11 until 21 November at Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin

Cells are fashionable again. After the human genome project had become the big disappointment in younger science history epigenetics has now caused a change. Information is not being bequeathed, but has to be activated, too, by so-called switches that seem to be controllable through nourishment and other influences. This not only puts a stress on material equivalent to the imagination of social influences on the evolution of the individual, but at the same time the responsibility for the development of everyone, that is being delegated by parents and especially future mothers of a child. These are scenarios that render individual what should be the responsibility of the community. But there are also studies about certain genes being passed on by viruses. This questions conventional ideas of heredity transmission. Have we reached the end of a certain model of life, of the idea of continuities in evolution?

Cells are not only small chambers, they are also being presented as a factory, as motors of growth and of change. As a germ cell the cell is the characteristic of a beginning on a small scale, as a prison cell it is the characteristic of a controllable place or delinquents. Perhaps Arjun Appadurai is right and vertebral systems as embodied by national states currently fight for their own survival like dinosaurs, while cellular systems like the globally organised capital, terrorists, but also grass roots globalisation win the race. But maybe we witness an even greater change of paradigm whose pattern we can only guess at. Anyway, the control over cellular evolution on the biological sector can only be described from a critical distance. It is not foreseeable which effects this stage of bio-politics will have on individual life. Yet in these domains it will always be about the money and power, about growth, progress and control, as the recent debate about Sarrazin’s theses has shown. Once more it becomes clear that theories of heredity transmission are always related to territorial interests. This is a relation with a long tradition that Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Staffan Müller-Wille have demonstrated in the case of temporal convergence in colonial politics and Darwin’s theory of genetics. These are menacing scenarios. However people everywhere do something different, they make use of the idea of growth in their sense. For example in Detroit they organize mass gardening of urban vegetables – Urban Farming –, in order to do something against the hunger that exists on the fallow land equal to the size of San Francisco. We are in Europe, and in Berlin there is not yet such a big project. But still, the “Prinzessinengärten” are the emergence of a model of a jointly used urban garden that is both a meeting-point for neighbours, as well as a fruit and vegetable garden with a social character. Along with the Prinzessinnengärten we will turn our big art nouveau house into a vegetable garden for ten days, where together we can cultivate, harvest and cook. We will inaugurate the Festival on November 11 with a big entrance and invite everybody to plant something in the garden with us. With her opening lecture Christina von Braun will negotiate money as primal cell, and shed a light on the correlation between biology and economy. After that there will be music with Masha Qrella, Kristof Schreuf and Angie Reed, plus a bowl of soup. And later on we will receive guests from “Life is Live” in the garden which can be utilised in a playful and queer way with Terre Thaemlitz.

Chris Kondek and Christiane Kühl stay faithful to the topic of money as an exuberant organism in “Money – it came from outer space”, an evening at HAU 3 (Premiere on 13 November). Most people consider money as a means of trade with a real value. This illusion has led us to the current catastrophe. Money is not a neutral tool that we use; it is a gigantic, living organism on its way to the next stage of evolution. Every Euro, every Dollar, every Yen is part of a bevy of intelligence that organizes itself in capital flows. It knows only one goal: augmentation. Expansion. Accumulation. Panic spreads, mass hysteria. Can governments stop the capital? Can it be tamed by science? What is money’s true nature?

The programme in the garden continues with a conversation about gardening in different contexts: Lothar Willmitzer, Richard Reynolds, as well as Marco Clausen and Robert Shaw from the Prinzessinnengärten speak about their work. From the perspective of philosophy Judith Revel sheds a critical light on the simple metaphors of the body that take biology as the origin of thinking about society, without revealing it as a construction.

At the weekend (13/14 November) the Prinzessinnengärten as such are at the centre of attention. Between workshops on harvesting, collecting seeds and boiling down the garden can be explored. The youth clubs of HAU present material they have worked on for several months, and die Helmis will show “Hans-Guck-in-die-Luft”. The mother of 19-year-old Hans is an outstanding tightrope walker, and his father a famous ornithologist. Hans is clumsy and living in his own world, but he is also a very talented draughtsman and bird voice imitator who has to cope with the conflict between an artist’s life and reality. Showcase Beat le Mot will play a concert with the hits from their childhood plays. And at the evening people can dine together. There will be guided tours in the garden, and one can work and harvest in the garden as one pleases. There will be coffee and stew, and with prior notice the garden is open to everyone, in general and daily from 4pm onwards.

Tuesday will be about architects and cells. In his performance “Within the Interim” artist Moritz Majce deals with communal architecture. In the garden we will speak with Peter Haimerl about cellular automatons in architecture, and Pieter de Buysser will give a lecture performance about walls and borderlines, reflecting on the relation between individual and society on a larger scale. On Wednesday there will be a lecture with scraps of film on gardeners and Hartz IV by Wolfgang Müller and Hartmut Andryczuk; and b_books will shift their Monday consultation hours to Thursday: a conversation on the topic of “Defending gardens. Flowers, political parallels and romantic fragments of a post-Wilhelminian style”, where by means of projects like gap2go and Christoph Schäfer’s book “The city is our factory” one will discuss ways of utilizing the city, waste lands, flowers and sofas that are being inhabited on the street. In her interactive performance “The perfect Human” on the same day Rosa Casado, along with Mike Brookes, will satirise notions of supermen.

At HAU 3 we will show the first computer performance we know of, “Hello Hi There” by Annie Dorsen, following the dispute between Chomsky and Foucault about the nature of man, or rather about the question if it is even possible to speak of this.

With lectures by Staffan Müller-Wille and Sheila Jasanoff, reflecting from a current and historical perspective on genetics, genetic engineering and Empire we will wrap up our programme in the garden. Following the premiere of “Dark Matter” by Kate McIntosh we will say goodbye to the plants during the garden party at HAU 1. “Dark Matter” will be hosted by a woman in the spotlight with a glittering dress and a long grey beard. Supported by two assistants and a bunch of small, strange dancers, as well as few materials that one also has at home – or not – this performance is an approach to the grand scientific-philosophical questions in head-on show-biz late-night theatre style.

“Money – it came from outer space” by Chris Kondek and Christiane Kühl and „Within the Interim“ by Moritz Majce are being sponsored by the Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.

“Zellen. Life Science – Urban Farming” is being sponsored with funds from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.