“Embracing Obscurity” – Hymke Theunissen

How do we relate to objects?

This is the question that theatre director Manuela Infante explores in her performance Estado Vegetal (Infante 2017). More specifically, how do we relate to plants?

Infante stresses that she does not want to imitate plants, to represent them, but rather to practice ‘doing plant’. Dramaturgically, she is inspired by plant-based logics. Ranging from the structure of the play resembling the ‘branching out’ of plants (rather than the unified structure we are used to in storytelling) to the quite subtle movement of the actress in following the stage lights, instead of the other way around.

Infante expresses her worries about representing something by giving it a voice. This puts us in an inherently unequal position, for we do not let the ‘other’ speak on their own terms but place restrictions on how they express themselves. Especially when the ‘other’ is radically different from us, we do not have full access to their existence. And how could we represent something we do not fully understand?

Infante adequately puts into words that there is an inaccessible part of the ‘other’ that is allowed to stay in the dark. We simply cannot know what plants feel. For her, the theatre provides a chance to embrace these dark territories, to explore them without wanting to resolve the mystery.

A parallel can be drawn between Estado Vegetal and another project that investigates nonhumans, namely the Dutch initiative Embassy of the North Sea that aims to politically represent the sea. Both Infante and the Embassy are inspired by Bruno Latour. Infante describes her performance as embodied philosophy, a thinking through making. The Embassy can be seen as a rather practical exploration of Latour’s legacy, for their aim is to actually create what

Latour calls a parliament of things (Embassy of the North Sea 2020). To put it briefly, Latour argues that there is no clear division between the domain of humans and the domain of things, which means that we should give objects a place within politics (Latour 1993, 139).

The Embassy thus quite literally wants to give a voice to the North Sea. Following Infante’s argumentation, this could lead to exploitation. How can we speak on behalf of something radically different without appropriating it? Is it not vital to resolve the mystery before adequately representing others?

At first glance, this might seem like an inescapable conclusion, but a closer look at the research that the Embassy carries out tells us differently. The Embassy listens to the sea from a scientific as well as artistic position to grasp the different domains it is entangled with (Embassy of the North Sea 2020). With this exploration, the Embassy tries to gain an understanding of what the sea does, by thinking through artistic practices, just like Infante explores what plants do by dramaturgically investigating their logics.

So, how do we relate to objects?

In some sense, we can never be completely sure. But we can be certain that the arts provide a vital space where the dark territories of nonhumans can be explored while embracing their obscurity.

References

• Embassy of the North Sea. 2020. “About.” Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.embassyofthenorthsea.com/over/
• Infante, Manuela. 2017. Estado Vegetal. Video. 1:21:38. Accessed November 17, 2020. https://vimeo.com/252358003
• Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.