Little Shop of Flowers (UA)

A project on plants in vacant buildings

 Leipzig has an abundance of parks and gardens, and there is an extensive culture of gardening throughout. Nature appears to be returning to the city. But many of us only seem to be able to see built structures, pavement, concrete and stucco facades as contrasts to plants and animals. Is there a different way for us to understand the city in its relation to nature? The arrival of climate change brought about increased efforts to make urban centres green and to increase biodiversity. Horizontally, communal gardening projects have created new neighbourhood communities; vertical gardens along the facades of houses provide an answer to the problem of densely-built cities as well as improved CO2-results.
 
 “Little Shop of Flowers” deals with the high-density city as nature. In a vacant shop in the city’s centre, a set will be made from plants. Together with actors from our acting company, copy & waste will play the staff at a strange florist’s shop, where people make friends with flesh-eating plants. Gradually, it turns out that nature is much less controllable in this shop than the urban florists had supposed. Do the plants have superpowers? And if so, how can they help to defeat climate change in the cities?