The Danish collective Diakron (Aslak Aamot Helm, Bjarke Hvass Kure, Amitai Romm) presents the film work 7 Summers, created in collaboration with photographer and inventor Emil Rønn Andersen. In addition, the artists exhibit two further works based on dried plants and exploring themes related to agriculture, drawing in part on materials and research from the corporate archive of Schering AG.

At the center of the exhibition is the film 7 Summers, which the artists describe as a science-fiction documentary. The footage was produced primarily in a so-called “phytotron,” a climate simulation laboratory located at the Risø research campus near Roskilde. The artists selected various plants—including wheat, as well as samples of fallow field and salt marsh vegetation from the area surrounding the laboratory—and exposed them to altered climatic conditions within the facility. In this controllable environment, factors such as temperature, CO₂ concentration, humidity, and air circulation can be modified. Seven different climate scenarios are thus simulated, and the plants’ responses are documented.

Yet the film is more than a straightforward documentary. Present and future, simulation and report continuously alternate. Using Andersen’s film technology, the plants appear in different contexts: on the one hand under laboratory conditions, and on the other within simulated landscape views.

Additional works introduce potential crops of the future, such as sorghum varieties, which according to research conducted at the University of Copenhagen could be successfully cultivated in Northern Europe in the future. Diakron also traces the history preserved in the corporate archive of Schering AG, which produced agricultural products including pesticides, fungicides, and seed-treatment agents for agriculture on an industrial scale.