Beatrice Voigt Kunst und Kulturprojekte & Edition
For more than more than three decades we have been developing interdisciplinary and cross-cultural art, culture and education projects for the reorientation of people in their their living and working environment. The focus is on the future-oriented interaction between people, nature and technology as well as the lively dialog between art, science and education.
Activities: Exhibitions, author contributions, documentation, creative processes, idea development, innovation processes, jury work, colloquia, congresses, communication concepts, conversion projects, concept development, creativity training, artist talks, moderation, public relations, performances, publications, seminars, symposia, systemic Gestalt coaching, team development, lectures, translations, workshops …
Latest News …
In 2024, I was given the honor of being nominated for membership of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. At a ceremony in the Great University Hall Salzburg in March 2025, I was admitted to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts as a full member of ‚Class III – Arts‘. I am grateful and delighted to receive this award for my commitment to addressing fundamental and complex questions about the relationship between people and the world through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects based on art.
Over the course of more than three decades, a series of bibliophile publications has emerged from the accumulated knowledge and experience in collaboration with renowned artists, scientists and institutions, the significance and orientation potential of which extends far beyond the present day. What unites all the topics is my desire to inspire new and further thinking and to sensitize people to the relationship between nature and culture in terms of perception, experience and value.
During an Easter walk in an English nature park near Oxford, I came across a graceful female beauty made of stone, framed and protected by centuries-old living “natural figures” – magnificent trees and lush rhododendrons. All around the sculpture, which is decorated with lichen, possible character traits of a human being are carved in stone in a walkable form: true heart … powerful soul … peaceful mind … Leaning against a pillar not far away is a sentence by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also carved in stone: “Si l’Auteur de la nature est grand dans les grand choses, il es très grand dans les petites.” – “In the smallest things, nature shows the greatest wonders”, Carl von Linné would probably agree.
It is a wonderful place – a bright expanse and eloquent silence that combines the flapping of wings and the singing of birds with the sound of the wind and the rustling of leaves. A dialog between man and nature through art. Making the invisible visible, making the unheard audible, making the incomprehensible comprehensible, discovering the (im)possible – inspiring enthusiasm for the beauty, dignity and value of life: these ideas have been inscribed in my work and in the books that have emerged from it.
Perhaps these thoughts will inspire you to visit the media library, where you will find all publications, book contributions etc. up to the present day – in the spirit of Picasso: “I do not seek, I find.”
- Mediathek (Media library)
Human ecology of water
Human ecology of water. Elements and Ressources – Concepts and Inspirations
In view of the current and future circumstances and effects of globalization and climate change, migration and war, energy demand and resource scarcity and much more, the handling of the elementary resource of water is a challenge of existential importance for society as a whole. As part of the 2023 annual conference of the German Human Ecological Society, of which I am a member, my lecture WasserKunst – Künstlerische Annäherung an ein faszinierendes Naturphänomen (WaterArt – An artistic approach to a fascinating natural phenomenon) focused on perspectives and experiences of water in different cultural and temporal periods.
In February 2025, this conference resulted in a further publication by the German Human Ecological Society on the topic of Human Ecology of Water. (Humanökologie des Wassers). Elements and Ressources – Concepts and Inspirations. The volume includes scientific analyses, social impulses for action and cultural reflections with a view to a practice-oriented responsible use of water in its many forms and areas of application.
“Water as a natural phenomenon – invigorating, moving, connecting” („Naturphänomen Wasser – belebend, bewegend, verbindend“) is the title of my contribution, which approaches the phenomenon of water from aspects that we humans can perceive, experience and shape. In the diversity of its manifestations, water reveals itself as a natural phenomenon with fascinating properties and the potential for the development of a global, preserving water culture. Education and culture prepare the ground for forward-looking action in the knowledge of constant change and the complex development dynamics of systems and societies.
Leseprobe Humanökologie des Wassers (Reading sample Human Ecology of Water)
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanökologie (German Society for Human Ecology)
Further insights, suggestions and tips on topics relating to water:
WasserWissen – die wunderbare Welt des Wassers (WasserWisdom – the wonderful world of water)
Wasser. Schatz der Zukunft. Salzburger Wassertage (Water. Treasure of the future. Salzburg Water Days)
WasserLeben – Wahrnehmungs- und Erfahrungsräume (WaterLife – spaces for perception and experience)
Zeichen von fern – Signs from afar – when art and science meet
Black Moving Iceberg was the cover picture of the second exhibition of works by Ulrich Gehret, which I showed in my Munich gallery in 1991. The creator of this work is an artist, researcher and cosmopolitan. His style is unmistakable and just as virtuoso as his choice and handling of materials.
In the summer of 1988, I visited Ulrich Gehret in the countryside around Malaga, where he lived and worked at the time. I had met the artist, who had studied free painting in Berlin and Hamburg, shortly before and was impressed by the intensity of his personal presence, by his thought processes. It was only photos of his paintings that awakened my intuition – I sensed that something new was being created here – a kind of ecopoetic artistic language. I decided to travel to Spain and see the original artworks.
So there I was – having just been exposed to the shimmering heat of the southern Spanish sun, I found myself in a shady, deep studio space that seemed to me like a mysterious, monastic place from another world. In the midst of the rugged rocky landscape of Andalusia, in the quiet seclusion of his studio, this artist created new pictorial worlds – “visual notes” – pictures like I had never seen before.
Gehret is a hermit and world traveler at the same time – he immerses himself in nature and culture on land and water, wherever he happens to be. He has traveled to many countries in South America, worked in Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago. He ventured out to sea in a boat – alone, observing the life and movements of whales in Patagonia in the hope of touching and stroking a whale. He succeeded. Unlike Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby Dick, he feels empathy and respect for other creatures, whose relics such as skins, bones or scales he sometimes integrates into his two- and three-dimensional works. Scripted elements weave through compositions that seem both figurative and abstract, combining shadowy spaces of memory with the real present and foreboding metaphors.
The joint viewing of the pictures led to long discussions about concepts such as content and form, intellect and emotion, static and dynamic elements, powerful gestures and delicate signs. We asked questions about the objective in the subjective and vice versa, played with Gehret’s almost Dadaistically constructed word creations and imaginative narratives.
„Here and now, or then, I individual, Ulrich Gehret, as an expression of my momentary feeling and reacting to this or any event, protesting against that unjust state of affairs or insanely delighted at signs of original human sympathy, have constructed an emotional diagram in which, with some effort of thought and openness, you might find yourselves…“
While preparing the book presentation Vom Werden – Entwicklungsdynamik in Natur und Gesellschaft (On becoming – development dynamics in nature and society) in September 2019, I followed the preparations for the ARKTIS expedition 2019/20 of the research vessel Polarstern (Polar Star) to explore climate events in the “epicenter of global warming” from afar with great interest. This provided an excellent current example of complex dynamic processes, interactions and feedbacks in the relationship structure of the Earth’s spheres.
What is the cryosphere and what is its significance? Why is it so important for achieving climate targets? The effects of ice are far-reaching and diverse, and the Earth’s radiation budget is also linked to the manifestations of ice. It influences ocean currents, the weather and the Earth’s climate. Traces of human activity and effects on the climate are legible; corresponding biological and biochemical signatures have been discovered and researched in sediments and ice cores.
Antarctic ice core in polarized light
Photo: Sepp Kipfstuhl/AWI, Archive of Alfred Wegener Instituts/Wikimedia Commons
Deposits of materials such as aluminum, plastic, cement and even radioactive waste have been detected by stratigraphic studies. The speed of human-influenced climate change with effects such as rising sea levels exceeds the developments of the previous 11,000 years of the Holocene and all earlier epochs!
In the same breath as considering scientific facts and correlations, another “sign from afar” came to mind. I remembered the artwork presented at the beginning, which is directly linked to the theme of the Arctic expedition and the symposium documentation Vom Werden.
On September 26, 2019, an imaginary encounter between the Polarstern and the Black Moving Iceberg took place – in the lecture hall of the Botanical State Collection in Munich – an encounter that unleashes multi-layered reflections on the interactions between ice deposits and the global climate. It is a work of art that emerges from the artistic intention to communicate something from the artist’s dialog with the environment and his inner world, which has become an image. Created in 1989, Gehret’s Black Moving Iceberg appears 30 (!) years later in the associative field of global climate change and opens up a surprisingly different, artistic approach to a highly virulent problem area of the present.
The combination of disciplines expands the space of perception and association, creates a moment of pause and, in the present context, perhaps raises questions about the origin of the black “dress” of the drifting iceberg. Is the image a product of the imagination or does the iceberg really exist? How old might it be? How old can icebergs get? Does it still exist or has it long since melted? What title would the artist give the work today? Perhaps “Black Melting Iceberg”? What do these “signs from afar” have to tell us?
The publication Vom Werden – Entwicklungsdynamik in Natur und Gesellschaft addresses the complex multidimensionality of problems, including the highly virulent climate crisis, which places the highest demands on the transformative shaping of reality. The interplay between art and science opens the senses and mind to the diversity, complexity and dynamics of developments in nature and culture. New ideas and opportunities for prudent, forward-looking action can thus emerge. As a bridge between scientific, artistic and pedagogical worlds of thought and life, this bibliophilically designed volume inspires us to think further, anew and differently in an effort to create meaningful and application-oriented perspectives for a culture of values that is open to the future (Perspektiven einer zukunftsoffenen Wertekultur).
The publication Vom Werden – Entwicklungsdynamik in Natur und Gesellschaft – Perspektiven einer zukunftsoffenen Wertekultur im Dialog von Wissenschaft, Kunst und Bildung forms volume 3 of the series:
„Visions for a culture of sustainability“ („Visionen einer Kultur der Nachhaltigkeit“).
The book follows on from the documentation of the symposium BodenLeben – Erfahrungsweg ins Innere der Erde. Annäherung an eine verborgene Dimension des Lebens im Dialog von Wissenschaft, Kunst und Bildung (Volume 2), also jointly published by Beatrice Voigt Kunst und Kulturprojekte München and the Universität für Bodenkultur Wien. BodenLeben
The artistically designed volume Vom Werden documents and reflects the symposium of the same name, which Beatrice Voigt Kunst und Kulturprojekte & Edition München realized in partnership with the Bavarian State Natural Science Collections (SNSB) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU). The book comprises 36 text contributions by renowned scientists, artists and educators with more than 300 illustrations and graphic representations on 320 pages in 21 x 28 cm format in color with links to film clips, images, animations, collages, performances and more.
First edition September 2019
ISBN 978-3-9816143-6-7
Kunst / Kultur / Innovation – Themenbereiche des Hauptmenüs
Kunst – Themen des Hauptmenüpunktes
Kultur – Themen des Hauptmenüpunktes
Innovation – Themen des Hauptmenüpunktes
Aktuelle Projekte
