Around 400 young apple trees are already taking root for Chemnitz as European Capital of Culture 2025, and more will be added on Saturday. But the major project is about much more than fruit.
Chemnitz (dpa/sn) - With a hammer and chisel, volunteers wrested a habitat for young apple trees from a parking lot in Chemnitz a year ago in a sweaty art event. In the meantime, the number of trees for "We Parapom", one of the flagship projects of the European Capital of Culture 2025, has grown to around 400. More are coming this Saturday and there will be many more. The goal is up to 4,000 apple trees, which then form a parade across the city. The hardship in unsealing the ground at the start is symbolic of the complex process of the project as a whole, said curator Barbara Holub of the German Press Agency.
Because just to plant the trees, suitable locations have to be found, ownership of land clarified, areas cultivated and questions about underground lines in urban space clarified, explained the artist. This often requires complex coordination and multiple inspections. "The closer we get to downtown, the more difficult it becomes."
However, the project goes far beyond the planting of trees and the associated "sculptural intervention" in the cityscape. "Keeping community ideas, questions of ecology and climate change as well as social questions of society as a permanent process in the public discourse - that is the major goal of We Parapom," emphasized Holub. At the same time, the question is asked what art can contribute to these social processes.
For this purpose, the first artistic interventions were implemented. The projects are guided by the idea of "silent activism", explains the curator. People could penetrate art through other contexts, have new experiences and sometimes only later realize that they are part of an art project.
In addition to further plantings, projects with international artists are planned for 2023. These include Zbynek Baladran from the Czech Republic, members of the Assemble collective, artist Apolonija Sustersic from Slovenia and Suzanne Lacy from the USA.
In addition, an action to collect and cider apples is to be initiated in the city as a large community action. It is also about the question of how to deal with resources and the local supply of food without long transport routes. In this way, it can be planned that the apples will rot on the streets as fallen fruit in the future, emphasized the curator. In the future, there are also plans to train arborists to take care of the trees far beyond the Capital of Culture year.
According to Holub, the project will already bear fruit well before 2025. Not only that the planting met with lively participation and there was plenty of interest in sponsoring the trees. The trees planted a year ago have already borne fruit: "The first apples were harvested this fall."
