Stowaways is an interactive, site-specific installation, which deals with archiving biological data of plants located in the central part of the greenhouse at the Botanical Garden “Jevremovac” in Belgrade. The work is based on mapping 25 selected species of plants, which exist in the protected space, along with samples and interactive objects, allowing learning about their characteristics.
Selected plants are labeled based on their native country and the location where they originate from, with the indication of their natural habitat. Those locations and the final destination of their migration form their living context. The archiving process includes a segment of reviewing the essence of these plants. They are biologically in the eventual necessity to adapt to a new artificial habitat within a greenhouse, which in this way assumes a role in emphasising their essence, function, importance, and unusualness…
As natural–living exhibits in a new environment, they gain an additional sociological connotation. Through phytosociology i.e., plant sociology, a group of plant species that usually live together is studied and described in terms of their vegetative environment at a given territory. A specific community of plants in this case is considered a social unit, the product of certain conditions, present and past, and can exist only when such conditions are met.
Along with the archiving of basic data for the survival of marked species, a database is compiled, which additionally includes exploring the collective symbiosis of cellulose and bacteria of selected plants with another type of cellulose, scoby, which develops through a natural process under artificial conditions as well.
Through the work Stowaways, the author initiates reflection on the interaction of natural and artificial environments of living and non-human systems, while deepening our understanding of the flora and their ecological role in a changing world.
Collaborators
Dr. Bojan Kenig, Center for Promotion of Science;
Ivana Živković, Institute of Botany and Jevremovac Botanical Garden, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade
Slobodan Vračarević, Makerspace, Center for Promotion of Science
Stowaways: database
