Michael Ackerman
Martin Bogren
Lorenzo Castore
Dimitra Dede
Anders Petersen

13 dec 2024 – 10 jan 2025

In October, we are delighted to host artist Anaïs Tondeur and philosopher Michael Marder for the conclusion of the residency of the project Flowers of fire – The testimony of the ashes. In continuity of “Chernobyl Herbarium”, the artist will continue to develop with the philosopher a dialogue with ruderal and phytoremediative plants growing in extreme soils, in this case, on the ashes of the anthropic fires of Terra dei Fuochi and the volcanic Vesuvio area, nearby Napoli. In an experimental and ecological photographic protocol, during her residency in 2024, Anaïs Tondeur collected traces of the bodies of these plants in a process of phytography and sent these other-than-human imprints to the philosopher Michael Marder, who responded with a series of letters addressed to each plant. After receiving the letters, Anaïs returned to the plant to read the philosopher’s words and during the reading she brought the plant back into contact with a light-sensitive surface in order to collect a new trace of its body on the photographic surface.
In this way, the philosopher and the artist create new entertwinements with the plants from Vesuvius and Terra dei Fuochi. Not encountering them as ‘sparks of hope’ or ‘phoenixes’ with infinite capacity to regenerate from the ashes of destruction, they rather seek to nurture new forms of interspecies care and attention through the philosophical and photographic process.
The artist residency is produced and curated by Spot home gallery with the support from French Institute’s MIRA program – Mobilité Internationale de Recherche Artistique – and of the Prix Photographie & Sciences initiated by the Résidence 1+2.