Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking

Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking is a collection of interdisciplinary essays that explore the relationship between critical plant studies and performance art in the Anthropocene. The play, by Manuela Infantes, features a polyvocal monologue acted with impetus by Marcela Salinas, which charges plants with an agency capable of uprooting culturally grounded conceptions of the world in the face of incommensurable trauma and loss. The book includes an interview with Infante, the full playscript, and stills from the performance, and reveals the roles that plants in art can play in reconfiguring human–nonhuman relations within current anthropogenic perspectives.

Format: Hardback
Length: 176 pages
Publication date: 07 November 2023
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Since its debut in 2016, Estado Vegetal, Manuela Infantes captivating piece of experimental performance art, has expanded philosophical thinking into a fully-fledged artistic inquiry of nonanthropocentric being. Through Infantes polyvocal monologue, acted with impetus by Marcela Salinas, plants are charged with an agency capable of uprooting culturally grounded conceptions of the world in the face of incommensurable trauma and loss.

This first book dedicated to Infantes plant-focused performance features eight essays by scholars, poets, and artists whose practices draw from research fields as disparate as new materialism, anthropogenic feminism, queer studies, and speculative realism. Including an interview with Infante, the full playscript, and stills from the performance, Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking reveals the roles that plants in art can play in productively reconfiguring human–nonhuman relations within current anthropogenic perspectives.

Infantes performance is a perfect case study and reference point for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of plant-thinking through alternative and experimental avenues. Furthermore, this book is at once a critical plant studies primer and an artistic problematization of the philosophical questions that have been central to the latest multidisciplinary discussions on plant-being.

Contributors:

Maaike Bleeker, Utrecht U
Lucy Cotter, Portland State U
Prudence Gibson, UNSW Sydney
Michael Marder, U of the Basque Country
Dawn Sanders, U of Gothenburg
Catriona Sandilands, York U
Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem,.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 216 x 140 x 6 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517913076