HABITAT – The Nativity Play
by O-Team and Bureau Baubotanik
In the middle of winter, O-Team and Bureau Baubotanik celebrated the assertiveness of life under adverse circumstances and the creation of a new research station – the Habitat – with a nativity play. The Habitat will be a performative installation to visualize the disturbed coexistence of plants, animals and humans. The implementation of the installation will start afterwards.
The nativity play is a consecration of the building area and the laying of the foundation stone – a participatory performance of human and non-human actors with fire, stones, smoke, nettle tea, noise, herbal bitters, symbolic, ritual and concrete actions.
After a stone egg was rolled through an oversized marble run into a digging hole at the site of the botanical building to be built, the residents and neighbors of the area looked at the newcomer in good anticipation.
Based on the tradition of a Christian nativity play, the structure of the performance consisted of repetitive sequences of movements. The guests were the actors in the performance, guided by instructions on a video screen. With representatives of the respective habitants shown on signs, they circled the habitat area several times and carried out incense cleanings on the way.
Each process was accompanied live with various sound generators and instruments by an orchestra, that was spontaneously put together of guests and two musicians.
Hot nettle tea from an open fire with self-made herbal bitters, consisting of plants collected in the habitat, was ceremonially served to video clips that presented parts of the artistic thought process for the development of the habitat using documentary material.
Dec 2021 the ´Artist Garden` of Kunstverein Wagenhalle artistic direction; Nina Malotta & Samuel Hof with: Marius Alsleben, Bureau Baubotanik, Rebecca Hennel, Nele Tiidelepp
HABITAT – The Nativity Play – is a cooperation of O-Team and Bureau Baubotanik
HABITAT is a project of Bureau Baubotanik, Nina Malotta, Samuel Hof, Rebecca Hennel, Florian Feisel and Matthias Rudolph, together with Nature Conservation Association Stuttgart. In cooperation with Kunstverein Wagenhalle e.V. und Theater Rampe. Funded by the City of Stuttgart and Landesverband freier Tanz- und Theaterschaffender Baden-Württemberg e.V. with the budget of the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts in Baden-Württemberg
