Vestige: Public Arts Garage poster

Kathryn Nelson, Karoline Schneider

Research output: Contribution to conferencePosterpeer-review

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Abstract

For our (Karoline Schneider and Kathryn Nelson) Public Arts Garage (PAG) project, we combined two ideas. The first was to develop posters from ‘hollow’ affirmation statements and place them over images of environmental degraded places. Our second idea involved an experience we had during the ‘Art of the Game’- exercise in the PAG project. The exercise included the naming of ‘street weeds’ within a one hour walk through our cities. We combined the two distinct projects into a third possibility… ‘Street weeds’ grow in unexpected places. They come uninvited into our towns and cities, yet they are survivors. Their seeds and spores are light and easily carried by the wind. Yet these plants are trodden on, ignored and in many ways despised. This abuse aroused our empathy, we decided to talk to them, to recite poetry and affirm their existence. These unwanted weeds became central players, in a performance where they were both audience and artists. We affirmed their existence and read to them the poem, ‘Vestiges’. This intimacy re-established, in our minds, a bond that animals and plants have shared over millennia - we exist only through mutual kinship. We breathe oxygen as a matter of course. Plants give life to the earth: they create the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the source of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct and elemental connection that life can make with the world. We should remember to thank them for this. This shared performance between plant and human was documented by a short film. It shows the creative process, where humans relinquish sole authorship and provide a platform for ‘street weeds’. By so doing we acknowledged their importance and perhaps most importantly of all our debt to them.

Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jul 2022

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