art & politics for plants
ON SEED GEOPOLITICS, PHYTOENGINEERING AND UNCANNY CROPS
How do artists, designers and activists use performance, biohacking, robotics, synthetic biology, photography or gaming to probe and challenge the capitalistic abuses of plants, soils and the communities that take care of them?
• 29. April - 27. May 2024 (updated)
• Online!
• Five-weeks, Mondays, 7-9PM CET
• Small class of participants
Artist / Student (Full Time)
€225*
Freelancer
€245*
Professional
€275*
Generous Supporter Ticket
€295*
Pre-Recorded Lectures Only
€215*
course
description
Western cultures tend to see nature as a vast reservoir of services and resources to own and capitalise on. Plants, in particular, are often regarded as mere tools to exploit for, medicine, fuel, industrialised food production and ornamental purposes. Over the years, however, this purely utilitarian viewpoint has revealed its calamitous consequences, marginalising communities, fostering inequality and threatening biodiversity and the survival of the more-than-human world.
The classes will investigate the creative strategies that artists and activists deploy to help us co-evolve in a more sympathetic and mutually beneficial way with the oldest and most important -in terms of biomass- inhabitants of this planet. We will be looking at the strategies they deploy -alone or in collaboration with local communities.
What is the role of creative and artistic practices when it comes to resisting ecocide? What forms of care should we develop, individually and collectively, to support flora and the more-than-human communities that depend upon it? Is it possible to achieve a balance between predation and protection?
School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe presents this five-week online program dedicated to the way art explores the geopolitical and ethical dimensions of plants. This online classes follow a hybrid (pre-recorded and live) model. The lectures are pre-recorded and they are followed by live sessions where you can directly interact with the instructor and exchange with the other participants. These sessions will also be recorded for playback in case you are unable to attend.
course
structure
Each week, the class will give an overview of the debates, state of knowledge and possible controversies surrounding a specific theme. The survey will be accompanied by many examples of artworks and design projects that illustrate, contest or investigate that same topic. The class will be pre-recorded in the form of two 45 minute videos, focusing each on a specific theme. They will be sent to participants on a weekly basis, along with a small list of recommended articles, books, podcast episodes, videos as well as a small assignment. Everyone will have the opportunity to write questions, comments, share concerns and interesting ideas or links on the course platform.
A few days after the lecture has been sent, there will be live sessions scheduled where we will discuss together the questions, suggestions, critiques and remarks. More importantly, these shared sessions will give participants the opportunity to interact, debate, share their own experiences with the specific theme and work collaboratively in smaller groups in breakout rooms.
The main objective of these live moments is to learn from each other, not just from the instructor. Many of our participants come with their own niche background of knowledge, experiences and resources, expanding the scope of all of our artistic and environmental practices. There will be two different live weekly sessions. One in the morning, the other in the evening, making it easier for people who live in different time zones to fit the exchanges into their routine.
course
outline
Week 1: A moment to get to know each other.
Video 1: In this first pre-recorded lecture, I will give more details about the content of the class, the recommended materials (texts, videos, podcast episodes…) and the functioning of the live sessions.
In the first live session that will follow, there will be a moment where you will have an opportunity to introduce yourself and say who you are, what you are working on, what you hope to gain from the class or how much space plants occupy in your life. These brief exchanges will help make the online classroom experience more convivial and a bit less virtual.
#petsandplantswelcome #humanconnectedness
Week 2: Explore and exploit
Part 1: The extraction of precious resources that characterised colonialist times continues today. The actors are more or less the same, the effects no less drastic than in the past for local communities and biodiversity.
Artworks offer platforms to debate about the various forms of “colonial pillaging”. They investigate issues such as the ethics of conservation conflicts, land grabbing, food sovereignty, biopiracy, the impact of neo-extractivist politics, the phenomenon of green imperialism and the colonial heritage of plant collections.
Part 2. A look at how local communities, often helped by artists, are fighting back against the various forms of eco-looting and the efforts of the transgenic industry. Theirs is a battle to preserve biodiversity but also an identity and a vision of the world where all forms of life are valued.
#neocolonialism #extractivism #biopiracy #palmoil #reforestation #phytoremediation #pollution #greenimperialism #greencolonialism #landrights #environmentaljustice #ethnobotany #landgrabbing
Week 3: Policing ecological borders
Part 1: We have a complicated attitude towards the so-called invasive species. They can outcompete local species and wreak havoc on ecosystems. A few scientists, however, caution that eradicating them can, in some cases, be a costly and futile endeavour. Besides, on a planet where biodiversity is threatened by the effects of global warming, these much-maligned plants might sometimes help collapsing areas regain some ecological dynamism. In some cases, the migration of plants is even encouraged and some scientific projects consider the need to help trees “walk away” from the pressures of a fast-changing world.
What can foreign plants and the much maligned “weeds” teach us about the challenges of surviving on a land that is looking increasingly alien?
Part 2: The nostalgic view about which plants belong to a specific territory has also led some institutions and private interests to investigate the possibility of bringing back long-extinct species. While exploring the “de-extinction” movement, artists and designers are questioning its motives, highlighting its shortcomings and challenging the promise that we can resurrect the animals and plants that we have driven to extinction.
This session will therefore explore the various strategies adopted to control and define which native or non-native species are desirable, missed, meddlesome, perfectible and worth preserving for the future of humanity.
#extraterrestrial #DeExtinction #seedbanking #privatisation #conservationism #xenobiology #syntheticbiology #cloning #crispr #invasivespecies #migration #massextinction #weeds #agroecology #darkecology #agroforestry #plantmigration #afforestation
Week 4: Transgenic trees and “Survival of the fittest”
Part 1: Curious plants and life-forms are emerging inside labs and in the wild. Some of these plants had to evolve in order to cope with the pressures of a rapidly changing world. Others appeared as the results of direct human intervention, their mutations engineered to serve purposes ranging from pharmaceutical research to future food production on distant planets.
How do artists, designers and scientists help us reexamine the models we’ve inherited and used for centuries when they do not reflect the proliferation of life forms designed, redesigned and invented in laboratories? How do newly-engineered life forms force us to reevaluate the dichotomy between nature and artificiality?
Part 2: By stressing the importance of symbiotic and cooperative relationships between species, contemporary scientists challenge the competition-oriented views of evolution and the way they contribute to damaging the planet.
In response to this paradigm, designers and artists create new narratives to not only question traditional Western concepts of nature and “otherness” but also to pay homage to indigenous worldviews.
#radiationbreeding #highfructosecornsyrup #monsanto #OGM #phytoremdiation #hyperaccumulators #exobiology #taxonomy #microbialfuelcells #postnatural #geneticengineering #biohacking #symbiosis #GenomeEditing #microbiology #bioart #queerecology #holobiont #computationalplanet #Sapmi #LynnMargulis #decolonisingecology #NeoDarwinism #Holobiont
Week 5: Thinking plants and political ecology
Part 1: Plant intelligence.
Stefano Mancuso, a pioneer in the study of plant neurobiology, believes that we need to study plants as cognitive organisms. Furthermore, he believes that our future could be shaped by the lessons we learn from the way plants communicate, harvest energy, channel external help, defend themselves and solve problems. How are artists probing the field of plant neurobiology? Should we acknowledge and respect the “intelligence” of plants in the same way as we should respect animal intelligence? Can we go even further and learn to value the inscrutability of plants?
Part 2: The second part of the evening will be an invitation to wrap up the theme of plants and reflect on what curator and media studies scholar Jens Hauser calls the need for “ungreening greenness”. The expression challenges the use of green as a synonym of everything that is perceived as “natural.” Green is not the most “logical” colour when it comes to symbolising nature. It is only since the Romantic era and in the Western world that it became the colour of nature. The artistic projects discussed in this last video will show that our current understanding of ‘green’ is often little more than a ploy to mask and hide the technical and capitalistic exploitation of living systems, ecologies and the biosphere at large. By dismantling the ubiquitous greenwashing rhetoric, the creative work presented will demonstrate the important role that art can play in times of environmental degradation.
#kinship #rootnetwork #chemicalvolatiles #ecoventions #neurobotany #plantblindness #JensHauser #Ungreening #greenwashing
who is this
class for?
Artists, designers, makers and pretty much anyone interested in the future of the more-than-human world, come join us! Enthusiastic like-minded community included. No experience necessary.
about
online classes
Classes are 'live' meaning that you can directly interact with the instructor as well as with the other participants from around the world. Classes will also be recorded for playback in case you are unable to attend for any reason. For specific questions, please email us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Additionally, this is a special class in wihch there is also a possibility to participate via weekly video download only (without group participation) for a slightly lower fee.
about
scholarships
We are offering a limited number of reduced fee scholarships for this online class for those facing financial hardships. These allow participants to pay a reduced fee and are reserved for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ who otherwise would be unable to attend. To be considered for one of these scholarships, please use this form.
To apply for a reduced fee scholarship, you must fill in the form no later than one week before the course begins. We will not accept any class sign-ups or scholarship applications after this date, as our regular sign-ups will determine the amount of scholarships we can accommodate. We will notify you shortly thereafter if your application has been approved.
We are a small organisation with no outside funding and like many, we are also in survival mode. We depend on tuition fees for reimbursing class instructers, space fees, and operational costs. We ask you to consider this when applying for a reduced fee scholarship. <3
meet the
instructor
Régine Debatty
Writer, curator, critic, founder
Régine Debatty is a Belgian curator and art critic who lives in Turin, Italy. In 2004, she created http://we-make-money-not-art.com/, a blog which has received numerous distinctions over the years, including two Webby awards and an honorary mention at the STARTS Prize, a competition launched by the European Commission to acknowledge "innovative projects at the interface of science, technology and art”.
Régine writes and lectures internationally about the way artists, hackers and designers use science and technology as a medium for critical discussion. She created A.I.L. (Artists in Laboratories), a weekly program about the connections between art and science for Resonance104.4fm, London’s legendary art radio station (2012–14.) She has collaborated to numerous publications, most notably co-authoring the “sprint book” New Art/Science Affinities, published by Carnegie Mellon University (2011) and the book E-Relevance - The Role of Arts and Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence for the Council of Europe (2022.)
