How can we imagine different ways of looking at and knowing about plants beyond established botanical systems? Wardian cart is a traveling research station that facilitates other ways of knowing, based on embodied views and experimental methodologies that encourage reflection and empathy toward our environment. The cart tries to re-imagine the colonial botanical artifact “Wardian case” into a tool for workshops to re-frame botanical heritage as a learning tool for a more symbiotic future.
Local
Netherlands
Den Haag, Leiden
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As an individual
First name: Nina Last name: Škerjanc Gender: Female Nationality: Slovenia Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Manče 11a Town: Vipava Postal code: 5271 Country: Slovenia Direct Tel:+386 40 563 052 E-mail:nina.skerjanc96@gmail.com Website:https://www.ninaskerjanc.nl/
Institutions like natural history museums and botanical gardens play a key role in representing botanical knowledge, and by doing so, mediate our relationship with plants. Plants are categorized through scientific taxonomies and systems and are often presented as isolated specimens in pots or herbarium sheets. These established systems of botanical knowledge and representation maintain the nature/culture divide. How can we unlearn the way we relate to nature and imagine different ways of looking at and knowing about plants beyond dominant ways of knowing?
By making a Wardian cart, I built a traveling research station that brings together people and practices that center on our relationship with plants in our local environment. I wanted to create a space that would enable other ways of knowing plants, based on embodied views and methodologies that encourage reflection, empathy, and care toward our environment. The cart is based on the colonial botanical artifact called the “Wardian case” which was used to transport specimens from the colonies. I tried to re-imagine this problematic artifact into a tool for facilitating workshops, through which we view plants not as specimens but as subjects in their own living space to acknowledge that any human action is intentionally or unintentionally entangled with other non-human matters.
During the first gatherings, different perspectives and experiments were shared and developed while being with and thinking through the weeds called “Cattails”. The workshops were based on unpacking our relationship with the plant by using methodologies based on observations, stories, and imaginaries. By questioning not just the systems but also the methods by which knowledge is created, I wanted to re-frame botanical heritage as a learning tool for healing our relationship with plants, to create a more symbiotic future.
Unlearning
Plants and Botanical knowledge
Workshops
Human relationship to Nature
Colonialism
The main objective of this project is to try to reconnect participators with nature and to question the way we normally learn about plants and how is that affecting our relationship with them. My goal is to share methods and ways of thinking I learned through my research, to inspire everyone involved to question the status quo and experiment with different perspectives and methodologies in their own field of interest. To be able to achieve a future where human and human actions would not be positioned outside the discourse of nature but a part of it, we will need to change the way we think about nature. That in my opinion is the first step towards a more sustainable living. To be able to act and make in a way that does not exploit nature or benefit just us, we need to be thought empathy and care towards all the other non-humans that we deeply depend on. With being thought only through the scientific lens of objectivity represented in schools or museums, I noticed a lack of different knowledges and perspectives which would encourage embodied, tactile connections and care. Especially in turbulent times of climate change and 6th mass extinction, the ability to think in more plural terms should be encouraged in order to re-think our relationship with nature which is becoming more and more complex.
The goal of this initiative is to re-connect participators with the non-human actors in their everyday environment and with that establish a sense of belonging and care towards it. Throughout the experience I want to challenge the visitor's perspective by questioning why we think and look at nature the way we do, how is that affecting our current relationship with it and what should we change to heal our relationship with it. The exercises are guided through the lens of questioning the paradigms surrounding plants and nature, which encourages the participant to re-think the concepts or ideas that they take for granted. Most people take that as an eye-opening experience claiming “I never thought of it like this before”, which lies at the core of the experience. Making people aware that there is more than one way of seeing or understanding the world we live in and that our “western” way of thinking is a perspective influenced by our history and culture, which is just one among many others.
This project is an example of embodied, on-site learning outside the institutions and their specifications. This initiative can or should be connected to institutions but should not be managed by them, to avoid the power systems of knowledge like differing between who knows better or what knowledge is more worthy. This is project is therefore also an effort to decolonize botanical knowledge and acts as an entry point to the discussion of colonialism in institutions, by questioning not just the systems but also the methods by which knowledge is created, by who, and for whom.
The initiative is imagined as an open space for discussion, welcoming to all the people interested in participating without any requirements. The inclusive mode of learning is established with the view that there are no differences made between the participating professionals and enthusiasts to balance the power dynamics in the group. The non-human communities, like plants we encounter, are also perceived to be a part of our community and therefore handled with respect. In the exercises we engage in there is no wrong or better answers, since the workshop is not framed as a scientific exploration but as an exploration of our subjective relationship to plants, which has no one true answer. During the workshop, the status quo of institutional botanical knowledge and its exclusions or isolations are questioned through emerging conversations.
Until now the participants of the workshops were gathered through posting on social media, posters, word of mouth, and specific e-mail invitations. Most of the participants were students and adults, with an affinity towards plants or were interested in my methodological approach. The outcome of the workshop is not specified for each individual, so the time we spend outside affects each individual differently. However, In the designated time for feedback and reflection at the end of the workshop, all the participants had a positive attitude toward it. They claimed that even at times when they did not know how to relate to the plant, they were happy to be allowed to play and explore since that is something they are not used to doing anymore. They felt more motivated to learn more about multiple plants and after the workshop, some claimed they started noticing the plant a lot more in their everyday life. I also noticed their greater appreciation of the plant we were discussing and its importance. I think this shows a good first step toward the participant’s sense of belonging and reconnecting to nature.
In the research phase, I was collaborating with Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, which allowed me access to scientists dealing with botany and botanical collections. I was also collaborating with reed farmers in Naarden where I could learn hands-on about the plant for the workshop I organized. Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag was also included in ways of promoting my project as well as including me in their Open day event on which I conducted another workshop. The project also received Stichting tot Steun award with a grant to continue the project and develop its potential. I am currently reaching out to institutions and art spaces which would allow me to reach wider audiences to conduct more workshops and contact various professionals for possible collaborations.
The field I wanted to re-frame through this project is the botanical practice or knowledge about plants and how that affects the way we relate to them. In my interviews with multiple scientists specializing in plants or other species, I noticed their deep care and affection towards the organisms they researched. This emotional connection which went beyond professional needs played the part in how they perceived the world around them. Since they were trying to protect the organisms they studied, they showed more inclination towards sustainable actions and awareness. Even though their affection could not manifest in their work, I saw an opportunity to share the stories through this artistic project. The experts were aware of the historical problematics of objective knowledge and the erasure of other indigenous knowledges and therefore found the idea of pluralizing the scope of understanding organisms from different perspectives necessary.
By doing the workshops on the field I had to design with the methodologies that would focus on reflection, empathy, and entanglements toward the plant and the environment in which we share. The traditional botanical way of observing and naming plants is problematic from the perspective that it is strictly objective and does not allow any subjective observations or thoughts that would encourage care toward the subject. Therefore, the plant becomes an isolated object rather than a subject unconditionally entangled with us and other beings in their ecosystem. Taking the “observer” outside of the equation, therefore, leads to a lack of responsibility for our actions and detachment towards the “observed”. The traditional botany we learn at institutions (schools, museums) is necessary, but should that be the only way we learn about other beings in our environment, especially in times of environmental collapse?
My wish is to bring back the sense of responsibility and co-dependence in ways of learning about plants by encouraging embodied and situated practices. Therefore I used the Wardian cart to travel around the city of den Haag to the spaces where a certain plant resides (parks, pavements) and interacts with other beings in their environment. By going to the plant instead of taking the plant outside of its living space, we could learn directly from the plant by smelling, feeling, listening, observing, and noticing. To document the experiences and to develop an alternative archive or imaginative herbarium, I used methods like reflections, storytelling, conversations, and imaginaries.
To continue this project I want to use traveling workshops to visit local parks, gardens, and institutions to create a small community of people interested in alternative plant narratives and inspire them to change paradigms in their own fields. The project’s aim is also to collaborate with various professionals to reflect on their perspectives on plants which could be shared during the event. The traveling format would also allow me to go to school backyards or infiltrate botanical gardens to offer another perspective on plants to the visitors of institutions presenting botanical knowledge.
In the workshops, we always wanted to focus on one specific plant and from that zoom out on how it is connected to us and other organisms. For my research methods and workshop activities I often draw inspiration from scientific techniques but used it in a different more experimental way which would allow the participants to be creative. For example, I used “Cyanotype”, which was one of the first photography techniques to document algae specimens, as a way to interact with a plant and document the visitor’s engagement with the plant. The participants were free to create a “Gentle cyanotype” of the plant paying attention not to damage the plant and then write a letter to it, to practice looking at plants as another living subject on which we are dependent.
Besides that, I created a “Field guide” with is guiding the workshop by asking questions rather than giving answers. The questions vary from the individual’s entanglements, attachments, and co-dependency to the plant, to more playful exercises like switching perspectives with a plant or conducting an interview with it. The methods were set up as facilitators rather than a finite set of rules, with a focus on allowing and encouraging multiple perspectives and ways of knowing rather than erasing or negating them. Each workshop is concluded with a discussion in which we reflect on our findings and feelings or feedback after the experience.
Since the workshops act on a local level by providing alternative perspectives on plants in the cities visitors live in or live close to, the people involved get more attached to the ecosystem because they can relate to it. The plants presented in workshops are usually involving “weeds” or other plants they encounter in the environment they live in. Even tho the visitors might know or not know the plants we discuss, the workshop allows them to form connections to the plants around them and start noticing them wherever they go. The power to know more about the plants that share the same habitat can give people a sense of belonging which makes them more likely to care about their environment.
Therefore this initiative could be implemented in multiple places, mainly in the urban spaces which hinder our connection to the land and in western countries where the ideological baseline for the dualistic divide between culture and nature exists. By unlearning the ideas of human exceptionalism which these dualisms enable, we can make the first step towards a more sustainable future by being aware that we are inherently connected and dependent on other species and that our priorities lie with finding more symbiotic ways of living.
The initiative has developed In a form of materialized concepts, values, and methodologies but has yet to be developed in form of an application where an official collaboration(s) would be established in order to organize multiple events and workshops for reconnecting with nature. With some funding, I want to bring the project to the stage where I could organize free workshops open to everyone. I am aiming to focus on collaborating with institutions like botanical gardens, museums, universities, and art spaces as an external partner in which I could offer workshops and methodological tools as a part of their program. I also want to work site-specific on a national level which would be determined by the space of collaborating institution, so for that, I would need to build more “Wardian cart” stations or imagine different formats through which I can communicate my ideas. Since the workshops are site-specific depending on plants that live in a certain place in a certain ecosystem the workshops would need to be adjusted depending on the location of the event. Therefore, I would need to conduct a lot of research and preparation about the plants we would discuss for which I would need to connect with professionals who can offer me their knowledge about a specific plant. That is why I am planning to connect also to the university which could allow me access to professors or students studying botany, ethnobotany, or horticulture.
