DRAWNONWARD
Plant seeds, earth, bags, rope, felt, biodegradable plastic.
Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.
Commissioned as part of Critical Mass: The Art of Planetary Health at Blue Mountains Cultural Centre curated by Sabrina Roesner.
Speaking as a species, we are certainly having some problems relating to the Earth. Perhaps this might be a good time to consider some other ways to relate with her?
For a while now we have felt the need to mark out bits of the Earth as belonging to me or you or us or them. Flags become symbols of this humanised territory, from real-estate to the nation-state, they stake a claim of permanent possession.
Plants consider territory in a very different way. Plants claim land with their bodies alone. They do not own, they just reside. Unlike ours these claims do not require exclusivity. Rather their nations overlap, are interwoven and concurrent.
Learning from the plants we would like to propose more soluble forms ownership. If you are here, its yours for the moment you are here (together with whoever else is here of course).
In DRAWNONWARD ten flags mark out a small territory, a little United Nations of dirtbags. Unlike the flags of human nations these flags are designed to decompose. Their substance aiding the growth of the seeds which they contain. The seeds have been gathered from roadside weeds, species which claim leftover terrain, species which will be the first to take over after our departure.
Like the palendrome, drawn onward: in order to move forward we need to constantly return.
