The Traveling Plant: Preparatory Logbook

Pierre Cox

Manypeeplia Upsidownia

Paris, France
Astrophysicist (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris)

To Mr. Thomas Bridges
Estancia Haberton
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego
August 8, 1880

Dear Mister Bridges,

In London, I found a new plant Whose flower was a pure delight; “Manypeeplia Upsidownia” Is the name I gave to this plant.

Every day, before sunrise, the flower starts to sing in a perfect canon along the music of “Frère Jacques”, namely:

Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing! Ding, dong, dong. Ding, dong, dong.

I here send you seeds & a living plant in the hope that they arrive safely & well & that you can grow the “Manypeeplia Updsidownia” successfully in Patagonia. In doing so you do honor to the Science of your Country, Promote in Some Degree the Commerce & aid the Population. It is with uttermost curiosity that I await you report & hear from you if the flower also sings its song in Waghan or any other native language of Tierra del Fuego.

Most sincerely yours,
Edward Lear

Cristian A. Zaelzer-Pérez

Americas’ Dream

Montreal, Canada.
Scientist, Graphic Designer, Artist, Science communicator, and educator. Founder and President of the Convergence Initiative, Montreal, Canada. Research Associate at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. Montreal, Canada. Part-time Faculty and Science-Art Advisor for the Faculty of Fine Arts of Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

Welcome to the North and South doors of the Americas, Bienvenue au Canada, Bienvenida a Chile. I am going to be your guide and give you some travel advice. First of all, we have to make sure that your documents are in order. Our continent is a delicately balanced community, and careless seeds can be a problem. But everybody is so excited about your visit. Maybe you already know that our Americas are a land of contrasts. Get ready to experience colours like no other place, and family members like you have never seen before. From the majestic sequoias connecting Earth and heaven to the humble a resilient deschampsia in the Antarctic fields. From the saguaros, arms rose to the sun in the dry desert, to the tillandsias, floating in the air feeding on jungle dreams. Cochayuyos in the ocean will make you reimagine forests while flavours inland will bedazzle you. I will bring you to the big plant’s metropolis, tropical and template jungles where it is impossible to see the sunlight. We will chat in infinite extensions of grassland and travel carried by the aromas of our beloved spices. We are so excited that you are here.

Nina Yankowitz

Traveling to…

New York, NY, USA
Artist

Dear traveling plant, while enduring the global pandemic, I found myself wishing your journey will establish you as collaborator with people to create protective smart clothing fabrics that enable responding to environmental conditions. Forced to uplift your roots as the earth and sky command, your flexibility to absorb liquid and light to generate growth makes you a perfect candidate for partnership! On your journey you’ll encouter the close encountering of the digital kind surfing unknown territories while your stem transfers human emotion extrusions into seeds for smart fabric infusions. The emoting fear via sweat you signal for the fabric’s color changing to a camouflage outfit motif allows blending into the environment, remaining unseen. These smart fibers made via your unique survival techniques can someday be used to keep nature’s elements well fed and protect our global environment from disasters of negligence.

Victoria Vesna

Immigration Advice for the Stinging Nettle

Los Angeles, California, USA
Artist

For this dangerous journey – you will encounter many enemies and evil people who will mistake you for a weed so you will have to be very careful and use your magical powers prudently.

Remember to take along the talisman of Thor, the god of thunder who is your protector. Those who are getting in your way may be struck with lightning in one form or another. If you encounter a black swan, take the time to break the spell as this may be the person who will help you on the journey. Also make sure to pack a bag of seeds that you will throw to create your protective community whenever you finally arrive to your destined land.

You may have to get a job while waiting for your green card, so use your healing gifts and offer your services especially to those suffering from inflammation and rheumatism. They will be grateful for your prickly medicine and further aid you to your destination. Although you don’t know where you will land with these unpredictable winds, the fairies can shift the currents in your favor.

Once you finally land on fertile ground that feels like home, reach out to local witches who appreciate your powers to ward off various form of evil sorcery. Gift them the seeds to plant just before springtime and you will prosper when your community arises with the power of the green.

Erika Torres Hoyos

Jagua, resistance paint

Envigado, Colombia
Nature illustrator

At the Colombia indigenous communities , body painting is preserved as an act of resistance despite colonization processes. The various ethnic groups have used plants to color their skin in their protection rituals. In this aspect, achiote and jaguar plants have been an example of this. The goddess Jagua, as the legend of the indigenous people of the Colombian Chocó tells, arose from the abundance of the fruits of a tree and taught the people to overcome adversity, taught them to hunt, fish, to heal. “Jagua” means wealth, mine, source and beginning. Even most women carry the portrait of the jagua, they paint their bodies with different motifs, ostentatiously showing the strength of the goddess Jagua

La jagua, pintura de resistencia

En las comunidades indígenas de Colombia, la pintura corporal se conserva como un acto de resistencia a pesar de los procesos de colonización. Las diversas etnias han usado plantas para colorear su piel en sus rituals de protección. En este aspect, las plantas del achiote y la jagua, han sido un ejempo de esto. La diosa Jagua, como cuenta la leyenda de los indígenas del Chocó colombiano, surgió de la abundancia de los frutos de un árbol y le enseñó al pueblo a superar las adversidades, les enseñó a cazar, a pescar, a curarse. “Jagua” significa riqueza, mina, fuente y principio. Aun las mujeres en su mayoría llevan el retrato de la jagua, pintan sus cuerpos con diferentes motivos mostrando ostentosas la fuerza de la diosa Jagua

Anaïs Tondeur

Spectra Vegetalis

Montreuil, France
Artist

You enter in the semi-darkness of a séance. A woman is stirring the air with her hands. She suddenly leans towards the ground as her body jerks. In her palms, one of yours has appeared. Sometimes, these “apports”* fly through the air, jostle the sitters in the face, land on their lap, or glide on the surface of the table.

The production of such supranatural plants is one of the most puzzling features of mediumistic phenomena. They are described as a spontaneous materialization of a fluidic double reproducing molecule by molecule the whole body of a plant. The flowers seem to suffer no ill effects from their strange mode of traveling. They appear with their entire details, freshness, and fragrance to the assembly.

The first recorded observation is to be found in the Correspondance sur le magnétisme vital entre un Solitaire et M. Deleuze (Paris, 1839). Elemér Chengery Pap, chemist at the Hungarian Civil Service, later gathered a voluminous collection of these supranatural curiosities, including various objects as well as small animals and botanical specimens. I would have encouraged you to visit these singular siblings in the Metapsychic Museum of Elemér Chengery Pap if only they had not burnt in a fire, at the end of the Second World War. However, if you travel to Budapest you may encounter the last trace of their ashes.

*From the French “to bring”

Spectra Vegetalis

Tu te glisses dans la pénombre d’une séance. Une femme brasse l’air de ses mains. Puis, elle se penche soudainement vers le sol tandis que son corps est pris de soubresauts saccadés. Au creux de ses paumes, apparait l’une des tiennes. Parfois, ces « apports végétaux » traversent les airs, heurtent les convives au visage, se déposent sur leurs genoux ou se glissent à la surface de la table.

La production de ces plantes surnaturelles fait partie des attributs les plus déconcertants des phénomènes médiumniques. Elles sont décrites comme une matérialisation spontanée d’un double fluidique reproduisant molécule par molécule toutes les parties d’un végétal. Elles ne semblent pas souffrir des effets néfastes de leur étrange mode de déplacement et apparaissent avec l’ensemble de leurs détails, leur fraicheur et leur parfum, devant l’assemblée des assistants.

La première observation connue est à trouver dans la Correspondance sur le magnétisme vital entre un Solitaire et M. Deleuze (Paris, 1839). Le chef chimiste du Service Civil hongrois, Elemér Chengery Pap rassemblera plus tard une volumineuse collection de ces curiosités surnaturelles, incluant des objets, des animaux de petites tailles ainsi que des spécimens botaniques.

Je t’aurais encouragé à leur rendre visite si seulement elles n’avaient succombé dans un incendie avec le reste de la collection à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Néanmoins, si tu visites Budapest, tu retrouveras peut-être quelques traces de leurs cendres.

Alan Tod

Why we are traveling

Porto, Portugal

We flew through space in group; as do fishes or birds. Like an alive space-ship, we are made of intelligent design. The heavier drives the group. That is elementary physics. We invented math and we use it to shape our body to travel, to grow and to adapt ourselves to the place we land. As we are made of water and so we attract water, we end up to arrive on Earth. There, we discovered animal cells. We raised them to make them more useful and bigger. We invented chemistry to slave them and one day, we gave them a bit of our intelligence and you appeared as Mankind. With time, as they discovered your addiction, some plants called the cereals manipulated you in order to destroy the forest and to propagate their grass all over this planet. As you already know, plants can force you to kill yourself with addiction. But be aware: We are the forest seeds; we are flying from space to create you on earth like a mother and we came in peace. We are just traveling to love.

Dolores Steinman

Free to Fly

San Pellegrino Terme, BG, Italy
Scientist

Seeds – light in weight but heavy in promise and hope – travel much faster and easier than fully-grown plants. No passports, no restrictions, but a lot of luck and a sustained collective effort for a little sprout to become a plant and then grow and grow and grow.

I didn’t plant a garden. The woods are across the street and up the hill. Wherever you look, the eye is caressed by greens of all shades – the fabric of dreams.

Little by little, surprises arrived on my doorstep: shoots and leaves. And then, little by little, I started adding colour and fragrance.

After grueling months of loss, suffering and grieving, life around us bloomed again.

Spring evenings under the wisteria and honeysuckle canopy. Summer mornings protected by the laurel and ash trees. Butterflies and bees working and playing on the basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, lavender and thyme. Worms helping out the roots with ever renewed soil for reticent roses. Gorgeous peonies. Fragrant jasmine and wild cyclamen. Random wild strawberries.

Just like the seeds that travelled to my garden, our thoughts and dreams are free to go anywhere, meet old friends, discover new places. Settle even, if the environment is reassuring.

Jean-Luc Soret

Prima Bella Sarra (1)

Paris, France
Curator

Prima Bella Sarra comes from a line of a genetically modified “plantimal”; an hybrid of the purple Sarracenia, an herbaceous carnivourous plant, the floral emblem of the Newfoundland and Labrador Province. Bioluminescent and songatarian, it knows how to imitate the songs, the colours and the movements of the love parades from female birds which songs it covets. This plantimal needs three successive cycles to achieve its growth: aquatic, aerial and terrestrial. Its leaves, when the plant is adult, are closing upon themselves and are contracting to allow its vocal veins to make an infinite combination of sounds. It is its extraordinary capacity to mimic the songs in order to secure its travelings that allowed me to experiment an unprecedent interspecies communication with the Prima Bella Sarra that took the form of successive exchanges of synchronous and asynchronous songs.

(1) As a tribute to the short story Prima Belladonna by JG Ballard published in 1971 in which a plant-animal covers 24 octaves.
(2) Neologism coming from the words “plant” and “animal” used by the Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac to name Edunia, an artwork he created between 2003 and 2008. The flower is an hybrid between the artist and a petunia.
(3) Neologism to name which feeds from songs and melodic vibrations.

Prima Bella Sarra (1)

Prima Bella Sarra est issue d’une lignée de « plantimales (2) » génétiquement modifiées, hybride de la Sarracénie pourpre, plante herbacée carnivore, emblème floral de la province de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador. Fleur noctiluque et mélovore (3), elle sait imiter les chants, les couleurs et les mouvements de parade amoureuse de femelles d’oiseaux dont elle convoite les chants. Cette plantimale dont les feuilles, à l’âge adulte, se referment sur elles-mêmes et se contractent pour permettre à ses vaisseaux vocaux d’émettre une combinaison infinie de sons, a besoin de 3 cycles successifs, aquatique, aérien et terrestre pour accomplir sa croissance. C’est cette extraordinaire capacité à imiter les chants pour assurer ses itinérances qui m’a permis d’expérimenter une communication inter-espèce inédite avec la Prima Bella Sarra, sous la forme d’échanges successifs de chants synchrones et déphasés.

(1) En hommage à Prima Belladonna de JG Ballard, nouvelle parue en 1971 dans laquelle une plante-animale couvre 24 octaves.
(2) Néologisme issu de la contraction des mots « plante » et « animal » utilisé par l’artiste brésilien Eduardo Kac pour son œuvre Edunia. Cette fleur créée entre 2003 et 2008 par génie génétique est un hybride de l’artiste et d’un pétunia.
(3) Néologisme pour décrire qui se nourrit des chants, des vibrations mélodiques.

Maja Smrekar

A Meditation From The Canine Log Book

Ljubljana, Slovenia
Artist

I’m always ready. There’s so many issues to take care for every day. Need to fetch the ball. Need to check the kitchen dumpster whenever possible. Need to be there when they’re cooking. Need to be there when they’re eating. I like to eat. I also like to chew. Sometimes I like to chew plants. When we’re outside. The other one accompanies me. She can be a pain in the ass. But I like her. She’s easily submisive. But! There’s the third one! I don’t get It. It’s completely autonomus. Sometimes It scratches me. The other one even makes some communication with It. Not me. It’s better to go around It when we meet on the corridor. But. Nevertheless, I have another obligation. The objective is to guard the plant. I never chew that plant. Because it’s inside. But. It always wants to chew the plant. Whenever It jumps up to the shelf; I jump too. I want to stop It. Before It chews the plant. The other one helps me. She barks. I bark too. It usually jumps off the shelf. The plant is safe. I better lay down just under the shelf. Because I’m so busy. Guarding that plant. I pretend to sleep. I pretend not to care. But. I am always ready. To jump. That plant relies on my guardianship.