As a formation created in 2019, we were interested in creating and sending a collective message to extraterrestrials using special communication means. Our question to ourselves and public co-authors of New Message was: if we could send a message to another civilisation in the outer space, what would we tell them? During WRO Biennale, once again we pick up the topic of communication, this time directing its vector to what is not above, but beneath our feet. Identifying obvious limitations standing in our way to build frictionless dialogue with soils and interspecies relations, we turn towards imagination as our guidance.

New Message 2023 is composed of stored fragment of previous installation, grounded artistic practice and collective imagination workshop. Repetitive, careful sensual perception and ‘good enough’ technologies are at the core of our artistic practice. Scientific research on memory and communication among plants, especially their incredible sound perception, influenced our decision to focus primarily on sonic, rather than visual narration.

In the art installation these stories reach our ears by their transmission through a vital medium – soil – center and source of every life-enabling processes, energy, nourishment. What can this overwhelmingly diverse, dynamic and never-to-be-known archive of non-human and human history teach us? Which story may interspecies want to tell us? How can we imagine collaboration at the end of the world? New Message narration is enriched by important and inspiring voices of Monica Gagliano and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

Collaboration: Tomasz W. Miśtura, Paweł Janicki. Set install: Dsa Zbigniew Giętka.

New Message: Fertile Imaginations is a new version of the project that was created by: Tomasz W. Miśtura, Anna Kaczkowska, Elżbieta Kowalska, Anna Rogóż, Ewelina Lesik, Piotr Brożek, supervised by Paweł Janicki, coordinated by Krystyna Mogilnicka and Edyta Zielnik, produced by The Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute as part of the main program of the Prague Quadrennial 2019 and financed by Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.