Plant After Reading is an exploratory arts-based research project using trash; food ‘waste’, seeds, and repurposing plastic recyclables through an ecologically focused artistic practice. The project is centered on creating non-commissioned/non-permissioned public art installations from rubbish planted throughout the community in the form of edible organic plants. Using rubbish, plants, and seeds as a medium for atoning food packaging waste and negligent acts of capitalism/ government, we intend to expand notions of artistic and aesthetic experiences through autonomous exchange. Central to the project is an attempt to negotiate and disrupt the discourse of unattainable sustainable (eco/social) food production through gardening and cultivation of plants, which we claim as art.
Intention and actualization rarely meet in our artistic processes. We intended to collect seeds from food and use grocery rubbish (recyclables) to create small sprouting organic edible plants that we place throughout the city. Our hope is to use food ‘waste’ and food packaging to create new food gifted to anyone who would accept a free plant and attempt to nurture it to production. We dream of endeavoring to unnoticeably disrupt supply chains of food by adding more food offered for free, anchored in what we are claiming as a collaborative artistic expression. We know, that in actuality, this project will not solve the large social structural issues surrounding food production and access stemming from colonialism, hypergentrification, racism, and economic stratification. This inquiry is about us, my kid and I, dreaming up solutions and about the potential of gestures to enact what we can imagine— a pivot towards.
— R.eyes