The English Garden doesn’t tear that out either: Munich is the most heavily sealed city in Germany. Densely built and tarred like no other. When Munich’s green lungs were created for its citizens in 1792, there were just 40,000 residents in Munich; today their number has grown to 1.5 million. And what about “nature in the city”? The theme, which is to lead a large interdisciplinary festival in 2023, has something of a joyful whoop, but also of a deep sigh.
One remembers the socially most intolerable phase of the pandemic, when the people of Tegernsee threw raw eggs on the car windows of the people of Munich because, despite all the lockdowns, they simply wanted to get out of their city walls. More city dwellers remembered their own bit of nature. Suddenly every bit of lawn felt like it was conquered – even if it was the traffic island for guerrilla gardening or the embankment on the Nymphenburg Palace Canal for sunbathing. Suddenly the citizen grabbed the public space and conquered what was always his. How little that was compared to what was available for this city’s parked cars has never been more glaring. In other words: the time is ripe for this festival, which wants to get down to business with enthusiasm and drive. The term “flower power”, borrowed from the hippie days, fits in well with this, even if this time, no problematic substances are guaranteed to be used to raise awareness, but the purest flower intoxication.
The festival team: Anna Kleeblatt, Max Wagner, Gudrun Kadereit, Roger Diederen and Nina Möllers (from left).
(Photo: Bernhard Faber, Robert Haas)
The initiators of the festival include two cultural institutions that launched the similarly participatory Faust Festival in 2018: the Gasteig and the Kunsthalle. There are also two more – with more core competence in matters of nature: the botanical garden and Biotopia. Together they call for participation in the “Flower Power Festival 2023”, whether other large or smaller institutions, everyone is invited to take part as a “partner”.
Michael John Gorman, Founding Director of Biotopia, said: “Biotopia’s vision is a more understanding, balanced and sustainable relationship between people and other living beings. With the Flower Power Festival, a network of actors who know each other better is unfolding across the city – and learn to understand, and together raise awareness of the importance of nature for our city.”
The starting point is the exhibition “Flowers Forever” in the Kunsthalle
Dozens have joined before the initiative went public. State opera, art area, concert hall, house of art, the city library are already there as well as the literary water lily circle, the box factory, the Bayerischer Hof, the young academy of the Technical University of Munich as well as the state forests and the palace and lake administration. Just to roam across this vegetable garden. And the alliance between culture and nature is only logical – in Bavaria’s capital it’s not just the little flowers that struggle through the cracks in the pavement and backyards. The development of art, for example, always comes up against concrete, when literally everyone is already sitting, standing and piling up, and there is a lack of free space.
“Celebrate nature in the city.” That is the official motto of the festival. It will take place from February 3 to September 30, 2023. In 2018, the Faust Festival caused a nationwide sensation with its concept and won the European Cultural Brands Award. Now it is to become the blueprint for the second mega event in the Bavarian capital, in which everyone can take part. As in 2018, the starting point is an exhibition in the Kunsthalle Munich. “Flowers Forever” will be shown there from February 3rd to July 9th, 2023. “We’re showing interdisciplinary art, design and scientific objects related to flowers,” says Roger Diederen, director of the Kunsthalle.
The four initiators see themselves as driving forces behind the festival. Many can identify with the keywords nature, culture, city and blossom, which describe the core idea of the festival. “Anyone can really take part, that’s exactly our basic concern,” says festival director Anna Kleeblatt, who was already part of the Faust Festival organization team. “In addition to participation, inclusion will be a focus this time. We think the festival is an opportunity to sensitize people in the city to the topic and to enable as many people as possible to participate in cultural life.” The organizers offer the program partners their own workshops. “Ideally, this could result in sustainable impulses that will make a difference in our society in the long term,” says Kleeblatt.
Everyone in Munich is called upon to dry flowers for a great work of art
At the Flower Power Festival Munich 2023, everything revolves around the flower, both literally and figuratively. Science, beauty, sustainability, aesthetics, plant diversity, garden art, quality of life, climate change, biodiversity – these and many more are conceivable themes that can be staged, with workshops, walks, exhibitions, games, theatre, installations and more.
The British artist Rebecca Louise Law, for example, needs no fewer than 200,000 dried flowers for her installation “Blossom”, which will be one of the highlights of the Kunsthalle exhibition. For this she already needs the help of the people of Munich. You are called upon to collect and dry flowers and thus become part of the great project. The flowers can be handed in at the Kunsthalle from March 25, 2022 until autumn.
More information and inspiration at #flowerpower.muc and www.flowerpowermuc.de