The Place of Plants: Spatiality, Movement, Growth

Authors

  • Michael Marder Ikerbasque / University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz

Abstract

Considering the ways in which plants move and shape the places of their growth, this article suggests that performing arts should account for the vegetal (and not only animal) model of movement. The implications of including plants in the category of “moving beings” are vast, as they touch upon the dynamic relation between immanence and transcendence, questions of time-scales appropriate to different kinds of beings and their responses to the environment, and phenomenologies of place corresponding to diverse forms of life. I argue that although, for humans, performing vegetal movement is “performing the unperformable,” art grants us a unique access point to experiencing what is entailed in such movement and in the places wherein it unfolds.

Author Biography

Michael Marder, Ikerbasque / University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz

[email protected]

Michael Marder (michaelmarder.org) is IKERBASQUE Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. His most recent books include The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium and Pyropolitics: When the World Is Ablaze.

References

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Published

10-04-2015

How to Cite

“The Place of Plants: Spatiality, Movement, Growth”. 2015. Performance Philosophy 1 (1): 185-94. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2015.1128.

Issue

Section

Non-human Performance Philosophy

How to Cite

“The Place of Plants: Spatiality, Movement, Growth”. 2015. Performance Philosophy 1 (1): 185-94. https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2015.1128.