Film Screening:
This Planted Place (2022)
December 8
Auditorium | 12-5 PM
In conjunction with Mia + Eric: In a Strange Place, currently on view in the Morris & Ann Dancyger Observatory Gallery, we’ll be showing This Planted Place (2022), an earlier work by the artists, over the course of the exhibition.
This Planted Place will be shown on loop in the Auditorium during our opening hours on December 8 and 22, 2024; as well as on January 5 and 26, and February 9, 2025. This screening is free with gallery admission.
This Planted Place examines the ecological complexities and human and more-than-human relationships in the Heidewald, a small woodland in Maxdorf, Germany. The Heidewald is the largest planted robinia forest north of the Alps. This species is controversial because of its ability to aggressively overtake native species, but it is also an important resource for the region as the annual blossoms attract beekeepers and their colonies from all across Germany each spring. In many ways, the Heidewald is the perfect representation of the idyllic German woodland. But this setting of contemplation is continually disrupted by the human world: chainsaws, airplanes, sirens and a human voice amplified by a megaphone. The Heidewald is a wholly unique landscape, but also a place where questions of global significance can be asked.
This Planted Place was commissioned by Matchbox: The Itinerant Art and Culture Project in the Rhine-Neckar Region as part of a multi-year engagement process called 3 WOODS.
About the Artists
Mia + Eric
We are Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis, a neurodivergent, interdisciplinary artist team from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Eric has a background in theatre and performance and Mia has a background in craft, printmaking and the visual arts. Together we create long-term research and community engagement processes that lead to socially engaged exhibitions, performances, temporary public art, participatory works, interventions, and publications. Thematically our practice deals with multi-species ethnography, interspecies relationships, biodiversity and place-based knowledge production in cities, small towns, and rural spaces. Since 2008 we have created and presented our projects, artist talks, lectures, and workshops at both formal and DIY galleries, festivals, residencies, conferences, and post-secondary institutions regionally, nationally, and internationally.
Mia + Eric have presented projects and exhibitions at The Bentway (Toronto), GIFT Festival (Gateshead, UK), Buenos Aires International Festival (AR), Matchbox (Mannheim, DE), Festspillene i Nord-Norge (Harstad, NO), Take Me Somewhere (Glasgow), Confederation Centre of the Arts, (Charlottetown), Parks Canada Discovery Centre (Woody Point, NL), ESKER Project Space (Calgary), Fierce Festival (Birmingham, UK), Grand Union (Birmingham, UK), Battersea Arts Centre (London, UK), Luminato Festival (Toronto), Flux Night (Atlanta), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), and Stromereien Performance Festival (Zürich).
