PRESENTATION: Assembling Grounds-Practices of Coexistence
How must our societies change for the Earth to remain habitable—not just for us, but for all forms of life? It’s a question that’s both urgent and unanswerable in simple terms. But in “Fellow Travellers. Art as a Tool to Change the World”, artists respond with stories, materials, and practices that guide us toward possible futures—plural, fragile, and deeply rooted in place.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: ZKM Archive
This timely exhibition marks the launch of “Assembling Grounds. Practices of Coexistence”, a new curatorial chapter shaped through fieldwork and collaboration across India and Sri Lanka. Its foundation lies in the ideas explored in the ZKM’s traveling exhibition “Critical Zones: In Search of a Common Ground” (2022–2024), initiated by the late Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. On its journey, “Critical Zones” brought together artists, researchers, and communities from a spectrum of environments and contexts, asking how we might redefine our relationship with the planet—and each other. “Assembling Grounds. Practices of Coexistence”, extends that question. It invites artists who participated in the earlier stages of the project to respond anew, from within their own networks, geographies, and modes of making. The result is a chorus of perspectives—many rooted in South Asia—that interrogate dominant narratives of progress and knowledge. Instead of linear development, we encounter layered timelines and micro-histories. Instead of universal solutions, we’re offered site-specific wisdoms and the aesthetics of care. These works resist the myth of modernity as a singular, forward march. They recover endangered cultural techniques, explore alternate ways of organizing society, and foreground the symbiotic relationship between humans and the more-than-human world. Art becomes not only a tool for critique, but a living archive—a way to preserve, adapt, and reimagine endangered forms of knowledge. Take the work of Parag Tandel and Kadambari Koli-Tandel, for instance. Their collaborative pieces weave together oral histories, culinary practices, and spiritual rituals from Mumbai’s Koli fishing communities. In their hands, the archive is not a dusty repository, but a breathing, tasting, working body of knowledge—a place where land, sea, and culture converge. Elsewhere in the exhibition, Ishita Chakraborty invites us to listen. Her sound sculpture interlaces human and nonhuman voices collected from the Sundarbans mangrove forest in India and the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. These are landscapes shaped by centuries of ecological entanglement, both resilient and under threat. Through field recordings and voice fragments, Chakraborty gives space to the many tongues—avian, aquatic, human—that speak to and through the forest. The political economy of biodiversity emerges as a key concern for several artists. Abhijit Patil’s work investigates the contentious terrain of seed politics and seed banks, asking who controls the genetic commons and how traditional agricultural knowledge might be protected from commodification. Meanwhile, Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro’s long-term project on the Katzenwedelwiese, an orchard meadow in Karlsruhe, presents a quieter but no less radical vision of sustainability. Using local organic materials, he creates objects that embody the principles of a “perma-circular” economy—one that gives back as much as it takes. What binds these diverse practices is not a singular theme but a shared methodology: of care, of slowness, of listening to place. The artists of “Assembling Grounds. Practices of Coexistence”, reject extractive knowledge systems in favor of reciprocal ones. They assemble—not to define—but to relate, connect, and question. This is not an exhibition that claims to have the answers. Instead, it creates a space for collective orientation—a compass made from fragments, seeds, and whispers. The “grounds” it assembles are not fixed; they shift, adapt, and make room for different kinds of knowing. In doing so, “Fellow Travellers” proposes a vital truth: that the future depends not on singular visions, but on a polyphony of stories—told across species, languages, and landscapes.
Participating artists: Maksud Ali Mondal, Nilanjan Bhattacharya, Bio Design Lab, Ishita Chakraborty, Anuja Dasgupta, Mallika Das Sutar, Abhijit Patil, Hema Shironi, Parag Tandel, Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro with Oliver Selim-Boualam and Katzenwedelwiese
Photo: © Asociación de Arte Útil, Talking to Power
Info: Curators: Mira Hirtz & Daria Mille, Curatorial assistance: Hanna Jurisch, ZKM (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe), Lorenzstr. 19, Karlsruhem Germany, Duration: 26/7/2025-31/5/2026, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, https://zkm.de/
