Plants, frictions, and cultural practice. Symposium launches in Prague next week
From extractivist practices to corn, beans and squash, plants have always mediated the terms of human life. But how can we, in turn, think with plants—through arts, culture, and creative research?
“Care” is a popular word these days. But lots of care (really!) has gone into making this three-day event happen. Countless emails, WhatsApp messages, and Meet calls have been exchanged – worrying over sound quality, nut allergies, and whether the Norwegians are right in predicting sunshine (they’re always right.. right?). Most of all, we’ve tried to put together a “carefully curated programme,” as one would say – one that encourages a meaningful exchange of ideas, offers plenty of food for thought, and ideally brings a little joy along the way.
If you're in town, you’re warmly invited to join us. Below, you'll find the full programme and a glimpse of our cherished guests from near and far. Entry is free, just reserve your spot via this link, so we know how much coffee and cakes to prepare.
P.S. Our open call for the summer school and residencies in Spain, Armenia, and Portugal closes in just over two weeks. It’s an opportunity to join a wider network of thinkers and makers committed to reimagining our relationship with the more-than-human world. The initiative will culminate in an open-source toolkit – part manifesto, part gathering space – that offers resources for weaving (plant) biodiversity into creative practice. We hope you will join us along the way.
–– Sasha (Haenke)
Taking place from 23 to 25 May 2025, Free Radicals the symposium unfolds as a decentralised symposium across Prague, gathering artists, researchers, and practitioners in a collective inquiry into plant-based knowledge and its aesthetic, ecological, and political stakes.
Rather than a singular event, we propose a distributed format—a living network of conversations, walks, workshops, screenings, and embodied encounters. Inspired by the mycelial and the rhizomatic, the city becomes a porous site of transmission: from railway tracks overrun with invasive flora, post-socialist industrial landscape echoing with poetry to Art Nouveau decor filled with debates about la colonisation du savoir, the programme situates cultural production within urgent ecological entanglements.
Conversations include a live transmission from Nepal by artist Uriel Orlow, panels draw together voices from community making, arts-science collaborations, and curatorial activism – tracing questions of seed sovereignty, biopiracy, and interspecies solidarity, among others.
Workshops range from ecosomatic practices to biodegradable material-making; reading sessions foreground Galician poetry with feminist and decolonial epistemologies. A film programme explores the entangled histories of plants as agents of memory, intimacy, and resistance.
The gathering culminates in a live-action roleplay set in the urban wilds of Divoká Šárka nature reserve. Here, artist David Přilučík and game designer Andrea Hubert reimagine the rights of landscapes and the agency of more-than-human worlds through speculative storytelling.
Free Radicals is convened by Haenke as part of a broader two-year research project exploring the intersections between plant biodiversity and artistic practice, co-funded by Creative Europe. Together with Fundación Uxío Novoneyra in Spain, Quinta das Relvas in Portugal, Today Art Initiative in Armenia, Pro Progressione in Hungary, and Sonic Tomorrow in Germany, the initiative is gathering research in order to write an open-source toolkit for individuals and institutions within the creative and cultural sectors designed to shape practices that support plant biodiversity.
The symposium is also supported by Goethe Institut Prag (Vielen Dank) and Instituto Cervantes Praga (muchas gracias).
See you next Friday!
PROGRAMME
Friday 23 May 2025
10.00 INTRO with Alexandra Strelcova
10.30 KEYNOTE | In conversation with Uriel Orlow - live from Nepal
11.00 PANEL | Art as a vehicle for social change
Arts and culture don’t just reflect the world—they shape its future. Through concerts, exhibitions, and performances, creativity transforms complex ideas into tangible experiences, sparking emotion, understanding, and action. Today, in the face of ecological and cultural loss, it’s more urgent than ever to fuse artistic and scientific knowledge. How can creative practice become a tool for biodiversity and care?
– with Uxío Novo Rey + Branca Novoneyra (Fundación Uxío Novoneyra), Beatriz Manteigas, Antonio Nunes (Quinta das Relvas), Lilit Stepanyan (Today Art Initiative) , Bálint Antal + Fruzsina Deszi (Pro Progressione), Hanna Grześkiewicz, Yasemin Keskintepe (Sonic Tomorrow)
14.00 WORKSHOP | Feral ecologies
A speculative workshop with designer Gaja Mežnarić Osole and artist Ivana Papić. What would it be like to live in Prague where invasive plants co-author the urban landscape? The participants will take a walk along the railway tracks in Vršovice and observe the city’s shifting ecologies. The workshop will feature guest speaker Kateřina Štajerová, a leading Czech expert on invasive species from the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Limited capacity - register here.
14.30 SESSION | Plants as archives of loss, memory, and place
This session brings together three artists exploring how botanical matter can hold, transmit, and transform collective memory. From ephemeral gardens that reimagine grief as a shared ecological ritual, to herbal flashcards documenting plant life in a regenerating urban landscape, and a metaphysical meditation on seed collecting as archival practice — each presentation engages with plants as living archives. Together, they invite reflection on displacement, resilience, and the quiet forms of care that root us to place. Presentations will be followed by a brief Q&A.
Jagoda Dobecka - Rooted in Loss: Reimagining Memorials Through Living Matter
Aki Lee - Lianjiang Herbalist
Rachael Thorleifson - Cosmos: The Flower and The Universe Itself
16.00 READING SESSION | Poetry as a form of resistance
Uxío Novo Rey and Branca Novoneyra will present the work and legacy of their father, poet and ecological thinker Uxío Novoneyra, one of the key figures of 20th-century Galician literature. His poetry, deeply rooted in the local landscape, language, and culture, resonates with ecological sensitivity and a political voice. The conversation will be moderated by poet Ondřej Lipár.
Saturday, 24 May 2025
Goethe Institut Prag
10.00 PANEL | Interdisciplinarity as a method
As species vanish, landscapes degrade, and traditional knowledge systems are sidelined, transdisciplinary collaborations offer fertile ground for developing new methodologies and frameworks of care and repair. At this intersection, creative practice is not simply a form of expression—it becomes research in its own right: sensitive to ecological complexity, rooted in place, and capable of transforming public discourse.
This session will unpack the practical and theoretical implications of working across disciplines. While scientific research offers the rigour and depth of evidence-based understanding, the arts have the power to render complex ecological puzzles graspable through emotion, story, and sensory experience. How might these two worlds better inform each other—not just for the benefit of humanity, but for the flourishing of other forms of life? From indigenous cosmologies to institutional innovation, we follow the threads that might hold the world together.
– with Marina Guzzo (Lab Corpo e Arte, Federal University of São Paulo - Freie Universität Berlin), Tara Lasrado (arvae.ch), Denise Bianco (Innovation Management, Central Saint Martins, London). Moderated by Tereza Havlínková - Czech Radio Wave.
11.30 PANEL | Green gold: plants in the name of profit
Plants have long stood at the crossroads of knowledge and power. From forest pharmacopoeias to laboratory-derived extracts, our relationship with plants has been shaped by cycles of care and commodification, reciprocity and extraction. But who really owns nature - and who profits from it—and at what cost?
This session opens a critical dialogue on the futures of plant knowledge beyond extraction. We’ll trace the histories and futures of plants that have moved—voluntarily or forcibly—across borders, and explore the frictions between biocultural heritage, intellectual property, and environmental politics. As traditional knowledge becomes both a resource and a site of contestation, how can we co-create futures where plant knowledge is not extracted for profit but held in trust?
– with Kenza Benabderrazik (ETH Zurich - SAE Greenhouse Art-Lab), Gaja Mežnarić Osole (Krater Collective), Ivana Papić, Julien Antih (University of Montpellier / Haenke). Moderated by Tereza Havlínková - Czech. Radio Wave.
13.00 BODY PRACTICE | Affective alliances with the landscape with Marina Guzzo
Žofín park
This practice proposes a sensitive listening—to oneself, to the surroundings, and to the ecological conditions that we inhabit. Participants are guided through minor gestures, grounding exercises, and attentional shifts that foster connection to breath, weight, and the more-than-human world. Through subtle movement, stillness, and presence, seeks to open space for embodied reflection on ecological collapse and resilience. Inspired by ecosomatic practices and choreographic thinking, the session explores the political and poetic potential of moving and sensing as forms of attunement, care, and resistance. This practice is both an individual and collective gesture of remembering that the body is never separate from the earth. In times of urgency and disconnection, the smallest gestures—those barely visible—can carry the force of reparation and reconnection.
— lunch break —
14.00 WORKSHOP | Material cultures with Adam Kvaček
Designer Adam Kvaček will introduce his project “The Paradox of Isoetes” and explain the importance of natural science research in contemporary design / material research trends. Together with a group of participants, they will create 100% biodegradable and plant-based homeware, and explore the potential of democratizing new materials. Refreshments will be provided. Limited capacity 8 persons.
14.00 WORKSHOP | Ecoart workshop with Lilit Stepanyan
An immersive workshop combining creative practice with art therapy. In this hands-on session, participants will explore the natural surroundings near the symposium venue in Prague, collecting leaves and flowers alongside the artist and workshop facilitator. Together, we will learn to identify local plants, discover their names and stories, and deepen our connection with the local biodiversity. Using simple tools like hammers, we will transfer the natural pigments and shapes of these plants onto textiles. This process not only fosters relaxation and mindfulness but also allows participants to create unique textile artworks. These pieces can later be incorporated into fashion designs, textile-based art projects, or kept as personal expressions of eco creativity. No prior experience is necessary—just bring your curiosity and a willingness to connect with nature through art. This workshop is suitable for kids.
14.30 | SESSION - Dispatches from the pluriverse
This session weaves together three distinct yet interrelated practices—experimental documentary, ancestral plant knowledge, and postcolonial ecofeminist art. We will learn about a project mapping fungal networks and speculative multispecies futures through film, dive into the complex interplay between traditional Ayurvedic practices and volatile plant compounds, and interrogate the colonial logic of classification through the somewhat misunderstood story of the kudzu vine. Across different registers and geographies, each contribution invites us to question what is considered free and radical across the pluriversal narratives of today.
– with MAI LING collective, Vienna, Tereza Špinka and David Přilučík (Artyčok TV), and Aishwarya Chaure (Laboratory of Ethnobotany and Ethnopharmacology, Faculty of Tropical Agrisciences, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague)
16.00 READING SESSION | Seed sovereignty
Agroecologist Kenza Benabderrazzik (ETH Zürich) and producer Tara Lasrado (arvae.ch) will open a space for feminist and decolonial perspectives on food sovereignty. Together, the participants will explore seed care beyond market logic and the right of communities to decide what grows, what is shared, and what is passed on. The participants willll read poetry, scientific texts, and essays that raise questions of care, power, and resilience — in the landscape and in their relationships.
18.00 FILM EVENING | Staying with the plants
This film evening, part of the Free Radicals symposium, brings together five cinematic works that refuse to see plants as passive matter. Instead, they emerge as agents of resistance, memory, intimacy, and speculation — tracing entangled histories of classification, care, and control.
We encounter Artemisia as both healer and dissident, challenging dominant pharmaceutical systems and pointing toward community-rooted medicine. We pass through colonial ruins overtaken by wild growth, where taxonomies once used to sort both plants and people begin to decay. In a city quietly transformed by unfamiliar flora, botanical life unsettles the boundaries between nature and politics. Flowers lead us through a story of imagined history — telling of a shift from mutual care to control, and revealing how extractive systems shape even our most intimate desires. And in the quiet, symbiotic life of lichens, we glimpse another kind of wisdom: one rooted in reciprocity, sufficiency, and the refusal to dominate.
Together, these films span poetic archives and speculative ecologies, offering cinematic reflections on medicines that defy market logic, landscapes haunted by plantation histories, and more-than-human alliances that resist domination — and invite us to stay with the plants.
Films:
Learning from Artemisia | Uriel Orlow | 2019 | 15 min
Mas Eternamente Não | Anežka Horová & Klára Trsková | 2023 | 4 min
The Secret Garden | Nour Ouayda | 2023 | 28 min
The Book of Flowers | Agnieszka Polska | 2023 | 10 min
Lichens Are the Way | Ondřej Vavrečka | 2024 | 43 min
Curated by Iveta Černá as part of the Free Radicals symposium.
Sunday, 25 May 2025
15.00 LARP | Plot komplot - live action role play with David Přilučík, Andrea Hubert (in collaboration with Divoká Šárka is alive)
Plot komplot is set in the environment of the Divoká Šárka reserve, and is an introspective and exploratory experiential game that builds upon the long-term focus of the eponymous art project. Divoká Šárka addresses questions of nature's rights, agroecology, ownership, and more-than-human alliances. The game draws inspiration from the Divoká Šárka Herbarium, where the stories of plants intertwine with the stories of other characters and worlds that oscillate between speculation and the present.
In this game, players take on the roles of fictional actors and create a story that unfolds in real time. Rather than strict rules, the game emphasizes openness to improvisation and storytelling, focusing on the active co-creation of conditions in which Divoká Šárka is not just a passive backdrop, but a living entity. Its processes are in constant dialogue with visitors and inhabitants, who mutually influence its form and destiny.
Through these processes influencing the workings of the reserve, the game problematizes the protection or feminization of nature and the question of what rights and responsibilities arise from recognizing the ability of the landscape to act politically. This perspective shows that when thinking about urban landscapes, there is not just one possibility, but a variet y of scenarios that emerge through more-than-human coexistence. Any understanding of the urban landscape, therefore, necessarily includes an understanding of the society in which this landscape is shaped. The creation of the game world, therefore, alongside playfulness, brings moments of sensitivity to environmental issues and challenges that today face not only the Divoká Šárka landscape.
Free entry, registration via GoOut.
About Free Radicals
Free Radicals is a two-year research project exploring the intersections between plant biodiversity and creative practice, co-funded by Creative Europe, led by the Prague-based Haenke collective. Through a series of artist residencies and living labs with collaborators in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Hungary, and Armenia, the platform will gather research and write an open-source toolkit for individuals and institutions within the creative and cultural sectors designed to shape practices that support plant biodiversity.
Applications are now open for the Free Radicals summer school and residency programme, hosted by Fundación Uxío Novoneyra in Spain, Quinta das Relvas in Portugal, and Today Art Initiative in Armenia. Guided by the diverse local contexts as well as experts from across the arts–science axis, residency participants will develop original works that serve as “proofs of concept” for how plant biodiversity and the larger more-than-human ecosystem can be embedded in creative practice. Artworks will be presented in a final group exhibition in Lisbon in autumn 2026. Deadline 31 May 2025.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.