USD $247.00
Why Look at Plants?
The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art
Series: - Critical Plant Studies, Volume: 5
Volume Editor:
Winner of the 2019 Outstanding Academic Titles award in Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)
Why Look at Plants? proposes a thought-provoking and fascinating look into the emerging cultural politics of plant-presence in contemporary art. Through the original contributions of artists, scholars, and curators who have creatively engaged with the ultimate otherness of plants in their work, this volume maps and problematizes new intra-active, agential interconnectedness involving human-non-human biosystems central to artistic and philosophical discourses of the Anthropocene.
Plant’s fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space constitutes a wake-up-call to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and ontological crisis. Why Look at Plants? challenges readers’ pre-established notions through a diverse gathering of insights, stories, experiences, perspectives, and arguments encompassing multiple disciplines, media, and methodologies.
Why Look at Plants? proposes a thought-provoking and fascinating look into the emerging cultural politics of plant-presence in contemporary art. Through the original contributions of artists, scholars, and curators who have creatively engaged with the ultimate otherness of plants in their work, this volume maps and problematizes new intra-active, agential interconnectedness involving human-non-human biosystems central to artistic and philosophical discourses of the Anthropocene.
Plant’s fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space constitutes a wake-up-call to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and ontological crisis. Why Look at Plants? challenges readers’ pre-established notions through a diverse gathering of insights, stories, experiences, perspectives, and arguments encompassing multiple disciplines, media, and methodologies.
Giovanni Aloi is an art historian in modern and contemporary art specializing in the representation of animals and plants in contemporary art. Aloi currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York and London, and Tate Galleries. He is the Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (www.antennae.org.uk). He is the author of Art & Animals (2011) and Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (2018). With Caroline Picard, Aloi is the co-editor of the University of Minnesota Press series Art after Nature.
"The emergence of the botanical from quiet, passive existence that constantly hums around us to active/interactive politicization on gallery walls, in installations, and in critical studies is so potent that it has become a full-fledged art movement. This book both unravels and invites an artistic reimagining of the human relationship to plants, in all its manifestations. [...] in light of the ongoing environmental crisis, the book is invaluable. [... It] could not be more timely." - J. Natal, Columbia College Chicago, in: Choice Magazine, Vol. 57 No. 1 (September 2019)
"In sum, Why Look at Plants? is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of the arts in considering human/non-human interactions, plant blindness, posthumanist thought, or the myriad implications of the Anthropocene." - Stephen Goddard, in: Esse, issue 99 (2020), p. 111.
"In sum, Why Look at Plants? is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of the arts in considering human/non-human interactions, plant blindness, posthumanist thought, or the myriad implications of the Anthropocene." - Stephen Goddard, in: Esse, issue 99 (2020), p. 111.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
About This Book
Introduction: Why Look at Plants?
Giovanni Aloi
1 Lost in the Post-Sublime Forest
Giovanni Aloi
2 The Humblest Props Now Play a Role
Caroline Picard
3 Ungrid-able Ecologies: Becoming Sensor in a Black Oak Savannah
Natasha Myers
4 An Open Book of Grass
Jenny Kendler
5 Trees: Upside-Down, Inside-Out, and Moving
Giovanni Aloi
6 Animation, Animism … Dukun Dukun & DNA
Lucy Davis
7 Tree Wound Portraits
Shannon Lee Castleman
8 Contested Sites: Forest as Uncommon Ground
Greg Lee Ruffing
9 Quercus velutina, Art of Fiction, No. 11111011
Lindsey French
10 Falling from Grace
Giovanni Aloi
11 Hortus Conclusus: The Garden of Earthly Mind
Wendy Wheeler
12 Eden’s Heirs: Biopolitics and Vegetal Affinities in the Gardens of Literature
Joela Jacobs
13 Thoreau’s Beans
Michael Marder
14 The Greenhouse Effects
Giovanni Aloi
15 Solarise
Luftwerk
16 The Glass Shields the Eyes of the Plant: Darwin’s Glasshouse Study
Heidi Norton
17 The Lichen Museum
Laurie Palmer
18 Hyperplant Shelf-Life
Giovanni Aloi
19 Life in the Aisles
Linda Tegg
20 Roomba Rumba: Interview with Katherine Behar
Fatma Çolakoğlu and Ulya Soley
21 Home Depot Throwing Out Plants
Various Contributors
22 Presence, Bareness, and Being-With
Giovanni Aloi
23 Houseplants as Fictional Subjects
Susan McHugh
24 Seeing Green: The Climbing Other
Dawn Sanders
25 Plant Radio
Amanda White
26 Psychoactives and Biogenetics
Giovanni Aloi
27 Of Plants and Robots: Art, Architecture and Technoscience for Mixed Societies
Monika Bakke
28 Boundary Plants
Sara Black
29 The Illustrated Herbal
Tova Flores
Index
30 (Brief) Encounters
Giovanni Aloi
31 Places of Maybe: Plants “Making Do” Without the Belly of the Beast
Andrew Yang
32 The Neophyte
Lois Weinberger
33 Herbarium Perrine: Interview with Mark Dion
Interviewer:Giovanni Aloi
34 Burning Flowers: Interview with Mat Collishaw
Interviewer:Giovanni Aloi
35 A Program for Plants: In Conversation, Coda
Giovanni Aloi, Brian M. John, Linda Tegg and Joshi Radin
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
About This Book
Introduction: Why Look at Plants?
Giovanni Aloi
Part 1: Forest
1 Lost in the Post-Sublime Forest
Giovanni Aloi
2 The Humblest Props Now Play a Role
Caroline Picard
3 Ungrid-able Ecologies: Becoming Sensor in a Black Oak Savannah
Natasha Myers
4 An Open Book of Grass
Jenny Kendler
Part 2: Trees
5 Trees: Upside-Down, Inside-Out, and Moving
Giovanni Aloi
6 Animation, Animism … Dukun Dukun & DNA
Lucy Davis
7 Tree Wound Portraits
Shannon Lee Castleman
8 Contested Sites: Forest as Uncommon Ground
Greg Lee Ruffing
9 Quercus velutina, Art of Fiction, No. 11111011
Lindsey French
Part 3: Garden
10 Falling from Grace
Giovanni Aloi
11 Hortus Conclusus: The Garden of Earthly Mind
Wendy Wheeler
12 Eden’s Heirs: Biopolitics and Vegetal Affinities in the Gardens of Literature
Joela Jacobs
13 Thoreau’s Beans
Michael Marder
Part 4: Greenhouse
14 The Greenhouse Effects
Giovanni Aloi
15 Solarise
Luftwerk
16 The Glass Shields the Eyes of the Plant: Darwin’s Glasshouse Study
Heidi Norton
17 The Lichen Museum
Laurie Palmer
Part 5: Store
18 Hyperplant Shelf-Life
Giovanni Aloi
19 Life in the Aisles
Linda Tegg
20 Roomba Rumba: Interview with Katherine Behar
Fatma Çolakoğlu and Ulya Soley
21 Home Depot Throwing Out Plants
Various Contributors
Part 6: House
22 Presence, Bareness, and Being-With
Giovanni Aloi
23 Houseplants as Fictional Subjects
Susan McHugh
24 Seeing Green: The Climbing Other
Dawn Sanders
25 Plant Radio
Amanda White
Part 7: Laboratory
26 Psychoactives and Biogenetics
Giovanni Aloi
27 Of Plants and Robots: Art, Architecture and Technoscience for Mixed Societies
Monika Bakke
28 Boundary Plants
Sara Black
29 The Illustrated Herbal
Tova Flores
Index
Part 8: Of Other Spaces
30 (Brief) Encounters
Giovanni Aloi
31 Places of Maybe: Plants “Making Do” Without the Belly of the Beast
Andrew Yang
32 The Neophyte
Lois Weinberger
33 Herbarium Perrine: Interview with Mark Dion
Interviewer:Giovanni Aloi
34 Burning Flowers: Interview with Mat Collishaw
Interviewer:Giovanni Aloi
35 A Program for Plants: In Conversation, Coda
Giovanni Aloi, Brian M. John, Linda Tegg and Joshi Radin
Bibliography
Index
This is a cross-over title that should appeal to many students and scholars who have engaged with animal-studies and posthumanism and who feel that these fields of inquiry require further problematization. The growing readership quickly developing around the Anthropocene might also be intrigued by the proposal of this book. Likewise, readers interested in posthumanism and contemporary art should find this book of interest.