In the one-week workshop “Curating Change” as part of the Design Campus, d-o-t-s started with the task of writing an auto-eco-biography: an encounter with a plant that has shaped us. This was to become the focus for the conception of an exhibition piece, which was to be shown in a jointly designed and realized exhibition in the Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts.
The search for an apple tree – a symbol of the Garden of Eden – in the romantic pleasure garden of Pillnitz Palace is fruitless. So it was not Adam and Eve, the humans, but the paradisiacal apple itself that was expelled from the park. However, if you break out of the park’s walls at and explore the surrounding area, the influence and importance of this fruit becomes clear: apples can be found in private gardens, as wild trees, on farms and even in research institutes. It is cultivated, forgotten or harvested, researched and promoted.
This work opens up the question of the inside and outside of a botanical garden: which species are given space here and which are too ordinary to secure a place? A brief insight into the history of the apple from its origins to the present day in the Pillnitz area can be explored through the act of eating.
August 2023
