As this year’s In House: Artist in Residence at the Gropius Bau, artist and theorist Zheng Bo explores how plants can become part of a political idea. Past and future are the central parameters of his politically and scientifically informed artistic practice, in which he deals with socio-economic themes and the relationship between humans and nature.

Tom Crowther is a Welsh scientist studying ecology and global biodiversity. He is an assistant professor in the department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, where he founded Crowther Lab, an interdisciplinary group of scientists studying global ecosystems to facilitate local efforts that protect, restore and manage biodiversity around the world. Crowther takes a holistic approach to studying ecosystems, including the networks of plants and soil organisms (like fungi, bacteria and nematodes) that interactively govern the exchanges of carbon between the land and atmosphere. This work is highly interdisciplinary, including theoretical, experimental and observational approaches to understand the mechanisms driving ecological processes across different scales.