Kroke, Roman : Microplastics and Medusae – poetic expeditions into H₂O. Interdisciplinary pilot project about the plastic pollution of aquatic environments. Verlag der Universität der Künste Berlin (January 2020).

Published by the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), financed by the Commission for Artistic and Scientific Projects of the UdK (KKWV).

   Extract of the Publication (PDF)

Content of the publication: As part of the interdisciplinary seminar Microplastics and Medusae – poetic expeditions into H₂O directed by Roman Kroke and Henning Wehmeyer, students of the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the Technical University of Berlin (TU) embarked together on a travel assignment to thirteen scientific laboratories throughout Germany specialized in the research on plastics in aquatic environments. The students came from diverse disciplines ((visual communication, fine arts, biotechnology, environmental engineering, architecture, Communication in Social and Economic Contexts, teacher training program). On the basis of their research travels the students developed hybrid artworks which were exhibited at the international festival The Universal Sea – Pure or Plastic?! in Budapest (HUN), 2018. The project was supported by the Hybrid Plattform of the UdK and TU which serves the cross-disciplinary exchange of art, science and technology.

   Serbian Television (Interview with Roman Kroke at the exhibition opening)

As a result of this project, Roman Kroke was mandated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Leipzig/DE) accompany the scientific expedition SO 268/3 on the research vessel SONNE crossing the Pacific Ocean from Vancouver (Canada) to Singapore (May-July 2019).

Since its launching in 2017, the pilot project Microplastics and Medusae – Poetic expeditions into H₂O has been meeting international attention from diverse domains: science, education, philosophy, art and architecture. Among others, Roman Kroke presented it at the Rufford Foundation Conference Enhancing Biodiversity Conservation in the Philippines (2020, Manila/PHL), at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina (2019, Novi Sad/SRB), at an interdisciplinary colloquium on climate change, organized by the architectural institute OCRA (2019, Montalcino/IT), at the scientific conference MICRO 2018 – Fate and Impact of Microplastics: Knowledge, Actions and Solutions (2018, Lanzarote/ESP) and at the UNESCO Headquarters as part of a conference about philosophical practices in education (2018, Paris/FR).

Roman Kroke also adapted the pedagogical concept for students on school-level, once again in exchange with scientific institutes: Among others, he led inter-generational workshops about the plastic pollution of marine environments for a mixed group of students and teachers from Switzerland, the Réunion Island and the Shetland Islands as part of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (2019, Geneva/CH). The Department F.-A. Forel for environmental and aquatic sciences (University of Geneva/CH) provided objects from their laboratories which served as artistic material for this workshop (2019, Geneva/CH). A similar approach was used for a Kroke’s workshop at the University of Bordeaux (FR) where scientists of the EcoBIM colloquium (an international network of researchers, economic as well as cultural players in the area of ecotoxicology in aquatic environments with a transatlantic axis) exchanged objects and expertise with a mixed group of students coming from four different schools.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD: In November 2021, the workshop in partnership with the UFZ Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research, the Louise-Otto-Peters Gymnasium and the Alluvial forest station (all in Leipzig/Germany) was distinguished with the environmental prize “eku -  ZUKUNFTSPREIS 2021” (2.500 €), awarded by the Saxon State Ministry for Energy, Climate Protection, Environment and Agriculture.

    Workshop Prize

Some of the participants’ video presentations explaining the concept of their artwork are online (in German):

     Videos

I spent three months alone exclusively studying lines to sensitize the long-neglected hand to the different nuances of pressure sensitivity.

In November, the “awakened Snow White” was able to prove itself for the first time in a commissioned work: The sketch “Temple of Consumption” (charcoal/paper, 40×60 cm, see photo) for my artistic excursions commissioned by the Gadagne Museum (Lyon/FR, 2021), a metaphor for the consumption of resources. The Lyon gastronomic icon “Mère Brazier” (1895-1977), 2. Franz Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist” (1922), 3. my experimental exploration of our oxygen consumption via freediving.

   Gallery

                   VIDEO (German version)

   Letter of recommendation

The participants will learn about Kroke’s artistic approach “process art”  and how he is developing his metaphors (drawings, installations, photos, readymades) based on his last two research trips: Freediving with whale sharks at the Pintuyan Research Station (Philippines) in cooperation with marine biologists from the organisation LAMAVE (Jan-Feb 2020), and his expedition across the Pacific Ocean on the German research vessel SONNE (May-July 2019).

In Kroke’s workshop, students created artworks on the topic of the plastic pollution of aquatic environments and climate change, based on his Pacific Ocean crossing on board of the scientific vessel SONNE as part of the project MICRO-FATE.

         Documentation

         Extract of the catalogue

During the 2-hour tours, the visitors dive into Kroke’s artistic universe and explore how he metaphorically combines the district’s history about the silkweavers with his projects about the protection of the oceans, climate change and sustainable development.

    Tour profile  (in French)

English translation of the tour profile:

“In my water weaver’s brain, the borders between history, the present and the future are permeable. Their narrative threads are intertwining, fertilising each other. I think this state of mind came over me the day I left my former job as a lawyer in Berlin … to immerse myself in my life’s passion: the Arts. Since then, sitting in my weaver’s shuttle transformed into a space pirogue, I navigate between times.

When I arrived in Lyon in 2017, I fell directly under the torrential rains and the historic flood of 31 May 1856! Carried away by these watery whirlpools, my shuttle was thrown onto the slopes of the Croix Rousse district, where I installed my art studio. The tamed rain strings still serve my charcoal as liquid lines, amalgamated with the sonorous threads of the cries of the canuts in revolt, to tackle the challenges of our contemporary social fabric…”

Let yourself be guided, for the time of a stroll, by Roman’s eye and artistic sensitivity. Discover or rediscover through his storytelling a district of the city whose matrix (traboules, buildings of canuts, …) feeds his daily life as an artist, which has become his metaphorical loom for transforming the experiences of his current projects: a crossing of the Pacific Ocean on board of a scientific vessel, an art workshop in the heart of the Belarusian forests in the footsteps of the Jewish Bielski partisans, …

Roman invites you to take a side trip in his company to meet the inhabitants of today and of yesteryear, ending the trip in the intimate universe of his art studio.

He also led a four-day art workshop on this topic for young people on behalf of the KlimaWerkstatt Juist. A short video teaser of the collective art-work created by the participants:

  Video