Artists Statement

Theme Architectures – Territoires Subtheme Symbiotic Imaginaries

Keywords: Plants, chlorophyll, botany, participative installation, detour of the extraction process, fragility, colors degradation, conservation, envelopment in the color, trans-species relation.

Espace vert is an installation-workshop that develops as it is presented and participated in. In a space resembling a chemistry laboratory, entirely lit with green light at 550 nanometers, participants are invited to experience the extraction process, crushing with a pestle, decantation with alcohol, filtration, evaporation, all in order to create the chlorophyll ink of a plant that they will have previously picked in the area. Under this green light, the participants create a set of botanical drawings of each plant, using the chlorophyll extracted from the plant itself as the only pigment. This green dye decomposes under white light, as chlorophyll is photosensitive to red and blue light. Only green light can preserve its color. A work on the nomenclature of colors is carried out collectively and the colors are listed. The participants are asked to share their personal connection to plants around a ‘chat table’. This installation on the vulnerability of plants aims to provide an immersive space in which to come up with new narratives on the common imagination and trans-species relations, as well as relocating human-plant encounters to this new, green-lit environment, where memories can be shared, and new experiences had.

• Anouk Daguin (FR) is an artist and has been a doctoral student in Art and Science for three years. An artist of encounters and gossip, she is inspired by the scientific process or tools that become the mediators of encounters. She explores, through participatory projects, the way interactions between humans, plants and microorganisms are woven in a defined setting: nursing homes, agricultural environments, institutional places to give birth to new narratives on the porositý of the world. Her research-creation work is supported by the Arts & Sciences Chair at École Polytechnique, École des Arts Déco – PSL, the Carasso Foundation, and the Biotechnology Chair at CentraleSupElec.
• Jean-Marc Chomaz is a physical artist at Ladhyx, CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique, University Paris Saclay, France, Jean-Marc’s work explores the invisible space of colors, the spectrum of electromagnetic waves that travel in Time-space and connect us to the past, to the cosmos but also to the living world, plants, animals, men, Aliens. Sepia of a photo too long exposed to the sun or faded green of the clover that the pages of an old book leafed through distractedly release from their oblivion.