I will create a performative lecture on apologies to plants. I will guide you through year-long, durational work where I apologized to a different plant every day. This specific lecture is taking that very internal artwork and sharing it with others as kin of non-human creatures. I want to perform this at Flow because of the chance to engage with the outdoors and a broad range of communities. These apologies take the form of paintings, written text, speech act, and ceramics. Some are societal while some are personal. Here are two examples:

3/17/2022 I am sorry to corn. Monsanto has genetically altered you into a monstrosity. We grow you and then use you to power our mechanical monstrosities. You are a major token in our energy revolution and it is not fair to you. We make you into monoculture fields and don’t give you a choice. Most of you do not get to grow like the Three Sisters from Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer shows how you could be grown in community with other botanical creatures but we genetically modify your growing cycles for the biggest, most powerful bounty. I am sorry that we take advantage of you.

06/06/2022 I said sorry to a little flower that I contemplated using to make an impression in clay. I did not end up working with the flower as a mark making tool, but even having that thought… it reflects my own viewpoint of power over the non-human. I should not have the right to just take a life with no repercussions.

At Flow Symposium, I want to isolate this one performative moment; an apology. An apology can be a pure transformational moment: It can also be superficial. Through this daily practice of apologizing and in performing these apologies for others, I’m pursuing the failure of the utopian dream; while at once maintaining the hope that lives within it. Failure here is not defined by the ability to reach a certain goal but as an opportunity to look at utopia from the other side. I constantly question if non-human, botanical creatures get any benefit from my apologies, but I feel enlivened to forge ahead and try this method of reimagining human-plant relationships. Failure becomes a propositional device. We might never be forgiven by the plants, but this shouldn’t deter us from trying to connect.

In my performative lecture, I will describe how my durational performance began with a dream. I dreamed of an orange-yellow light shining above my pillow. This light told me to apologize to a plant sincerely every day for a year. The part that I keep coming back to of this magical-realist dream, is that in the moment the light touched me, I experienced a moment of unparalleled joy that to this day has not been surpassed. This dream is the origin story of my project but not the motivation. I reveal it here to make something clear, that a false apology is the worst sort of betrayal. I perform through intense earnest actions while knowing my proposition is absurd. The audience may laugh or cry, but as long as we come together in even one genuine moment, we will have met my dream head on.