a study of burden is an ongoing series started at the beginning of 2021, in the pandemic context, and it explores forms – as geometrical morphologies of bodies, and as modes of natural organization, of relating, interconnecting and living-with and in companion with a significant non-human other whose presence can become as concrete as it is usually abstracted. The piece of granite is a displaced remnant of an abandoned landscape, of a former stone quarry in Măcin Mountains, which was held by an Italian family more than a century ago, and it tells the story of bodies which after years of industrial exploitation start to be considered disposable and rendered obsolete, living behind traces of different soil and subsoil geo-arrangements. By looking into patterns of agential and epistemological positioning towards and in conjunction in a continuum of altered spatio-temporalities, a study of burden intends to communicate not only exhausted bodies, but also the exhaustion and depletion of productivity itself.

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phytoplastia is a self-published research document, delivered as an essay on the ecological relations of plants and their agency in morphing the materiality of the world/nature/reality. Words intercalate a series of six small abstract drawings which imagine the plasticity of the vegetal line as titled the line is not a line but the sequence. phytoplastia accompanied five-liter-ecosphere – an installation of three plant-wired glass terrariums by Anca Bucur made in collaboration w/ Sergiu Nisioi, included Liminal group show. The glass terrariums also worked as speakers recording the series of sounds produced by plants when growing and relating with each other, different layers of soil, bacteria and collected pebbles and pieces of stones. The title of the installation is an appropriation of microbiologist Clair Folsome’s sealed ecosphere, made in 1968 and which informed his later work The Origin of Life: A Warm Little Pond.

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Several long-range, low-power radios were inserted into and around a worm breeds a dentrolite breeds a prototype sculptures from the Botanical Garden of Bucharest in order to create an alternative ecological network that communicates (with) the environment. The information provided by the unearthed objects through their sensors is rendered in the plots below. Several sound recordings capturing both species and sculptures of an ill-edged anthropic geography are currently available on mixcloud. The platform opens up various research questions on the relations between factors such as air pollution, noise, atmospheric pressure, soil temperature or humidity and the sonic productions of the species co-habiting the area.

Sensor information has been released in a public repository and an executable notebook is available here.

a worm breeds a dendrolite breeds a prototype navigates a frontier landscape of multispecies entanglements and onto-epistemic frictions, unearthing the ecological dimensions of their mingled spacetimemattering organization. Resurfacing from beneath the soil, invertebrate molecular agents – vermes, parasites or arthropods – stretch their limbs, unfasten their mandibles and gape their gonopods to pair and entwin their abreast greener kindreds for a more vivid naturecultural scenario to manifest and shimmer. If oaks and elms and cypress would grow backwards, if rinds and mosses would wrap inwards, if all these roots could stem the heights in circles and birds not seal their eyes, lowlifes would softly run riot. Whilst examining the nature of difference between these living forms, Anca Bucur’s sculptures and interventions within the Botanical Garden chart an understanding of matter not only as a product of interrelated semiotic practices, but also as an already composite factor in its iterative aggregations and vital materializations. Soft bodied organisms, smooth skins and spontaneous relics are oozing into visibility to reshape the landscape, manufacturing the soil as both their habitat and their end-product. Vermicular intelligence returns open an ecology of the living soil, annexing its limbless embodiment to conjure a multispecies community of biota, aerating the land and burrowing new life into it.

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