[Greenhouse] Dissociated
Jülich, 2018
The following video was one of the outcomes of my recent residency at the Plant Sciences Institute of Jülich Forschungszentrum (DE). The motion picture is aligned with audio-segments from episode one of a two-part BBC-4 special program hosted by neurologist Vilanayur S. Ramachandran (Emma Crichton-Miller, producer / Chris Rawlence, director). [ Please see below the video for more details… ]
Exposé 1935 Early Version [p.893] Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin
Corresponding to the form of the new means of production, which in the beginning is still ruled by the form of the old (Marx), are, in the social superstructure, wish images in which the new and the old interpenetrate in fantastic fashion. This interpenetration derives its fantastic character, above all, from the fact that what is old in the current of social development never clearly stands out from what is new, while the latter, in an effort to disengage from the antiquated, regenerates archaic, primordial elements. The utopian images which accompany the emergence of the new always, at the same time, reach back to the primal past. In the dream in which each epoch entertains images of its successor, the latter appears wedded to elements of primal history. The reflections of the base by the superstructure are therefore inadequate, not because they will have been consciously falsified by the ideologues of the ruling class, but because the new, in order to take the form of an image, constantly unites its elements with those of the classless society. The collective unconscious has a greater share in them than the consciousness of the collective. From the former come the images of utopia that have left their trace in a thousand configurations of life, from buildings to fashions.
Statement about the video
The JFZ IGB-2 Plantsciences Institute has various missions. Amongst them, to predict the impact of global warming on future plant and agricultural behaviour, and to establish standards for academic, scientific, and industrial testing and evaluation in the plant sciences, for the EU and beyond.
The video reflects upon the work environment at the Institute’s greenhouse laboratories, which are central to the staff’s scientific endeavours. I spent time considering the unavoidable challenges of lab work with plants and the environments required for such investigations. I mainly consider the general, difficult questions that emerge from simulating and situating such kinds of open system investigations in closed system environments.
I parse these questions through one of my doctoral research hypotheses: if ‘greenhouse’ is the history, technology, effect, and superstructure that fosters global warming, then it must be a strong instrument and spectre of perceptual dissociation.
The video is in no small measure influenced by the proposed idea of ‘boundary object’ by Susan Star, and of ‘hypomnemata’ offered by Bernard Stiegler. The former is about objects that have different meanings in different social worlds while sustaining a structure that is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, as means of translation. The latter, is the term that suggests the blur that is the complex of memory, one that no longer operates in terms of interior / exterior due to the transgressive digitalisation of life.
Likewise, the video refers, and also strives to add additional strands to the influential artwork of Kader Attia. His recent research on Ramachandran’s neurological, therapeutic work on ‘phantom pain’ (people feeling physical pain in body parts that have been amputated) seems to signify a potent social trauma stemming from the ‘amputations’ perpetrated by the deep, forgotten histories of colonialism. Stemming from Attia’s recent film documentary ‘Reflecting Memory’ (2016), I aim to extrapolate further emphasis on the role of greenhouse as virtual space, messianic spectre, and master instrument of environmental dissociation.
I depose greenhouse, in all its manifold definitions, to be a false sense of privilege and control, of interiority and exteriority, rooted in colonial memory. At best, it represents the dissociation between human, non-human, and environment; at worst, it is a kind of metaphorical amputation that initiated the dissociation of the human self from natural history, now exacerbated by the digitalisation of all memory and its life.
While considering that greenhouse was the first, primitive, virtual space — one where we create the illusory effect of being able to accelerate and/or conserve natural history — I look to embody alternative conceptions of greenhouse, say, as caudex, or as dissolute space in-between inside and outside, not unlike the critical space between the root and the stem of a plant.
My sincerest thanks to Ulrich Schurr, Director of the Institute, for his indispensable work in better understanding climate change and plant behaviour. And of course, for his continued, selfless support and guidance. Very Special Thanks to Institute scientists Beate Uhlig, Christoph Jedowski, Henning Lenz, Shizue Matsubara, and Uwe Rascher for their time and advice.
