Karine Bonneval (FR),
in collaboration with ecophysiologist Eric Badel
Vertimus, straighten up with the plant
Practicable installation, 2019
Still from the film. Emilie Pouzet and the polar in the sphere, 2019, courtesy of the artists.
Can we straighten up like a plant—by engaging our shared sense of gravity and bodily limits? The first film was shot at INRAe PIAF in France, where a young poplar, placed horizontally, is filmed frame by frame as it gradually straightens over two weeks. The illuminated lab sphere is used to study how plants deprived of gravity reveal proprioception, or the ability to sense and adjust their own form. In this device, a plant is tilted and slowly rotated to observe how it senses the boundaries of its own body and adjusts its form to remain upright. In the second film, a performer attempts to mirror the plant’s micro-movements, postures nearly impossible for the human body. Together, the two projections form a duet: two beings, two timelines, one shared choreography. On the carpet, two tilted plants accompany the sculptural devices. By leaning at 35°, visitors are invited to watch the film and to enter the plant’s temporality. It’s a sensory experiment that activates our inner ear and proprioception, allowing us, momentarily, to inhabit another rhythm. A shared moment with a plant—through the language of movement and perception.
Karine Bonneval’s practice is nourished by a dialogue between art and science. She questions the way we perceive and represent the plant world. Her installations propose alternative ecologies where breathing, moving and listening with plants becomes a shared experience. She invites us to “phytomorphism”, a sensory immersion in connection with air, soil and gravity. Her projects, both sensitive and collective, develop rhizomatically, involving actors from a variety of disciplines. In collaboration with plants and environmental science laboratories, her research explores new ways of interacting with other living things.