Opening hours: Friday to Sunday, 12 - 5 pm
Opening: Saturday, 12 July, 3 pm

In the exhibition, Crispin Gurholt and Heiko Kalmbach make a tree the subject of fictional and documentary explorations in film, text, performance and photography.

Their collaboration addresses themes of projection and becoming as they enter narratives with shifting realities and questionable truths - all in search for the tree’s soul, and its extended meaning.
What wisdom can this tree in the yard of ‚Am Strom 53‘ offer us in regard to our past, present and future? We start with the assumption that the tree has a soul, a consciousness. Can we tell if it is a she or he, or if maybe it is both? Is this tree part of a family, a community, and how is it connected to other trees and living organisms? Is it an activist, a therapist, a soul mate? Is the tree a being like us, even though it doesn’t think, feel or communicate like us?
In this process we made the tree our counterpart, a character, to resonate with life and personal history. To put us in touch with the tree`s soul, Munch’s soul, the soul of the house, its surroundings, flowers, nature and the reality of life. We are being confronted; history becomes palpable. The tree has lived through more than two centuries. Reclaiming the tree also means to liberate it from all assumptions, contexts and associations with its multiple fictional realities, and to let it become nature again - a subject of its own.
But are we able to let the tree go, to free it from our ludicrous reality game? Or will we forever be reclaiming it and imposing our titles in our thrive for extended meaning?
In the game „Now I am here, Now I am not, Now you are there, Now you're not“ we might find something to hold onto. So why not hug the tree, you can call it George or Paula if you want, it feels great.
A simple tree trunk laying there is what you want it to be.

For support we thank: