Uriel Orlow (*1973) works at the intersection of history, botany and postcolonial criticism. In his films, installations and performative projects, he explores how plants function as carriers of political and historical meanings – and how knowledge about them is shaped, appropriated or suppressed by power structures.
Reveries of Collective Walkers is a reading performance that centers on plants as protagonists and invites people to enter into an intimate dialogue with them. The work was created in 2022 and has since been performed at various locations, most recently at the current Venice Biennale “Minor Keys.” In Zurich, the readings take place in Platzspitz Park and the Arboretum – two locations with very different origins.
The Arboretum was established at the end of the 19th century as a botanical collection and organizes plants according to their origin. It represents a worldview in which diversity is classified and ordered according to Western European criteria. Platzspitz Park, on the other hand, is an organic urban space: its trees – including plane trees from an 18th-century Baroque pleasure garden – are part of a multi-layered urban past in which different uses and social realities overlap, including the open drug scene of the 1980s and early 1990s.
In both places, the plants bear the weight of these layers. A ginkgo from East Asia, a cedar from Lebanon, a plane tree from Asia Minor: each plant carries traces within it that extend far beyond the place where it stands. The artist invites visitors to read aloud to them in their own language and with their own voice. The plants listen: they inhale the CO2 exhaled while speaking. This creates a form of connection and community that rethinks the relationship between humans and vegetal beings in the context of colonial and ecological linkages. The walk itself becomes a form of knowledge, carried by voices, plants and a shared presence in the space.
Overview:
Readings will take place in Platzspitz Park and the Arboretum on three dates. After a joint introduction, each participant selects a text and a plant, spends time with it and reads to it. Texts in various languages will be provided – participants are also welcome to bring their own texts.
Location
Arboretum and Platzspitz Park
Dates
Saturday, June 20 · 3–3.45 p.m. · Arboretum
Saturday, June 27 · 3–3.45 p.m. · Platzspitz · Artist in attendance
Sunday, July 5 · 3–3.45 p.m. · Arboretum
Free admission, no registration required.
Weather permitting. Check program shortly before event.
Please note the awareness concept.
Foto Credits: Uriel Orlow, Reveries of Collective Walkers (Venice), 2026, photo: Renato Chorão