A Day in the Park
Nezaket Ekici is one of Germany's most high-profile and at the same time most popular performance artists. Marina Abramović's former masterclass student is known for her powerful imagery, decisiveness and expressiveness. By now, she has presented her impactful works, in part painful and unrestrained, in part playful and very witty, in over 70 countries on four continents.
Ekici developed the performance Gehend-Sehend ('Walking-Seeing') especially for Neuhardenberg Castle's landscape garden. It focuses on the applied design rules and principles: all garden designs of this type reflect elements of intentional concealing and highlighting, such as perspectives and sight lines. At the same time, she calls attention to the labour the design and maintenance of these gardens involves. Ekici also shows that landscape gardens are the work of generations.
The performance, which leads the audience through the park with several stopping points, explores its rediscovery through the eyes of an artist and makes it possible to experience its design logic in a sensual and direct way.
Ekici's artistic perspective is preceded by an insight into the practical aspects of garden design. In a panel discussion, the internationally renowned landscape architect Adelheid Gräfin von Schönborn, who restored the Neuhardenberg Castle park according to Lenné's original vision from 1997 to 2001, talks about the conservation of heritage gardens, about how the principles of horticultural design have changed through the ages and about the continuously evolving landscape garden as a task that spans generations.
