Performing with trees as shifting attention

Abstract

Performing with plants might seem peripheral to the core concerns of visual, performance, or media art. Due to the climate crisis and the debates regarding post-humanities, this marginal interest in vegetation, and especially forests and trees, is suddenly placed at the heart of current concerns. How can we perform with plants is a question of utmost interest, and not only, or even mainly, in terms of art. Despite a general plant blindness, with the currently flourishing field of critical plant studies, there is an increased interest in working with the vegetal. The project Performing with Plants (2017–2019) can be linked to ‘art’s return to vegetal life’ and more broadly to the current 'plant turn' in science, philosophy, and environmental humanities. Plants are sensitive to place; their life is literally site-specific. Trees are experts in their manner of adapting to circumstances. One way to perform with such seemingly sessile beings, respecting their specific sense of time and space, is to visit them repeatedly where they grow. This chapter describes some experiments in Helsinki and in Stockholm and discusses the ethical problems involved with the help of an example of hanging in a pine.