Kunsthalle unterwegs: The Forest as Echo
19.6. – 21.6.2026

Soya Arakawa / Natasha Barrett / Oliver Gather / Hanne Lippard / Mélia Roger / Miki Yui

The Forest as Echo brings together music, sound art and performance with an immediate experience of nature. Set within the historic fountain complex of the Jan Wellem Fountain and the adjacent Weyhe-Park in the Grafenberg Forest, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, in cooperation with the Förderkreis Jan-Wellem-Brunnen e. V., presents a programme that makes the forest perceptible as an acoustic and social space of resonance.

At the centre of the project is the area surrounding the site itself. Over the course of three days, it is activated through concerts, performances, sound interventions and guided forest walks that respond to the specific atmosphere, acoustics and topography of the forest. The artistic contributions reflect on the relationship between sound and space, perception and movement. In this way, natural processes and artistic practice are interwoven.

Echo is understood here as a multilayered motif: as a physical phenomenon, a poetic image and a social principle. Sound is not conceived as an isolated event, but as something that reverberates, spreads and generates resonances. In this sense, the forest does not merely function as a backdrop; rather, it becomes an active resonant body and participant in its own right.

The Forest as Echo invites visitors to open their perception, listen to their surroundings and experience the interplay between nature, sound and community.

A project realised as part of the project series Kunsthalle unterwegs.