[-empyre-] nature's reserved camouflage

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all

it seems we have fallen behind in some respect (timewise);  I posted my comments and questions to Alana after reading her statements which did not come out until Friday and Sunday I think,
so the new week can perhaps combine some earlier reflections of the performative (and documentary) side of the artworks discussed and proposed,
such as the ones just described by Amanda ("Frugivore") -- and I am interested in finding out more about what you mentioned, Amanda, working
together with Alana (< on several projects about soil at the moment, and we have been talking about the relationship between different kinds of knowledge (for example western science, the spiritual)>).....
–  and also the work that was mentioned by Špela Petrič,  the PSX Consultancy's plant-centered design,  sounded wonderfully humorous, off beat.

To backtrack a little, I felt there was room to talk further about what Florian mentioned:

[Florian Weil schreibt [Sunday]
>>Laura  Beloff's artwork A Unit (http://bioartsociety.fi/art-henvi/?page_id=6) 
expresses this relationship more dramatically. Her installations allows 
people to carry/wear a plant like parrot on their shoulder.  The plant 
becomes a daily companion or should I say almost a friend...
How do you perceive your plant based camouflage suit in that context? Do 
you feel reunited with plants? Do you distribute seeds or other germ 
buds during your performance?
For my master thesis I wrote a chapter about locomotion with plants.
>>

Some images came to mind, reading this, the carrying and performing with plants. The images are of Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga's
installation-performance "Diaspore"  (10-hour performance, at  ‘14 Rooms’, Messe Basel, 13–22 June 2014). When I heard about it and inquired,
the performance was described as 'consisting of one to three women always carrying the plant "Cestrum nocturnum", also known as Queen of the Night, standing there having them on their heads. In constant dialogue with the plant, these women navigate through a topographical map on the floor, guiding their movements through different territories.'


So now, perhaps over several posts, I'd hope to develop more dialogue, perhaps raising more skeptical questions, about what those of you invited, here,  consider "plant art" to be, whether this is a reference to working with plants, performing [with] them, designing, growing plants, etc, experimenting with them, or whether this is something else (media art? using plant as medium), how does this relate to the current interest, that I surmise from the special journal issues and books coming out, in animals, and zoontologies?  

Špela, you mentioned the exhibition context, "Designing life", and you challenged yourself and gave up you said. I find this enormously interesting, and wanted to ask you whether there is any subliminal or overt analogy to the
commercial/industrial and research fields of product design, say, where in recent years a more politically self-conscious approach [?] perhaps led to the creation of some institutes and subfields focussing on "human-centered design" or participatory design –  and I visited the Perceptual Enhancement lab here on my campus the other week where I was invited to be "user tester" of an LTM device, a sensory glove or "interactive adaptive wearable hand rehabilitation tool for self-managed cognitive & physical training". It glows in the dark, like Eduardo Kac's GFP Bunny.   It was not designed with me or my grandmother in mind, though. And i did not feel I participated, except filling out a rather dull questionnaire afterwards. 

So how do you get your plants to participate?
 
[Špela schreibt]
>>We challenged ourselves to attempt plant-centered design, the obvious obstacle being the difficulty of understanding what plants would want/need. Rather than trying to avoid anthropocentric projections we embraced the fallacy and posed the result as a humorous yet bio-logical extension of human cultural practices, bringing plant and human sexuality into proximity by playing with the symbolism and ubiquity of sex...>>

Needless to say, reflecting on some the postings we have received over the past weeks, I am a bit worried at how easily the joke can be played on the plants or the animals, and I am neither an activist nor a moralist, and pace the Singing Plants I could not understand, I simply wonder whether the plants or the birds or the rabbits are "(ab)used as decoration" for some media art, as Florian does imply without saying it out right.

Špela could you comment further, please, on how ironic the idea of "plant-centered design" is?  What irony?


And what happened to simple gardening?  no one has mentioned it so far, and yet we all live with landscaping, changed nature, and living plants (well, I do, the garden at my landlords' is 55 meters long and 24 meters wide, and my landlady Judith works there every day and i am amazed just watching her and the incredible richness and diversity of the life right near me, none of that art, but lively and full of energies and full of dansity.

regards
Johannes Birringer
dap-lab
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap