Overview

Winner of the 2019 Outstanding Academic Titles award in Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Why Look at Plants? proposes a thought-provoking and fascinating look into the emerging cultural politics of plant-presence in contemporary art. Through the original contributions of artists, scholars, and curators who have creatively engaged with the ultimate otherness of plants in their work, this volume maps and problematizes new intra-active, agential interconnectedness involving human-non-human biosystems central to artistic and philosophical discourses of the Anthropocene. Plant’s fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space constitutes a wake-up-call to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and ontological crisis. Why Look at Plants? challenges readers’ pre-established notions through a diverse gathering of insights, stories, experiences, perspectives, and arguments encompassing multiple disciplines, media, and methodologies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Giovanni Aloi
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Weight:   0.672kg
ISBN:  

9789004409583

ISBN 10:   9004409580
Pages:   282
Publication Date:   08 August 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments List of Figures Notes on Contributors About This Book Introduction: Why Look at Plants?   Giovanni Aloi Part 1: Forest  1 Lost in the Post-Sublime Forest  Giovanni Aloi  2 The Humblest Props Now Play a Role   Caroline Picard  3 Ungrid-able Ecologies: Becoming Sensor in a Black Oak Savannah  Natasha Myers  4 An Open Book of Grass  Jenny Kendler  Part 2: Trees  5 Trees: Upside-Down, Inside-Out, and Moving  Giovanni Aloi  6 Animation, Animism … Dukun Dukun & DNA  Lucy Davis  7 Tree Wound Portraits  Shannon Lee Castleman  8 Contested Sites: Forest as Uncommon Ground  Greg Lee Ruffing  9 Quercus velutina, Art of Fiction, No. 11111011  Lindsey French Part 3: Garden  10 Falling from Grace  Giovanni Aloi  11 Hortus Conclusus: The Garden of Earthly Mind  Wendy Wheeler  12 Eden’s Heirs: Biopolitics and Vegetal Affinities in the Gardens of Literature  Joela Jacobs  13 Thoreau’s Beans  Michael Marder Part 4: Greenhouse  14 The Greenhouse Effects  Giovanni Aloi  15 Solarise    Luftwerk  16 The Glass Shields the Eyes of the Plant: Darwin’s Glasshouse Study  Heidi Norton  17 The Lichen Museum  Laurie Palmer Part 5: Store  18 Hyperplant Shelf-Life  Giovanni Aloi  19 Life in the Aisles  Linda Tegg 20 Roomba Rumba: Interview with Katherine Behar  Fatma Çolakoğlu and Ulya Soley  21 Home Depot Throwing Out Plants    Various Contributors Part 6: House  22 Presence, Bareness, and Being-With  Giovanni Aloi  23 Houseplants as Fictional Subjects  Susan McHugh  24 Seeing Green: The Climbing Other  Dawn Sanders  25 Plant Radio  Amanda White Part 7: Laboratory  26 Psychoactives and Biogenetics  Giovanni Aloi  27 Of Plants and Robots: Art, Architecture and Technoscience for Mixed Societies  Monika Bakke  28 Boundary Plants  Sara Black  29 The Illustrated Herbal  Tova Flores Index Part 8: Of Other Spaces  30 (Brief) Encounters  Giovanni Aloi  31 Places of Maybe: Plants “Making Do” Without the Belly of the Beast  Andrew Yang  32 The Neophyte   Lois Weinberger  33 Herbarium Perrine: Interview with Mark Dion   Interviewer:Giovanni Aloi  34 Burning Flowers: Interview with Mat Collishaw   Interviewer:Giovanni Aloi  35 A Program for Plants: In Conversation, Coda  Giovanni Aloi, Brian M. John, Linda Tegg and Joshi Radin Bibliography Index

Reviews

The emergence of the botanical from quiet, passive existence that constantly hums around us to active/interactive politicization on gallery walls, in installations, and in critical studies is so potent that it has become a full-fledged art movement. This book both unravels and invites an artistic reimagining of the human relationship to plants, in all its manifestations. [...] in light of the ongoing environmental crisis, the book is invaluable. [... It] could not be more timely. -- J. Natal, Columbia College Chicago, Choice Magazine, September 2019, Vol. 57 No. 1.

Author Information

Giovanni Aloi is an art historian in modern and contemporary art specializing in the representation of animals and plants in contemporary art. Aloi currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York and London, and Tate Galleries. He is the Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (www.antennae.org.uk). He is the author of Art & Animals (2011) and Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (2018). With Caroline Picard, Aloi is the co-editor of the University of Minnesota Press series Art after Nature.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions