Keynote und collective action by and with Adrien Missika
Bring your own Gießkanne!
MAK Lecture Hall and Wotruba Promenade
Unkrautpflege (weed care) takes us to Berlin in the summer of 2018. Following a heatwave, the artist decided to water all the weeds growing in his street, the iconic Karl-Marx-Allee. For two hot summer days, following the sidewalk from Alexanderplatz to Frankfurter Tor, Missika empties his watering can over a variety of thirsty pioneer plants, refi lling the can from either fountains or restaurants along the way. Portraying the urban landscape of his adopted hometown, Missika focuses on the biodiversity of those overlooked plants in public spaces by caring for them as if they were his own.
Take a watering can
Fill it with water
Go out on the street
Walk down one way
WATER ALL THIRSTY WEEDS
Refi ll the can wherever possible
Go on until tired or hungry
In Cura the artist offers a spa treatment to the plants that fi ll the lost spaces caused by poor urban planning in the megalopolis of Mexico City. Walking under the highways surrounded by gigantic architecture, Missika cleans the forgotten plants with a cloth and half-fi lled water bucket. Adapting his gestures attentively to each plant’s morphology, the water reveals the plants’ true colors, previously hidden under thick layers of dust. Performed with a romantic approach and thus gaining
a poetic value, Cura is the gesture of caring that rejects anthropocentric beliefs.
Take a bucket, a cloth, and a spray bottle
Fill them with water
Go out on the street
Find dirty plants in public spaces
CLEANSE PLANTS with care, leaf by leaf
Go on until tired or hungry
In the third action, Pioneer’s Treat, completed this year, the artist took to fertilizing some wildly growing weeds in Lisbon, Portugal. In an attempt to lead an eco-conscious life, Missika had started to grow his own vegetables on his terrace and to compost food scraps in a single-household composter to produce his own fertilizer and thus keep the system in a loop. Instead of limiting the growth and spread of unwanted plants in the urban landscape, the artist is making an effort to keep them healthy and resilient by making the soil they grow in even more fertile.
Take a bucket or any container
Fill it with compost
Go out on the street
Walk down one way
FERTILIZE ALL WEEDS
Gently adding compost to the soil
Go on until the compost runs out
