Theoretical framework on politicality of vegetative world

Michael Marder, Phytological principles of political mobility
Therefore, the potential for artistic research of these ways of political resistance to dominant systems lies precisely in re-examining principles of gathering, which in history were mainly based on movement and conquest/appropriation of territory in public space. Contrary to this 'zoocentric' philosophy of political gathering, which at certain historical moments led to the emergence of fascism, inspired by the proposal of Michael Marder, the authors of the project will methodologically explore movements that do not relate to mobility, but to the principles of growth, decay, and metamorphosis. second, a new condition. All together - the principles of the phytological approach according to which man is not a political animal (Aristotle), but precisely a political plant! Each plant in its uniqueness is a collective being, a loose and disorganized assembly, individual or organism. In vegetative beings, life is concentrated - not in the vital root, but it disperses and spreads throughout the body of plant communities. The same applies to protests in recent history (Occupy Wall Street, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Acampadas in Spain), deprived of a single central structure, leader, or global organization. The new political movements are vegetative, considering that they are acephalic, without a head and, therefore, without an organizational principle or origin. They grow with "superfluous" additions, scattered, from the beginning which does not exist; and to move in accordance with it and to follow its peculiar rhythms means to accept this dispersion. Recent protest movements have spread in almost the same way, as it is difficult to say which was the “original,” driving moment of the “Occupy” movement. After all, plasticity, perhaps much more pronounced in plants than in animals, at the political level includes the ability to adapt and sustainability that has the potential to withstand the most repressive police actions and corrections. Plasticity means being at the same time, flexible and firm. Also, the "passivity" of plants can be related to the embodiment of human 'negative' feelings, such as depression, hopelessness, apathy, etc. Conceptually and methodologically, the authors hybridly unite the principles of clubber rave dance and the phytological approach to movement in (political) space. They conceive of these principles as ways of sharing the discourse of depression and hopelessness, and of political unification into communities (which are not necessarily based on the anthropocentric principle) within the theatrical public space. This approach touches on the question of the emergence of space for our public practices and coexistence, which is not so much defined by where exactly it appears or exists but is defined by joint bodily investments and vulnerabilities, both human and inhuman. Such an approach goes beyond the socio-political issues of democracy in the organization of the social and opens a debate on the human existential state - which is never only social or only human.