#sensoryfeedback

Why don’t we remember plants? - in conversation with Elke Dreier

Magda Wisniowska chatting online with the Munich -based artist Elke Dreier - April, 2020. [Elke Dreier: ‘Asking a Plant to Teach Movement’ (2015); Installation view EMAC Festival, Rijeka, 2015; Image credits: courtesy of the artist] [on a sunny afternoon, Wednesday the 15th of April, 2020 – website of the artist: https://elkedreier.de/ ] Magda : So my first question is about perception, the fact that you describe nature as something perceived. Is there a particular way you think that you perceive nature? Elke : It is about our sensory connection to the world and how we can perceive the external world. Our access to nature is through the senses, directly dependent on the body. I am interested in how the processes of stimulation, translation, and interpretation from this sensory input turns into information - conscious or subconscious. Magda : So your interest is almost a biological one, an interest in sensory feedback? Elke : In sensory feedback and the dynamic interaction between organisms and the environment. Magda : I am very much interested in how the senses contribute to the production of knowledge. I think it is amazing that something affecting our sense of sight, hearing, or smell can be transformed in such a way that it can be thought and communicated. But increasingly I wonder at my own relation to nature. I notice things like chlorophyll in leaves when the light hits them - I like collecting seashells…Your point about the environment is a good one, because so often these discussions around sensory processing take place in a vacuum! Is your interest in this topic in any way a consequence of the current climate crisis? Elke : Maybe reflecting on the climate crisis intensified the question of what is our current relation to nature and what kind of approaches there are… And it also evokes the question of where nature lies — somewhere between an endless collection of seashells and techno-science. Magda : Do you think the fact that nature is something perceived by us, inadvertently puts us —humans who perceive, who think and communicate in response to sensory experience — into a position of privilege, and might contribute to the idea of nature as something we can dominate? In other words, might there be a political aspect to this? Or another way of asking, do you think animals and plants perceive? I mean they sense, of course, but that is not quite the same as perception. I was thinking about your piece, ‘Asking a Plant to Teach Movement’… [Elke Dreier: 'Asking a Plant to Teach Movement’ (2015); Image credits: courtesy of the artist] Elke : ‘Asking a Plant to Teach Movement’ deals with communication forms beyond a traditional concept of interaction and exchange. The video installation shows a hand imitating the leaves of a yucca plant trying to learn a new approach to posture and movement at another speed. The direct, unmediated way to learn is through imitation. Communication, interaction, and movement are the ways in which humans access the outer world. The way we think and communicate is based on translation and the attempt to find a possibility for the exchange of information. I think it is really important to accept that there are other systems that are true at the same time. Magda : So I guess I now want to broach my other two topics: aesthetics and art. Do you think there’s still a place for an aesthetics of nature? Or is beauty a limiting concept for you? Elke : If this means nature it is linked to the consumer’s image of nature, a promise and advertisement, then it is limiting, in the sense of being boring. If the aestheticising helps us to reflect about nature and physicality, and helps to create approaches that are not only created through scientific knowledge, then it could also be useful. However it tells us more about ourselves than nature itself. Magda : Oh, I didn’t think of advertising! But of course you are right! The image of a beautiful nature is something packaged and sold. I guess I read too many philosophical accounts, where beauty is seen to preserve something of a nature free of the human. What about your practice? Some pieces, like the recent ones at the Kunstverein were very aesthetically appealing… Elke : Ah, you mean the Scroll – Variation Series? Small prints of the recordings of airflow. [Elke Dreier: 'Scrolls – Variation’ series (2019); Image credits: courtesy of the artist] I try to find an interplay between the thoughts, reflections, research, and a visually independent form and structure. There is a study about the relation between the personal need for structure and the sensation of wild, manicured or romantic gardens. It is not very surprising that people with a high rated personal need for structure preferred manicured gardens! * 😉 Magda : In my research I wonder, to what extent this strong need for structure is a response to nature in the first place! As in, not being able to handle chaos! Your approach sounds very rational though. 😉 Elke : 🙂 yes, of intellectual contemplation… Magda : I like how you describe your approach, because it is somehow the contemporary counterpart to Kant’s disinterested pleasure. It is the actual contemplation of beauty that is pleasurable and not the object that is contemplated. Should we finish on this note, or maybe you have some questions for me? Elke : Do you think there is a possibility to create a contemporary approach to nature that is neither dominated by science nor the wish to go back to nature? Magda : The idea of going back to nature is a regressive one, and somewhat absurd, because how far exactly is one supposed to go? On paper, the scientific, rational, enlightened approach looks good and I have much sympathy with thinkers such Ray Brassier. Personally though, I think a whole new way of thinking would need to develop first, before we can see a shift in our relation to nature. It’s as if now, both the modernising project of enlightenment and its regressive counterpart, have reached a dead end. I am also not sure if art can help… Elke : I read about a phenomenon called plant blindness, that describes the human tendency to neglect plants in the environment and a lack of appreciation for the fundamental roles of plants. I thought art could be a way to better remember plants.** Magda : Hah! Did it work? (I never remember my plants!) Elke : In my experience, until now, only if they are moving. 😉 Magda : This is what we should call this chat — why don’t we remember plants. *Van den Berg, A.E., &Winsum-Westra, M. (2010), Manicured, romantic or wild? The relation between need for structure and preferences for garden styles. Urban forestry & Urban Greening, 9, 179-186., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1618866710000105, 30.3.2020 ** Wandersee JH, Schussler EE (1999). Preventing plant blindness. Am Biol. Teach 61, 84-86