Wandering and dancing. Tiny Spaces Deep Connections, Day 12 - 14

Exploring the garden, collecting plants and seeds. The plants will be used to make a tea blend that will taste like Projekthaus Potsdam and the seeds will be used to make seedbombs, every seedbomb containing some of the “essence” or collective wisdom of the soil I am walking around on daily. Wandering and collecting also gives me the opportunity to be present on site and meet all the different people living and working here. With some I exchange a few words, with others I have long conversations. Everything is growing in abundance, some parts of the gardens are more cultivated, others wilder, and often there is a mix of human design and nature’s randomness. There is a sweetness in the air always, a mix of the scent of the roses that are everywhere and the flowers of the linden trees. Both are great for tea, but ask for a different way of collecting. The roses have been put there by the people living here and I can’t just pick them, even when there are many. I only take the petals of the roses that have bloomed abundantly and now almost fall apart when you touch them. The linden trees have so many flowers that you hardly see the difference when you harvest a good quantity of them. And of course people have a different connection with those flowers, they won’t be missed. I do ask the tree for permission and cut gently.

Living in the Bauwagen is easy, I like the amount of space, barely 12m2, but it is a bit of a challenge to dry everything I am collecting in there. It asks for improvisation and a careful handling of all the material, using all the available surfaces and creating new ones. And sometimes moving around inside is a little like a dance in order not to disturb all the fragile things that have occupied the space.