Slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tbiOU0G2bwwzo0B7oAULIrDoK7T1quzD43mvorY_rVU/edit#slide=id.g2faa2b212f2_0_22

Reflections:

   I remember when I first saw Diana’s artwork with roots as I was preparing for the artist research presentation in mid October, I felt kind of uncomfortable and perplexed and not sure what to think of the work. For pieces like *Entanglement*, after growing the roots for weeks, it finally cuts the roots off, and kills the grass. It feels rather cruel and violent to me. (Yet I didn’t talk about that feeling much during the presentation, because at that time I kind of assumed that all artists chosen for this class’s artist research presentations are artists working ethically with plants…so I was feeling confused and kind of didn’t dare to “criticize”.)

   Yet in future classes and artist research presentations, we see more examples of artists working with non-human animals, or other lives and/or materials, and my critical lenses are also evolving… Growing a house of crystals which is rather money-costing and material-wasting, building a sculpture of beeswax which is overworking the bees, overworking silkworms for huge sculptures of cocoons, or putting many flowers in the ocean simply for aesthetics…

   Still it’s a bit hard to say with Diana’s works. What/Who are plants to us? Can plants be exploited?... Or after the roots are killed, what do we deal with it after the exhibition?

   I remember after the presentation, Marcela asked me: What happens to the roots afterwards? Good question!… Later I searched online, but couldn’t find any clues yet. I wish in future, artists can document not only the “finished work” and the making process, but also how they deal with it after the work, especially their environmental impact throughout the process (from materials, making, installing and curating to afterwards).

   Yet at the same time, I am eating plants everyday. That is basically, someone help grow the plants, and then harvest, or “kill” them or parts of them. If I feel weird and violent to “harvest” them for art in Diana’s context, what about us growing and “harvesting” and eating them every day? We almost forget about this… Is it because we are too used to it? And/or in our ways of thinking, if the plant is used for utility purpose (if we think of eating it as more useful compared to making it into “art”), is its “consumption” or being killed more justifiable? And then we feel it is less wasted?

   And this semester’s gardening on the rooftop garden reminds me of the behind-the-scene growing lifes and growing “food”. Once, the harvesting and eating was more mindful: When my friend pulled out her carrot from their pot, and we were all amazed by how cute and fresh and baby-like the baby carrot is, its still pinky orange, its super tiny body (roots), its lovely small green leaf… And when i carefully eat it in a cherishing way, like some treasure, I am amazed by how it tastes: “ohhh it’s great, and it really tastes like carrot!” hahaha.

   At least one thing we can do now is to not to take everything for granted. We shall be more grateful for foods, for what and whom are nurturing the food, and for nature. (Similar with those we use or work with for arts!)

   Going back to the debate around the “harvesting” in Diana’s artmaking. In “On Roots and Men: Interwoven Narratives in the Age of Hybrid Realities” by Judith Elisabeth Weiss and Herbert Kopp Oberste Brink, they say that Diana sets in motion “the interplay between collaboration with nature and the opposing mastery over nature. She not only spreads out the lush verdant green of caring horticultural work for us to witness – but also the opposite – destroying what she tended beforehand”. If we consider this performative, educational and provoking aspect of her art (By her art, I mean, the grass who are growing themselves anyways yet shift with her constraints/induction…So it’s definitely not “her” art, at least, “their” “art”, and their life!), then it seems more acceptable to use roots for this purpose?