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Adrian Wagner, aka Poetree Gestell X, is working toward a doctorate degree in philosophy, and was selected through the SEEDS Public Art Campaign to create artwork for an installation in Freiburg, Germany, contemplating the past in the present moment.

The Black Forest art installation, a collaboration with SEEDS Public Art Campaign, aims to raise awareness and to regenerate a conversation through philosophy and poetry about the hidden potential of our cultural shadows. In this particular context, it is related to the holocaust and the German heritage of phenomenology. What does it have to do with Seeds? First, let me take you on a journey to the Black Forest.

“What truly stands steadfast must be able to sway within the counter turning pressure of the open paths of the storms. What is merely rigid shatters on account of its own rigidity.”~ M. Heidegger

Imagine dark trees, a small mountain, and a hidden cabin. The wind blows strong, and you only hear the water flow of a spring nearby. You work restlessly through the world’s philosophic history, desperate to bring back a sense of being that since ancient times has been forgotten in central Europe. This hut and the man existed in the Black Forest, in Southern Germany. The man was no other than the philosopher, Martin Heidegger. “Being and Time” was his epos. He influenced philosophy at the beginning of the 20th Century like no other before him. His language transcended continental philosophy, moving towards spirituality and poetry in his later days. His deep grounded state in the Earth and his love for nature are often reflected in his work. But there was also a looming shadow hanging over him. As rector of the University of Freiburg, he firmly embraced Hitler and the nationalist project. He was an anti-semite and his writings are to some extent deeply problematic, often a philosophical blueprint for alt-right movements. He never spoke after the war about it – as much as he contributed to Philosophy he stayed silent when it came to Auschwitz.

Between always and never” ~ P. Celan

On the other hand, imagine being born in Czernowitz, today Ukraine, in a city where people and books lived when it was still considered to be the ‘Vienna of the East’. Imagine fleeing the German occupation, your mother being shot, her body burned in a concentration camp. Imagine being a poet that writes in the language of the murderer of his family. Paul Celan had no intention of transcending the horrors but became a lightning rod in the post-war society for the dark unspoken material, the horror everybody avoids, and let himself be burned by it. If there is somebody who made it possible to write poetry after Auschwitz it is him.

Both of those men, despite the difference, were impressed by the work of the other, both agreed to meet in the Black Forest, at Todtnauberg in the hut. Celan with the hope of the coming word of a possible dialogue after all the autocracies. The dialogue never happened, Celan took his life.

Heidegger stayed silent until the end of his. How do we make peace, how do we heal the collective wounds, and face the enormous cultural scarfs? What have those two men to do with SEEDS you might ask?

As a regenerative community, what if we could help the most important poet and the most controversial philosopher of the 20th Century to continue the conversation they never had? What if we could take on the depth and seriousness of their poetry and philosophy and add a good portion of creativity?

As a work of innovative engineering, algorithms, and the SEEDS Regenerative community, the aim is to uncover artfully a collective blindspot through philosophy, nature, and poetry. It is inspired by the work HARVEST as well as the work of Yehudit Sasportas. It is a fusion project between nature, algorithms, collective blind spots, and the legacy of Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger.

As a ‘Heideggerian Gestell’, it swings as a metaxy between the non-neutral nature of technique as well as the fascination with artificial intelligence. The installation embodies the ambiguity of our natural and/ or artificial futures ahead of us. It serves as an embodied hauntology (a term developed by Jacques Derrida), reminding us of the increasing absence of ‘presencing’ (translation for Heidegger’s term “anwesend”) to start a dialogue and sense-making journey.

This artful journey between nature, technology, poetry, philosophy, sincerity and irony, and collective shadows of the past and of the future will be the first social sculpture from the SEEDS community for the SEEDS community.

Impact:

  1. Through the installation awareness around transhumanism, AI, and existential questions of what it means to be human are raised, all connected to renewable systems.
  2. It is a regenerative community project, combining the virtual Seeds Currency community and the local Black Forest School of Metamodernism to engage in deeper sense-making and meaning-making around cultural shadows and how to overcome/integrate collective trauma.
  3. The project embraces radical sincerity as well as irony and offers an ironic twist in framing Heidegger in a frame – something he warned.
  4. Based in Wagner’s calculations, approximately 145,000 Seeds from the public art campaign went to this art project for the artist and basic materials.

For more information on this developing project, see www.blackforestmetamodernism.org

Adrian Wagner

Adrian Wagner, Doctoral candidate of Thomas Hübel’s AIS Graduate Programm, Political Scientist, and co-founder of Teal Wave Consulting. In his dissertation, Adrian is currently researching the Pocket Project. His focus is to shine more light on collective trauma integration and how to develop individually and collectively the capacity of Global Social Witnessing. As part of the Institute for Integral Global Competence, he is engaged in the Global Social Witnessing Lab at the University Witten/Herdecke. Adrian has published in various magazines such as Info3 and Evolve about leadership, collective transformation, and social change. He currently lives and works in the black forest where he co-founded the Black Forest School of Metamodernism and is engaged in building the social sculpture Poetree Gestell X to regenerate a conversation on the hidden potential of phenomenology. www.globalsocialwitnessing.org

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