Plantification Efforts (Some Suggestions)

Plantification Efforts started with the desire of deciphering the language of plants. Inspired by the studies of Stefano Mancuso, plant neuroscientist, I began to fantasize about the possibility of communicating with the vegetal world.

The first question is whether plants actually communicate with the outside world, and the answer is obviously positive. They communicate through chemical signals, they react to impulses, they are able to change their chemical structure according to the signals they receive. Plants are sensitive and interconnected with the external environment, they use more than fifteen senses, but would it be possible for us humans to feel like a plant? Maybe we should refine our sensors. Several questions rise during the process: how to become a plant? How to implement a de-humanisation of the person?

During the period of my research, Italy and a good part of the world were in a lock-down period, due to which the vital functions of human beings were drastically curtailed. In a way we found ourselves living in an induced vegetative state, we were immobile but constantly interconnected. Considering this situation, and finding myself surrounded by plants locked in the house with me, I decided to deepen this ‘plantification’ process by developing a series of exercises in between play and meditation, to try a physical approach with the large community of green beings. Because plants react, move, perceive, communicate and interact, and if a human wants to try to identify with their world, the first thing s/he could do would be to observe them and to imitate them.

Plantification Efforts (Some Suggestions) consists of seven exercises that explore some of the activities of plants, inviting the reader to try to do the same. It is conceived as a zone of detachment from the frenetic everyday life of the human being, this tool is provided to deepen the relationship with external world and the senses.