I'm lost in Paris

I'm lost in Paris © R&Sie(n) 

I'm lost in Paris questions and provokes fantastic scenarios : can a forest grow overnight unnoticed and swallow a city ? 
How long would it take nature to destroy the concrete jungle and force us back into a feral state of being ?
R&Sie(n)'s interventions explore our disconnecting from Nature, question architectural and human behaviour : why do we cement the  land ? Why do we pesticide the soil in order to eat ?

Streamside day © Pierre Huygue

And why do we do romanticise Nature, thinking it needs saving ? 

The natural world is in constant metamorphosis for its own survival and the maintenance of plant and bacteria expansion : Nature doesn't need saving but we do.
The fern used to grow I'm lost in Paris is a good example of plant world resilience : it species existed before the human race, 360 million years ago. 
Its rapid and aggressive nature recalls Kudzu, a plant which survives pollution, fire and lack of nutrients by sprawling over cars, streets, houses or entire landscapes.

















Symbiosis'hood  © R&Sie(n)

The transformative structural nature of Kudzu which inspired R&Sie(n) to build Symbiosis'hood in Korea blurs the boundaries between two properties as the invasive plant is slowly covering the spatial areas that originally delimit where one property starts and another ends - exposing how Nature reclaims land regardless of human contingencies.





I'm lost in Paris © R&Sie(n)

I'm lost in Paris is a façade for a city laboratory, exploring the way ferns protect the environment from heat and control pollution. 
Despite soil and with little water, the hydroponics experiment has managed to grow thousands of them while the glass grapes clean up the air from pollution composing with nature by adapting.   
Nature can't be domesticated : architects need to validate the inter-dependence between the human world and the animal/ plant world.
We may not stop the consequences of the Anthropocene but by composing with the natural world we may find our place in it, and hopefully save ourselves and some species. 


1200 Hydroponics ferns - a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, without soil
300 glassblown "grape-drops" beakersPhytoremediation - the science of using plants to help clean up pollution

The Bees' Police

Policing genes - 2010 © Thomas Thwaites


Policing genes, futuristic project of designer Thomas Thwaite, is funded by the Centre for Security and Crime Sciences to stop illegal and unlicensed pharmaceutical drugs being grown from genetically modified plants. Thwaites attended a crash course in Synthetic Biology and now anticipates that since it is easy to download DNA sequences from the internet, and insert the genes of one plant into another, the average gardener can potentialy transform broad bean into an hybrid with the DNA of cocaine.

















© Thomas Thwaites

These possible futures are influenced by the current laboratories experiences on tomatoes that produce a vaccine for Alzheimer's disease, or potatoes that immunize against Hepatitis B. To help the London Police, using roof beehives, Thwaites has thought of using the genius of bees hunting for pollen to detect the producing of illegal plant-made-pharmaceuticals : what more efficient police than the bee which goes everywhere - indoors and outdoors - with little noticing ? Policing genes implies there is no limit to city surveillance and state control.










Video on display at the Wellcome Collection, projects created for the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art, offering an alternative view on how science could influence our future, inspire debate about the human consequences of technological futures, both positive and negative.

Answers from the Lower World

Mouth of God © Kate MacGarry © Marcus Coates

Just before reaching the Kate MacGarry gallery in London to see Marcus Coates show, there is The Last Tuesday Society : a taxidermy boutique filled with skulls, dead animals and Gothic curiosities. 
A coincidence that will later remind me that it's less the macabre that Coates celebrates in his work than the transcending of animal spirit.
His costumes from shamanic rituals are displayed in the gallery : a suit with deer's antlers, an adidas tracksuit with reebock trainers and dead badger hat, a metallic suit with white horse's head.

Questions & Answers © Kate MacGarry © Marcus Coates

The book tucked in the adidas tracksuit's pocket is an encyclopedia of israeli and middle east birds (a reference that will make sense after viewing the plover's wing), the mannequin that resembles a city worker wears shoes laced by blank keys, referring to a pointless routine, a destiny unfulfilled, the recent banking system collapse ?
In a nearby glass cabinet, shamanic props are shown in a false didactic manner : a masticated and reconstituted kit-kat, an onion bag from tesco filled with feathers from the Jay Garrulus Glandarius etc...

Firebird, Rhebok, Badger and Hare © Kate MacGarry © Marcus Coates

On the wall, paper sheets handwritten in english, japanese or hebrew describe his journeys in the underworld as he attempts to answer questions such as What is capitalism ? or What is the meaning of life if we all die in the end ?
As the stories unfold, Coates is guided by animals encountered in spirit so that a snake, a line of starfish or a flock of birds help him deliver answers in bird language. 
It's difficult to imagine what really happens during shamanic performances, unless having a glimpse at some of his videos.

Beryl - Journey to the Lower world © Kate MacGarry © Marcus Coates
photo © Nick David

As it appears, Marcus Coates doesn't preach to the preached. His rituals are a surreal act between integrity and the farcical, forcing us to assess wether it's for real : do we cross the line to feel for the people and situations encountered ? do we keep safe, choosing to get the giggles ? - aren't we doing a bit of both ?
Somehow, the odd shaking, sweating and squeaking helps to bring the truth safely, as it puts less attention on the challenging answers. Coates helps by going at the heart of the matter, in a subliminal manner.

At the pub © Kate MacGarry © Marcus Coates

When he dresses in animal skin having a pee at the pub, or films himself performing a shamanic ritual in a red-light district in respect to prostitutes (Radio shaman - filmed in Norway, as nigerian women challenge respectable locals), contrasted emotions are acted out. Which can be moving. 

The shamanic trance he performs in front of the residents of a soon-to-be-destroyed tower block in Liverpool looking for housing alternatives(Journey to the Lower World) is cathartic for the audience. 
As he waits for a lift in their council estate or is having tea with a bunch of old ladies, wearing deer's antlers and dead animal skin, his presence in casual, everyday environments - the office, the city streets, the council estate -, highlights our disconnection from the natural world and its associated melancholic longing.

Eventually, his enactement of animal's behaviour connects with a time beyond human, a place we used to inhabit.
If less comfortable reaching a trance amongst practitioners in posh western suburbs, Coates is likely to be found walking the sacred lands of Australia in search of dreamtime stories. 


Red Fox Vulpes vulpes © Kate MacGarry © Marcus Coates

It's the flux between roars of laughter and fleeting moments of metaphysic wonder which by contrast places Coates' performances at the heart of art rather than shamanism.
While Joseph Beuys chose the coyote as spirit guide to dig out the american psyche, Coates turns towards his local birds, as metaphor of his cultural heritage - where the traditions of twitching and trainspotting are celebrated along the geek and the awkward.
As one uncanny image of him crawling as a red fox recalls, it is his way to reach a place that transcends formative childhood memories, when pretending to be animal meant feeling human.



Thanks to Fabio Altamura and the Kate MacGarry gallery

A flock of finches

© Celeste Boursier-Mougenot 

Once, I walked from the chaos of a noisy street into the cool darkness of a church and sat to meditate : from the silence of the sacred space emerged the creaking harrowing sound of a chair sliding along the floor. 
Orchestrated by electro-magnetic captors installed outside the church, the chair was following the movements of the street's passers-by : it's with an apparent economy of means - a chair, an invisible system -, that Celeste Boursier-Mougenot uses the acoustic of objects for his soundscapes.


From here to ear © Celeste Boursier-Mougenot © Peter Whyte © Xippas gallery

The Curve gallery is now showing his last work From here to ear.

Passed a metallic-chain curtain, the gallery opens onto a seaside promenade plunged in semi-obscurity. On the walls are videos of closed-up hands playing guitar. The sound that emanates from the videos doesn't fit the visual experience but reproduces the videos' amplified signal. In immersing confusion, electric guitars can be heard at the far end of the gallery which builds anticipation.


From here to ear © Celeste Boursier-Mougenot  © Xippas gallery 

The display reveals a set of musical instruments used as feeding apparatus while a flock of 40 finches is repeatedly fleeting back and forth in a fascinating manner. 
Landing on the strings of amplified basses and guitars and perching on the top of cymbals to feed and drink, the birds transcend the space, filling it with a cascade of sounds.
While deambulating around the space, the viewers contribute to the birds' motion agenda so that the combination of the two flows determines the musical pattern. The delicate choreography of the birds contrasts with the wild sonorities induced from the guitars : the fragility of their hypnotic dance questions our human scale , challenges our presence in the room. If connections inevitably occur, viewers never truely interact with the birds; an invisible force almost separates us from their relentless activity, until the soundscape initiates a fleeting point, an atemporal window between human and animal realms.


© Celeste Bousier Mougenot

From here to hear was previously shown for the Estuaire in Nantes, a shipping harbour between river and ocean. 
As Celeste suggests, beyond principles of chance and hazardous beauty lies a desire to find less subjective ways to compose music, such as observing - and re-thinking - life's diverse currents of activities as auditive matter.
His sensory landscapes mirror nature's sacred geometry to reveal processes of harmonic and chaotic complexity. 

Thanks to Celeste Boursier-Mougenot.

Spot 79

Spot 79 - 2009 © Analucia Feracci

Spot 79 is a walking garden which is temporary growing in a Permaculture centre. The plankton observed in the garden survived an oil spill in sea waters. Part of many unusual phenomenons provoked by human pollution, this new form of life relates to the red water cancer, an invasion of killing algae that asphyxiate all sea life.

Spot 79, 2009 © Analucia Feracci

The plankton slowly gave life to a colony of crustacean-algae : the plants came to life, moved around, getting closer to one another.

As the garden became a place for observation, it opened onto other experiments influenced by the social life of plants like The Garden in motion and the third landscape observed by botanist Gilles Clement. 

It echoes the vibrations of plants and wildlife intelligence which Jeremy Narby explores in Intelligence in nature and Cosmic Serpent : DNA and the Origins of Knowledge; to summarise, the transmission of (molecular) knowledge between plant species and Amazonian Shamans.