Final event: The soil does not speak back
Performance | Artist Talk
27.10.2026
An Evening of Artistic Research, Conversation and Performance
An evening in two parts at Earthwise Residency. Hear of the work conducted through an 8-week residency and experience a work-in-progress performance piece.
- What happens between a scientist and the microorganisms she works with every day—and what happens when an artist begins listening to that relationship? During their Earthwise residency, molecular biologist Dr. Katarzyna Krawczyk and award-winning composer and transdisciplinary artist-researcher Mike von der Nahmer explored these questions through scientific logbooks, conversations, field recordings and artistic experiments.
- The evening begins with a 45-minute closing conversation and participatory workshop with Kasia and Mike. Looking back on their residency, they will share encounters, discoveries, uncertainties and questions that remain unanswered. Through a few simple exercises, the audience is invited to explore how observation becomes interpretation, and how our attention and language shape the ways we relate to microbial life.
- The second part is a 45–50-minute work-in-progress performance of THE SOIL DOES NOT SPEAK BACK, a one-act theatrical Living Score written, conceived and composed by Mike von der Nahmer. Narrated by Mike, with Brice Soniano as musical dialogue partner on double bass, and film footage shot by Mike and edited by Anita Prestidge, the piece brings together voice, moving image, music, drum, mechanical organs, recorded matter and documentary voices read by members of the audience.
- The performance asks: when does an encounter become a relationship if we cannot know whether the other is responding? It does not give microbes a human voice or pretend to resolve the unknown. Instead, it creates a space in which observations, memories, misunderstandings and silences can coexist.
- “We cannot show the relationship itself. We can compose the conditions in which its presence – or absence – becomes perceptible.”
Performance credits
- Written, conceived, composed, filmed and narrated by
- Mike von der Nahmer
- Musical Dialogue Partner
Brice Soniano — Double Bass
- Additional Sound Voices
Bees, trees, birds and objects from around Earthwise
- Film Editing
Anita Prestidge
Scientific, Documentary and Artistic Contributions
- Katarzyna Krawczyk, PhD — Plant Biochemist and Molecular Biologist — scientific logbooks, laboratory experiences, conversations and microbiological research.
- Niculina Musat, Dr. rer. nat. — Associate Professor, Aarhus University — scientific conversations, interviews and microbiological perspectives.
- Serafina McPherson Kimø — conversations and reflections on fermentation, microorganisms and community.
- Ryan W. Paerl, PhD — Associate Professor, North Carolina State University, and his students — written reflections, observations and perspectives on microbial life.
- Christine Fentz — Artistic Director, Earthwise Residency and Secret Hotel — guided forest practice and reflections on encounters, relationships and the more-than-human world.
- Renilde Becqué — The Repatterning Collective — correspondence and reflections on relationships, communication and co-creation with the more-than-human world.
- Participants of the Earthwise workshops — personal reflections, writings, observations and artistic contributions that have become part of the documentary material and Living Score.
- The performance incorporates documentary voices drawn from scientific logbooks, interviews, conversations and participatory artistic research, brought to life through readings by members of the audience.