Botanical Comrades 植物同志 Plants Practice Politics

Artist and Theorist

As this year’s “In House: Artist in Residence” at the Gropius Bau, artist and theorist Zheng Bo explores how plants practice politics. Past and future are the central parameters of his politically and scientifically informed artistic practice, in which he deals with socio-economic themes and the relationship between humans and nature. He taught at China Academy of Art and currently teaches at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where he leads the Wanwu Practice Group.

Professor of Microbiology and Principal Investigator

Regine Hengge is a Professor of Microbiology and Principal Investigator at the excellence cluster Matters of Activity (MoA) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Using Escherichia coli as an example, her research group is investigating the genetic mechanisms and regulatory networks underlying the growth and morphogenesis of biofilms and their interaction with plants. In the context of MoA she works on the structure, form and function of biofilms with regard to design processes within and with “active matter”.

Head of the Research Group Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Adaptation

Roosa Laitinen is head of the research group Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Adaptation at the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam. She investigates mechanisms of evolution in plants in order to understand how they respond to environmental changes. In her research, Laitinen uses the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which grows naturally across the world in various habitats and is a model organism for genetics and molecular biology in plants.

Professor of Ecology at the Institute of Biology

Matthias Rillig is Professor of Ecology at the Institute of Biology at the Freie Universität Berlin and head of the research group Ecology of Plants. Rillig is also director of the Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research. In his scientific work, he investigates the symbiosis of mycorrhizal fungi with plants as well as the effects of climate crisis and globalisation on soil processes and soil biodiversity. Rillig heads several joint projects, including µPlastic, which studies the effects of microplastics on agricultural soils.