mono presents 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭-𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, a group exhibition curated by Jule Kurbjeweit, with works of Anne Büscher, Joana Viveiros, Márcio Vilela, Marco Pires, Pedro Vaz and Sanne Vaassen. Opening on February 16th 6pm to 10pm Free entry From 16.02.2024 Until 01.03.2024 Wednesday to Saturday 3pm to 7pm When we ask if plants are conscious or sentient, or to what extent, what we ask is whether, or to what extent, they are like us: we attempt to encounter ourselves in them. But could we, instead of projecting our human categories, encounter the plant-other “on their own turf,” as philosopher Michael Marder suggests – yet without invading their space? In his book Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), we find an approach towards such an encounter. Here, plant-thinking is understood as “(1) the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants (hence, what I call ‘thinking without the head’); (2) our thinking about plants; (3) how human thinking is, to some extent, de-humanized and rendered plant-like, altered by its encounter with the vegetal world; and finally, (4) the ongoing symbiotic relation between this transfigured thinking and the existence of plants.” While anthropocentric thinking about nature asks what nature is in relation to the human, plant-thinking opens the subject to the other and to otherness and allows human thinking to be “de-humanized and rendered plant-like, altered by [the] encounter.” Thus, the group exhibition "Plant-Thinking" proposes an approximation and outlines the conditions for encounter based on an openness to receive, allow and desire the other’s being and unfolding, in the sense of the Latin phrase which Hannah Arendt (1978) refers to: “Amo: Volo ut sis” – I love you: I want you to be. – Anne Büscher (1991, Germany) @anne_buscher – Joana Viveiros (1996, Portugal) @thestuffthatido – Márcio Vilela (1978, Brazil) @marcio.vilela – Marco Pires (Alcobaça, Portugal) @marcopires – Pedro Vaz (1977, Mozambique) @pedro__vaz – Sanne Vaassen (1991, Netherlands) @sannevaassen
