Library of Botanical Voices (Lecture performance)
A performative investigation into the possibilities of artistic collaboration between humans and plants.
The lecture performance is part of To Those Who Will Survive, a larger performance project for three to four performers, currently in development.
The project stems from the desire to challenge the perception of plants as mere scenic or decorative elements, and to recognise them instead as conscious presences and co-creators.
Through a practice intertwining art, science, spirituality and ecological research, the artist explores alternative ways of relating to the plant world: listening to it and creating together. The process itself, made of attempts, intuitions, failures and discoveries, becomes the performance: a living diary shared with other artists, biologists, therapists, shamans and researchers of non-human forms of knowledge.
Within this framework the Library of Imagined Plant Sounds was developed: an archive of imagined plant sounds translated into musical compositions. It keeps evolving as a collective and performative archive, an exercise in listening and coexistence that brings together artistic practice and scientific knowledge.
With a tone that is both ironic and vulnerable, the performance reflects the hopes and failures of those who sincerely try to communicate with the plant world, imagining through this relationship new shared forms of life “to those who will survive”.
Photos: Eirik Havnes (black and white photos and greenhouse set-up), Benno Steinegger (water detail).
Presented at
Press
“L’attore e artista guida tutti noi spettatori verso una comprensione olistica dell’ecosistema che abitiamo, che passa attraverso il suono e l’ascolto, e culmina in un’idea di teatro che non si limita ad intrattenere ma tenta invece di risanare le conflittualità create dall’Antropocene.”
Translation “The actor and artist guides all of us spectators towards a holistic understanding of the ecosystem we inhabit, one that passes through sound and listening and culminates in an idea of theatre that does not merely entertain but tries instead to heal the conflicts created by the Anthropocene.”