Living Colors: Plant-Based Experiments

The workshop builds on Evelyn Möcking’s own artistic research with plant-based dyes and translates it into an experimental, participatory format. As in Sigmar Polke’s Athanor, the focus is on the interplay of material, transformation, chance, and observation—here with an emphasis on colorants derived from plants. The aim is to sensitize participants to material aesthetics, organic color processes, and artistic research as an open experimental framework. In doing so, participants develop an awareness of the materiality of color—recognizing that dyes are not simply commercially available, but emerge from living, natural processes. They also experience that artworks and materials are not static, but changeable and responsive: they may fade, intensify, or combine into new shades. This experience of transformation and processuality is made both tangible and memorable. Through collective experimentation, participants also gain a sense of agency. They discover how simple everyday materials such as fruit, vegetables, or herbs can produce creative results, whose openness and variability extend the principles of Polke’s experimental alchemy into a contemporary context.