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…

The last Transmission in Motion session included an inspiring conversation with Chilean theatre director, scriptwriter and musician Manuela Infante. Manuela has introduced us to her ongoing attempts to decolonize the theatrical space from anthropocentric practices through dramaturgies that are based on natural elements. In some sort of biomimicry-like compositions, she translates posthuman theoretical and philosophical…

The Transmission in Motion (TiM) Seminar, took place on November 18th, 2020, under Corona-proof conditions, in a virtual auditorium in Microsoft Teams environment. The title of the online session “Plant-based Dramaturgy” – Manuela Infante, revolved around the artistic work of Manuela’s Infante, Chilean theatre director, scriptwriter and musician. The seminar was moderated by Liesbeth Groot…

Western understanding of humanity has permeated into different layers of cultural and societal considerations. The western master narrative has turned the understanding of what it means to be a human into the myth of “original unity, fullness,” stable and not subjected to changes (Haraway 2016, 8). Such a way of reasoning may result in ceasing…

“Knowledge in Making – Design by Doing” is the title of the Transmission in Motion seminar series. Its second session, moderated by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink, “Plant-based Dramaturgy”, took place on November 18, 2020. This session’s guest was a Chilean theatre director, scriptwriter and musician, Manuela Infante and she discussed the process of creating Estado Vegetal…

In the Transmission in Motion Seminar on plant-based dramaturgy, a talk was organized with Chilean theatre director, playwright and musician Manuela Infante. The talk was moderated by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink, who asked Infante about the artistic creation process of her work Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State). In this work, Infante explored plant-based logic to formulate several…

In the Transmission in Motion seminar on November 18th, entitled “Plant-based Dramaturgy”, Liesbeth Groot-Nibbelink interviewed Manuela Infante about her performance Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State, CIM/Ae 2017), and the creative process leading up to this theatre piece. Infante uses her theatre practice as a way of thinking through academic ideas based in fields such as speculative…

In a way, it is a miracle that a horticultural business exists, because in a sense you never buy one single plant. Rather, you acquire an ever-expanding, living organism which can easily be multiplied by cutting off a small section and planting that elsewhere – from those small cuttings, an entirely new plant grows. In theory,…

Manuela Infante, theatre director of Estado Vegetal, very matter-of-factly recounts the sequential nature of the production’s rehearsal process in the seminar session on ‘Plant-based Dramaturgy’ (18 Nov 2020). For her, the preparatory process undertaken always begins as “procedural,” or what I would interpret to be a task-based methodology. Crucially, Infante shares that her dramaturgical approach…

In her recent lecture for the TiM seminar series, Manuela Infante quoted plant philosopher Michael Marder with regard to the making of her piece Estado Vegetal (2017): “to recognize a valid ‘other’ in plants is also beginning to recognize that vegetal other within us” (Infante 2020). In order to make sense of the above quote,…