some alteration of the one who feels

urushiol extract, glass containers

.5 oz

2015

In The Universe of Things, Steven Shaviro suggests that “a feeling always involves some alteration of the one who feels.” In a continuing search for adopting a phytocentric perspective, what role can feeling play, specifically in the negotiations between individual bodies? A broader definition of communication offers the potential to reframe the exchange of chemicals as forms of dialogue with nonhuman others. Looking to urushiol, the active resin in poison ivy which can cause allergic reaction in human skin, what are potential practices of intimacy and vulnerability with vegetal otherness?

Exhibit

2015, impercebtibly and slowly opening, a group show about plants at Sector 2337.

Publication

Kate Sierzputowski, "Pausing to Consider How Plants React to Humans, Hyperallergic, November 16, 2015.

Images Courtesy of Clare Britt