Containers of a World to Come: Seeds and Global Contemporary Art

At a moment when ecological questions—and their relation to questions of social justice, power imbalances, and colonial conditions—are increasingly pressing, the seed has emerged in global contemporary art as a portal for sustained critical inquiry into plant-human-land relations. Seeds are ordinary and indispensable—the first link in the food chain, the embodiment of biological and cultural diversity, and the repository of life’s future evolution. The diversity of seeds is at risk, however, due to the growth of industrial agriculture and the so-called Green Revolution. Artists such as Beatriz Cortez, Kapwani Kiwanga, and Jumana Manna, work with the spatial-temporal politics of seeds, homing in on their colonial legacies and radical futures. Their works raise questions about preservation practices and the socio-political dynamics of plant histories across different parts of the globe. Understanding the seed and its place in contemporary art as an instance of what Tania Bruguera has defined as “political-timing-specific art,” we seek proposals for 20-minute presentations by scholars, curators, and artists that address the way artists engage the aesthetic and political properties of seeds. How does looking at seeds (re-)focus attention? What kind of potential histories and speculative futures do they evoke? How does cultivation alter practices of world- and art-making? Papers may address topics including Indigenous science, the colonial history of botanical science, and paradoxes of preservation, among others.