Susanne Schmitt

More than a hundred years ago, an object fitting well into a market booth just like the wooden market stalls at the Art/Scienec Forum changed the world of biodiversity protection forever: the feathered hat.

“To be of Service” works through decaying and disappearing objects -historical hats that are at least sixty years old - to trace shifting ideas of interspecies relations and the complicated notion of “ecosystem services” - free services for humankind.

The installation, featured at Berlin Science Week and generously supported through an Art/Science fellowship at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, holds a hat about “The Origins of Species Protection”, ca. 1900, a straw hat from postwar Germany, turned into a tiny diorama for meadows and wetlands, and a hat being created based on AI-invented bird models that uncannily mirror the twisted and reassembled taxidmery birds that once travelled on fashionable hats.

Read more here and watch a video about the stories behind the hats here.

“Haptic Hortus” plays with two very different sites in Berlin. Both hold their very own (hi)stories of touch and hapticality: the Botanical Gardens in Berlin and a derelict nail salon, now the Studio Nagelneu, next to Prinzessinnengärten Berlin. You can watch a short documentary shot during Berlin Science Week here.

Haptic Hortus is a “phytographic” (Cheryl McEwan) take on the everyday encounters of plants and humans at the Botanical Gardens in Berlin, telling stories through very human places and finding that they are, indeed, not as human as we think we are. Centered around two larger video works and less obvious pathways of smell, UV lights, and tastes, the installation took up vignettes and encounters that reflect back on a collaboration with the ethnographic research project “Touching Plants” (SFB Affective Societies, FU Berlin/Botanical Gardens Berlin).

The journey through Haptic Hortus began with a projection of a giant aquarium into the shopwindow of the Studio Nagelneu - both marking a threshold and lowering it - and asked visitors to be conscious and concerned movers, not spectators, through a rang of multi sensorial propositions. Following and appropriating those invitations, visitors created and experienced the multiple layers and overlaps of the two sites narrated along a thread of touch and accountability, plant time, and the political potential of bodily orientation. The installation was activated through three different workshops by guest facilitators who brought different aspects of plant-human encounters to life:

Hapticality as acoustic encounter (November 1st, 2022, 8 - 9.30 pm)

On the first day of the installation, sound artist Felix Claßen took participants on an acoustic exploration of Haptic Hortus' material layers. Playing with transduction effects an contact microphones, we fold and unfold connections between sound and touch and experiment with the often untouchable materials found at Botanical Gardens as resonant sound bodies.

Sensory Ethnography Workshop (November 2nd, 2022, 4 - 6 pm)

The Sensory Ethnography Workshop by Sandra Calkins and Cornelia Ertl focused on the role of the senses, especially of touch, in knowledge production and multispecies affecting in gardening. They started with an exercise for somatic attunement and a short theoretic input based on their fieldwork in the Botanical Garden. After that, the participants had the opportunity to encounter vegetal beings on their own, embedded in a common gardening care practice. How does it feel like? What can we know about plants by touching them?

Hapticality in a different light. Nighttime phytography and electric energy (November 3rd, 2022, 8 – 9.30 pm).

The evening, facilitated by D Susanne Schmitt in collaboration with Moving across Tresholds - An experiential Knowledge Lab, moved along propositions for encounters with sources of "artificial" light, its nuances and its absences. We did so by taking cues from the different sources of light and shadow that the space held: light from beamers and projectors, daylight and its dissappearance, sources of light on the street next to the Studio Nagelneu, and last but not least: the UV light that is used to create and harden artificial nails and grow plants alike. By throwing and avoiding shadows, creating and disabling light(s) the site created an opening to think about plants as sensorial beings who need light for nurture and offers a reflection to think about the nighttime ecologies and economies of Neukölln through the lens of electrified land lit up landscapes. This workshop was additionally supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, Aid Program Dance. 

Haptic Hortus has been made possible by generous support from the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam and the SFB Affective Societies at Freie Universität Berlin where the research project “Touching Plants” (Prof. Dr. Sandra Calkins, Cornelia Ertl) is based.

The upfront “aquarium” spatial proposition has been developed by landscape architecture and interior design collective Team Dis+Ko-Natural Building Lab.

Videography: Andrea Keiz

Sound design: Felix Claßen

Documentation (Video/Foto): Stella Horta

"Bar Fly / Drinks for Insects" is an ongoing collaboration with plant destillation expert and artist Katrin Petroschkat .

The bar was featured by events such as the SLSAeu GREEN conference at the Danish National Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Science and Art Festival at Stiftung Nantesbuch/Stiftung Kunst und Natur, or the {un][split} Micro Performance and Macro Matters Science & Art Festival.

BarFly - Drinks for Insects is a performative installation with consumable plant odeurs.
It is a performative miniature bar space offering plant based refreshments for insects and an olfactory drink menu for human attendees. In a moment of insect mass disappearance it is also a site-specific memento mori for guests that might never show up (again).
At the bar, open to all species, distilled plants and flowers - consumable and ephemeral creations - are presented in an experimental setup and tested in their capability to attract and confuse insects and humans alike. Possible components are odorous shots of “Spiral Hornet’s Delight” or “Horticulturalist`s Eclipse”, a creation for the rose chafer.
Just like a chance meeting in a cafe, cocktail bar, or pub, Drinks for Insects offers glimpses into ways of life and social scenes beyond everyday human experience.
The setting of the bar blends and mixes scents, smells, bouquets, liquids and storiesto create a potentially unsettling experience: a temporary refugium in a time of insect mass extinction. Will the bar fly be the last remaining insect at the counter?

Images: Beate Kellmann.
 

Watch the film here, introduced by Kerstin Kraft:

Kraft, Kerstin, et al. “A Short Introduction to the Film Glove and Touch Studies.” Fashion Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2024, pp. 1-11, https://www.fashionstudies.ca/introduction-to-glove-and-touch-studies/, https://doi.org/10.38055/FS050108.

Wie lassen sich museale Räume neu falten, falzen, vernähen, raffen, von Innen nach Außen wenden..und was hat das mit der Handwerkskunst und dem Fingerspitzengefühl historischer Schneiderinnen und den Bewegungsspielräume Frankfurter Bürger*innen zu tun?

In einer künstlerischen Antwort auf die Sonderausstellung “Kleider in Bewegung. Frauenmode seit 1850” des Historischen Museums Frankfurt, einem choreographischen Audiowalk von Susanne Schmitt und Laurie Young, wird das aktive Ver- und Entfalten von Raum, Köper, Textilem und Geschichte(n) möglich.

Der Audio-Walk ist bewegungsintensiv. Bitte bringen Sie Ihre Taschen und Rucksäcke vor Beginn in den kostenlosen Schließfächer unter. Den Faltenpfad erhalten Besucher*innen auf einem Audioguide (im Museum erhältlich), oder auf dem eigenen Smartphone mit eigenen Kopfhörern gestreamt werden. Mit einem QR- Code am Eingang können Sie den Audio-Walk auf das eigene Endgerät herunterladen.

Der Faltenpfad dauert ca. 55 Minuten. Eine Teilnahme ist auf Deutsch und Englisch möglich.

Faltenpfad ist inspiriert von einer künstlerischen Forschung mit dem textilwissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekt “Kleidung in Bewegung” von Prof. Dr. Kerstin Kraft und Dr. Regina Lösel an der Universität Paderborn.

Sounddesign: Cobi van Tonder & Patrick Petzold, produziert von Patrick Petzold @ studio 206.

Bilder:

Handschuhe - Susanne Schmitt

Ausstellung - Stefanie Kösling Fotografie, mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Historischen Museums FFM

www.stefaniekoesling.de

A sensory ethnography of the Deutsches Hygiene Museum.

What does it feel like to work at a Science Museum that puts forward certain models of perception? How - and what-  do humans learn about the five senses, a very specific way of organising the world?

This book explores the social atmosphere of a very peculiar museum about the human body through the perspective of its employees - curators, security staff, cleaners, exhibition developers, and researchers - and the multi sensorial. As the first German ethnography fully dedicated to sensory ethnography, it explores the gaps of the five-sense-model when it comes to experiening a workplace sensorially and revisits organizational ethnography from an embodied perspective.

My most current project, fully funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and co-directed with dancer and choreographer Laurie Young. We travel to Natural History Museum across the globe and create immersive, choreogaphic audiowalks in ressonance with the everyday lives of the bodies they house. Our sites include the Australian Museum in Sydney, the Deutsches Jagdmuseum in München, the Chicago Field Museum, and the Museum Natur und Mensch in Freiburg

Taxidermy -preserved animal bodies, more-than-human remains - is our starting point. Materially and metaphorically. We track the stories of some of these beings as we meet them, explore where and how their life's lines intersected with the lives of human animals and other species. Our particpants diverse and wayward human bodies explore these entanglements through movement, sound work based on field recordings from our sites and contemporary composition, and speculative fiction based on ethnographic fieldwork with a strong focus on movement and the human and more-than-human sensorium.

More info here: www.movingnaturalhistorymuseums.com

All images by Susanne Schmitt, at the Museum Natur und Mensch, Freiburg.

A biennial celebrating unloved others and neglected forms of life at the KloHäuschen München, one of my favourite collaborators.

Works shown on the left are by Ellie Irons and Ella von der Haide.

FInd out more here and get in touch if you would like to order a catalogue.

Exploring atmospheres ethnographically, editet together with Sara Asu Schroer, is forthcoming with the Routledge Anthropology of Creativity and Perception series.

The notion of atmosphere has always been part of academic discourse, but often refers to something vague and diffuse - a phenomenon connected with our affective engagement with the world that is difficult to grasp. This volume develops and refines the concept of atmosphere, seeking to render it productive for anthropological and social scientific research by bringing together a range of original ethnographic studies in combination with thorough investigation of the use of the term in language. With chapters that examine dimensions of atmosphere through topics of interdisciplinary concern, such as learning and the acquisition of skills, the experience of place, affect and mood, and the perception of weather and environment - whether in natural landscapes, medical and educational settings, homes or creative contexts - Exploring Atmospheres Ethnographically analyses the relational and transformational processes through which people perceive, experience and live in a moving atmospheric world. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology and cultural studies with interests in space and place, sensory ethnography and affect.

A faded diorama installation at Das KloHäuschen, Munich, September 2014.

The area around the KloHäuschen, an old public toilet next to Munich's wholesale market, is a dwelling site for bees. Bees who carry a strange mark...

The paper, plant, and sound-bending installation plays the work of Munich zoologist Karl von Frisch who, in 1973, won a Nobel prize for physiology for decoding bee dances: a complex form of communication. Von Frisch and his assistants painted the bees' backs by hand with a mixture of schellack and rubber alcohol in order to track their movements while the bees were busy drinking sugared water (available at the Diorama Bar during the opening).

A sound installation tracks dwelling sites for bees across Munich.

Follow this link for a German description.

Seahorses are flagship species for conservation during the current global sixth mass exctinction event. "Care and Curiosity. The curious case of the sea horse", an ongoing work-in-progress, explores the mundane yet wondrous world of caring for sea horses in private homes and public aquariums through video and site-specific installation.

All images by Susanne Schmitt, taken behind the scenes at the London Zoological Society. Thank you, LZS!

The RCC perspectives volume Troubling Species. Care and Belonging in a Relational World , with an article by me on care, gender, and seahorse survival, is a good staring point for explorations of more than human care in subaquatic worlds.

How to Not be A Stuffed Animal's (Laurie Young & Susanne Schmitt) production Send out A Pulse!  at the Australian Museum is now available via the Australian Museum App.

We thank the Australian Museum staff for their openness and curiosity, Trevor Brown for his amazing sound design, and the Volkswagen Foundation for their generous support!

Living Room is a production by the choreographic-ethnographic artistic research project “How to Not be A stuffed Animal. Moving Museums of Natural History through Multispecies Choreography” aka Susanne Schmitt and Laurie Young. It will be available shortly through our website and can be played with and experienced at Museums of Natural History everywhere.

While we usually collaborate with museums who give us access to their audio guide systems, this one is a rogue one.

It speaks of the loss, archiving, and political power of movement across species. Based on years of movement experimentation in museums and archives and fieldwork with taxidermists, it invites participants to explore themselves as moving agents and asks what gets lost when species get lost.