2023, installation: object (carbon steel; dry plant matter: reed, miscanthus, sedge; juniper berry essential oil, 100 × 110 × 200 cm; collage (carbon steel, reed, bulrush and wild cucumber fruit, mix of i.a. water chestnut, oak, teasel, and burdock seeds; elm flower flakes
Collaboration: craftsmen from the Kowale Losu (Destiny Makers) studio in Warsaw
The Spore has been inspired by the phenomenon of a seed as a young plant form frozen in time, as it were. Botanical tropes have been set to an excerpt from Lęk (Fear), a book by Polish psychiatrist and philosopher Antoni Kępiński, who writes of awareness of future time, and of the anxiety-triggering unknown:
[…] in order to live, we have to constantly strive for a future unknown, converting it into a past known. Such transformation of the unknown into the known, of the future into the past, requires effort and courage. And occasionally man is found wanting. Sometimes he/she is too weak, at other times the situation may be inordinately tough. Man then fears the future, all he/she wants is to go back into the past […] or remain in the present at the very least, and that is impossible, as life is all about expanding into the future, one cannot come to a standstill, not even for a little while.*
The steel and plant form is a conceptual shelter, ready to protect us in times of conflict and crises, global and personal alike. A haven in times of threat, of feeling overwhelmed or overstimulated, of attacks of anxiety brought by an uncertain future. The artists explore the capacity for regeneration and self-soothing in a fast-flowing, technological world on the brink of extinction. For each of the two, working on The Spore was significant in terms of personal issues and challenges as well: the death of a parent; activist burnout.
The object has been lined with dry plant matter collected in urban wastelands and along woodland edges, and supplemented with a collage showing the progress of this art-and-research project. It comprises ponderings on the materiality of seed, an entity combining a soft interior concealing the fragile germ with a tough shell protecting it from the outside world, allowing it to survive periods of adverse weather conditions. When examining and observing plants, the artists have also discovered other options of operating in the present, while gently “leaning out into the future.”**
THE WORK IS VIEWABLE BY FLASHLIGHT. ENTER THE SPORE IF READY FOR REED SEEDS STICKING TO CLOTHING. THE INTERIOR HAS BEEN SPRAYED WITH TANSY AND JUNIPER BERRY SCENT.
* A. Kępiński, Lęk (Fear), Warszawa 1977, p. 14.
** See: J. Erbel, Wychylone w przyszłość. Jak zmienić świat na lepsze (Leaning out into the Future. Making the World a Better Place), Kraków 2022.
