Car Encounter 2019
Car Encounter (2019) , participatory performance, audio, customised Volkswagen estate car, plants and soil.
​
This immersive work re-imagined empathy based on research with females on the Autistic Spectrum. The artist used their speculations of a radically different future to problem-solve; and created a soundtrack playing from the car stereo. Car Encounter was hosted in a family car that had been planted and rewired to function differently allowing participants to step into another world and contemplate how to be.
The customised car fit into the science-fiction landscape, the car had been rewired to function differently, referring to a neurological difference, the rear passenger door was been re-hinged to open from top to bottom instead of side to side.
As part of the performance, the artist became a self appointed replicant with reference to the characters in Philip K Dick’s Novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. She also examined psychometric tests in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner– The Director’s Cut (1982) as a parallel to current assessments and tests in clinical psychology for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Both use tests where empathy is a criterion to determine whether one is human or if one has impairment relating to empathy.
Research was also conducted by interviews with women and young girls on the Autistic Spectrum. The interviews contain speculations of a radically different future: mother who imagines a future with an entity who takes care of her children, a teenager who seeks a life in solitude with nature and a child who believes that dog-human breeding would make humans more compassionate towards one another.
From this material, she generated fictional reimaginings of these speculations: a fully automated mother, people-cancelling technology and drunken plants relating to plant intelligence.
Imagine a plant species that responds to your behaviour, it interprets your feelings by movement and gesture. This non-verbal form of communication can also be used for greetings such as ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’.
​
Excerpt from Car Encounter 2019 soundtrack : ​
She walks out of her hut in the morning, the tired tips of the pink-dipped Actinidia Kolomikta climber leaves prop-up. They reach up high towards the sky as she stretches her arms. She throws her head back, gently tilting her head from side to side. The plant arches back and gently and sways side to side. She reaches to touch a pink tip. Another tip rises to touch her shoulder, followed by another to touch her cheek. They greet each other.
The day passes and at another moment, the teenager is feeling sad. She slumps to the floor and curls herself into a ball. The plant feels her emotions and proceeds to curls its leaves up, one by one, from top to bottom. Although the teenager feels sad, when she notices that plant has caught her emotions, she does not feel alone.
​
Stephen Harrod Buhner herbalist and writer noted that: The similarity of human and plant neural systems and the presence of identical chemical messengers within them illustrate just why the same molecular structures (e.g., morphine, cocaine, alcohol) that affect our neural nets also affect plant consciousness.
​
Buhner cited the work of Jagadir Bose a plant neurologist from the 1900's.
​​
Excerpt from Car Encounter 2019 soundtrack :
​
​The teenager returns back from her afternoon near the stream. She notices that every leaf of the Actinidia Kolomikta is still curled up. She panics and rushes manically inside the hut to find some water. Instead she finds a bottle of vodka, she smells the drink and gags. She drops the bottle on the shrub. A pool of liquid surrounds the roots and is quickly absorbed into the soil. The ovate-shaped leaves start to uncurl, one by one, from bottom to top. The shrub appears to have perked up and is looking merry.
The girl continues to feed the plant during the course of the afternoon. Cautiously she observes the plant’s behaviour every time she feeds it. It flops over and bounces back, like a children’s roly-poly toy. She finds this amusing, laughing out loud rolling all over the floor every time the plant produces a new gesture. She can feel it laughing too. She becomes intoxicated by this experience.
It starts to get dark, the plant has passed out, the bottle empty on the floor. The teenager staggers back to the hut.
​