garden (2019)

garden is a site-specific performance piece made with handmade paper, dried plants, and your body. It is structured as a grounding ritual, one of slowness and deliberate enchantment. Over the course of its narrative garden invites us to consider the ways in which we relate to & care for both our bodies and the physical environments we live in.

performance script for garden

Choose a site

Wander around the various floors of a space (work building, school) multiple times. Pay attention to corners and strange shadows. Ignore the feeling that you are being watched. Choose a spot to place your garden, one that feels good to you. Consider who will see and move around the garden.

Gather the plants

Save flowers you find, weeds that catch your eye, over the course of a summer. Perhaps cut coneflowers from a relative’s garden and pick all the petals off. Save the stems. Gather roses from the bushes outside your apartment. Dry them all on a screen, in the dark. When dry, place in a box.

Prepare the soil

Find a bucket. Mix fibers (such as processed abaca and flax and kozo, or old scrap paper run through a blender) together with lots of water, retention aid if possible, and several large handfuls of foraged clay. Using your hands, work the clay into the fiber. This may take time. Let it rest, while you rest.

Plant the garden

Take your bucket of soil, and box of plants (all dead). Go to your site. Take the fiber mixture in your hands and lay it out on the ground: either in a long line, or whatever shape you like. Take the plants out of the box. Set their stems in the soil. Squeeze the soil around the stems; the fiber will hold them. When you can’t get any more soil out of the water in your bucket, stop, and gently water the plants at the base of their stems with what’s left in the bucket. You may wash your hands and arms with the muddy water when you are done.