Abstract

Plant-Juggling is an ongoing research project that aims to find methods for the co-creation of juggling material between humans and plants in our cities. This project challenges anthropocentric notions in our cultural paradigm and views of human exceptionalism, shifting our perception of human-plant relationships in the public sphere. Through practicing and creating with vegetal beings, plant-juggling acknowledges our assemblages with plants, treating them as agents in public discourse, co-producers of space and partners in circus, rather than how they are normally perceived; as living objects in the backdrop of our everyday landscapes.

In this exposition I will first give a brief context of human-plant relationships in public space from a Critical Plant Studies perspective. By analysing academic resources in the fields of multispecies ethnography, vegetal politics, and urbanism, I will give a brief outline of the socio-ecological relationships of plants and humans in urban public space. In this way, I will also explain how anthropocentric values are reflected and perpetuated in our cities, and how these affect both our daily interactions with plants, as well as urban policy and planning.

Then, I will reflect on how Plant-Juggling understands and applies juggling to create a shift in perception of vegetal beings. I will explain how this project takes an ecological approach to skill and focuses on the ‘tuning’ aspect of the juggling practice. In doing so, I will outline how, when used with these perspectives in mind, juggling can be an effective tool to listen to, respond and evidence plant agency. Furthermore, I will exemplify these arguments by explaining a couple of the exercises that have come out of the research process, showcasing how these principles can be put in action.

The Plant-Juggling Project

Plant-Juggling is an ongoing research project that aims to find methods for the co-creation of juggling material between humans and plants in our cities. This project acknowledges our assemblages with plants as co-producers of space and offer a series of exercises to guide human jugglers into co-creative practice with vegetal beings. In this way, it challenges traditional anthropocentric perspectives and views of human exceptionalism which distort our relationship with plants, reducing them to ‘living objects’ (Exner and Schützenberger, 2018) and a backdrop landscape to our activity. Through developing this research, I have realised that although achieving plant-human ‘co-creation’ in the purest sense of the word might be an impossible task, in the exercise of trying to tune into and create with plants, we begin to see these beings differently, as subjects of power, agents in public discourse and partners in circus.

This is an ongoing research project that began during my time studying in the Performing Public Space MA at Fontys University. In this investigation, I have focused my research to plant-human interactions in an urban context and undertaken experiments in parks and sidewalks. This project explores human-plant relationships in public space discourse through a post-humanist and Critical Plant Studies lens. Slowly it has developed into a multifaceted research process that uses theoretical research, practical juggling experimentation, and visual arts as tools for exploration within  this inquiry.

Plant-Human Public Space

This project views Public Space as a socio-ecological network of multispecies intra-actions[1], that is co-produced by multiple bodies, communities, and configurations. As such, public space is regarded as a decentralized and relational space, in which both human and more-than-human[2] subjects co-construct in their perpetual sharing of process and relationships. When myself or other jugglers approach the task of working with a plant partner to make a juggling sequence, participants and audiences are encouraged to view public space from this unconventional standpoint.

 It is important to note that this is not the common way in which our current social paradigm addresses public space. Overarching societal values of human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and a strong nature/culture divide in our cities, has meant that humans do not normally consider more-than-human beings within our socio-political realm, and that they are not seen as subjects within public space. This perspective has, amongst other things, shaped our relationship with plants and therefore their participation in our cities.

These notions translate into our personal relationships and daily interactions that we have with vegetal beings as well as bigger cultural processes such as public policy, urban planning and legislation. A clear symptom of how our daily relationships with plants are affected in this way is ‘plant blindness’. This is a term coined by J. H. Wandersee and E. E. Schussle which refers to the human inability to notice plants in our environment. This term is not literal, but it refers to a cognitive bias that humans experience in the way that we reduce plants to a collective background landscape (Wandersee & Schussler, 1999). In this way, we barely notice these beings in our daily activities and do not consciously engage with them or acknowledge them. Another example of the repercussions of human exceptionalism upon plants, is how humans have socially constructed a narrative that perceive plants as belonging to certain territories or places in our cities. For example, plants that through time move into another country are considered ‘invasive species’, and unwanted plants in flower gardens or that climb buildings are deemed ‘weeds’ (Head et al., 2014). In turn, although these species are scientifically considered ‘living beings’, since there is no designated space for them in the cities, and without strong legislation or policy to protect them, they become ‘killable life’ (Houston et al., 2017).  Plants that fall under these categories are disposed of without much thought or care.

Plants, Humans, Public Space… and Circus?

When I started this investigation, I had concerns about the limitations that my own juggling practice would pose to the research. Namely, how in many ways circus represent values of human dominance over the more-than-human. In First Open Letter to the Circus: ‘The need to redefine’ Bauke Lievens, dramaturge and scholar, puts into words concerns about my discipline that I have struggled to articulate. As Lievens explains, “the mastering of physically demanding, dangerous techniques and the taming of wild animals can be seen as expressions of a belief in the supremacy of humankind over nature and over natural forces such as gravity” (Lievens, 2015). I began my investigation aware of the limitations of circus vocabulary and wanting to redefine the meaning of my technique.

Thus, instead of perpetuating these ideas of dominance and human exceptionalism in circus, the Plant-Juggling project takes an ecological approach to skill. This approach recognises skill as emergent of its context and variety of actors, both human and more-than-human. Elliot Rooke describes the ecological approach to skill as “a reflection of the quasi-organic way that the networks from which skill arises grow. Intertwined and co-constructed, these ecologies cannot be readily unpicked and broken down” (Rooke, 2023). In his text, 5 D’s of Ecological Skill Rooke introduces five characteristics of ecological approaches, one of them being ‘dialogue’, explaining how skill is shaped through the communication of different actors and the importance of fostering listening and interpretation abilities to understand the languages in which the more-than-human communicates.

Whiles conducting juggling co-creation with plant partners, I have become aware of how inherent traits of my discipline help me connect and communicate with vegetal beings. As a juggler I had trained my ability to adapt to non-humans and my environment. For instance, I had been constantly responding to the emergence of surprising pathways that my juggling balls take during practice and noticing the many ways in which my environment affected my performance of tricks (brightness of lights, texture and temperature of the floor, amongst others). When it came to working with plants, I turned this same sensitivity and awareness towards my new partners and found that I was reacting and adapting to their process, their structure, and their surroundings.

This experience of awareness, adaptation and reaction relates to the concept of ‘tuning’ in the work of circus scholar Vincent Focquet. ‘Tuning’ is a concept that Focquet (2018) borrows from Timothy Morton’s work and repurposes for circus. It is a process of continued listening and adaptation to the subtitle agency of the network of actants that the artist is immersed in, both human and more-than-human. In his thesis Withdrawal Towards a Humble Circus, Focquet argues that there is already ongoing tuning in circus practice, for example, in working with the emergences that I had experienced during practice. Additionally, he remarks, that although tuning as part of circus training has been used towards achieving mastery over non-humans, these same skills can be repurposed into building a network of responsive multidimensional causalities between artist and more-than-human collaborators (Focquet, 2018). Through this project I have tried to build upon this inherent awareness that comes with the juggling practice, doing my best to reapply it within plant and human co-creation.

Juggling with Plants: The Exercises

The Plant-Juggling exercises are a collection of tasks with the purpose of enabling a caring, respectful, and understanding co-creative process between plants and jugglers. The exercises are suggestions for human jugglers on how to approach a plant partner and delve into this artistic endeavour. They have emerged from a variety of sources: some stemmed from collaborating with fellow jugglers in plant co-creation, others from repurposing or curating methods from post-humanist authors for circus, and some from personal practical experimentation. These exercises aim to 1) train a human’s awareness to be able to recognize and lean into the many ways in which they are connected to plants and how this relationship is constant creation, and 2) figure out practical and tangible devising methods for ways in which a human can position themselves to be affected by plants partners.

Tasks to help practice awareness have to do with getting to know and connect with plant partners. A way of doing this can be, for example, through carrying out a critical thinking botanical investigation where the human takes time to research and get to know the living process of their plant partners. Being mindful, however, of the reductionist descriptions of plants as objects of study within botanic studies and biology. Another useful exercise for jugglers to be able to understand their connection to plants is David Abram’s Inter-Breathing. The participant is encouraged to spend time with a plant partner, feeling the connection that both share through breath, viewing this not as air but as a “living organ, or membrane, of the Earth, (…)” that is shared between all living beings (Abram, 2018). These amongst other exercises, should help a juggler attune to their plant partner and help them make informed and connected decisions during the co-creation of juggling material.

Other exercises help give jugglers tangible starting points when creating new material with plant partners. A series of these are prompts for improvisations, for example: ‘maintain focus on your plant partner throughout and let this guide the work’, ‘try to imitate the structure of your plant partner in your juggling patterns ’ or ‘use your juggling as a medium in which to imagine what you can’t perceive of your plant partner; what’s under the soil, their slow imperceptible movement or how they might be in the future’. These prompts tackle perception of plants and force the juggler into a place of imagination and wonder, translating the already built awareness into a source for creativity and creation with plants. However, other exercises are more direct and demand an immediate reaction from the juggler, like integrating the catching of falling leaves into a juggling pattern. Or changing their juggling equipment for a material that is integrated into the plant’s living processes such as soil or water. These exercises that demand immediate reaction from jugglers, force a disruption in the pre-learned skill and demand full presence and special attunement to their plant partner and their context.

When practicing these exercises regularly, I noticed a change in myself: I began to see plants more distinctively and cared for their particularities and wellbeing much more than before. The practice of these small tasks of imagination and connection started to build up slowly, deconstructing the anthropocentric biases I held towards plants in public space. Plant-Juggling is still a work in progress, but I am excited that my work as a juggler has transformed in this way. Into a practice of noticing and respecting vegetal subjects in our cities, as well as fostering caring relationships with more-than-human beings.

[video bellow]

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