Vegetal Opposition
performance-installation
duration 45min.

was developed at DANCE RESIDENCE |TO WALK OR NOT TO WALK|
Performers: Ksenia Zemskova, Lena Petiko / Shevchenko, Daria Chermyanina,
Lydia Antonova, Anna Demidova, Anya Simakina, Polina Zvyagintseva
Curators: Masha Yashnikova-Tkachenko, Dasha Plokhova

Solyanka Gallery, Moscow, 2022
Mycelium festival, Moscow, 2022

The urban environment is subject exclusively to human needs and interests, but we should not forget about other communities that exist nearby, in particular plants. Flowerbeds, alleys and parks are devoted to them, but nevertheless, walking down the street one can always come across « troublemakers» plants in cracks, niches, on the roofs of houses and in other unintended places. How do they manage to survive within a hostile regime? Performance examines the environment as a source of knowledge and shows the results of an investigation of plant resistance tactics to external structures, their logic of adaptation and territorial occupation. The research tool was empathy: acceptance of the other, co-being with them through feelings of tonus, speed, and attempts to reproduce in one’s own body the reactions of plants and their ways of adaptation.

The work included:
-dancers looked for objects in the urban environment - specific plants and explored the affects produced by contemplating them. Verbally described them and discussed the forms and processes of the relationship between plants and the environment.
- In rehearsals they explored found affect in their own bodies and worked out types of movements, gestures, and ways of communicating with the environment.

Seven female performers took part in the performance. The video work involved photographic documentation that the performers made during the laboratory, as well as audio recordings of their voices, which explained the survival and resistance tactics of a personally selected plant by each participant.

Publication http://aroundart.org/2022/07/03/progulka-na-solyanke/