Rhythm
Two channel video installation, 4K video 12:38, 2025
Rhythm juxtaposes two modes of life on Earth: a Berlin techno parade approaching its final stop on the one side, and plants growing and appearing to dance over time on the other. They are projected in parallel, allowing visitors to enter a space in which they become one of the players.
The work takes the concept of plant blindness as its starting point. The term was introduced in the late 1990s by Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee to describe the human tendency to overlook plants, to treat them as inert objects, or to see them as less valuable forms of life. An important factor in this lack of perception is the different tempo in which humans and plants live. In Rhythm, the playback speed alternates between motion and stillness. At times, humans are brought to a standstill, while plant movement is accelerated into choreography. At other times, the plants don’t move while people dance to a rhythm that we can recognize. Viewers become part of the changing rhythm and are invited to reconsider their own perceptual habits about life around them./p>