Let’s talk botany. The contemporary world, by orchestrating the material conditions of movement, facilitates our transplantations. Flowerpots, nurseries, greenhouses, open country. Is it only coincidence that modernism was from start to finish a tribute to the root? It was radical. In the course of the twentieth century, artistic (and political) manifestos appealed for a return to the origin of art or of society, to their purification, with the aim of rediscovering their essence. It was a matter of cutting off useless branches, subtracting, eliminating, rebooting the world from a single master principle that was presented as the foundation of a liberating new language. Let us wager that our own century’s modernity will be invented precisely in opposition to all radicalism, dismissing both the bad solution of re-enrooting in identities as well as the standardization of imaginations decreed by economic globalization. For contemporary creators are already laying the foundations for a radicant art - […] To be radicant means setting one’s roots in motion, staging them in heterogeneous contexts and formats, denying them the power to completely define one’s identity, translating ideas, transcoding images, transplanting behaviors, exchanging rather than imposing.
Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant, 2009Let's talk Botany
Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
What if we tell a different history
The opposition between Us and THEM has been — well, still is — one of humanity's most persistent ways of arranging ourselves in the world. It has caused wars; and, oh no, another one just escalated. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Us and Them presumes autonomous identities with distinct borders, identities that must be defended by arms. And it presumes roots. A rootedness somewhere, in something.
Not by accident does the root require territory. Identity secretly claims land.
And still, in the twenty-first century, in the midst of a digital revolution, we remain grounded in the land. We are reminded that more than half of the world's GDP depends on nature, on botany, not data. We remain entangled with soils.
So, what if trans- had become the decisive concept of modern history rather than identity? Rather than the root?
Could we imagine a world in which we are unable to conceive of ourselves as complete unless we transfer, translate, transmit, traverse? A world in which existence itself is unfinished unless it crosses into something else? Unless it risks itself in passage?
Then transfer would not merely be logistics, the movement of goods, information or people from one place to another. It would become a way of relating. To others. To languages. To places. To the planet. To the innumerable forms of life that continuously make and unmake us.
Or? Has trans- already become one of the master concepts of our age? Not as translation, but as transaction. The transnational. The transfer of capital. Data streams. Supply chains. Even body parts crossing borders. Perhaps trans- is no less entangled with power than the root. Perhaps it does not replace identity but accelerates its economisation. Or perhaps both—the root and the flow—have learned to live remarkably well together.
of our Imagination
