Concerning Plants
A Mythic Conversation
Concerning Plants is a playful interpretation of the mysterious and complex networks of plant communication. The inflatable winds through the trees as if a strange root system emerges from the ground, somehow both alien and natural. It is something which has gown up above the surface to give us a glimpse of the mythic and invisible networks down below.
This inflatable is inspired by mycelium and rhizome structures. Deleuze and Guattari explain that the rhizome ‘has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills’ , “ the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight.” Deleuze calls this philosophy an "image of thought," based on the botanical rhizome, that apprehends multiplicities. This is in reaction to our own incorrect notion of a tree as a hierarchy.
Concerning Plants is one of the featured environmental installations within the Trail Mix series, part of the Breckenridge International Festival of Arts, which runs Aug 10–19, 2018.
All Photo credits Richard Romero