Botanical Memories: On Healing and Care

Botanical Memories: On Healing and Care
May 28, to June 21st, 2026

In collaboration with the Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich, WE ARE AIA presents Botanical Memories: A Performance Series.

Unfolding across the summer of 2026, this program features performances and workshops that explore both our ancestral and evolving knowledge of medicinal plants. The events invite participants to share the inquiry into our complex coexistence with nonhuman beings, revisiting the support and healing that communities have long found in plants, while also questioning how urban development and dominant knowledge systems have distanced us from local species and their everyday relevance.

The performance series at the Botanical Gardens examines the history of the relationship between humans and plants. In collaboration with the Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich, artistic and scientific perspectives come together. Together, we explore medicinal plants not only as biological entities, but as holders of memory, meaning, and connection.

At the heart of this collaboration lies the central question: What knowledge about medicinal plants—shaped by people, place, and tradition—should be remembered and passed down?

By reviving practices of interspecies mutual care, the program shifts focus from grand human narratives to personal stories. It encourages reconnection with somatic knowledge and looks beyond dominant cultural frameworks. Together, artists and participants can imagine new pathways toward healing with plants and microbes.

Co-developed with botanists, alternative healing practitioners, and the team at the Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich, this program blends interactive formats, performative encounters, and experimental storytelling.

Artists: Lisa Biedlingmaier, Isabell Bullerschen, Sonia Gomes, Haroon Mirza, Anthea Östreicher, Maja Renn, Lena Maria Thüring, Giulia Essayd, Olga Kokcharova and Luc Müller.

Photocredit: Claudia Winteler