Andrea Palášti (b. 1984, Novi Sad) is a more-than-human fitness trainer, a misleading tourist guide, a dilettante freshwater ecologist, an ignorant art(ist) teacher, a phony press photographer, a quasi-primatologist, a noted expert on Dalmatian pyrethrum, a passionate archive researcher, and […]
Andrea Palášti (b. 1984, Novi Sad) is a more-than-human fitness trainer, a misleading tourist guide, a dilettante freshwater ecologist, an ignorant art(ist) teacher, a phony press photographer, a quasi-primatologist, a noted expert on Dalmatian pyrethrum, a passionate archive researcher, and a perfect dinner-party hostess. She works across artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical boundaries, testing different positions to create spaces for learning. These practices are based on concrete case studies and are research-driven, investigating the RIBA and ZSL in London; Bundesarchiv in Berlin and Koblenz; USHMM in Washington, DC; The Natural History Museum in Vienna; the Schönbrunn Zoo; Kincho Research and Development Laboratory in Osaka; Kyoto University Museum’s Herbarium, and others. She collaborates closely and interdependently with her partner Daniel Popovic, as well as her parents, Marta and Ivica. She also fosters collaborative relationships with her students and fellow artists, recognizing the immense value of shared creativity in her artistic practice.
About the project
Her arrival in Berlin coincided with the fall of the Ribbek meteor. While her mother saw it as a sign of good luck, her father cautioned her to watch out for her head. Luckily, it was a small piece. But what if this cosmic event had been more catastrophic? What if it had signaled not just a stroke of fortune but a harbinger of extinction?
Have you ever wondered how it feels to fall like a meteor and sink into the ground as an impact crater? Do you know how to erupt like a volcano, flow like molten lava, or fossilize yourself?
Well, here’s your unique chance to learn all about it by enrolling in Andrea’s newly developed workout class called ‘Fitness for Unlikely Species: the Extinction Edition’. In a world where meteors fall daily, volcanoes erupt suddenly, and species face widespread extinction, cultivating resilience and adapting to these catastrophes becomes crucial!
The artist will guide you through a fitness exercise and an illustrative lesson all rolled into one by mimicking entities whose shapes, movements, and existences are closely related to the notion of extinction. The fitness exercises draw inspiration from the awe-inspiring exhibits housed within the esteemed Natural History Museum in Berlin: through a series of somatic exercises, you will practice falling like the Ribbeck meteor and erupting like Hawaiian volcanoes. Learn how to hang in one place like the T-rex Tristan Otto or fossilize as the Archaeopteryx lithographica. Embracing the physical state of these elements and entities by falling, sinking, rumbling, bursting, collapsing, and petrifying, you will literally reshape your bodies. Because as human physical fitness became an essential desire in the Anthropocene, not just to ‘look good’ and prevent diseases but also to resist climatic failure, it is crucial to find new ways of learning, understanding, connecting with, and moving within our ‘world in trouble’. So please join Andrea in a collective exercise delving into the intricate relationship between natural disasters, extinction caused by human activities, and the persistence of survival.
Photos: Christian Rückert
