Stephanie Specht Antwerpen BEL in Collaboration with Vincent Schwenk Hamburg GER

Stephanie Specht (°1982) is working as an independent graphic designer since 2006. After graduating from the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2004 (Graphic Design) she’s lived and worked pretty much everywhere (Cape Town, Brussels, Princeton, New York, Antwerp). Every single one of these experiences shaped her as a creative person. Aside from all client jobs she works on many personal projects and creates all visual communication for the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in Antwerp. The integration of intuition in her work is significant. The ability to reinvent herself from time to time is of high importance, when the need for change is there she wants to act upon it. Freedom is the most important element in her life. Someone once said she has a very fine hand for purposeful raw candid simplicity. She likes to apply this style to identity design, posters and book design. —— Vincent Schwenk is a 3D artist who has extended his visual skills into multidisciplinary fields, ranging from designing album covers to creating corporate branding projects, conference identities, and digital art. After obtaining his BFA in Graphic Design from FH Augsburg, he embarked on a freelance career in art and design, where he serves as a director, motion designer, corporate partner, and teacher. His work plays with physical irregularities: futuristic, candy-colored constructions that, despite their artificiality, exude a strong organic energy. These constructions expand across abstract spaces, merging into fluid sculptures and installations. He draws inspiration from associative references to his immediate surroundings, many of which carry a narrative humor that offers a fresh perspective on ordinary objects and everyday situations. An example of this can be seen in his ongoing series „Non-fungible Trash.“ Collaborating with Vitaly Grossmann, they form the directing duo known as VVAND, in which they strive to explore new visual styles. Vincent‘s work distorts familiar spaces, transforming them into novel contexts. This is achieved through transformative and performative installations, as well as the conversion of digital sculptures into moving images. He primarily expresses his artistic drive through self-initiated projects. —— EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE Next time you’re out in a forest, be aware of what lies below the soil, leaves, and moss that carpet the ground. Underneath the forest floor, intertwined with the roots of the trees, is a fascinating microscopic network of fungus called mycelium connecting individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals. German forester Peter Wohlleben dubbed this network the woodwide web, as it is through the mycelium that trees communicate. A linchpin in the tree-fungi networks are hub trees or mother trees, these are the older, more seasoned trees in a forest. Typically, they have the most fungal connections. Their roots are established in deeper soil, and can reach deeper sources of water to pass on to younger saplings. Through the mycorrhizal network, these hub trees detect the ill health of their neighbors from distress signals, and send them needed nutrients. Keeping soil healthy has a myriad of benefits – filtering pollutants, encouraging crop growth and saving pollinators, to name a few – but it also plays a larger role in turning around the climate crisis. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas responsible for raising global temperatures, and removing excess amounts from the atmosphere is crucial for the livelihood of the planet. Along with forests and oceans, the soil beneath us acts as a natural carbon sink, absorbing and storing CO2 from the atmosphere. Mushrooms also play an important role in this process. Trees in boreal forests, for instance, pull carbon from the atmosphere, which is then taken up by fungal root networks to be stored in the soil or used as food to help mushrooms grow. Some scientists have stated that fungal mycelium is the largest repository of biological carbon in healthy soils. Paul Edward Stamets is an American mycologist, author and an advocate of the importance of fungi in addressing global issues, including physical and mental health, the environment and mass bee mortality. His recent research has also uncovered a potential link between mushrooms and bee health. With bee colonies already in decline across the globe, Stamets found that mycelium extract could provide an added immunity benefit to bees threatened by infectious viruses. The research showed that feeding bees mycelium-extracts of some polypore mshrooms reduced pathogenic viruses hundreds to thousands of times in less than two weeks. These viruses threaten worldwide food biosecurity. And the extracts from polypore mushrooms have also been shown in the laboratory to reduce viruses pathogenic to other animals, including humans. Everything is connected underneath the surface to help, feed and restore the whole world.