About
Political and ecological crises are constant companions to a world shaped by extractivist and exploitative practices—a world that depends on these very practices to sustain a liminal status quo through endless growth. Practices directed against humans and non-humans alike; practices that turn workers, animals, soldiers, plants, and ecosystems into resources and tools with which to feed a political and social system whose endless drive for expansion will, ultimately, lead to its own extinction.
Stockwerk e. V.’s 2026/27 thematic year, BRÄNDE, brings political and ecological crises into relation with one another.
Emblematic of this entanglement of ecological and political fragility is the German Forst: a population of trees that appears forest-like, yet whose monocultures, planted as so-called “commercial forests” (Nutzwälder), are increasingly exposed to drought, heat, and the threat of wildfire. Large parts of Germany’s tree cover were replanted in the post-war period, after vast stretches of forest had fallen victim to the machinery of war, to wartime destruction, or to reparations (Reperaturzahlungen). What emerged from this reforestation were monocultures—fragile ecological and social constructions whose value is defined not by the ecological worlds they sustain, but by their management, productivity, and capacity to generate profit. And it is precisely this logic of utility that leaves them increasingly vulnerable to a changing climate and to the unraveling of global ecological processes. The loss of their economic viability that will follow is foreseeable; the ecological and societal consequences are not.
Through the title BRÄNDE, Stockwerk e. V. – Association for Ecological Art brings political and ecological crises into relation throughout its 2026/27 thematic year, unfolding across exhibitions, performances, podcasts, city walks, lectures, formats for dialogue, and interventions in public space. At its centre are a series of questions: How can we begin to understand ecological and political concerns as increasingly entangled with one another? How do we respond to the ongoing erosion of democratic structures, and to the neglect of ecological questions that follows from it? And how can we have a say in what is allowed to grow back after destruction?
Under the direction of Katja Schäfer (chair of Stockwerk e. V.) and Cosmo Schüppel (independent artist and cultural worker), BRÄNDE unfolds across cultural venues and public spaces throughout Weimar from August 2026 to July 2027. At its centre are Galerie EIGENHEIM, Gaswerk e. V., the 11m3 Project Space, and the Stockwerk Project Space.
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