What Plants Tell Us
Summary
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Plants
Spring Summer 2020
As scientific research demystifies the complex world of plants, we are gradually opening up to their sensitivity, intelligence and agentivity. More than ever interdisciplinary, this feature draws its references from the fields of science, anthropology and botany. Inevitably, environmental concerns and the impact of human intervention on plant biodiversity figure prominently, while the works suggest different ways of communicating with nature, taking a closer look at the non-individualistic behavior of plants. Generally invited for what they are, but also sometimes for the metaphors they evoke, the plants that appear in these pages sometimes evoke human exploitation and domination, or the collapse of ecosystems - but sometimes also, in a more optimistic way, resistance, solidarity, collaboration and hope for renewal.
Editorial
Feature
Towards an Ecosophical Art
The Question of Plant Consciousness in Contemporary Art
Photography and the Nature/Culture Divide
Of Time and Contaminated Flowers: On the Work of Susanne Kriemann and Anaïs Tondeur
Rashid Johnson : Plants, Presence, and Care
Fatma Bucak: The Damask Rose
“Waybroad” and Lessons in New Territories
A Vegetal Odyssey
Floral Resistance to Authoritarianism and Incarceration in Porcelain Installations by Ai Weiwei and Cai Guo-Qiang
Portfolios
Columns
Reviews
Current Issue
Immersion
Winter 2026
This issue is interested in all forms of immersion in contemporary art. How are artists critically engaging with immersive technologies? Conversely, what kinds of practices are challenging technology in their pursuit of immersion? How are these experiences breaking down the boundaries between spectator, body, and art? We put forward proposals that rely on listening and sustained attention rather than on amplification and sensory overload – works using devices that are sometimes relatively simple and non-invasive, sometimes a little more elaborate, but in which participation is, with a few nuances, neither passive nor devoid of critical thinking.
Cover: doux soft club
bleu de lieu, 2023-2024.
Photo: Cléo Sjölander, courtesy of the artists