Divadlo Setkání: Atlas nepoddajnosti

Beside railway tracks, in the gaps between warehouses, on sites awaiting development and along fences, plants live by different rules than they do in parks. No one plants them here, prunes them, or keeps any records. The soil is uneven and saline, full of rubble, fragments of tyres, and seeds carried in by the wind. The urban jungle creates temporary refuges for species that might otherwise find no place in the city. Here, biodiversity does not emerge despite disorder, but because of it. Urban jungle is both a reservoir of diversity and a place of fierce struggle for space, light, and time.

In a world that is falling apart and rearranging itself at the same time, it no longer makes sense to wait for balance to return. Nothing will go back to what we once thought of as stable. Nor can we place our hope in a quick fix, in salvation through technology. Our lives are interwoven with the lives of other than human beings. We are walking ecosystems. Our inner microbial neighbours change with our diet, our stress, our illnesses, antibiotics, and the seasons. They weave themselves into our metabolism. They shape our immunity and our moods. They are a community with stories of their own. No life can exist torn from its surroundings. Life is a quiet pact between many species holding together.

Oil products are the metamorphosed biomass of prehistoric oceans. The settled bodies of algae, microorganisms, and animals, transformed under the pressure of geological layers into black gold. From the deep memory of the sea, we press out bottles, bags, and packaging that grow brittle in the sun and peel away in thin layers. They break down into particles that continue to enter the cycles of life, carried by rain, streams, fish, and birds. Life sustains itself through the constant passing on of matter, energy, and form. A plant becomes a caterpillar, the caterpillar a bird, the bird a song and a movement of air. Fragments of plastic enter bodies. Sun, heat, wind, and waves break them into smaller and smaller pieces, spreading them through water, soil, and air. They pass through fish, birds, insects, and through us. They remind us that no body has ever been entirely sealed within itself. Every organism is a membrane, a place of passage, a form in which matter pauses for a while. To be alive means to be transformed through others, to be shaped by them and to carry them within oneself. Every body is made of visits. Of gifts that have passed through other mouths, other stomachs, and other bloodstreams of exchange.