A Leakage of Wholes (iterations)
Betty Russ
Gallery 4
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Popular culture uses speculative science fiction, fantasy and horror as a means to both ferment, and ignore, mounting eschatological terror. Within the context of imminent global catastrophe, speculation around plant consciousness and monstrous plants, as manifested in both philosophy and popular culture, is a site of productive tension concerning the vegetal, the more-than-human, and the future. Compelled by the unreal, unimaginable, the weird and eerie, queerness, and provocative ideas, experimental material investigations emerge of other possible worlds to describe these tensions.
While mining the polyvalent discourse of retro speculative science fiction as a site of research, the vegetal frequently emanates signs of what has been and what is to come. Weeds, or rather, plants supposedly out of place, have an immutable loquacity in the knowledge they hold of the capitalocene, and tell clairvoyant, veracious narratives of where we are headed.
Presented by Firstdraft in partnership with Metro Arts, Brisbane.