Do Trees Dream of CO₂
at 18:00 on 13 October 2023
SOLU Space, Panimokatu 1 (3rd floor), Helsinki

Researchers have learned that plants rest at night, in similar way that humans and animals do. But do they also dream? What is their nocturnal existence like? Which similarities and differences can we find between them and us?

Do Trees Dream of CO₂ is a Franco-Swedish collective, which will present their work at SOLU Space on 13th October 2023. The collective has been developing technology and artistic expressions to facilitate interspecies dialogues between humans and trees for two years. The event offers an opportunity for the audience to get a glimpse of the technical, scientific and artistic developments that the projects has made to date. The visitors joining for the evening are also invited to participate in a practical demonstration where they can try to dialogue with a tree.

Humans have traditionally ignored plants’ ability to solve problems. Biology has recently acquired important knowledge about plants and their perception and problem solving skills. We gradually learn more about how plants react when the surroundings world changes and what they do in order to enhance their chances of survival. Mankind has also been relatively blind to many of the similarities that we share with the vegetal life around us. But since we share the same planet and the same evolutionary past, we also share a lot of biochemistry. In biology much attention has recently been given to the agency of plants – how they sense the world and deal with changes in their environment. In Do Trees Dream of CO₂, artists and researchers investigate what art can learn from this new and exciting research and how it can be used to create new and visionary art.

Per Hüttner is a Swedish visual artist and musician who lives and works in Stockholm and Paris. He was trained at Konsthögskolan, Stockholm and at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. He has shown his work extensively in Europe, Australia, Asia, North and South America. Hüttner is the founder and director of the international research network Vision Forum and a member of various musical and  performance collectives. He has been part in developing the EEGsynth which a tool to use brain activity in performance art.

Karine Bonneval is a French visual artist. Her transdisciplinary practice offers alternative ecologies for breathing, moving and listening with the plant world. By invoking popular and scientific culture in her pieces, she invites humans to "phytomorphism", to experience a moment of shared time with plants, in dialogue with the air, the soil and gravity. Her work with plants has led her to develop rhyzomatic projects that involve people from different backgrounds: scientists, botanists, gardeners, cooks and residents of the places where she is invited to design her projects.