Nandita Baxi Sheth
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I connected to the Plant Contingent through my interest in the vegetal world. The philosophers Deleuze and Guattari famously directed, “follow the plant”. Following plants, leaning in and paying close attention to them led me to notice the pollinators and then become fascinated with the honey bee and pollen. A spoonful of honey in your tea makes it sweet. The wax of the honeycomb turned into a candle lights up the darkest night. The pollination services of the honeybees provide ⅓ of the food we eat. The pollen grain of each plant is unique, like a human fingerprint revealing information about the plant source, location, and geologic time. The process of pollination moves across atmospheres and landscapes entangling human, insect, and vegetative lives in conditions of both flourishing and precarity. The plant contingent begins in the middle of plants and wanders to its roots and soil, to its flowers and ceremonial uses, and to its wild assemblages such as thickets and undergrowth. Plants always entangle us in thinking with many beings and immerse us in a multitude of substances. In addition to philosophical research and writing, our collective art making engages me in emergent and layered processes.
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I came to be part of the contingent in an organic manner because I was delving into plant ontology and the research of plant entanglements with humans of the earth. I became aware of plant thinking as a result of various visits to the jungle to be part of teacher-plant ceremonies given by the Siona shamans in the banks of the Putumayo river in Ecuador. Plants were calling me in a non verbalized way and I did not know how to understand their sweet and tender voice. From then on I have followed the path they tend to me with their always gentle calling. Being part of the Plant Contingent is part of this voyage within vegetal democracy. Speculative fabulations and philosophical discussions on the being of plants and its connections with art and the possibilities of them to be producers of culture are part of navigating the rivers in the house of plants. I implicate myself in the study of ecosystems of relationality as if wandering into a body without organs in which each plant drawing, card, text or landscape are entangled and function symbiotically in chaotic harmony.
Miranda Texidor
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Samantha Jones
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Although I have lived in the deep forest for most of my life, my philosophical awakening to trees came during a recent moment of grief, where I came upon a snag, or dying tree that was still standing in the forest. This tree offered me quiet solace, opening me to its community and abundance even in its hollowed decay. From here, whole new worlds have presented themselves through this encounter with plant being, allowing me to begin to formulate a new definition of care, which I call wild care.
I see wild care as inherently a mode of plant-thinking in its expansive and vibrant process-based sense of being. Plants make us waver. They entangle and implicate being, connecting us to each other whether we think we have a choice or not. Plants have the capacity to show us how to think with our whole being instead of just privileging the eye, and the head. New tendrils sprout where limbs are severed, and new life is propagated in the voids formed from loss. Shoots push up through our material, drawn insatiably to grow onward. In this way, we are constantly reshaped by plant thinking. Frida Kahlo once used the phrase “fucbulus pile” to describe the vitality of beings (both human and non-human) in her painting Moses, which I find particularly apt. Plant thinking is messy and hard to contain, forcing us to notice, negotiate and navigate with the ecologies that we have tried for so long to define, control, homogenize, and ignore. In short, plants wake us up and keep us alive, despite ourselves.
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Soil and plants belong together, they are lovers, they make each other possible. Soil and plants nourish each other within their many cycles of composition and decomposition in a continuous exchange that invites bacterias, fungi, worms, seed, nitrogen, carbon, humans, and many other actants to be present. Thinking with soil opens alternative ways of being, of interacting with others and the world.
My connection to soil and plants began with several visits to a small community called La Magdelena, located at the edge of the Ecuadorian Andean eastern mountain range, where the Amazon basin begins. The Shuar people of the village gathered periodically in order to settle disputes and to communicate events. The gathering includes the drinking of a fermented yucca drink called chicha. The fermentation process of the chicha is relevant to my interest in soil, plants, fungi, art, and community. I came to understand that La Magdalena represented much more than lush vegetation, an abundance of stories, and even an exotic escape. It gave me an insight into a different way of being present. Just like a plant needs sunlight, my imagination and creative energy need the outdoor light of the sun, the touch of the free air, the smell of the grass, and the taste of the Earth that translates into the reverence for the fermentation ritual. A continuous process that connects sites to people does not erase the poverty and scarcity of resources of this community, yet it shows that generosity and resilience are possible even under precarious circumstances. + Instagram
Patricia Tinajero
+ Web
+ Web
Nandita Baxi Sheth
+Web
I came to be part of the contingent in an organic manner because I was delving into plant ontology and the research of plant entanglements with humans of the earth. I became aware of plant thinking as a result of various visits to the jungle to be part of teacher-plant ceremonies given by the Siona shamans in the banks of the Putumayo river in Ecuador. Plants were calling me in a non verbalized way and I did not know how to understand their sweet and tender voice. From then on I have followed the path they tend to me with their always gentle calling. Being part of the Plant Contingent is part of this voyage within vegetal democracy. Speculative fabulations and philosophical discussions on the being of plants and its connections with art and the possibilities of them to be producers of culture are part of navigating the rivers in the house of plants. I implicate myself in the study of ecosystems of relationality as if wandering into a body without organs in which each plant drawing, card, text or landscape are entangled and function symbiotically in chaotic harmony.
I connected to the Plant Contingent through my interest in the vegetal world. The philosophers Deleuze and Guattari famously directed, “follow the plant”. Following plants, leaning in and paying close attention to them led me to notice the pollinators and then become fascinated with the honey bee and pollen. A spoonful of honey in your tea makes it sweet. The wax of the honeycomb turned into a candle lights up the darkest night. The pollination services of the honeybees provide ⅓ of the food we eat. The pollen grain of each plant is unique, like a human fingerprint revealing information about the plant source, location, and geologic time. The process of pollination moves across atmospheres and landscapes entangling human, insect, and vegetative lives in conditions of both flourishing and precarity. The plant contingent begins in the middle of plants and wanders to its roots and soil, to its flowers and ceremonial uses, and to its wild assemblages such as thickets and undergrowth. Plants always entangle us in thinking with many beings and immerse us in a multitude of substances. In addition to philosophical research and writing, our collective art making engages me in emergent and layered processes.
Although I have lived in the deep forest for most of my life, my philosophical awakening to trees came during a recent moment of grief, where I came upon a snag, or dying tree that was still standing in the forest. This tree offered me quiet solace, opening me to its community and abundance even in its hollowed decay. From here, whole new worlds have presented themselves through this encounter with plant being, allowing me to begin to formulate a new definition of care, which I call wild care.
I see wild care as inherently a mode of plant-thinking in its expansive and vibrant process-based sense of being. Plants make us waver. They entangle and implicate being, connecting us to each other whether we think we have a choice or not. Plants have the capacity to show us how to think with our whole being instead of just privileging the eye, and the head. New tendrils sprout where limbs are severed, and new life is propagated in the voids formed from loss. Shoots push up through our material, drawn insatiably to grow onward. In this way, we are constantly reshaped by plant thinking. Frida Kahlo once used the phrase “fucbulus pile” to describe the vitality of beings (both human and non-human) in her painting Moses, which I find particularly apt. Plant thinking is messy and hard to contain, forcing us to notice, negotiate and navigate with the ecologies that we have tried for so long to define, control, homogenize, and ignore. In short, plants wake us up and keep us alive, despite ourselves.
Soil and plants belong together, they are lovers, they make each other possible. Soil and plants nourish each other within their many cycles of composition and decomposition in a continuous exchange that invites bacterias, fungi, worms, seed, nitrogen, carbon, humans, and many other actants to be present. Thinking with soil opens alternative ways of being, of interacting with others and the world.
My connection to soil and plants began with several visits to a small community called La Magdelena, located at the edge of the Ecuadorian Andean eastern mountain range, where the Amazon basin begins. The Shuar people of the village gathered periodically in order to settle disputes and to communicate events. The gathering includes the drinking of a fermented yucca drink called chicha. The fermentation process of the chicha is relevant to my interest in soil, plants, fungi, art, and community. I came to understand that La Magdalena represented much more than lush vegetation, an abundance of stories, and even an exotic escape. It gave me an insight into a different way of being present. Just like a plant needs sunlight, my imagination and creative energy need the outdoor light of the sun, the touch of the free air, the smell of the grass, and the taste of the Earth that translates into the reverence for the fermentation ritual. A continuous process that connects sites to people does not erase the poverty and scarcity of resources of this community, yet it shows that generosity and resilience are possible even under precarious circumstances. +Instagram
+Web
+Instagram
+Web
Miranda Texidor
+Instagram
Patricia Tinajero
+Web
+Web
+Instagram
Samantha Jones
+ Web
+ Web
