How will the flower bloom in 2100?
Full article by Annelie Berner here
Plant Futures is an artistic research project into Helsinki’s nature, seeking to understand how the flora will shift in the face of future climate changes. Rather than focusing on the stories of climate change on a macro level — wildfires, floods — we want to uncover the stories of climate change on a micro level that could eventually shape our familiar surroundings into something entirely new. Looking at just one flower, what does it need to survive and how might those needs be impacted by climate change? How might changes in the local landscape affect our emotional connections with our surroundings, our sense of place?
When we discuss and visualise climate change, we often focus on how seas rise, how heat increases, how these will impact our cities, agriculture, jobs, lifestyle. Yet one of the overlooked elements of our daily lives, peace of mind and joy are the non-human beings who accompany us - the birch trees, cattail grasses, ferns and moss (here in the North). How might they change in the futures? What new companions will live among us instead?
Together with local partners, Annelie Berner and Monika Seyfried will investigate the most populous plants in the local region. How do they show they flourish? What do they need to live? They will use near and far future projections of the local region's climate in order to generate new inputs for the plants and identify possible future plant inhabitants.
As the future conditions change around us, as the sun shines more or less, as the clouds roll in and out, as the rain pours down or waits, breathless, for a gust of wind to sweep a shift in the weather, how will this one plant experience those changes? The lines that sprawl out from any climate model give us an intangible range of possible futures. Each line determines our future everyday landscapes and experiences, the pops of colour that burst from buds, the shape of a petal in the spring of 2100.
Credits:
Project by Annelie Berner in collaboration with Monika Seyfried as part of European Media Art Platform at M-Cult Helsinki.