Performance. Video recording, b/w, 480 x 640 pixels, audio, 5’03”.
This time I am explaining the very latest work I made: the performance entitled “rewilding a plum tree”, which is not obscure at all, but I want to tell you why I did it.
It may be banal, humble, but planting a seed could one day become a revolutionary act, illegal, abolished by law: nowadays, U.E. wants to forbid the use and exchange of unapproved seeds, a blow to biodiversity and freedom.
http://www.seed-sovereignty.org/
To plant a tree is purely an artistic act, meta-natural. But with this action I want to restore what human beings stole to the belonging dominion.
Planting the seed, we favour the return to life of the primordial form of that natural genetic project: a wild plant, free from the manipulations and eugenic selections made on cultivations.
You may be unaware that the fruits we are used to eat are the result of eugenic manipulations in order to make them bigger, sweeter or with the desired characteristics, by the means of grafts, selections and controlled pollinations, all alterations that if done on a human being would be considered monstrosities, like the creature of Dr. Frankenstein. Instead, the wild plants offer us fruits that are small but rich in natural equilibrium and vital strength, that is the energy expressed by the spontaneous genetic code inscribed into the seed.
We all know how a plant sprouts and grows, but I believe that some do not not know how to do that in practice: this video document is for them all.
I could have chosen a better place where to plant this plum tree, a sunnier hill, but nature does not choose where a seed will fall, and all the chances to survive are up to fate, to selection and the very plant's strength.
About this performance the art theorist Vivi Kallinikou had the following words:
Do not waste time: go to free a tree.
Planting the seed, we favour the return to life of the primordial form of that natural genetic project: a wild plant, free from the manipulations and eugenic selections made on cultivations.
You may be unaware that the fruits we are used to eat are the result of eugenic manipulations in order to make them bigger, sweeter or with the desired characteristics, by the means of grafts, selections and controlled pollinations, all alterations that if done on a human being would be considered monstrosities, like the creature of Dr. Frankenstein. Instead, the wild plants offer us fruits that are small but rich in natural equilibrium and vital strength, that is the energy expressed by the spontaneous genetic code inscribed into the seed.
We all know how a plant sprouts and grows, but I believe that some do not not know how to do that in practice: this video document is for them all.
I could have chosen a better place where to plant this plum tree, a sunnier hill, but nature does not choose where a seed will fall, and all the chances to survive are up to fate, to selection and the very plant's strength.
About this performance the art theorist Vivi Kallinikou had the following words:
“The notion of planting a tree as a revolutionary act in the context of the very same act being considered illegal is intriguing and goes beyond Beuys’ work.”
Do not waste time: go to free a tree.
