Nirit Binyamini Ben-Meir

A participatory installation of moss colonies on a rug and live projections. Audiences are invited to influence the moss’s climate by spraying water and blowing hot air on the moss landscape.

Two large projections show the moss's reaction in real-time, one through a macro-lens view, showing the movement of the strands, and another through a red filter that emphasises the dry and vulnerable areas.

The reactions of the audiences are an integral part of the work. The dramatic setting aims to provoke a journey of thoughts and emotions, from curiosity through cautiousness and empathy to self-reflection and kinship: 'is what I am doing harmful for the moss?' 'How can I help it prosper'? 'What does it mean for me as a human to influence the moss?'

“Kinship is shared breath. Breath is what transforms bodies into one another, We thrive on the breath of others that we inhale and others prosper because we feed them with our breath” [Andreas Weber]

Shared Breath, Video [20 min] / Live Performance, reviving moss with human breath. This slow, poetic experience offers an optimistic perspective and shows humans are needed in this biosphere. Kinship can be as simple and intuitive as breathing.

A moss rug acts as a board game. Each player gets a territory. Their goal is to keep it the greenest and most prosperous area. During the game, the players influence the climate of the moss using water spray, hot air and manipulating the rug’s topography. As the game progresses they would discover how their actions affect the moss’s condition. Would they try to change the course of the game and collaborate to try and balance the moss rug?

The Cultivation Party workshop is the starting point for a long term activity and engagement. I invited several community members to collect moss from areas that are being under construction and to make our own large moss rug. 

This year, the World Economic Forum in Davos has announced a summit called ‘The Great Reset’, But are the actual decisions as bold and reformative as declared on the agenda? 

My proposal imagines how the interaction with living moss at the venue might encourage empathy and solidarity. Designed to be placed in the conference venue, the living installation reshapes the hall’s environment to create a more holistic and immersive debate and a new approach to our decision making systems.

“The patterns of reciprocity by which mosses bind together a forest community offer us a vision of what could be… I hold tight to the vision that someday soon we will find the courage of self-restraint, the humility to live like mosses.” Robin Wall Kimemerer