Installation (2019)
Can “ecosystem services” and disservices provided by plants be seen as phyto-technologies of multi-species societies? How are spaces of creative dissonance, resilience, and resistance created by outliers: pests, parasites, invasive species, and allergens? What moral agency do humans have in determining the assets and liabilities of plants during the environmental strains of the Anthropocene? These questions are explored through an assemblage of objects, images, and recordings featuring plants as protagonists in natural habitats along roadsides, probing what Natasha Myers (2016) has dubbed the “Planthroposcene.”
Project Credits:
- Concept, Dust Etching
- Images: Alexandra Toland (Bauhaus University, Weimar)
- Further Image credits: Uwe Starfinger (Julius Kühn-Institut)
- 3D pollen imaging: Michael Braun (Bauhaus University, Weimar)
- Glass casting: Lena Trost (IKKG – Hochschule Koblenz Glass Studio)
- Film: Johanna Ickert and René Arnold
Biography:
Alexandra Toland (US/DE) is a Berlin-based visual artist and environmental planner with research interests in ecosystem services, urban ecology, soil, and culture, and the Anthropocene. She is Junior Professor for Arts and Research at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, where she directs the PhD program in art and design.
