Climate Care 

Climate Care is a festival engaged with theory and practice at the intersection of climate challenges, ethics of care and environmental humanities. Emerging from weathering the conditions of its site – a rainwater retention basin in Berlin – the programme is a result of in-depth cohabitation with the constructed water infrastructure, its human culture and its multi-species overlays. 

Since Climate Care’s first edition things have changed. Activities are still heavily restricted and the formats we can host on site have been reshaped as a result. The pandemic has also already reshaped our conversations on care and climate. As we prepared for the 2021 edition of the festival, we learned of the plans to “re-naturalise” – or “rewild”, to use a different term – the basin, proposed by our landlord Tempelhof GmbH, the state-owned company that manages the site. This means the environment enjoyed by the life forms currently occupying the site will be dramatically altered. For example, the thick concrete floor will be removed and replaced with a porous layer to allow incoming polluted rainwater to filter into the ground. This kind of action is not only technical. This will deeply affect both the biodiversity on site, the social use of it and our ability to fill it with cultural programming.

Climate Care: The Rewilding Years is a first impulse to bring into public debate what the city of Berlin can learn from different rewilding practices, be they social, technical, ecological, artistic or political. The festival will look critically at the notion of “rewilding” by questioning the biological and ethical implications of this action on micro and macro scales. Through these different notions of rewilding, we come to need complex definitions: intertwined and entangled terms that can hold more than one, perhaps even contradictory ideas. As we work to repair our relationships to nature, the environment, and cultures defined as foreign to us, we first require a carrier bag to hold these together.  

Climate Care 2021: The Rewilding Years

Curators: Gilly Karjevsky & Rosario Talevi

Programme Assistants: Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Eliza Chojnacka, Hannah Lu Verse, Lorène Blanche Goesele

Production: Felix Wierschbitzki, Maddalena Pornaro, Serena Abbondanza, Johan Kirsimäe

Caretaker Coordination: Teresa Huppertz

Graphic Design: Y-U-K-i-K-O 

Web Design: Roman Karrer

Photography: Lena Giovanazzi, Constanze Flamme
Video: Nicolas Mastracchio

Programme Editor: George Kafka

Artists:  Alex Nehmer, Amanda Machin, Andyvazul, Anna Fainareti Lioka, ARCH+, Barbora Sedova, Ben Glas, Black Earth Collective, Cleo Wächter, Colin Self, Daisuke Ishida, Diane Barbé, Fog Puma, Garance Maurer, Gülsüm Güler, Hanna Rullmann, Hoops, Hyewon Suk, Infuso Giallo, Jakob Walter, Johanna Wehkamp, Kate Tyndall, Katherine Ball, Lisa Ertl, Marc Herbst, Marjetica Potrč, Maternal Fantasies, Menghan Wang, Michelle Teran, Mitchell Keaney, Monaí de Paula Antunes, Between Us and Nature, Özgür Özvatan, Patricia Reed, Radu Ciorniciuc, Rahab Njeri, Sandra Jasper, Sarah Friend, Selina Seyd, Siobhan Leddy, Susan Ploetzly, Tatu, Teresa Dillon, Valentina Karga, Vilte Gustyte, Zabriskie

Spatial Experiments: Felix Wierschbitzki, Florian Stirnemann, Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Katherine Ball, Lorenz Kuschnig, Stefan Klopfer

Construction Management: Felix Wierschbitzki, Lorenz Kuschnig

Building Team: Ariel Curtelin, Benjamin Frick, Ester Bonneau, Florian Kurzenberger, Jan Schlake, Jan Theiler, Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Johan Kirsimäe, Jonas Johnke, Katherine Ball, Maddalena Pornaro, Maxi Schneider, Moritz Wermelskirch, Samuel Boche, Serena Abbondanza, Stefan Klopfer

Volunteers: Alice, Alina, Anne, Begs, Caroline, Elias, Garance, Helene, Jade, Katie, Lenny, Liva, Lorenz, Lotti, Luca, Ludwig, Magda, Matea, Matheu, Mathilda, Max, Paula, Rose, Sunniva, Timo, Vilma and Deneb, Gribouille, Lilith, Lumi

Food by TDD (Tischlein Deck Dich)