DESING
DESING
Regenerative Systems Design
The Botanical Lab
Material Science & Products
Evolutionary Science & Illustration
Science
Travelling Plants
An art residency and exhibit by Goethe Institute Chennai in collaboration with Alliance Francais madras 2024 , travelling through to Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi.
The physical and theoretical starting point for the project Travelling Plants is the Herbarium at the French Institute at Pondicherry, but where does the story of travelling plants actually begin?
Do we look millions of years ago when masses of land shifted across the oceans to meet new ones? Or the seeds that migrated with the first humans and animals who traversed the earth? Do we pin it on early European conquests and trade routes of the 15th century, that are said to have begun the modern capitalist world system, or the creolisation of cultures and the reconfiguration of biodiversity that occurred in the aftermath of colonialism. Additionally, climatic changes across millennia, connected with cosmic, geological and other upheavals, have seen the extinction, transformation and survival of varied species. Simply put, the answer exists within all these, and provides the reason one must look anew, every day, at the science of plants - to understand, respond to, and evaluate the complex and intertwined history of plant and human life.
Projects like this one bring the necessary focus and specificity to the identification of various streams of knowledge pertaining to nature, turning the lens on individual and collective responsibilities that lie in its preservation. Impelled by the vulnerability of the planet in our current times, contemporary discourse must continually develop vocabulary to cope with change – ‘sustainable’ living is no more a possibility without understanding carbon-footprints and intergenerational equity
For instance, ‘Anthropocene’, that divides the blame equally on all human activity, is being replaced by the more direct ‘Capitalocene’ that holds petro-capitalism squarely accountable for global heating.
Institutions such as IFP are both repositories of information and spaces that offer an experimental ground for mapping responses to climate challenges. The five artists had transdisciplinary interactions that offered the gravity of analytical systems and factual data to their creative explorations. They also interacted with beauty and aesthetics of a different kind, embedded in the microcosmic and macrocosmic elements of the botanical world. Amidst a disorienting contemporary, art and science can lend vigour and meaning to each other.
While these artistic projects are not a replacement for activism, artists help us understand the necessity for new languages and value systems, ones that respond to past and present, that create different visions of our collective future - Lina Vincent
Using the device of a timeline, Waylon D’ Souza creates a web of information and overlapping histories. He contrasts and combines indigenous and western knowledge systems, broadly annotating historical relations of power, ethics, economies and nature through a standpoint of creative activism.
The olfactory memory revival shrines contain fossils of petrified wood, coral and asphalt from roads along with a blend of fragrances specific or nostalgic to the timeline.
Below the Sari would be The travelling seed bank kolam co-created with different members of the project with native and introduced species predominantly collected in the southern subcontinent which have traces of heritage colonialism , capitalism and consumerism.
In conjunction with his graduate studies, Waylon travelled to the Western Ghats, Kerala, and several urban markets, collecting plant specimens for his aquaponic experiments. He infused this into his urban afforestation project which has now evolved into ‘The Botanical Lab’ - an ethos for aesthetic and scientific natural systems.This has grown to be a space where you can touch, smell and taste the art; where plants are allowed to manoeuvre freely and multiply. It reflects a healthy permanence of preservation culture where you don’t segregate, but integrate everything into a communion of possibilities.
This communion is not preached in isolation within a single space but at various projects and ecosystems, so much so that these spaces becomes a kind of affective realm for not just for the designer to develop work that contributes towards projects of ecological calibration but also raising a critical call to our own callous ways of interacting and using nature.
The Botanical lab
Observations from wildscapes inspire Waylon's experimentation and prototyping process. Every experience in the wildnerness serves as inspiration and offers insight into the science of natural aesthetic. Waylon employs these observations to create self-sustaining systems where nature acts as a sublime influencer.
Forest Science
Biodiversity mapping in different ecosystems and study of human interventions in ecosystems