Future Gardening ~ Speculative Botany

Currently, our climate zone is shifting thirteen meters north-eastwards every day. In the near future, we will increasingly experience relatively wet winters and dry hot summers due to the Mediterraneanisation of our living environment. What will our urban landscape look like in the future when we live in the current climate zone of southern France 50 years from now?  

Plants have evolved all kinds of survival mechanisms over the centuries to sustain themselves and adapt. Evolution is taking place everywhere in our environment, and species are developing new methods to move with the changes that can be observed daily. How can we as humans learn to adapt to the changes that reveal themselves to us daily as a crisis?  

During this workshop, attendees participate in a guided speculative drawing exercise from which a (plant) species emerges that could become a permanent fixture in our urban nature in the near future. The aim is to create a hybrid species between imagination and our surrounding ecology. With Speculative Botany, the Onkruidenier explores with participants how drawing exercises can become a form of radical observation for new entanglements with a changing urban nature. 

This workshop will also be held on Sunday 25 August and Wednesday 4 September.

Performing language depends on the composition of the group (in NL or ENG).  

Ticket price is on a donation basis. 

Speculative botany. Photo: Niels Scheurwater