With their multi-species organisms, the artist duo STRWÜÜ challenges the supposedly linear demarcation between living and inanimate subjects, thereby significantly destabilising the dualistic notions of nature and culture, humans and technology.

The protagonist of their latest work is a boulder from Glenkeen Garden. As one of innumerable rocks, it characterised and structured the Irish landscape. In the course of human appropriation and cultivation of the land, boulders of this kind were piled up on the edges of fields to form enclosing walls. For centuries, they have also marked privatised land or nationstates — border architectures that function like biomembranes. Both are semi-permeable filters that only allow certain substances or subjects to enter.

Nowadays, a more complex system is required: satellites that allow an all-encompassing view from the skies. The robotic arms detect them and freeze the moment they themselves become visible. They refuse to be observed. As soon as the robotic arms are out of the satellite’s field of vision, they continue to scratch the rock’s surface.

STRWÜÜ (Jo Wanneng and Lukas Fütterer) is an artist duo founded in 2014. They kidnapped a plant, ate for a stop-motion animation, and performed together with a giant water lily in a pond. They had inaudible sound objects concealed, used each other as marionettes and spent a long time moving a small stick slowly forward. They layered animals into ever-changing patterns, provided old printers with prostheses, and made Chinese pigeon whistles circle in a huge hall. They tied strings to shape sounds, let insects rain, and constructed noise as unstably as possible. They bridged time to generate space, accompanied industrial buildings while oscillating, and forced air to dance. They deprived fans of their cooling effect, cooked rosin to engender friction, and sank mycelium in dirges. They soldered a low-frequency flock ritually for days and stole your choice with captured wind. (As of 2024)