Miranda Whall

It is always exhilarating to uncover what one has been doing but hadn’t consciously realised. The longer I practice art the more I come to discover that I am never far away from the same source and the same concerns, they follow me around like a shadow, it is thrilling to find them still there and waiting. Again I discovered I am probing, prodding and poking away at my (our) human relationship to nature, an interspecies dynamic. Again I am touching on animism, derived from the latin anima – breath, spirit, life. Animism is a belief that all things – animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems and even words are animated and alive and possess a distinct spiritual essence. Which takes me full circle back to my lace drawings of 20 years ago where I drew myself perched on, sprawled over, crushed under and propped against animate and inanimate things, my auto- erotic self portrait spiralled ecstatically within a pencil drawn egalitarian utopia where oversized lemon squeezers, salt spreaders, foxes, roses and ants etc. co- existed with each other and me in an unlikely and unruly kaleidoscopic orgy. Then there was the video series Marine Dialogues where I superimposed myself into the water tanks of marine creatures, smaller, incongruous and unwelcome I screamed full pelt at a seemingly responsive jellyfish ‘Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone‘, whispered a litany of profound and mundane confessions to a pair of iridescent, hermaphrodite sea gooseberries in ‘Is It Ok If’ and shouted down a megaphone ‘All The Things I’m Good At‘ to a sea anemone as she slowly closed her tentacles – indifferent and disinterested to my being good at ‘keeping 2 chevrons apart, popping bubble wrap and crossing cattle grids etc’. There was the series of watercolour animations where I animated giant watery singing birds dispassionately perched on my back and bum as I robotically thrust a rubber dildo into myself, ‘Tits & Arses’ was a circular 7 screen installation where tiny beautiful jewel like videos drew the viewer in to peek at my arsehole clenching in synch to the songs of 7 British Tits, then more recently in another attempt to ‘get close’ and to ‘relate’ I crawled on my hands and knees through heather, bracken, moss, Molinia, bogs and rivers as a cyborg/human/sheep for 5 1/2 miles in the Cambrian Mountains and through the dark evil undergrowth of a Welsh wood for 24 hours as a cyborg/human/badger.

Here I am again unquestionably influenced by Nan Shepherd, and Robert Macfarlane’s brilliant introduction to her book The Living Mountain. All of my favourite phrases from her almost unbearably profound text resonate again, but afresh in this new body of work, for example; “To know fully even one field or land (veg bed and patio) is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width..”… ” I am on the plateau ( veg bed and patio) again, having gone round it like a dog in circles to see if it is a good place, I think it is, and I am to stay (up) here for a while”. In light of her words, I currently need no where else to go, there is a lifetimes worth of conceptual and material matter in/on this 5 x 5 metre flagstone topography outside my lounge window. Macfarlane writes ” For Shepherd there was a continual traffic between the outer landscapes of the world and the inner landscapes of the spirit. She knew that topography has long offered humans powerful allegories, keen ways of figuring ourselves to ourselves, strong means of shaping memories and giving form to thought. So it is that her book investigates the relationships that exist between the material and the metaphorical mountain (veg bed + patio).” he goes on to say ” Her book is a hymn to ‘living all the way through’; to touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing the world. If you manage this, then you might walk ‘out of the body and into the mountain(veg bed + patio)’ such that you become, briefly, ‘a stone…the soil of the earth (or a leaf!)’. And at that point then, well, then ‘one has been in’. ‘That is all’ , and that ‘all’ should be heard not diminutively, apologetically, but expansively, vastly”.

I have come to realise that this current body of work, while still reflecting on the pathos, the stupidity, the arrogance and the ache of our disconnect, is less tense than in previous work, I have settled in to realising that while I cannot really connect with nature, if I am still, silent and open enough it is possible it might connect with me. Most of us spend most of our time stuck ‘up here’ and so it is a good idea to spend time ‘down there’. My goal is that my solo and tentative forays into plant staring will move towards a national collective plant staring event, a large public relational project. Most of my women friends and family, I don’t recall hearing it from my male friends, tell me they have spent a lot of their time during lockdown at their allotments or in their gardens staring at their plants, I want to harness that energy, to create a collective energy, Why? – why am I doing this, what is it for, what is the point, and what is it really about more specifically – well I’m not yet brave, knowledgable or articulate enough to say..but as the project unfolds the plants will let me know…

My research journey thus far has followed a fascinating path; it started with; what is staring, the practice of staring, staring at plants (of which there was none), talking to plants (at which point Prince Charles and ridicule seems to preside), herbcraft, the Amazon and indigenous people, psychedelics, ayahuasca, plants as sentient beings, plant and human consciousness, plant intelligence, the oak tree Quercus and surveillance…

Staring related research:

“Staring is a vivid form of human communication. Part of our enormous communal vocabulary of the eyes, staring is a particularly emphatic way of expressing our response to others. A more forceful and sustained form of looking than glancing, glimpsing, scanning, contemplating, surveying, gazing, and other forms of casual or normative looking, staring starkly registers intense interest and endows it with meaning. That interest ranges widely in form–from domination, adoration, curiosity, surprise, allegiance, disgust, wonder, befuddlement, openness, hostility, to reverence. The stare is a highly charged interpersonal encounter that we snap up in a variety of contexts to put a sharp point on what we mean, think, or want. Staring is a way of strongly reacting to another; it bespeaks involvement. It is the human response to novelty, to the unexpected“. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Director of Graduate Studies at Emory University Atlanta.

Vegetal Oncology:

Vegetal ontology is the area of research that explores phenomenology, environmental philosophy and plant thinking. In the words of Michael Marder, one of the leading voices in the area and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, there is a need for an “acknowledgment of both the ubiquity and alterity (otherness) of plants as beings with their own subjectivity – one that is radically different to our own”, he goes on to say “To be sessile, rooted in one place, embedded in a milieu, is to express life-force on a molecular-cellular level. Plants do not possess a neurological centre but, like art perhaps, they are defined by a state of ceaseless unfolding, a material knowledge or thinking without thinking, and an insatiable, immanent becoming” and so to perceive plants as having a form of consciousness – an awareness of internal and external existence and to possessing intelligence – the ability to acquire, understand and use knowledge therefore make choices, we need to slow right down, shift our anthropomorphic point of view of consciousness and intelligence and hang out in their time, plant time. I believe there is nothing better than art to help us understand material knowledge or to allow us the time and space to think without thinking, artists do this, plants do this, so what better than to do it together. Art embodies knowledge and what is embodied can be understood.

Plant related research:

Jeremy Narby, Monica Gagliano, Floreianne Koechlin and Stefano Mancuso are just some of the scientists I have come across who are currently leading debate and proving that plants are not just sentient beings but can make informed choices, have memory, can communicate with each other and can, if we listen, communicate with us. Their work aims to rid us of our ‘plant blindness’ and open our hearts, stomachs, minds and souls to see and listen to vegetal knowledge, to honour plants a personhood and give plants their deserved ethics and rights. Through their astonishing scientific experiments and specifically Monica Gagliano’s fascinating combination of subjective and objective perspective they provide substantial evidence contrary to ridicule, aligned with current interests and a way into a language that our ancestors used to understand and indigenous people still understand – they are introducing us to ‘plant voice’, and I am all ears.

Sophie Leguil: More than Weeds 

On her website she simply asks “Are We ‘Weeds?” I love this question!

https://morethanweeds.co.uk/author/sleguil/

Jeremy Narby: Intelligence in Nature

“In this mesmerising talk, Jeremy Narby shares the findings from his groundbreaking book Intelligence in Nature. He describes his quest around the globe to chronicle how leading-edge scientists are studying intelligence in nature and how nature learns. He uncovers a universal thread of highly intelligent behavior within the natural world, and asks the question: What can humanity learn from nature’s economy and knowingness? Weaving together issues of animal cognition, evolutionary biology and psychology, he challenges contemporary scientific concepts and reveals a much deeper view of the nature of intelligence and of our kinship with all life.” Jeremy Narby and his presentation on ‘Intelligence in Nature’ at the National Bioneers Conference in 2005

Jeremy Narby: Intelligence in Nature

Bruce Parry: Tawai: A Voice from the Forest 2017

“In the main feature Tawai, Bruce takes us on a journey to discover why we have created the types of societies that we live in today. During this journey we learn that practices such as meditation may have been created over time to bring humankind back to a way of being that reflected our more connected and empathic hunter-gatherer origins. In this additional featurette, Bruce invites his brother Duncan to share with him another tool or practice that has a similar outcome – a practice which he first discovered while making documentaries with the BBC – the Amazonian medicinal brew, ayahuasca. But as we shall see, in order to begin the process of self-reflection and healing that Bruce believes is so necessary in the world today, it is also important to know that the journey, while ultimately beneficial, is seldom an easy one.” Bruce Parry explorer, filmmaker and director of Tawai: A Voice from the Forest 2017

https://www.tawai.earth/tawai-ii-ayahuasca

Monica Gagliano: Plant Intelligence and the Importance of Imagination in Science 

Stefano Mancuso: Are Plants Conscious 

Floreianne Koechlin: Tomatoes Talk, Birch Trees Learn – do plants have dignity?

Art related research:

Francis Alys – Looking Up – http://francisalys.com/ Tehching Hsieh a Taiwanese artist born in 1950 is also one of my all time favourites, he made 5 monumental one year long endurance pieces over 8 years and one 13 year long piece between 1978 – 1999. His insistence that a ‘piece’ had to be one year long in order to become life and not theatre has always interested me. In Outdoor Piece 1981 – 82, Hsieh lived outdoors in New York City without entering any kind of shelter, no lobbies, bus shelters, transport, doorways etc. The mental and physical strength required to commit to this, survive this and fulfil this endeavour blows my mind, while I stare at my oak tree for 10 minutes on the hour every hour for 24 hours I am tapping into his legacy. Tehching Hsieh – Outdoor Piece – https://www.tehchinghsieh.com/oneyearperformance1981-1982