Ben Nurgenç
From the Cosmos to the Compost

Hamburg-based artist and researcher Ben Nurgenç has a deep understanding of the Stadtpark’s mushrooms, trees and dead wood. As an artist-mycologist, he leads a series of walks that invite participants to experience the park’s natural cycles with all their senses and explore its connection to the cosmos.

During these walks, Nurgenç brings along a DIY bio-reactor that not only breaks down organic waste and produces fertilizers but also generates electricity. This energy powers a small radio receiver, allowing participants to “listen” to the radiation of various celestial bodies and the faint “vibration” that fills the universe. In so doing, the project draws a poetic line from compost to the cosmos, linking the smallest biological processes in our home, the Earth, to the vastness of space, from the micro scale to the macro politics of the universe and the sustainable ways of living.

The radio astronomy experience is developed in collaboration with Pranjal Trivedi, an astrophysicist from the University of Hamburg’s observatory.


Ben Nurgenç was born 1986 in Neustadt an der Weinstraße and lives in Hamburg

Walks at the Stadtpark:
Sat 5.7., 15:00
Sat 2.8., 14:00
Sat 16.8., 15:00 (In cooperation with International Sommerfestival Kampnagel)
Languages: Deutsch, English, Türkçe
Free and open to All
Meeting point: the right side of the fountain in front of the Planetarium
Meeting point for the walks on Google Maps

Interactive tour with Pranjal Trivedi at the Observatory Bergedorf:
So 13.7., 11:00
The Known and Unknown Invisible

Related Dates