The installations were developed through a long time-span, where several discussions and prototypes took place within the Garden Alliance and Bovista Mushroom Club. In the case of BMC; the idea of a terrarium built up out of many conversations within the group to materialize aspects that were part of the research and videos. We arrived to the idea of building an environment in which the mushrooms of the videos could exist. Bringing ecological elements into the museum was part of an exercise to allow living matter to come into foreplay within a controlled environment as the white cube usually is. The foraging of the soil and leaves also forms part of the installation, as an ongoing practice of collective moments, which again goes back to the idea of mushrooms and mycelial networks. GA group was formed from a part of the class for which it was important to reflect on socio-political crises and varying stages of revolution taking place in countries of our origin. The concept of Veriditas - a natural regeneration power of biological life (Hildegard von Bingen) - was taken as a basis for it to express and focus on translocal solidarity. We tried to emphasize intersections between social processes and natural ones, to be close to the BMC project.

There were several challenges during that period due to the enclosure that we all know about, which also affected the process of developing collective (and individual) works. Even so, for some of us it felt as if having projects together was an element that kept the group meeting (online) and exchanging ideas, for example the BMC would meet on friday nights online to brainstorm about the project, and then individually continue the research, to then feedback in the big round. The negotiation happens in learning to be ready for changes of plans, improvisation and unexpected obstacles. A lot of it has to do with letting go of control and allowing the process to lead you in different ways according to the capacities of the group. A personal motivation in the theme also helped to keep the mushroom research ongoing as theory and practice. Nevertheless, there were several difficulties for art students to keep afloat during the pandemic crisis due to the lack of support„ which is why it was a real need to look for ways and resources in groups and places to be able to keep working and at the same time, make a living.

During this period of almost a year, we have come quite a long way. In the Gathering we organized a discussion with activists and artists from different countries. The organization required a lot of resources. We often met offline, which was very valuable during the pandemic, when personal contacts were kept to a minimum. In addition, it was more important than ever to collaborate with colleagues from regions where revolutionary events were gaining momentum, for example, in Belarus, Rojava and the United States, and thereby support their resistance. In preparation for the Exhibition, we focused on individual works (with periodic online discussion) and developed the design of the installation together, which was quite productive in the conditions of 2nd or 3rd corona waves.

The forming of groups happened quite organically, with some people proposing topics and then others jumping in. As the outcomes of each group changed, so did its conformation, some people from the third group (Art School) switched to Bovista Mushroom Club and from there it changed again several times during the process. Each group worked autonomously. In the GA some people after Gathering left a group because they were more involved in activism during the time of Exhibition.

The context of the museum already has its own controlled environment, and therefore, context. The temperature and humidity of the air, the light, everything about this context falls within human calculations and control. In Bovista Mushroom Club, we were interested in the raw natural environment where mycelium and mushrooms grow. Only working with video coming from a screen didn’t seem to cover the complexity of mycelial networks that we were researching. Hence, we first thought of creating an environment in which the mushrooms of the videos could feel at home. Several ethical and logistical considerations started to arise, with bringing dirt and branches into the white cube. At the beginning we had many more elements from the forest, but due to the limitations within the space we could only operate with a few branches, dry leaves and soil. There was something about working together, similarly or differently than the mycelial mushrooms, that had more relevance than the outcome itself. When thinking about mushrooms and mycelial as ever-growing networks, we wanted to experiment with ecology from a material aspect and not only theoretical. It quickly became clear that bringing the forest into the white cube was not gonna work out of many reasons, so we had to do with only fragments of it, like hanging tree branches and using transparent foil as a surface for the video projections and at the same time, as a container for the terrarium. For GA it was important to try to build a translocal solidarity and make the socio-political events of other countries relevant to the visitors of the exhibition. During the research we discovered that the medieval philosopher Hildegard von Bingen lived and worked quite close to Baden‑Baden. Her theory greatly influenced the development of the GA concept for both Gathering and Exhibition.