Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant

Zheng Bo, Le Sacre du printemps, 2021 – 2022 Zheng Bo, Le Sacre du printemps, 2021 – 2022

Interspecies Love
Panel with Monica Gagliano, Wanuri Kahiu, Bo Zheng
Curated and moderated by Yvonne Volkart
As part of Kinship in Transformation
An Event in the Art-Science series
28 May 2024, 4 – 8 pm,
Istituto Svizzero, Rome

The narratives of kinship, love and networks of care are deeply rooted in the respective social structures and cultural systems. In the Western world and beyond, the definition and ideas of these concepts are closely tied to a capitalistic and heteronormative social structure that has furthered the maintenance of privileges for some, and the persistence of inequalities for others. Anthropology and history, critical theory, and gender studies, and many more disciplines deal with questions related to kinship, love, and reproduction. Likewise, artists propose new stories and definitions and, in their practice and research, subject the normative claims and classical canons to a re-reading.

The event Kinship in Transformation invites artists and researchers, coming from different disciplinary backgrounds and artistic practices, to share their reflections and work, opening to alternative narratives and stories about kinship and love that can nourish fresh perspectives.

How can we think about kinship in new terms and acknowledge its myriad possible forms and always changing nature? And thinking beyond human relations, what can the realm of interspecies relations tell us?

The panel Interspecies Love is part of Kinship in Transformation, an event in the Art-Science series dedicated to the encounter between scientific research and artistic practices, curated by Maria Böhmer (Head of Science) and Gioia Dal Molin (Head Curator). Interspecies Love is a cooperation of Istituto Svizzero and the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF.

Image: Zheng Bo, Le Sacre du printemps, 2021 – 2022

Istituto Svizzero Roma

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Glossary

Borrachero Andaki

From the Solanaceae family, the Borrachero Adaki (or Culebra) is a variety of the Brugmansia plant form the high Andes and humid rainforest of Colombia, thought to be a cultigen because its presence is most often related to human settlements where the plant has been cultivated. In 1942, Richard Evan Schultes encountered this rare variety of the Burgmansia plant. Its leaves narrower, resembling a knife and “the corolla almost divided into separate petals united only towards their bases.”

He named this variety Methysticodendron Amesianum [the Mutant Sleep Tree], or also known as Borrachero Culebra.

Richard Evans Schultes, “A NEW NARCOTIC GENUS FROM THE AMAZON SLOPE OF THE COLOMBIAN ANDES.” Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 17, no. 1 (1955): 1–11. See term

Buen vivir

Good Living is an old-new paradigm based on the indigenous concept of Sumac Kawsay. It is a concept in collective construction in Latin America that seeks alternatives to the Western idea of development, linking indigenous traditions and worldviews with critical ideas within Western modernity. Buen vivir proposes to abandon the idea of development as unlimited economic growth and to substitute it for a supportive and sustainable economy, displacing the centrality of humans, recognizing the centrality and value of nonhumans, and the rights of Nature.

Mónica Chuji, Grimaldo Rengifo, and Eduardo Gudynas, “Buen Vivir,” in “Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary”, eds. A. Kothari, A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria & A. Acosta, (Tulika & Authors Upfront, New Delhi, 2019), 112. See term

Plasticity

Plasticity is an individual plant response to the environmental change as it is called in ecology and evolution studies. According to the view of natural scientists (such as Trewavas), the “intelligent behavior” by plants shows rather during their individual life time scale, and that this process is not an evolution. See term

Resistant weeds

Term given by industrial agriculture to spontaneous vegetation resistant to agrochemicals used in transgenic monocultures. See term

Senti-pensar

Eduardo Galeano once said that our society often separates our soul from the body and mind from heart. To avoid this, Galeano proposed the concept of "senti-pensando" which means feeling-thinking. He learned this wisdom from Colombian fishermen who created the word "sentipensante" to describe language that speaks the truth.

Eduardo Galeano, "The book of embraces,” Trans. Cedric Belfrage, ed. W.W. Norton, (New York, 1991), 221. See term

Weeds

Over 50 years ago, biologist Edwin R. Spencer stated that “any plant is a weed if it insists on growing where the farmer wants another plant to grow. It is a plant that is out of place, according to one person's judgment, but according to the good judgment of nature it is perfectly in its place.”

Edwin Rollin Spencer, in “Malezas comestibles del Cono Sur y otras partes del planeta," E. H. Rapaport, A. Marzocca, S. B. Drausal, (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Bariloche, 2009), 3. See term

Panel “Interspecies Love”

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