Thinking about and with plants is essential: Interview with CAS Resident Joss Allen

Yes, of course. I’m currently researching with the Glasgow Seed Library, which is hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow. I spent most of last year with the library and their seed librarians Hamshya, Louise and Rowan, and am currently trying to write something up. I’ve been interested in thinking about the seed library as a kind of seed commons, or rather what working with seeds through the library might teach about commoning as a practice. As part of the project, together with the librarians and some of the folk involved in the library, we crafted a seed library song. It’s called, sow, tend, gather, return. Part of the impetus behind creating the song has been to think about what kinds of cultural practices are needed to support seed work or commoning. How might song nurture a seed commons?

I guess firstly, exactly that – that there is a relationship between these things. Often it is quite hard to disentangle them from each other. They are all so deeply connected for me. Art has been part of my formal education and through it I have thought about all these other things. Art might have been my way in initially, a way to explore scholarship or community-building.

So, the project took place in Huntly in Aberdeenshire, Northeast Scotland with an arts organisation called Deveron Projects, where I had worked for several years. Initially the project was run by Lindy Young, Camille Sineau and myself. Then later joined by Caroline Gatt and Rhian Davies. We were trying to explore what it might mean to think with the garden – to explore the garden as a site of learning and skill-sharing but also as a way to frame other conversations about food, land, ecology and survival. More broadly, it was an attempt to pay better attention, or try to cultivate “arts of attentiveness”, to the relationship between humans and more-than-human.

We ran a lot of events over the course of three years. A monthly workshop exploring some kind of skill related to gardening – such as sowing seeds, making compost, forest gardening, basket weaving, fermentation, all sorts of things – set up in an old shop where we had a library of books, seeds and tools. We ran a swap shop for vegetables and produce folk had made, looked after a local orchard, grew food for Deveron Projects and community events, to name only a few things that we did. I guess through art, gardening and food, we were exploring different forms of scholarship and ways of being together.

Well, I guess if we start with seeds, they are fundamental – without seeds, most of the plants we rely on in Europe, for example, would not be cultivable. So, whoever controls access to seeds has quite a lot of power. However, seeds are not only resources; they are often culturally significant, too. Embodying a history of relations, traditions and practices. Another seed library in Palestine, the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, is a vital example of seed conservation during these troubling times.

Learning about seeds and gardening can create a different sense of awareness about ecologies and landscapes. Gardening is not an innocent practice, though – think about the entanglement of botany and colonialism, for example, of the journey many now typical garden plants have taken to reach European gardens and how they became named and categorised. Reckoning with gardening and working with seeds can also be reckoning with these histories, which are part of the unrest you talk about – climate change, genocide in Palestine. We can also think of how plants are used as part of the ongoing colonisation of Palestine – the prevention of harvesting and foraging of culturally significant crops, the planting of out-of-place pines to hide cleared Palestinian villages, both in the name of conservation.

Thinking about and with plants seems essential to me. They might just be our most important ally if we tend to them well.

Yeah, a good question and one I’m never really able to answer. I find the not-knowing productive, though. I often move between different poles, trying to understand where art fits, what it does, but I guess these days I’m less concerned about trying to name what art is.

When I was working on the Town is the Garden project, this question came up often. Caroline, who I mentioned above and who is an anthropologist, told me during a conversation (which is recorded in one of the Town is the Garden chapbooks ‘Story 1’), in response to a similar question about the role of art, that:

“[A]sking where the art is cannot be the question, it must be the object of our questioning. Neither art, nor for that matter anthropology, can or should retain its current distinction in the light of the role each of these spheres play in the very system that has led to the current global social and environmental crises.”

So, perhaps that is useful.

ATLAS Arts doesn’t really have a venue and instead works across the Isle of Skye, Raasay and Lochalsh on the mainland – a huge area, which can make it quite challenging. They tend to develop projects slowly over time, prioritising developing relationships with artists, and different communities and individuals both locally and further afield. They are really prioritising taking time to listen and learn locally, building attentiveness to place while being in conversation with other places. As well as trying to create longer-term opportunities for artists and cultural workers.

Recently, they’ve been thinking about the kinds of resources an arts organisation can provide for the communities living locally. Now they have very high-spec cinema equipment which they lend out across the area to anyone, as well as a book printing and binding studio set up in their office, again that anyone can come and use.

I think their project, The School of Plural Futures, is a great example of all of this in practice. Now in its third year, it is a kind of alternative school working with artist Emmie McLuskey, that unfolds as a series of gatherings, creating space for young folk to learn together and discuss important issues related to things like climate change and social justice through creative activities.

I’m trying to resist having too many ideas before going – it’ll be impossible not to think about plants and seeds, and of course the area’s history with mining though. I’m keen to spend as much time getting to know the area and see where it goes. I'm really looking forward to spending time at Velferden.