New Zealand artist Hans Kellett took daily strolls through the adjoining gardens and along the Berlin wall path to converse with the locals. And so a series of poems came to bloom, that naturally also found its way into the broadcasts.

Here are two of them:

LOW-MAINTANANCE BORDERS

 
I’m tending my parents‘ grave
 here in the Rosenthal Cemetery
 and I’m trimming the hedge.
 I think you have to do it twice a year
 I do it in spring and late summer
 I don’t know if that’s the right way to do it, but it suits me that way.
 It’s not raining, and it had to be done,
 so I thought I’d do it today
 I’ve been doing this for ten years
 since my parents died
 two-thousand-and-one
 or… yeah…
 two-thousand… um… nine.
 Since then.
 It’s like my little garden,
 because I don’t have any other garden.
 And it’s big for a grave –
 a double grave two by two metres,
 not just a little spot for an urn.
 There’s a bit to be done.
 I decide spontaneously what to plant, and how
 I wanted something taller, that offered some shade
 So I chose this Japanese Maple,
 a little one
 a couple of roses
 and the rest more ground cover.
 I like the maple: it has such a beautiful colour, its reddish leaves.
 My mother chose this spot when my father died
 they – so to speak – reserved a double
 so they are both buried here now.

But it’s a beautiful little cemetary
 and there is a tawny owl up in the church
 you can see it even in the day.
 He observes everything
 he’s always been there, I think
 as long as…
 I don’t know how old they get
 if that’s already the next generation.
 When I trim the hedge,
 it should just be a bit straighter
 afterwards…
 a bit shorter, a bit narrower
 otherwise…
 usually you’d use a string –
 stretch it along the sides
 so you have the same height all around
 and go by that
 but it’s not such a big hedge
 what is it?
 thirty centimetres?
 or twenty-five?
 It’ll be enough if I measure it by eye…
 Then Ines and I walk round to see
 The tawny owl in the chapel wall – it’s one of three
 To me it looks first like a loaf of wholemeal bread
 perched in a niche, til two slit eyes turn bread to head
 And Jörg’s eyes are both opened now
 He asks his phone, and tells us how
 tawny’s been crowned ‘Bird of the Year’
 A cloud moves on,
 the sky’s trimmed clear.

GARDENING ON SANDY SOIL

The Spree shifts
casting drifts of
fine sand,
scattering its broad banks
with silica seeds.

And Lisa loves dill,
so she hopes that it will grow
in the sandy soil
of her city satellite.
She was fire and flame for a garden.

But Prussian sand
is stronger-willed
than April
stronger
in its multitude of grains
than dill can deal with.

In the centre 
of the sparsely-grassed lawn
a stand of tree.

Its name means
‘Tree of Life’
and yet
it is eternal uninvited guest
at burials.

Cypressaceae –
its sap
can stop
your planting plans.

You can’t compost it.

Members of its family
hang around like paparazzi
like oglers at a car crash,
the bouncers at 
Böcklin’s Hotel California.  

This sand, though
is more giving
than the chalky cliffs
of The Isle of the Dead.

It whispered to Lisa
of Old Frites
and so they came,
the end of season staple -
pink, and white,
and glossy with butter.

Now she’s not planting,
but shaping,
shifting the soil into a
productive patchwork

Tonight
there’ll be a barbeque
and soon
she’ll harvest her herbs.

Text: Niki Matita

The fourth of those beautiful days in August was as sweet as honey. Early birds and busy bees buzzed, hummed, chirped and warbled on the airwaves. We dedicated ourselves to the fauna, especially to bees and birds that also seem to be the prototypical garden sound sources for many of those who responded to the open call. Snails and other creatures were treated to sounds, spirits were conjured up and forgotten eccentrics introduced.

“City air makes you free” as the Town Musicians of Bremen already knew, and also seems to apply to the wild animals who are fleeing from the fields and woods to the cities more and more. Undisturbed by agricultural engines and pesticides, they can breed, nest and mate in rows of houses and allotment gardens and find plenty of, mostly species-inappropriate, nourishment.

Birds of a feather flock together//And so will pigs and swine//Rats and mice will have their choice//And so will I have mine//

Blackbirds, starlings, sparrows and crows are our next-door neighbours, who also occupy the Datscha garden’s complimentary breeding burrows and nest boxes. Antje Vowinckel, an author of radio plays, brought along a piece called “Cuckoo’s Chance” featuring the aforementioned brood parasites, and also pays tribute to hobby ornithologist and manic egg collector, Edgar “Cuckoo” Chance and his work.

South-american artist Suetszu is deeply enchanted by the chanting of birds, and devoted her turntable performance “Flightmaster’s Whistle” to ornitho-acoustic field recordings, weaving them musically into a featherlight twittering soundtrack. Musician and shamanic healer Zelda Panda established contact with animal spirits in the Datscha garden, faced a falcon and unfortunately became sorely afflicted by obtrusive mosquitos that were especially attracted to her.
Some may say, it is non-voluntary and therefore an act of prey and hatch killing; others put their own delight in the product above the exploitation of the creature, and regale their palates with honeycomb gold. Dominik Jentzsch and Caroline Schaminet introduced their project “Berlin buzzes”, which awards prizes to bee-friendly gardens and allotments and informs about the apinae. They focus not only on bee-keeping and yield, but also on wild bees, bumble bees and hornets, which are equally essential for pollination and therefore secure the mere existence of all our vegetal nutrition. As Inox Kapell aptly points out: “The labour of insects is worth millions!”

Snail, Slug, slimy bugs//Eat their supper when the moon is up//

Sound artist Marek Brandt went into prone position to reach out to his slow audience: “Music for Slugs” is the latest part of his ongoing series of compositions “Music for Animals”. Discovering the hearing abilities and the musical taste of the species to be treated to sounds, he creates specific works for special locations. The addressees of his composition joyously turned up, ready to party on the subwoofers.

The live concert by Hamburg band “Junge Haut” offered a far more conventional set-up. Guitar and voice formed the perfect musical accompaniment to the Indonesian Gado Gado, which was served at the long table to the joys of the Datscha team and our guests, strengthening us for the last night of the festival.

(Proof-reading by Cesca Bondy)

[Show as slideshow]

Text: Verena Kuni | Kate Donovan

If the beach grows under the pavement, what is growing under the lawn and under the seedbeds? Perhaps the jungles of a future that will no longer be ours, because we probably lost it long ago. Of course, in our gardens we are still dreaming of it. Here, in our gardens, we hope to find our paradise. A place that does not know about the Fall of Man: flowering landscapes, which blind us to our ruthless exploitation of all conceivable resources; green treasures, which lead us to believe we would be able to bring back bygone biodiversity at any time; community gardens, which allow us to pretend the social care we have otherwise omitted from our everyday lives. Here we are creating the most beautiful pictures, to show them off with us inside.

The Tree of Knowledge, however, has long been felled – as compensation we planted an arboretum, like a book which we can consult at any time. In the olden days one had to take long trips to visit it, in order to gain knowledge about the world. Today we enjoy cheap flights wherever, whenever we want to go on holiday, elegantly hidden under the pretense of cosmopolitism, albeit at the expense of our climate and global ecosystems. At the same time, thanks to technology we feel oh-so-secure that all the necessary information about the world, and therefore the world itself, is always at our fingertips and available with only a swipe. So for some of us it has become really attractive to actually dig with our own hands in real dirt – given that the latter is the fruitful soil located in our backyard and not one of the contaminated landfills elsewhere around the globe to which we have sent our computer waste.

But what if these dumpsites – these stinking, dead beds of rotting technology that we are cultivating so eagerly – had meanwhile grown into the real gardens of our nature? After all, gardens have always been among the spaces and places mirroring man’s dream of “nature” as something to be dominated and determined. Moreover, gardens have always been techno-nature- cultures. This is likewise true for the concepts they are based upon and built from, for their investments and their structures, their designs and their uses. Over the centuries, humans have developed a wide range of tools and techniques, many of which are operating directly on and with living organisms – particularly in the garden and for gardening: be it for the cultivation of soil or to control the growth, spread and multiplication of life, including the extinction of existent species as well as the breeding of new species and subspecies.

And now, since people are increasingly confronted with the serious consequences of their egoism, greed, and a hardly justifiable belief in technological progress, gardens shall adjust: as biotopes and hideaways for a vanishing biodiversity, as spaces of experience and as places for learning that can help to raise awareness and to gain knowledge of something that has been lost long ago. In our radio garden, we try to listen to it. We are carrying our transceivers into the green to find resonance.

[Excerpt from: ECHO (THE GARDEN, HEREAFTER)] Verena Kuni

So many resonances from our Sunday in the radio garden, but here are just a few:

Kat Austen helps us to use empathy to find new symbioses with our non-human contemporaries; Marta Zapparoli takes us on an afternoon adventure through her ‘inaudible sounds’ – the phenomena of radio frequencies, captured on cassette; Gabi and Dirk talk about plant porn cinemas; Jodi Rose pays a visit to the studio, we talk of the language of natural and built environments, of possible futures; Seamus O’Donnell and MiHo set up a table for their performance outside – a lamp, bed springs, and a glockenspiel to sample, and a big rake head discovered in the datscha garden.

Kate Donovan

[Show as slideshow]

It took a while to cook: our documentation of the fabulous 5-day August festival in 2017… but here it is! Both (Cake and booklet) were served on occasion of my “traditional” winter BBQ in the Datscha garden.
Much time was dedicated to lighting the fire bin (damp wood !), eating cake and drinking hot apple cider… next to browsing through 40 bilingual pages packed with individual essays and stories, images and graphics.

At the party our time was equally divided between trying to light the fire bin, eating cake, browsing through the  booklet while drinking Hessian hot apple cider… no time for photos! 

Fortunatly at least Valie Djordjevic shot a few: Thank you!!!
(Übersetzung folgt)

Finally…

Genau: Fr. Schaffner und der Baum

Tiger/all girls berlin int. & radio artist Antje Vowinckel

Intense talks: Rafik Will & Helen Thein

All DR artists are invited to get their copy in print… if you didn’t manage now, you can have a view online on: https://www.academia.edu/35787807/Datscha_Radio_2017_Plots_and_Prophecies._Gardening_in_the_anthropocene

Or: contact me or come and fetch your copy at the wood ruff punch party  (that’s May then…). Please understand
that we don’t have the means to send those booklets via snail mail.

Text: Gabi Schaffner

When we tilt our heads to gaze at the sky, we do so for various reasons: to count the stars, to let our eyes wander through the blue, to dream towards the clouds. Gardeners, however, like to check the weather. The dream of a reliably predictable future resonates with the actions and passions of weather forecasts. And why not? The world does consist of resonant frequencies.  And consequently of radio…

Under the title “Plots and Prophecies – Parzellenprognosen” Datscha Radio 17 broadcast 24/5 from the 25th – 29th August straight from an allotment garden and out into the world. The process of radio making – otherwise quite a hidden event – becomes transparent in the Datscha’s winter garden. Creative, interdisciplinary and open to everybody, Datscha Radio17 transformed the privacy of the garden into a public space for art and communication. Aligned with the length of the festival, the radio makers, artists and guests focused on five subject areas.

Our first day’s central point was the garden as a palladium of political and territorial relationships. The history of garden culture(s) and their associated metaphors of power and the body were re-established from the first minute on with the choir of the Hidden Stories Singers. Next to current issues about sustainable food production and ecological start-ups, naturally the “New Symbioses” of the second day were dedicated to outdoor-cooking and its hermaphroditic connection to the staged concerts and performances.

What will our living worlds look like in future perfect? “Biotopes in Future Perfect” combined science, performance and art into a “radio-active” kaleidoscope that continued to glow in subtle colours even long after sundown.

On the fourth day, artists, guests and the Datscha team addressed the theme of “Bees and Birds”,  – starting with current developments in Berlin urban gardening, to insider knowledge on cuckoos, and live music for the resident slug population.

The last day of the festival was reserved for dark matter: the soil, deceleration, the immersion into the unknown and with it, of course, the imaginary garden.

Just as radio waves spread simultaneously in all directions, Datscha Radio17’s spectrum resonated beyond conventional formats and forms. More than 40 international sound gardeners and radio makers responded to our open call and took part in the programme. Additionally, an “International Garden Radio Listening Club” invited the listeners to parallel listening parties.
And so the radio days grew organically by themselves; there were parallels and reflections, sequels and surprises, constants and mysteries. For instance, the New Zealand poet Hans Kellet continually held conversations in the neighbouring gardens and transformed them into poems.  What can be considered a real mystery though, were the “Greenhouse Emissions” – a plant language translation machine first introduced by Kate Donovan and Ryan McFadyen – that were broadcast on three days of the festival.

While we worked together in our greenhouse of plots and prophecies, the techné of radio increasingly transformed into organic communication. The future – doesn’t it rather lie in the resonating frequencies of the here and now and their materiality? In roaming the (radio) garden, day by day new perspectives began to open up. Rarely did they disclose a view of ‘the whole’, they led us rather onto selected paths and trails… just like this publication.

[Show as slideshow]

Text: Shanti Suki Osman

It was intentionally poignant that we opened Datscha Radio17 with the Hidden Stories Singers performing an updated version of a suffragette song and Gerri Gribi’s “We Say No” from 1991. Replacing occasional heteronormative imagery with trans-inclusive and intersectional scenarios, the group consciously cultivated and made space for biodiversity – in the garden, in our stories and as an underlying structure for the radio shows to come.
The Datscha garden as a space for historically and locally connected politics was exemplified by a wide range of guests and contributors that day, starting with the two-hour “Midday Discussion” about the future of the local garden colony “Einigkeit e. V.” Yet there are aspects of “political gardening” that usually evade the typically white, western and male gaze.

The broadcast “Hidden Garden Stories” presented “Die Gärtnerei”, a city garden and meeting place in Berlin-Neukölln where newcomers and people in the neighbourhood come together, quite literally, to grow something new. Situated in front of a cemetery, nestled between the sounds of police cars and aeroplanes, the founders explained their aim to transform this space into a land of the living – humanising it with new plant life, new people and new stories.

But how do we bring together these different knowledges and make it all work? In “Composer’s Garden” we heard how, in Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s project “Hydra Plantation Radio”, the vibrations of specific plants were turned into sounds. These plants, that the colonisers brought over to Germany to replant and serve as decoration, survived. Like people, the plants cross-pollinated, adapted and learnt how to persevere. Like people, the plants were demonised and seen as a threat. As Nathalie discussed in her interview, the plants became testimonies to the African women who witnessed the plants being stolen from them. This “living archive” of plants moves us away from those existing in institutions and museums, making space for new narratives and making the invisible visible.

“Hidden Garden Stories” also featured Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor’s “Mutter Erde”, which traces matriarchal lineages, ancestry and memory. With little knowledge of her own mother’s mother, Taylor invited other black femmes to explore, archive and re-tell their family stories in the one place she knew was relevant to their green thumbed matriarchs – the garden. As with Nathalie’s plants, and the community of the Gärtnerei, there is unknown and undocumented trauma. Despite the drone of the bees and the scratching of the shovel, there is a silence – and these various gardens seek to make room for these stories to finally be heard.

Datscha Radio17’s first day explored still more contemporary garden (his)stories, such as the onomatopoetic “Schwarz-Weiß-Gärten” of Dirk Hülstrunk and the philosophies of landscape and Baroque gardens with Katrin Schröder. Here again, stories well embedded in the past rose to the top soil.

Why is the garden the place to grow futures from imagined pasts? Berlin is scrambling with its past, present and future. The rise of the right wing displays the apparent amnesia of some of the country’s voting population – whilst its marginalised communities are reaching into their heritages and pasts to get perspective and strength for the future. Where else but in the garden can simultaneously existing lived experiences be made audible and at the same time, somehow be kept safe from harm?

[Show as slideshow]