Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club #49

life of soils

Have you been into composting lately? Making soil definitely is a good idea. We also ask what soil is. Soil is home to 90% of the world’s fungi, 85% of plants and more than 50% of bacteria – and 59% of life overall, a recent study says. Let’s look closer at soil organisms through the art and science practice of a microbiologist, who brings the tiniest soil world to light.

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