The Conference of Trees by Christina Kubisch

Presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Canadian premiere!

Five bonsais stand on a table, their trunks wrapped with spiralling cables. Each tree has its own sound, which is transmitted via an inductive loop to electromagnetic headphones. As they walk around the table, visitors can mix the five audio channels themselves.

The listener hears them whisper, rustle, sing and murmur —all processed from field recordings of nature.

Berlin media artist Kubisch had the idea for this work in 1988 during a residency in the artist colony of Worpswede in northern Germany, where constant military manoeuvres were causing substantial environmental damage and noise pollution. Die Konferenz der Bäume (The Conference of Trees) was created as an alternative to the political summits of the time, at which nature played no role. (Künstlerhaus Bethanien)


“((The late 80s were)) a period of major NATO training exercises, called “Golden Crown”. Every day, supersonic aircrafts passed, with frightening noise, above our residency place. The training destroyed not only landscapes, forests and fields, but left oil and other dangerous materials in the farming grounds. The Conference of Trees was created as a small counter-proposal to the huge fighting machine and the many conferences which did not care about or for nature.” — Christina Kubisch


First presented at “ars viva“ at Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg 1989, going on to Seoul, Venice and others.

Offered as a companion piece to The Conference of Trees are images from Kubisch’s 2001 UV photo series Schutzraum (Shelter), only exhibited once before. Deep in northern Germany's disused Hasestollen tunnel —a WWII air-raid shelter once painted with phosphorescent paint so residents could see in the dark— Kubisch trained hidden UV tubes on the walls to reawaken an eerie, decades-old glow, letting moss, lichen and mineral residue fluoresce alongside it. Like The Conference of Trees, the image series turns a site's multiple historical layers into something you listen or look your way into slowly — proof that for Kubisch, art is never fixed, only ever "constant within change” (Kubisch).

Free contextualisingCall & Response <>events:

22 Sept2026, 6–7pm:
Under a Common Sky -- Faisal Anwar on hybrid art & climate care
Immersive media artist Anwar introduces his international work in the context of Kubisch’s ideas of listening to nature.

6 Oct 2026, 6-7.30pm:
"Mobile Life” art workshop with Hitoko Okada
Registration to follow - limited space, 16+ (first come, first served)
Interdisciplinary artist Okada guides a hands-on creative exploration of Kubisch’s bonsais.

Call & Response <> is the Goethe-Institut Toronto’s cross-disciplinary series exploring core programming questions in dialogue withinternationaland local artists.

Christina Kubisch, born in 1948 in Bremen, Germany, belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Her artistic practice spans performances, concerts, video and visual art works as well as sound installations and electro-acoustic compositions. In her series of Electrical Walks (since 2003), electromagnetic fields are amplified and made audible via specially designed headphones.Kubisch created her personal artistic strategies by developing and transforming technologies such as ultraviolet light, solar energy or electromagnetic induction. In her installations she merges audio and visual arts to create multi-sensory experiences for the participants, who are invited to become active as listeners and performers.

Kubisch, who has taught audiovisual art in Berlin, Paris, Saarbrücken and Oxford, received the Giga Hertz Award in 2021 for her life’s work and is a member of Akademie der Künste, Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.


Part of the 2026 program (re)Open Minds: Adapting to the Future