WOLDT concept

from 2022 ongoing 

The idea for the "Memory trees" came from another artwork. It was an artistic intervention during the SAR (Society for Artistic Research) annual conference in Weimar 2022. The plants were present as participants in the Audimax of the Bauhaus University. The idea: Shall we talk about nature and sustainability? We were then asked and allowed to adopt the plants. I picked up two and drove home with them.

My research work on the image memory finally led me to the tree. The trees were already a central topic in my photo essay series titled "Theatre Forest" (2020), there were the fallen trees, I focussed on. Now there are young plants of interest. They are full of history and post-history. Let me explore these. The first is "Die Feige" (The Fig) and the other "Verwurzelt" (Rooted).

One is about the fig tree, which is one of the oldest useful trees known to mankind, or according to recent archaeological research, it is obviously as such to identify. It is the tree of life and the tree of sin at the same time. But it is also Feige, der Feige (German), the controversy of artistic freedom, as the artist and theorist Bazon Brock incisively described in a tweedon the resignation of the general director of documenta 15 Sabine Schormann due to allegations of anti-Semitism to the work "People's Justice" by the Indonesian Artist Collective Taring Padi for the documenta 15, – already removed from display in Kassel. The fig is the tree of meaning.

The almond tree is "Rooted". It is the root that fixt the tree, as the amygdala in the brain, regulates and fixed people's emotional life according to their perception. The amygdala, the almond-shaped part of the brain appears as a symbol and visualisation of memory through emotional expression.

The concept continues

WOLDT concept, Die Feige, 2022, Ficus carica (Feigenbaum), ca. 110x50cm, paper and living plant of a fig tree. Referring to Bazon Brock's reaction to the resignation of the director of documenta 15 Sabine Schormann on twitter ,- artistic freedom in context.

WOLDT concept, Verwurzelt, 2022, Prunus amygdalus (Mandelbaum), ca. 120x30cm, paper and living plant of almond tree. 

WOLDT concept, Palmette, 2022, Trachycarpus (Fan Palm), ca. 100x70cm, paper and living plant of a fan palm.