What can a river’s flow reveal about the transformations within a society? How do minerals teach us about states of presence? In what way could a plant reveal traces of family memories? 

These are some of the questions raised by the works gathered here. Carried out in a variety of formats and on a range of themes, these projects examine the different elements surrounding us as agents of knowledge, transformation, and connection. They regard humans not as mere observers of this ecosystem, rather as an inherent element of the fabric we call nature. 

Céline Manz brought to light stories embedded in the landscape in Murmurs of the Pearl; In rīḥa, Hichem Merouche analysed a plant carrying intimate bonds; Studio Eidola investigated how clay shapes Egyptian society in Is the Dam High Enough?; with Metabolic Cosmopolitics, Francesca Brusa researched environmental art practices linked to oralitures; lessons from birds and collective memories gave form to Dorothy Wong Ka Chung and Benjamin Ryser’s Rockfall and Birdsong; Matheline Marmy explored the intersections of landscape and geology in Time Capsule; and Lithic Alliance investigated the connection between minerals and societ in Healing Extraction.

Narratives embedded in landscapes: Murmurs of the Pearl, by Céline Manz 

Murmurs of the Pearl is an ongoing project by Céline Manz, developed within the Waves Across the South research trip at Guangdong Times Museum. Grounded in feminist historiography, forensic archaeology, and situated knowledge, it traces how submerged narratives become embedded in cultural and ecological landscapes. Following a sonic thread through the freshwater ecosystems of the Pearl River Delta and the Rhine River, it uncovers the histories of women drowned as acts of gendered violence across cultural contexts. 

Detail of the installation ‚Mermaid Forensics‘ at Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou in May 2026, as part of ‚Murmurs of the Pearl‘. Photo: Céline Manz

Through field recordings, material research, and oral testimonies gathered with local collaborators, Céline develops work that finds form in spatial and sculptural translations that include participatory elements. Materials originating from these waters — oyster shells and pearls — activate resonance within the installations, grounding the work in the ecosystems it draws from. By inviting visitors to engage with elusive inheritances rendered into open, revisable propositions, the work interrogates the narrative through which the past is constructed and mediated. 

Céline Manz doing field recordings using a geophone at the ‚Ghost Pond‘ in Changzhou Dao, Guangzhou, as part of ‚Murmurs of the Pearl‘, April 2026. Photo: Céline Manz A plant carrying legacy: rīḥa, by Hichem Merouche 

The encounter with a plant growing on his grandmother’s grave in Algeria led to an evolving dialogue between artist Hichem Merouche and that specimen of Pelargonium graveolens – commonly known as rose geranium. So much so that it guided a residency he undertook in early 2026 at Utopiana in Geneva. 

Merouche, an artist driven by multilingual research, incorporates personal stakes and relationships in his practice. In Switzerland, he developed a project centred on this geranium’s essence – using distilling techniques native to his hometown, Annaba – and how its fragrance can change depending on its surroundings and interactions. 

Working with plant essences and fragrances

Under the title rīḥa (in colloquial Algerian Arabic, the word means both ‘scent’ and ‘memory’), the research examined the forces governing the human–plant interaction. Connected to his ancestor through the living organism, the artist investigated family bonds and loss whilst touching on plant agency, spirituality in the digital age, and contemporary systems of legacy.  

In Utopiana, the artist found room for different types of experimentation, whether with plants and scents or by making way for emotional and reflective states. Merouche met with professionals from the arts and the sciences, exploring topics such as plant intelligence, scent-based methods, and artistic practices related to mourning. Ultimately, the research looked to engage with the living world while questioning the ethical and spiritual fields within which art is conceived.  

Visiting his family’s grave in Algeria

‘One of the contextual tensions is to engage with a Swiss art scene driven by institutionalised conversations on ecological stakes, planetary thinking, shared futures. The spiritual prism, as I understand it, receded and the attention to the living world was mainly through a post-capitalist awareness, driven by guilt in a particular historical sense: the undoing of extractive logic. This highlighted my own scope, rooted in the sacred status of what surrounds us and in systems of belief and care. What made this disorientation productive rather than isolating was the remarkable openness of the local artists and scientists, and their will to share their processes and doubts, which allowed for real exchange,’ Merouche remarked.  

This research has culminated in a body of work that was presented in Farsta, Sweden. The project’s next steps involve the creation of a video work. 

A substance rooted in cultural memory: Is the Dam High Enough?, by Studio Eidola 

A material central to Egypt’s architecture, clay has a prominent presence in the regions bordering the Nile River. Historically, sediments have been carried downstream by seasonal floods, sustaining agriculture and mud-brick construction. Ever since the construction of the Aswan High Dam, however, the material is largely retained upstream, forcing increased reliance on substitute clays. 

This transformation became the research focus of industrial designer Denizay Apusoglu and architect Jonas Kissling, founders of Zurich-based Studio Eidola, during their residency in Egypt in late 2025. For their project Is the Dam High Enough?, they investigated how the material life of Nile silt has changed following the construction of the dam, completed in 1970. 

Jonas Kissling and Denizay Apusoglu pouring of prototypes during their residency project in Egypt

Through visits to river villages, brick factories, and extraction sites across Aswan, Luxor, and Fayoum, the research traced these altered material flows. It analysed mud fragments, produced via minimally controlled drying to test deformation under sediment-trapping conditions, and examined how infrastructure influences material processes and sediment dynamics. Although the same procedure is followed each time, the outcomes diverge. Variations in curvature, length, thickness, and deformation emerge from internal material stresses, uneven water loss, and sediment heterogeneity. 

The artists also documented communities still working with Nile silt using ash-and-straw mixtures, while industrial production blends remaining silt with mountain clays such as tafla. This shift reflects a broader transformation of the Nile from a cyclical system to a regulated resource. 

Working setup of the spherical Bukla production in Al-Nazla village, in the Fayoum area of Egypt

‘The residency made us more aware of how a single material can shape an entire society over long periods of time. Working around the Nile, we encountered mud not only as a construction resource but also as a historical agent that has informed settlement patterns, agricultural systems, crafts, and architectural traditions for millennia. This shifted our understanding of the material from a neutral substance to something embedded in cultural memory, labour, and landscape transformation,’ noted the duo. 

Metabolic Cosmopolitics is a research project that investigates environmental literacies of adaptation and repair emerging from artistic practices grounded in oral histories and forms of knowledge rooted in non-human agents. The project explores how these practices reimagine and sustain humans’ metabolic relations with the land and its inhabitants. The research trip conducted by Francesca Brusa in 2026 spanned four weeks across different Indian states and their art communities and practices. 

‚During a research trip to Northeast India,‘ says Francesca Brusa, ‚I encountered the work of Anga Collective. In the communal field where village festivities and gatherings take place in Bhalla, a village located approximately one kilometre south of Guwahati, the collective has constructed a bamboo structure unlike the surrounding houses and temples. The architecture stands as a monument to the elephants whose lives are deeply entangled with those of local communities and whose struggle for coexistence shapes the region.’ 

A bamboo tribute to elephants in Bhalla, symbolising their connection with local communities.

‘Situated amid paddy fields, forests, and elephant corridors, the village is woven together through the stories of its inhabitants and those of the elephants that traverse the landscape. Oral histories of encounters, bamboo-woven sculptures, and site-specific constructions in the rice fields trace the presence of these pachyderms across the territory. As forests are fragmented, infrastructure expands, and cities grow, elephant habitats and migration routes are increasingly disrupted. These displacements intensify encounters between humans and elephants, making their presence and influence on everyday village life ever more tangible throughout the region.’ 

Sonic memories: Rockfall and Birdsong, by Dorothy Wong Ka Chung & Benjamin Ryser 

Rockfall and Birdsong, is a video and sound installation by Dorothy Wong Ka Chung and Benjamin Ryser in collaboration with members of the indigenous Truku community in Taiwan. Following  the 7.1-magnitude earthquake in Taiwan’s east coast in April 2024, it explores the community’s resilience in the face of adversity and the deep connection between the Truku, the land and nature, tracing the contours of colonisation and history.

Invited by the Tree Tree Tree Person—Taroko Artist Residency Programme, Dorothy and Benjamin have spent five summers since 2017 living with and learning from the Truku community in the mountain village of Alang Skadang, about a seven-hour walk from the closest city. The residency invites artists to live privately with members of the tribe. Dorothy and Benjamin bonded with Truku elder Yuri Pasang on their first visit in 2017; since then, they have returned to stay with Yuri almost every year and the three of them have collaborated on a number of artworks.

Rockfall and Birdsong was developed through conversations with Yuri and other community members and exhibited at the Taitung Sound Art Festival. While talking about the earthquake, Kcing, a Truku hunter, half-jokingly said, “Can you guess which animal can survive during an earthquake? It’s the birds! They just fly into the sky.” Inspired by this conversation, the work explores personal stories and family memories about birds such as klalay bkarit (swallow), sipil (black bulbul) and pgagu (Taiwan green pigeon).

Video-sound installation shot. Swinhoe’s pheasant photo taken by our collaborator Yuri Pasang at Skadang tribe, Hualien, Taiwan

When asked about the birds’ sounds, tribal members would often use hand gestures and their voices to mimic bird calls. And when speaking of the earthquake, they did the same—using their voices and limbs to imitate the tremor. There was something striking in the contrast: the resonance of fear in their bodies during the earthquake, and yet, above it all, the birds chirping safely through the disaster, untouched, unbothered. It led to the main question of the work—how do we hold both fear and hope within the same body, within the same community?

Yuri Pasang, a collaborator from the Truku tribe, demonstrates how to whistle through her hands to call the pigeons in the forest. The shape of the hands look like a bird that has survived an earthquake and is flying up into the sky

‘A friend once told me that the bodies of those who live in the mountains are like books. Every scar is a story.’ 

Sifting sediments: Time Capsules, by Matheline Marmy 

Johannesburg — known in isiZulu as eGoli, the City of Gold — sits atop the Witwatersrand plateau, one of Earth’s oldest geological formations, created nearly 3 billion years ago. Beneath its surface lies one of the world’s largest gold deposits, shaping the city’s history through mining and extraction. To the northwest, the Cradle of Humankind has revealed fossilised remains that mark major paleoanthropological discoveries, further embedding the region’s sedimentary record into global history.   

This layered geological archive is the focus of Geneva-based artist Matheline Marmy’s current residency, which explores the intersections of landscape, geology, and mineral extraction. This ‘holds vast potential for me to delve into the intertwined relationships between living and non-living matter and the development of life,’ the artist explains. Building on a 2022 research trip to Cape Town, where she studied local geological features, Matheline now expands her inquiry. Working across geological sites, scientific institutions, and her studio, she gathers imprints, moulds, and photographs that will inform new sculptural works.   

During her 2022 research tip in Cape Town, Matheline Marmy presented the work Untitled (Displacement Reaction) and other sculptures experimenting with copper sulphate, and researched the unique geological features specific to the region.

Matheline’s practice engages with mutable materials — metal, acid, glass, and light-sensitive emulsions — to examine how these transform through contact with other substances and the passing of time. Rather than static artworks, her sculptural installations are laboratories where chemical transformations unfold to evoke processes of invasion, growth, and sedimentation. At the core of these experimentations lies the concept of Deep Time: geological timescales spanning billions of years.  

The residency is split between the Nirox Foundation in the Cradle of Humankind and Cape Town, where Matheline will conduct fieldwork, archival research, and collaborations with academics, artists, and activists. She explains: ‘I will be exploring South African mining sites, formulating new perspectives on mineral processes and human–environmental entanglements, translated into new sculptural forms. The project develops a transdisciplinary methodology, bringing artistic production into dialogue with specific site inquiries. Particular attention will be given to bronze as both medium and subject, reflecting on extraction and the layered temporalities of the Earth.’ 

Matheline Marmy, Untitled 6 (Excroissance), 2026 © Casa Azul

Lithic Alliance is a more-than-human collective predominantly working with the lithological realm and the vibrations emerging from it. In 2025, they spent three months on an artistic residency in different parts of Brazil to investigate the connections between geological matter and ecology’s socio-cultural, geopolitical, and speculative aspects. 

Much of the research took place in the Chapada dos Veadeiros savannah in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, a municipality marked by contrasts: it is pervaded by esoterism and spirituality, whilst also surrounded by agribusiness. These grounds sit on a massive quartz slab (covering over 4,000 square metres) and are surrounded by rocks and cliffs. Mining scarred the land and shaped the livelihood in the region; however, part of the area was turned into a protected park, attracting visitors due to its crystal energy.  

Landscape in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, Brazil

The impact of these minerals on the region shaped the research Healing Extraction, largely carried out at ALTO Art Residency, a platform for self-directed artists working in dialogue with nature and sustainability projects. By disconnecting to patterns defined by Western ontologies, the project proposed making space for new understandings and relations, listening to crystals and the beings living within them. The question of how to connect with other dwelling species led to a collaboration with minerals, using their states and consistencies as processes in performances. 

‘To be in contact with different belief systems, the closeness to the grounds, and an animistic understanding of the indigenous heritage was incredible. A sense of earthly belonging underlaid significant moments. Learning from that place, from its temporality and earthly bonds, certainly influenced the methodology and the direction Lithic Alliance’s work will develop,’ they noted. 

Crystal shop in Goiás, Brazil

According to the collective, the research opened pathways to develop new work. The connection between quartz and optics became clearer as the investigations progressed – historical links between Switzerland and Brazil were identified at the Geological Museum of Bahia. Finally, the understanding of vision and augmentation through rocks also resonated in Lithic Alliance’s contribution for the Swiss Pavilion in Venice in 2026.