PAOLO LOLICATA
Ein Spätling Frühling
Ein Spätling Frühling (A Late Spring) is a six-month research project developed in the forests of Frohnau, Berlin. Hosted by Künstlerhof Frohnau and funded by Culture Moves Europe and the Goethe-Institut.
Guided by Martin Heidegger's philosophy and his understanding of poetry as a way of revealing the world, the research unfolds through the natural cycle of winter.
Located on the site of the former border between East and West Berlin and hosted in a repurposed military hospital, the project explores the concept of symbiotic creation with nature and the role of artistic practice in uncovering the historical traces and scars embedded within the landscape.
Through tabletop games and sewing as temporal and collaborative methodologies, alongside improvisation, archival research, poetry, philosophy, and forest management, the project develops alternative ways of reading both natural and human landscapes. The resulting works invite a shift away from anthropocentric perspectives, proposing slower forms of observation, listening, and coexistence with the more-than-human world.
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The forests of Frohnau were once divided by the Berlin Wall, where a militarised border cut through trees, paths, and ecosystems. Among its most striking elements was the raked sand of the death strip, a surface designed to record every footprint crossing the border. A landscape intended for surveillance became, paradoxically, an archive of presence and absence. Today, the forest is slowly reclaiming these scars. The remaining clearings, patrol roads, and traces of the sand strip reveal how political histories become inscribed in the landscape, while nature quietly rewrites them over time
The title Ein Spätling Frühling refers to Martin Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin, in which the poet is described not as ein Spätling—one who arrives too late—but as ein Frühling, the beginning of another season of thought. Developed during the winter, the project inhabits this tension between lateness and emergence, waiting for spring, waiting and becoming.
October 1, 2024 – March 29, 2025
180 days • 6 lunar cycles
Ein Spätling Frühling unfolded over six months, following six complete lunar cycles between 1 October 2024 and 29 March 2025.
This temporal framework became the project's methodology, allowing the research to evolve alongside the gradual transformation of the forests of Frohnau through autumn and winter into early spring. The residency crossed the autumn equinox period into winter (21 December 2024) and concluded shortly after the spring equinox (20 March 2025), witnessing the forest shift from falling leaves and shortening days to the first signs of renewed growth.
The changing duration and quality of daylight, together with the recurring rhythm of the moon, became a structure for observation, experimentation, and reflection. Periods of abundance alternated with moments of absence, uncertainty, and waiting, allowing new directions to emerge organically from the landscape itself.
Rather than measuring productivity, the lunar calendar offered a temporal score through which creative processes could unfold according to natural cycles of attention, pause, and renewal.
The final works are organised according to the sequence of the lunar calendar, inviting visitors to experience the research not as a linear narrative but as a cyclical process of observation, repetition, and transformation, where each work marks a particular moment within the evolving relationship between the artist, the forest, and time.
The project attempts to dwell within time passing, allowing the changing rhythms of light, darkness, and the seasons to become active collaborators in the creative process.
Respecting the process and accepting it.
