ROOTS: Storytelling about Animals and Plants with the Artist Maj Horn
Curator: Lýdia Pribišová
📅 12 November 2025 | 17:00 – 20:00
📍 Fleck coworking | Mierové nám. 17 | Workshop / Round Table
We invite you to an afternoon of storytelling, discussions, and artistic interventions exploring how we perceive the world around us – plants, animals, the landscape, and humans as part of it. Together, we will reflect on how to recognize interspecies connections, how to sense and feel nature more deeply, and what place humans occupy in this interconnected system.
The event connects art, science, and personal experience. Danish artist Maj Horn, together with guest speakers Veronika Repková – herbalist and guide to the world of plants – and Isa Klee, artist, researcher, and urbanist focused on multispecies coexistence in urban environments, will open a discussion on how to build sustainable relationships between species in times of climatic and social change.
The program includes presentations, a performative lecture, a workshop, and a round-table discussion. We will explore traditional ecological knowledge as well as folkloric rituals and storytelling. These approaches will be combined with ecocritical thinking to explore concepts such as naturecultures, interspecies kinship, and plant blindness.
Interspecies kinship is a framework for fostering relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. Influenced by thinkers such as Donna Haraway, this framework emphasises moving beyond traditional human-centred thinking in order to notice, respond to, and build relationships with other species and ecosystems.
The term plant blindness refers to the tendency to overlook plants. This term can also be applied to animals that are not seen or taken seriously, such as pigeons. We see them, but we don’t really see them. This is problematic, because when they become invisible, their significance within ecosystems and our understanding of the world disappears as well. How can we perceive plants and “invisible animals” differently? This question will be explored through the presentations by practitioners who consciously engage with the perception of plants and animals.
The workshop will utilize storytelling as a methodological framework combined with performative approaches. The focus will be on knowledge sharing, taking a site-responsive approach to Trenčín and its surrounding landscapes and ecosystems.
The event is part of the artistic project Floating Communities by Danish artist Maj Horn, curated by Lýdia Pribišová.
Project mediator: Veronika Marek Markovičová
The event will be held in English.
Photo and video documentation will take place during the event and may be used for the promotion and documentation of the Trenčín 2026 project.
Program
-
Welcome and introduction by curator Lýdia Pribišová
-
Performative lecture by artist Maj Horn
-
Presentation by Veronika Repková: Plant Alchemy
-
Presentation by Isa Klee: Artist, researcher, and urbanist focused on multispecies connections
-
Workshop led by Maj Horn
-
Round-table discussion
-
Refreshments
Registration: https://forms.gle/rDXwppGSegoPGwaY8
About the Artists
Photo: Nathalie Greppi. Tidal Tounges. Performance by Maj Horn & Sarah Blissett, 2025.
Maj Horn is an artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She works with research-based and socially engaged methods and media such as performance, photography, organic materials, and installation. She holds an MFA from the Funen Art Academy (DK). To deepen her understanding of landscapes, biodiversity, and ecosystem dynamics, she studied Interpretation in Nature – Theory and Practice at the University of Copenhagen, which she integrates into her artistic practice.
Veronika Repková is the founder of Herbarium Projekt, a company that combines ancient plant alchemy with modern technology. Together with her team, she cultivates medicinal plants near Trenčín. Veronika is also a teacher and guide, inspiring conscious care through plants and the wisdom of the natural world.
Isa Klee is an Austrian artist, researcher, and urbanist who initiates, activates and designs biodiverse spaces and processes at the intersection of art, biodiversity conservation, urban design and research. She works to raise awareness about the protection of endangered species, particularly those living in urban environments. She is the co-founder and chairwoman of Öko Campus Vienna, where she works on issues such as nature restoration, participation, and citizen science in urban areas.
Shifting Ecologies, Kunst Haus Wien, Climate Biennale — photo: Michael Kofler
