In the course Insularities, Immunities, Communities, we investigate the conception of community – and practice thereof, in the Western and Global North tradition – that is in imperialist racist capitalism. Community has been dominantly understood alongside the lines of insularities and immunities, that is, principles of separation between territories, between bodies, between the ones that count and the ones that don’t, the ones that are exposed and the ones that are included, the ones that are predated and the ones that are allowed to flourish. Together with writers, artists, theoreticians and activists, we will look for other ways to practice and understand community. 

This semester, the examination of politics plants is a way to continue this investigation of the regimes of separation and domination occurring in postcolonial capitalism – but also to look at other ways, more than human ways to work together, to make kin, to love – how to make community in a radically different way.

The main inquiry line this semester will be:

How to speak about, with and through plants and how plants speak to us. 

Plants, even those who adorn the pages of children’s herbaria or some living rooms of the Global North, are neither neutral nor passive ornaments. Be they observed, (re)-named and classified as botanical objects, extracted and transformed as pharmakon in healing practices, sown and grown as agricultural products, or weaponized as instruments to erase story or to separate lands, plants have always been entangled in (human) politics, especially in relation to the management and treatment of bodies and territories.

In the framework of colonial capitalism, plants have played a crucial role in the dispossession of land and in the extraction of knowledge. They still play a great role in the control of food and the creation of economic dependencies. At the same time, plants provide an habitat for multiple species and people, they have offered shelter for maroons and still do for resistance fighters. They are at the heart of environmental activists’ and indigenous’ struggles as their devastation represents a major issue for the future of so many, and of the planet.

But first and foremost, plants are living, sentient and intelligent beings. They are the only beings capable of biosynthesising organic matter using light energy, water and carbon dioxide. Over millions of years, they have created an atmosphere conducive to the development of other forms of life. They have their own agency, which the (Western) dualist philosophy has been unable to see and understand, putting them at an ontological distance from the humans and deeming them as mere resources.

So we would like to ask, together with artists and theorists: how can human speak to plants, and how do plants speak to humans? – and what does that even mean, ecologically, aesthetically, and politically?

We will think, speak, work about, with and through plants.

To do so, we will do to different places and work through different formats:

We will do artist’s studio visits.

We will visit exhibitions from the Klima Biennale Wien

We will have a two-days workshop at the very End of June with artist Uriel Orlow, conceived of as the peak or the semester, towards which we will work together.

Participation in discussions, attendance, collaboration & fulfilment, including the realisation of personal projects over the semester. The first meeting and final workshop are mandatory.

Please note that this course consists of two parts. Anne Faucheret delivers the theoretical part, and antoine Turillon  the practical part – even this separation will not be as clear as presented here. Please register for both.