Annette Arlander : Performing And Thinking With Trees

How to collaborate with other beings we share this planet with is a central task for artists today. The starting point for these texts was the realization that we must find ways of relating to the environment that are meaningful from the perspectives of the ecological crisis and a new-materialist and post-humanist understanding of our place in the world. They suggest that artistic research can contribute by allowing for and generating hybrid forms of performing and thinking. Performing and Thinking with Trees summarises the various strategies of lens-based work used in two artistic research projects by Annette Arlander, namely Performing with Plants (2017–2019) and Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees (2020–2021). The focus of these essays is on artistic practices, enhanced by some philosophical discussions related to vegetal life. They seek to contribute to critical plant studies as well as to demonstrate what the outputs of artistic research beyond doctoral work might look like.