OpenHaus

3:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Workshop | Earthworm Manifesto | Merve Bektas | For adults, teenagers, and accompanied children (LU, DE, FR, EN)

The Earthworm Manifesto acts as a speculative, transformative storyline weaving relations between humans, earthworms, and the underground. By proposing a non-anthropocentric fabulation that addresses the need to decentralize humans from soil assemblages, it asks: How would you become part of their manifesto? What relations and stories are you building? Why is it necessary to consider facts and fables together?

Inspired by Haraway’s concept of SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative fabulation—this workshop invites participants to generate, blend, and compost new stories and knowledges. We will use methods such as storytelling, collective writing and drawing (Cadavre exquis) to continue co-creating the Earthworm Manifesto. The outputs will contribute to a growing archive created through this workshop series.

Text: Earthworm Manifesto Workshop, by Merve Bektaş, photographed by Georg Zeller, 2023.

3:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Workshop | Creative Exploration of Soil | Natalie Taylor | For adults, teenagers, and accompanied children (LU, DE, FR, EN)

This workshop will explore the potential of soil as a painting and drawing medium. Using ancient sieving and grinding techniques we will be working with Scottish archived soils along with fresh local soils to create an earthy palette of colours to use as watercolour paints. You will come out of this workshop inspired to look around you for the colours of nature and with new skills to turn the everyday dirt under your feet into beautiful art. We will also be looking at the world of soil in a new way by looking through powerful lenses at tiny soil-dwelling creatures which make organic soil so nutrient rich and precious.

(Walk-in workshop : a more in-depth workshop is offered for small groups, open to adults, teenagers, and children accompanied by an adult. Registration on site. Two time slots available: 3:00 PM and 4:30 PM.)

The educational team of the Naturmusée will be on site with part of its exhibition 'Schatzkëscht Buedem' to show you why soil is a true treasure.

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm | Workshop | Compost Creatures | Dana Zoutman | For adults, teenagers, and accompanied children (LU, DE, FR, EN)

In the compost bin, worms and other creatures work hard to turn your food scraps into soil. And this soil can be used to grow new food! Let’s celebrate the slimy worms and their friends. In this workshop, we will use waste materials such as cardboard and food scraps to create our compost beasts. At the end of the workshop, we will give our creations to the compost bin.

3:30 pm – 4:15 pm | Talk | Roundtable discussion about Earthbound | d-o-t-s and the participating artists (EN)

During this event, a roundtable discussion will bring together d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet & Olivier Lacrouts) and the artists involved in the Earthbound project. This will be an opportunity to explore and discuss in depth this multidisciplinary project, which examines the vital yet often overlooked role of soil in sustaining life on Earth.

Earthbound focuses in particular on earthworms – essential agents and ambassadors of soil health.

Through this artistic and ecological initiative, the project highlights the interconnection between decomposition and regeneration in biological cycles, inviting reflection on the importance of soil preservation.

During the roundtable, d-o-t-s will explain the entire creative process behind Earthbound, from conception to realization.

4:15 pm – 5:15 pm | Participatory Exchange | Compost Exchange followed by Cut-up Compost Poetry | By Dana Zoutman | For teenagers and adults (EN)

What is “compost” – and how do we make it? During compost conversations, there will be space to delve into this topic together. Going through the steps of building and maintaining various compost systems, we exchange questions and ideas to start to unravel the strange and essential world of compost and soil.

Following this exchange, Dana will propose a cut-up compost poetry workshop. In the earth beneath our feet, decay and decomposition are unavoidable to nourish new life. Decomposition can also be used as a writing tool: in this workshop, we will “decompose” found texts and rearrange their parts into poetry. Bring old magazines, newspapers, or other texts that can be used for cutting up.

5:00 pm – 5:30 pm | Tour of the residency outcomes and exhibitions | Led by Christian Mosar, Artistic Director of the Bridderhaus, Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts (d-o-t-s) | FR

Christian Mosar, director of the Bridderhaus, will guide you through the artist residencies, its history, architecture, and artistic program. During the visit, Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts will introduce you to the exhibition Earthbound. Worms, Soil, Decay.

5:30 pm - 6:00 pm | Sound Performance | Soundscape | By Sam Erpelding

In this performance Sam Erpelding shows a brief insight into his artistic dissertation in the field of ecoacoustics and computer music.

The two national parks Donau-Auen and Kalkalpen (AT) not only serve as research sites, they also symbolize the last remnants of large floodplain landscapes and primeval beech forests in Central Europe.

Excerpts from current pieces such as “Zur toten Pappel” (to the dead poplar), “Zur alten

Buche” (to the old beech tree), “Chiroptera Socius Docta”, “Flussgesänge” (chants from the river) and “voices from the ground” shall raise ecological awareness and draw attention to sonic health and anthropogenic impacts on these unique and fragile acoustic environments.

Aesthetic forms of expression of the wind, complex sound spectra of non-human organisms, subtle sonic characteristics of life in dead wood, or of subterranean and underwater organisms, as well as the social calls of birds, amphibians, insects, fishes and mammals in relation to human presence are conveyed with the help of immersive sound art.

6:00 pm – 6:15 pm | Happening | The Worm Ceremony | By d-o-t-s and Dana Zoutman

As part of the opening of the Earthbound exhibition, Bridderhaus is welcoming some new permanent residents: worms! In the compost bin next to the terrace, they will be conducting a continuous regenerative performance (in collaboration with Bridderhaus visitors and the local community) - turning our waste into fertile soil. During the welcoming ceremony, we will introduce the worms to their new home together and welcome them with poetry and compost creatures.

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm | Happening/Workshop | Veillée Carbone | by François Génot

Artist François Génot invites you to discover the process of making charcoal around a large fire at the Bridderhaus and to experiment with its use in drawing. This workshop will be an immersion in nature – a chance to reflect on the relationship between humans, plants, and art by creating with what surrounds us.

8:00 pm – 11:00 pm | Live Set | by Dankwart

Driven by deep, syncopated rhythms and textured drones, interlaced with processed environmental recordings and glitched musical harmonies, this Dub-Industrial Live Performance (by Dankwart) invites on a sonic journey through imagined factory floors to surreal forest environments overtaken by machines. The contrast between natural and synthetic elements is central, exploring themes of coexistence, conflict, and sound transformation.

3:00 pm – 8:00 pm | Exhibition | Earthbound. Worms, Soil, Decay: an immersive exploration of life beneath our feet

Running from 28 June to 14 September 2025, the exhibition Earthbound. Worms, Soil, Decay explores the vital, yet often overlooked, role of soils in sustaining life on Earth, with a focus on earthworms as key agents and ambassadors of soil health. In light of the ongoing ecological crisis, Earthbound encourages a deeper connection to the underground world and its non-human inhabitants, advocating for mindful stewardship. Earthworms – often dismissed due to their slimy appearance – are essential to soil fertility but face numerous threats, including soil artificialization, shrinking areas of arable land, and intensive agricultural practices such as compaction and pesticide use. Pollution from acid rain and industrial activity further endangers these crucial creatures. Earthbound is envisioned as a multidisciplinary artistic and ecological initiative that highlights the interconnectedness and fundamental role of decay and regeneration in biological cycles. M

3:00 pm – 8:00 pm | Residency Presentations | François Génot (LU, DE, FR, EN)

François Génot borrows his attitude and the impetus of his approach from the resistance and proliferation of living things. He develops a sensitive and energetic formal language, punctuated by his experience of places. Travelling, collecting and paying particular attention to materials, forms and natural phenomena feed his practice. His attention to the spontaneous, everyday nature that inhabits our anthropised spaces opens the door to the human, animal, plant and mineral worlds around him, with which he tries to find new ways of cohabiting and sharing.

During his residency, François Génot is interested in the interstices and margins of an area undergoing major change, questioning the notion of wasteland through the prism of living things. The industrial sites (Metzerschmelz, Ellergronn, etc.) will be examined through the prism of the living world, and botany in particular, as a revealing, fragile witness to intertwined histories.