Borrowed Scenery

Borrowed Scenery is a story about an alternate reality (past, future or parallel) where plants are a central aspect of human society. Weaving through the physical spaces of everyday life, the story can be tangibly experienced wherever plants and humans interact. Borrowed Scenery encourages us to see urban plant life with fresh eyes and re-imagine our cities as places of sinuous interaction between humans and plants: where plants don’t just provide us with food and materials but become neighbours, teachers, and gateways to the planetary ‘Other’.

Borrowed scenery holds up a magnifying glass to reveal vegetation where we would usually overlook it: in cracks between buildings, on our plates, in emerging technologies and age-old stories. Whereas in our reality humans cultivate plants (or so we think), in Borrowed Scenery plants can cultivate humans and absorb human culture into their growth and form.

Borrowed Scenery is about the dissolution of borders between reality and fiction, mysticism and technology, nature and culture. It is a story that wants to become reality. By 'borrowing' the setting of everyday life in the city, it attempts to infuse our habitual activities, such as walking or eating, with a vision of a possible future where insatiable economic growth is superseded by an atmosphere-based economy, where nature has a voice.

Find out more at http://lib.fo.am/parn/

Browse through the online archives using the "patabotanical mission dispatch device" at http://borrowed-scenery.net

Visual documentation: https://vimeo.com/album/2250717

Borrowed Scenery is a part of FoAM's European project PARN and the Electrified project of Vooruit, SMAK and Timelab.

Created: 15 Aug 2012 / Updated: 23 Oct 2021

Related

Supported by: