Dear all, friends, comrades, colleagues, collaborators and art-enthusiasts,
I am thrilled to finally launch my newsletter! It’s been cooking for a while after I decided to finally jump off the socialmedia-train earlier this year. It really feels exciting to start this new journey and hope I can update you on my artistic practice, studio work, research and other interesting topics or findings, as well as exhibition or workshop announcements in this way. ✿
This is also why it is my great pleasure to use this first newsletter to break the shell and invite you to the exhibition and opening of Soft Gardens on Saturday 5 April at the project space sign, CIAT (Zossenerstr. 34, 10961 Berlin).
The exhibition is curated by Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes with works by Kallia Kefala and Kim Bode as well as further contributions by:
hooops (Lena Astarte Posch & Nicola van Straaten); Lorena Carràs and Jean-Marie Dhur (Zabriskie - Bookshop for Culture and Nature) together with Sina Ribak; Aiko Okamoto; Wanda Dubrau & Juliet Meding; Suza Husse and Aziza Ahmad (Poster).
Accessibility-relaxed format: Agnieszka Habraschka.
Soft Gardens is an exhibition with accompanying program that are developed in a relaxed format and take place in a relaxed atmosphere. You can find more information on what a relaxed format involves and other accessibility information in the attached accessible PDF document.
intro:
The search for a story about another place has brought you here.
Is it a place of dreams or is it the place from a story that has been entrusted to you?
Whatever it is, you are here now.
The light has a warm temperature that permeates the whole room.
You hear voices ...the voices of the stones, the voices of the weather and the voices of the water.
The room speaks.
Welcome to Soft Gardens
a project between Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes and Kallia Kefala.
Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes is an ongoing artistic research initiated by Kim Bode, that explores landscapes not only as material and physical spaces but also as collective ideas and political terrains. Functioning as a platform for collaboration and exchange, it weaves together artistic research and practice. Kallia Kefala joined the project as part of the exhibition Soft Gardens – a multimedia installation comprising from textile, sculptural, floral and audio works.
In Soft Gardens, the concept of landscape is re-contextualized and expanded. It encompasses not only physical or geographical spaces but also inner landscapes. These inner landscapes are materialized as spatial and sound installations, inviting visitors to experience them as queer utopian places in the making.
The two rooms of the project space sign,CIAT are transformed into a cozy but also eerie "nature" - a space open and inviting. Visitors can rest there, focus on their sensory awareness and engage with the thoughts and impulses that arise. The installation functions as a retreat, a site for imagination and exchange that visitors can actively shape. Textile sculptures invite reclining, ceramic and straw-metal sculptures can be touched and used to create sound, and plant sculptures can be experienced through touch and scent. Light and sound conditions are regulated, allowing for a sensory-friendly experience of the space. The exhibition primarily appeals to the senses of touch and hearing (haptics and audio). You can sit, lie down, linger and listen in the rooms.
The installation questions the categorical divisions between nature and culture, human and non-human, real space and inner space, linear time and queer time, the private and the public. These binaries blur, allowing images of the familiar world to dissolve, making space for new possibilities of coexistence.
The landscapes that emerge reflect collective desires and political aspirations for alternative ways of being together. They serve as blueprints for a world of queer, cross-species coexistence and mutual support.
🪸 Opening: Saturday, April 5, 18:00 - 22:00
🪸 Duration: April 6 - May 4
🪸 Closing: Sunday, May 4, 15:00 - 19:00
🪸 Opening hours: Thu-Sun, 15:00 - 19:00 (closed on May 1)
🪸 Venue: sign, CIAT - Contemporary Institute for Art & Thought
🪸 Address: Zossener Straße 34, rear building, 10961, Berlin
studio sneak peek
Program Highlights:
12.4.25 ✿ 15:00 - 18:00 WORKSHOP
Tentacle Feeling - A storytelling workshop
with Wanda Dubrau & Juliet Meding
in English and German // registration recommended
13.4.25 ✿ 13:00 - 15:00 NEIGHBORHOOD WALK
Kinship-Walk
with Lorena Carràs and Jean-Marie Dhur (Zabriskie - Bookshop for Culture and Nature) together with Sina Ribak
in English // registration mandatory
17.4.25 ✿ 18:00 - 20:00 READING GROUP
Indefinite Terrains
with Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes
in English // registration recommended
20.4.25 ✿ 15:00 - 17:00 WORKSHOP
Listen - Transmit - Listen - Transmit
with Aiko Okamoto
in English, German and Japanese // registration mandatory
26.4.25 ✿ 15:00 - 17:00 WORKSHOP
Napping with hooops
with Lena Astarte Posch & Nicola van Straaten
in English and German // registration mandatory
27.4.25 ✿ 16:30 - 19:00 PARTICIPATORY PERFORMANCE
huuummming
by Kallia Kefala
Multilingual // registration recommended
3.5.25 ✿ 16:00 - 18:00 TEA TALK
On staying soft and being gardens
with Suza Husse, Kallia Kefala and Kim Bode
in English whisper translation and German
4.5.25 ✿ 15:00 - 19:00 CLOSING WITH DRINKS
For further information on the exhibition and accompanying program please visit:
https://bureau-of-transitioning-landscapes.net/
What is the Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes?
In 2017 i initiated what grew into the main focus of my artistic practice and what was named Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes in 2018:
It is an artistic research project that explores landscapes not only as material and physical spaces but also as collective ideas and political terrains. It seeks to emphasize landscapes as symbiotic entities and ever-evolving archives in conflict, where stories, memories, and power structures collide, and mutual relationships of both human and non-human interactions evolve.
The project is inspired by queer ecologies. A term introduced by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson that challenges rigid, hierarchical views of „nature“ by drawing from queer theory and ecological thought. It critiques dominant narratives that frame „nature“ as stable, binary, or heteronormative and instead highlights fluidity, interconnectivity, and transformation. Mirroring the diverse and often non-conforming experiences that are found in queer communities, it enables us to see „nature“ as a vibrant and interconnected agent, where every organism and element contributes to a larger sphere. It helps us to recognize that (ecological) relationships are not fixed or hierarchical and allows us to understand that there is an ongoing negotiation and transformation in and around us.
The collaborative work of artists, researchers, and folks directly involved with landscapes provide the bedrock of the Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes. The project understands environments and encounters within them through the expertise of embodied and situated knowledges from the perspectives of caregivers, workers, residents, and storytellers, articulating ways of understanding rooted in lived experience, local history, and their material conditions. By using tools such as artistic research, experimental approach, and open dialogue, the Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes seeks to create spaces that reimagine the relationship to landscapes and elevate them as powerful entities that are capable of expressing their own narratives of resilience and transformation.
Even before attending the Queer Ecology seminars —shoutout to the Institute of Queer Ecology and the Institute for Postnatural Studies—, I’ve been carrying the idea of an open, collaborative project: One that brings together people with a shared curiosity and interest about the intersections of diverse landscapes, queerness, mutual support and entangled mutations. Until now, I haven’t had the courage to step forward, but I feel the time is right. Therefore I formulated this little open call for a reading group that is also focusing on (artistic) practice and exchange:
The Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes is gathering a group to think with and about landscapes as sites of struggle, relation, and transformation. Situated in Central Europe, the understanding of landscapes is shaped by histories of dominance, colonial entanglements, and inherited power structures that continue to define how landscapes are seen, used, and controlled. Rather than assuming a universal perspective, this reading group for collective study and practice is an attempt to critically examine these positions—engaging with texts and practices that deconstruct extractivist, capitalist, and heteronormative frames.
Through the lens of queer ecologies, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist perspectives we will explore landscapes as active and symbiotic entities rather than static backdrops. As a group we will draw from works that examine ecological entanglements, and question colonial and capitalist framings of nature. Some texts will engage with the politics of movement and sonic landscapes, while others will consider multi-species survival and care. We will also reflect on methodologies for artistic and situated research and expand our understanding of landscape itself.
This is an open call to artists, researchers, people with lived experiences, workers, storytellers, and anyone engaged with the frictions, transformations, and potential of evolving landscapes. No formal expertise is required—just curiosity, care, and a commitment to learning and unlearning. How the group will be structured and what texts will be read is up for collective engagement!
If you’re curious and open to exploring these ideas together, feel free to send an email with a few lines about you or your interest to desk[at]bureau-of-transitioning-landscapes[dot]net to get involved.
The group will meet on:
April 10th – First meeting: [Online/Digital]
We'll gather online for an introductory session where we can meet, share our interests, and discuss the topics we’d like to explore together. This will be informal and open conversation to lay the groundwork for the group and upcoming sessions.
April 17th – Second Meeting: [Offline/Analog]: In the framework of the exhibition soft gardens (Berlin)
This session will take place in person at the soft gardens exhibition in Berlin. The proposed reading for this session is Indefinite Terrains by Polly Stanton, which examines landscapes as ever-changing, shaped by histories of power and memory. In the context of the exhibition, we’ll discuss how these themes manifest in both the reading and the space itself.
May 15th – Digital/Online meeting: Topics to be determined
Our third session will be digital again, and the topics we explore will be chosen collectively based on the group’s interests and participation.
Looking forward to seeing you at the exhibition!
With excitement,
Kim
Image taken during field recordings at the Lower Oder Valley National Park