Erika Mayr

1973, Germany

Erika Mayr (1973) has been trained as a landscape gardener and horticulturist. While developing a project for Detroit in 2004, she discovered various aspects of urban beekeeping. Back in Berlin, Erika started her own beekeeping enterprise on rooftops and became a key figure in the upcoming beekeeping scene of the city. Over time she developed a specific taste and knowledge about honey and a way to share with people. As a co-founder of Stadthonigfest (2011-2018) she organised a yearly honey market at Prinzessinnengarten, at its first location in Berlin-Kreuzberg. As curator of the Honey Lab 2016 (Stadtlandfood Festival Markthalle Neun, Berlin) she collaboratively created a tasting bar with honey samples collected within the city limits and labelled with personal information about each beekeeper. During summer-schools organised by Animalesque-Berlin (2018,2019) the „bees+trees“ bicycle-tour through Berlin and the honey-tasting afterwards gave insights for the students of how everything around us is linked and connected. Erika was director of the Charlottenburg Beekeepers Association from 2008 to 2019. In 2020 she relocated to Rome, where she is transforming the green areas at the German Academy Villa Massimo towards a more bee-friendly and sustainable garden. She also installed her apiary of 6 bee-families.

Links: website

ABC

Affinity

Affinities are inclinations, affections, kinships, and connections between different bodies, human and non-human. The Irish essayist Brian Dillon defined affinity as "something a little bit stupid", "a realm of the unthought, unthinkable, something that unkillable by attitudes or arguments". The realm of pre-thought inclination towards something, the realm of love, perhaps you could also call it.
Perhaps we want to use the word affinity to first recall what the German philosopher Walter Benjamin called correspondence. With this concept, Benjamin hinted at the relationship between different elements of the world or its phenomena, which meaningfully connect with each other or create a certain resonance or organic analogy between them. His notion of correspondences contains the idea that certain objects, images, or experiences can be understood in relation to other objects, images, or experiences, whereby we can begin to reveal hidden connections and meanings that would be missed if we focused solely on individual entities before them being placed in one of these relationships.

written in 2023

Aljaž Škrlep

Be-longing

Ola Korbańska

Pisdaria

“I found a pisdaria.” – “What is that pisdaria?” – “Look how many pisdarie.” – “Here we will put some pisdarie.” – “I woke up feeling a pisdaria on my left leg.” – “Look, this is such a pisdaria!”

During autumn I lived for some time in Topolò and every now and then I have been hearing Ali saying pisdaria. One afternoon the sound of this word suddenly caught my attention. I started to repeat it, not knowing exactly what it meant. It became a synonym for thing, element, moment, word, feeling – one that is a bit familiar, little, light and simple. Something that, all the time it was repeated, would make us smile. Since then, all the time I talk with Vida or Elena all the little traces, marks, cute things, crumbles are just and simply pisdarie.

I find very fascinating and beautiful how language evolves in groups of people spending time together and how the meaning of a word like pisdaria can be familiar and understood by the specific group that has been together in a certain moment in time-space.

Vida Rucli

Relaxed and disciplined

One of the most prominent Slovene partisan poets Matej Bor once wrote: “The rhythm of Slovene revolutionary poetry must merge into one with our liberation struggle. And what is the rhythm of the awakened Slovenian masses? Relaxed and disciplined at the same time. Why would we search for form in various currents and -isms? Form is dictated to us by our flowing life itself.” Living in an abandoned village throughout the whole year requires intentionality in both discipline and relaxation. While life in the city is guided by the city-flow, in Topolò, the lack of the gaze of another during winter and our consequential habit of this lack turned our gaze to the flow of surrounding nature, our loyal companion: be persistent and disciplined in growing, generous and relaxed in giving.

Written in 2022

Aljaž Škrlep

Written in 2022

Studio Wild

Temporary dweller

Dwelling is primarily the establishment of a relationship between a human being and the environment. This relationship is established through identification or a sense of belonging to a certain place. Hence, the dwelling community is not necessarily only people permanently living in the place, but also those who have an affection to the place and dedicate care to it. Those who keep returning, those who spend every holiday in a specific place, those who create for the place, those who are inspired by the place, those who experience it as a safe shelter, waiting for them like family. The set of relations between people dwelling in place and people visiting/returning are bound in time, not in a hurry, but in a low spiral time. Community is built on values such as reciprocity, collaboration, support, and care.

See also Residency, Responsibility, Return, Visiting

Written in 2023

Janja Šušnjar

Tingling

When the sunlight touches the surface of the water little sparkles appear – I call them tingles. It somehow makes me smile and feel light. When tingles affect my body, I usually can't calm down, a special enthusiasm takes over everything and makes me feel bubbling.

I love the Italian word to define this phenomena: 'formicolio', from 'formica' (ant); as when I was young and without noticing I sat over an ant hill – multitude in motion – and suddenly my body was covered of these fast little insects.
I experience different types of this little slight prickling sensation. Tingling describes both the quick, very quick movement of elements in space, the strong feeling of an emotion, and the feeling as if a lot of sharp points are being put quickly and lightly into the body.

Tingles for the unknown. Tingles for surprises. Tingles for excitement. Tingles of fear. Pins and needles.

Sometimes I take a moment to observe the splendid sparkles flowing on the surface of the water creating an over-shifting brilliant pattern. Somehow standing in a point and observing this spectacle gives me a sense of, at the same time, calm and excitement. Their magic and ephemeral presence is hard to grasp and even when I see them, if I slowly move I notice how the sparkle slowly disappears, but I carry some tingles with me.

_Tingling moments: little situations–traces–memories that I like to remember and carry-with-me. Lived moments, that if I think about, I immediately feel some joy and a sensation of lightness spreads all over me.
“How else do most of us experience history if not in the presence or absence of small things?”
Thea Lenarduzzi, Dandelions, Fitzcarraldo, 2020

Vida Rucli

Zappa

The hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural and horticultural hand tool used to shape soil, remove weeds, clear soil, and harvest root crops. Shaping the soil includes piling soil around the base of plants (hilling), digging narrow furrows (drills) and shallow trenches for planting seeds or bulbs.

Written in 2022

Studio Wild