GARDEN
The creation of an Artistic Mediterranean Garden: the A.T.E.N.A garden
Our trio is like a plant. Each artist is a leaf, completely unique, essential to breathe, and united to the whole. These leaves produce a shared creative climate.
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A wasteland - Edges
A.T.E.N.A is a residency for European women artists founded in Sète in 2017 by Lise Chevalier. Since 2021, the three artists have been working on joint residency periods. As the working spaces are located within the grounds of a nursery school, in 2022 we had the idea of founding a Mediterranean artistic garden in a long wasteland located between the school building and a public garden planted with trees. You might not even notice the existence of this garden, but all you have to do is to step inside to feel its liveliness. We carried our research into edges, transitional spaces rich in biodiversity, in order to study this wasteland and intervene gently and reciprocally.
Transform
As well as planting and researching Mediterranean species, we are developing architectural projects, creating works that interact with this natural space, and drawing inspiration for our creations from the interactions with the garden’s living creatures. We create transitions, thresholds and spaces of transformation. We develop programes of performances, readings, exhibitions, meetings with the public and workshops with the school’s students. This garden feeds our imaginations, and we’ve planted the seeds of our collaboration here.
Plantation
Our first action at the garden was to observe the existing ecosystem: what plants grow there already, which animals move in it, which wet and dry zones do we perceive? From the very beginning, when we started the project in 2022, it was clear that we had to think and act on a long-term basis. We decided to leave all existing plants and add a variety of new ones. We worked with a local nursery specializing in Mediterranean plants to select plants adapting to the dry clima and therefor don´t require much water and grow autonomously after just one year. By choosing climbing plants like Jasmine or the trompet flower, we created a natural permeable corridor between the A.T.E.N.A garden and the Parc du Château Vert. We added plants with medicinal properties, such as chaste tree (Vitex agnus- castus), elder (sambucus) and passiflora. Over time we planted succulent cuttings from the nearby beaches to one edge of the garden. Seeds from Berlin travelled to the A.T.E.N.A garden to spread. As well as succulents from the Greek islands of Crete, Symi and Rhodes. All these plants tell a story that we listen to, that we retell and that we expand with our artistic languages.
Ollas - artistic irrigation objects
by Kathrin Köster
The ceramic vessels were developed modelled on the so-called “Ollas”, a very old, traditional method of watering gardens. Buried in the earth and filled with water they irrigate the surrounding plants. 50% of the consumption of water can be saved. Despite their closed form, they are an open system inside the earth, nourishing the roots nearby.
We have built a 13m2 outdoor studio designed as an indoor-outdoor creative laboratory opening onto the garden. This outdoor studio was designed and built in collaboration with the architecture collective Dahu in Sète. We worked with the reuse of materials to create an ecologically sustainable structure. Sète has many huts, including fishermen’s huts and ‘baraquettes’ (small summer dwellings built from salvaged materials). These poetic huts, scattered across the maritime landscape by the pond, inspired us to build this outdoor studio.
Under The Arms Of A Pine Tree (In Times Like These) Outdoor sculpture
by Ulrike Bernard
Multi-storey wooden platforms around a pine tree Time of realisation: March 2024
The shape of the platforms is inspired by tree mushrooms
Under The Arms Of A Pine Tree (In Times Like This) has been installed as permanent outdoor sculpture in the A.T.E.N.A garden, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the mediterranean environment with all their senses. From different levels and points of views, artists from A.T.E.N.A residency are invited to daydream and to get inspiration for the projects they are working on. The shape of the platforms is inspired by tree mushrooms. Tree mushrooms are transformation experts by breaking down wood, they are used in medicine, can be processed as a dye or as natural leather, are parasites, are food for insects, are tinder. All around us, artistic and ecological initiatives are springing up like mushrooms, coexisting (in)visibly like a mycelium. The sculpture has been and will be activated by hosting artistic reading formats and thus support the establishment of dialogical encounters. The words „In Times Like This“ are written on a textile ribbon, which has been attached at the top of the 3rd platform. They refer to a poem by the feminist writer Adrienne Rich „What Kind Of Times Are These“ from 1991 - „Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it’s necessary to talk about trees.“ (Excpert of the poem)
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