Plant/Human Borderland Jamming

Abstract

Artists and scholars alike are turning to plants as key allies in our attempts to go beyond colonial modes of engaging with the environment through extraction, control, categorization and the human-centric discourse of Anthropocene thinking. This paper will adopt the methods of “critical plant thinking” and “multispecies ethnography” to investigate creative modes of telling “lively stories” about two particular species of plants made nomadic during colonial seed scattering – Bitou Bush (Chrysanthemoides monilifera) and Aloe (Aloe ferox). Both plants moved through botanical/colonial conquest from South Africa to Australia for ornamental reasons, yet have become a vilified weed and economically promising respectively. Turning to embodied and humble practices of composting, foraging, crafting and care, this article feels through recent practices of tactical and food based art, combining theory with ethnographic narrative that details the making of actual jam with two plants protagonists. Developing the concepts of “multispecies jamming” and “DIY violence,” this paper grapples with the presumption that difference translates to ontological separation, and ultimately asks for a valuing of plants beyond human use, opening ourselves up to embodied, vulnerable ways of ingesting stories and cross species relationships. How do practices of grounded care intersect with violence in ways that may develop tools and methods to compost the Anthropocene with plants front of mind? How might this help us to unseal ourselves from complexity and separation in times of mass extinction and destruction?