Visual artist and biologist Jędrzejewska Szmek Krystyna

Professional Orchestra of Plant Amateurs

The inspiration for this project is one of the dynamically developing internet phenomenons - AMSR videos (autonomous meridian sensory response), which are based on soft sounds on the border of audibility, which stimulate a kind of tingling sensation, often accompanied by a feeling of relaxation. Interestingly most of the clips are based on artificial situations such as e.g. the clatter of nail tips on “My collection of Modern Luxury Handbags”. Although AMSR is still unconfirmed by science, films have millions of views and many people point out their therapeutic role in fighting insomnia, tension, loneliness. For me the popularity of AMSR is interesting in the context of loneliness as a massive problem of many modern societies and which is being underlined as one of the civilisation diseases. Playing with the convention I would like to set up an “orchestra”, which would be a collective and off-line experience based on micro-sounds generated when people contact plants. We tend to express a longing to recall the time in which humankind was a part of nature. Is this a stage that has passed and we no longer need, and whose reproduction is only nostalgia? Or is it a real bond, the loss of which causes sadness and loss? During the residence, I would like to make trial sound and visual recordings that would become material for later work with a group of non professional performers. Their memories/experiences of contact with plants would become a material to carry out a performance in which a kind of noise is created, composed of many micro sounds, e.g. crushing snowberry fruit or the rustle of thistledown. The effect could be compared to a bustle of a multi-voice human conversation with plants. A conversation that is less and less audible with the modern changes of lifestyle and the technologization of agricultural practices. This event acts also as an excuse to be together and to act together, both between people and plants and people themselves.