Plant project texts by Merel Cladder

v1
Non-art - say practice or plant life - that goes art. No need for shivers up the spine, but still, watch it.
On view: Process, no product. Or no objects to keep. Just possibly to pass on or discard. There’s your Fluxus gene.
In a similar lingo, Minimalist, Abstract Expressionist and possibly Color Field genes, just all off-canvas. Much green, here.

Land Art? Possibly, if brought back into the studio. And that just for the while it lasts. Plants are no stones.

There’s the blending of landscapes and a carving up of territories, of both mind and matter, as well as self and surroundings - like it’s all cake.
Herzogian, a touch. The testing, scrutiny, exploration, trip, exaltation, hitting on limits, but also the noughties’ stare and chuckle.

Techno, revisited – or rather a particular episode and individual experience of it. And one noun to its symbolical language, a plant with a cult status, cultivated. Experience corroborated by means of a selected set of fairly random, scattered narratives – per consumer feedback and user ratings.

The ‘Eat me/Don’t eat me’. ‘Touch me/Don’t touch me’. Plants sending out varying signals.

The planter, admittedly artist - if no Fritz Haeg or Derek Jarman or Maria Sibylla Merian - is watching.

So there’s the vision thing and the check by image-reason and visual practice. Experiments both take time, have an end to them and may but need not be repeated. And render tested, articulated visions, pictures of which feed well back into next ones.

v2
Plants as multiples. Well yeah, plants tend to multiply and be multiple. Like to grow in the wild, too. Urban, non-urban, don’t care. One can step in, be with them, go plant, go a crew. Crop and clear. And think about the commons. The commons – ‘cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society’, says one. ‘All gifts, all shared’, says another. What was “a society” again? Never mind. Definitions of SP23. Network 23. Free techno, free party. Then-there-now.

The trip to relive. To relive a so-called significant event. A ciggy burn then scar tissue here, the smell of fruit and juice and kisses there – now jalapeño pepper, now musk. Tracks and songs about these – though maybe better play Music For Your Plants. And while losing fears – trust, straight men, stasis… but heyya 22nd century, who needs these really – just don’t lose your sense of humour with it. (“She has closed her eyes”.) Like, coming out of that – stronger? That wishful positivolo thinking. Re: process theory. But then, constructive, yes – per reconstruct and while not necessarily positivist, definitely projective, too. It was and by a same stroke new will be. And gotten. Motherboard[.vice.com] reports on new hearts being made out of scar tissue now. Etc. Generic – not so much progress but generative.

Meaning – to reconstruct what is visible each and every day. And differently at night, with fading or flasher lights. Extreme events are bonding – someone says she’d read. Try as you will a different logic… Dumbo, though the cartoon version who manages to fly an all-time fav. Our Lady of the Flowers, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs – another one quotes.

So there’s your vision, call it forecast, call it speculation, if this weren’t so eager. Consumption and vision, consumption of vision; purge and vision, purge of vision. Consumption and purge of – it all. The analytical moment to consumption, basically. Right, bite that apple and go.