On Vegetal Passions

Live Report published at OPEN! – Platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain

Dutch Art Institute, June 2017. Link here.

 

On Vegetal Passions

 

Flux of thoughts on talk by Michael Marder: Becoming more vegetal – energy-wise.

 

thinking about the mode of being of plants. what plants are, or what we are. beings among other beings. just like here. now. inside a structured environment. are we growing while listening? I ask myself these questions as a way to understand the dynamics implicit in inhabiting a museum knowing that we are educated to become little capsules that receive, contain and generate. just like here. now. I attempt to convey a message, trying to share thoughts and ideas that rise in the moment. truth is I can’t avoid but feel moved and consequently less able to use words in logical order so as for others to be able to grasp their meaning. this is a screen. hard floor. dark walls. and we are talking about skin, about touch, about energy.

becoming less, Michael Marder notes, instead of becoming more. what is then growing and becoming? how to learn from plants? what is the relation of matter and energy? inseparable he remarks. inseparable I repeat. considering this, then why not to become less as a way to stop the destruction that is presently happening all around us. hidden obscure essences, Michael Marder adds, making a reference to phenomenology, are not what this discipline tries to access. it rather looks at appearances as everything is already there. visible. communicating.

particles – feel it?

any curvature that we might fall

into is washed away by

a space-time-continuum

that moves

endlessly

how far can concepts of time and space take us? opening oneself up to other modes of life. constant flux. new forms. oh, shapes! shapes that take form in a continuum. we, as shapes, in a permanent flux of energy. dreams about a non-violent energy. dreams of an energy that doesn’t devastate what it touches but rather nourishes it. to listen to other modes of existence. why to cling on to inflexible systems of thought that are preventing life itself? as us, truths are in permanent change.