Installation photos by Studio Flusser for MeetFactory. Performance photos by Sara Pereira.

Notes to the seers (2021)

Guided tasting (installation, sound)

In this ongoing series, participants are invited to taste a number of edible plants associated with herbal contraceptive medicine. Artemisia, queen Anne's lace (a type of wild carrot), and rue, the first three in this series, are plants that grow wild in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The project invites participants to collectively investigate plant material that travels across geographical, political, and cultural borders. The act of tasting is understood here as a simultaneously one of relation, capable of consolidating a connection between human and plant beings that nurtures forms of queer kinship; and one of assimilation and integration, where consumption becomes the currency that governs perceptions of value—echoing the colonial power relations that manage the porosity of borders. Who is allowed to be where, and how? Who is allowed to cross borders—which ones, and under what circumstances? Once we have crossed a border, what performances are demanded of queer and BIPOC communities?

Adapting to the difficulties of COVID-19 pandemic, the project has so far taken shape in three different ways. In the summer of 2021 at MeetFactory, in Prague, the public was invited to take away packages containing samples of two different plants—artemisia and rue,—which could be used to prepare herbal teas or tasted in small quantities. Whilst experiencing the plants, the public was encouraged to listen to two sound pieces, accessible online through QR codes, meant to guide their encounters with these plants. In September 2021, a small in-person guided tasting was held at The Institute for Endotic Research in Berlin, Germany. This time, the public was invited to experience a small selection of hors d'oeuvres created by the artist—wild carrot-infused popcorn, rue-flavoured cachaça, and grapes dipped in artemisia-flavoured chocolate. In the third iteration of this project, the sound pieces for the guided tasting will become part of the broadcasts of Radio Arts Catalyst.