From a theoretical point of view, Earthbound is part of a curatorial reflection we've been conducting for several years around Living Things and, more generally, the relationships between human and non-human worlds. It extends and deepens approaches initiated with two of our previous projects. Plant Fever. Vers un design phyto-centré (CID Grand-Hornu, Belgium, 2020) explored how design could emancipate itself from an anthropocentric vision to adopt a plant-centric point of view, taking into account the needs, cycles and interactions of the plant world. Histories of greenhouses (Sanem, Luxembourg, 2022) pursued this reflection by analyzing greenhouses as ambivalent spaces: places of care and cultivation, but also of artificiality and control. These experiments led us to question the notion of hors-sol, understood both as an agricultural practice and as a metaphor for contemporary lifestyles increasingly detached from natural rhythms and the materiality of the earth. With Earthbound, we wanted to reverse this dynamic by rediscovering an anchoring point, descending to the ground to reconnect with the living world beneath our feet, where decomposition becomes the engine of regeneration.

The project was conceived over the course of three residencies at Bridderhaus. The first two, carried out between 2023 and 2024, enabled us to define the broad conceptual lines we wished to address, but also to map the local issues related to land in Esch-sur-Alzette and to anchor the project in the territory. A third, production residency took place in spring 2025: we invited graphic designer Aglaë Miguel (FR), designer Vicent Orts (ES) and gardener-poet Dana Zoutman (NL) to join us in co-designing the exhibition's scenography, texts and community compost. These three stages were fundamental: they enabled Earthbound to emerge from an organic process - exchanges, experiments and concrete gestures shaped the project and its identity.

Continuing this collective work, close collaboration with Valérie Tholl and the Bridderhaus team played a decisive role in the design of the cultural program that accompanied the exhibition in Esch-sur-Alzette. Conceived from the outset as an essential component of the project, the program forged a direct link between the works, the site and its inhabitants, through workshops, performances, artistic residencies and participatory activities. By inviting the public to observe and manipulate soil, or experiment with care gestures, the various activities transformed the exhibition into a space for encounter, learning and shared transformation.

Why focus on soil in a design exhibition? And howEarthbounddoes it differ from other recent exhibitions that have taken an interest in this subject?

d-o-t-s: Soil is one of the most fundamental and yet most neglected elements of our environment. We literally live by it, but paradoxically, we've forgotten about it. In our industrialized societies, it has become a mere surface, a neutral support or an obstacle to be overcome, whereas it constitutes a teeming and complex ecosystem. As biologist David Porco reminded us at a conference we organized at Bridderhaus in September, beneath our feet lies a universe of interdependencies, where minerals, roots, fungi, bacteria and earthworms participate in an immense cycle of life and decomposition.

But above all, Earthbound continues its trajectory. The next stage of the project has already been confirmed: the exhibition will be presented at the Octave Cowbell gallery in Metz from October 23, 2026 to January 23, 2027. This new iteration will extend the reflections initiated in Luxembourg while re-rooting them in the Metz context, through a renewed selection of works, and a program of activities designed in dialogue with local partners.

And the adventure doesn't stop there. After Metz, other editions of Earthbound could see the light of day: several discussions are underway with art centers and museums, both in France and internationally, interested in hosting the project and developing their own interpretations of it. True to its initial spirit, Earthbound will continue to transform and circulate. With each iteration, it will compose with new soil, a new rhythm, a new ecosystem - cultivating, season after season, a network of living practices, ideas and relationships.

Finally, we're working on the design of a publication that will draw on the project's experience to delve deeper into an idea we hold dear: that of curating an exhibition as a rooted and fertile practice, in constant interaction with the ecological, social and symbolic dimensions of its environment. The aim is to explore how curatorial practice, too, can draw inspiration from the logics of the living - freeing itself from extractive models, valuing processes of decomposition and regeneration, and encouraging situated, eco-conscious forms of participation based on care and reciprocity.

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