Talking Plants
For the installation Talking Plants, Melanie Boehi established a pop-up laboratory of the Centre for Plant Interpretation in the Useful Plants Garden section of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Centre for Plant Interpretation is an experimental, transdisciplinary platform for thinking about plant communication in its various facts: how plants communicate with each other and their environment; how plants communicate with humans; and how humans communicate with plants.
Boehi invited a group of twelve “plant interpreters” to facilitate interactions between the public and plants in the garden. The plant interpreters represented a wide range of fields, including ecology, botany, conservation, anthropology, history, music, graphic design, healing and the study of African metaphysics. Artist and healer Ernestine Deane opened the event with a blessing, asking for guidance and permission of the land, plants and ancestors; acknowledging that the botanical garden was built on Indigenous land, which has been shaped by histories of colonial occupation, slavery and apartheid-era forced removals. With the blessing, Indigenous and southern African cosmologies were put at the centre in the botanical garden which has evolved as an institution embedded in colonial, imperial and apartheid politics. Rather than framing plants as passive objects of Western taxonomy, the blessing opened up a way to approach plants as active subjects which engage in world-making, communication and social relationships. Members of the public were then invited to formulate questions for plants, and discuss them together with the plant interpreters. To document the questions and observations, cards were distributed on which participants could write down notes and which they could either keep as a souvenir or attach to a display for other participants to see and reflect on. The outcome of the performance were conversations that transcended disciplinary boundaries, and demonstrated that artistic methods can very effectively stimulate exchanges across the humanities, natural sciences and Indigenous epistemologies.
The plant interpreters were: Denisha Anand, Ernestine Deane, Graeme Arendse, Jitsvinger, Luregn Lenggenhager, Maud Khutjo Sebelebele, Oscar Masinyana, Tihana Nathen, Phakamani m’Afrika Xaba, Percy Zvomuya, Rhoda Malgas, William Ellis and Zayaan Khan.
South African graphic designer Salma Price-Nell (The Salsa Creative Studio) designed a tote bag and vinyl stickers that were used to mark the plant interpreters, as well as an interactive card that guided participants through their plant observations.
Talking Plants was presented during the ICA Live Art Festival on 2 April 2022 and supported by Pro Helvatia.
