– Kōbō Abe, Dendrocacalia

This presentation will elaborate on some of Amanda White’s current projects and related research questions, which examine how we attempt to relate to and imagine plant life and how such interactions and imaginings may be approached through various forms of cultural production. Some of these questions include: why is looking at plants appropriate in this particular cultural moment? How is being-plant imagined; for example in fiction, science fiction, and folklore? How is being-plant considered in our daily interactions, in the contemporary landscape of agriculture and food, field identification and taxonomy through to genetic manipulation? Can interdisciplinary methodologies in artistic practice allow for new ways of imagining human relationships to plant life? White is also interested in how the theoretical framework of these questions can be relevant towards looking at other non-human and non-animal members of our ecological communities.