Breathing and growth: Performing with plants

Abstract

Abstract In this article breathing as a practice and vegetal growth as a form of movement are discussed by first returning to some repeated performances for camera made in Helsinki in 2004–05 and a text written in 2008 describing them in relation to Luce Irigaray’s ideas on breathing. These are then looked at from a current perspective and related to Michael Marder’s ideas on the place of plants, of growth as one of the Aristotelian forms of movement and Marder’s challenge to the arts to consider the vegetal. Based on Irigaray’s and Marder’s joint suggestion, in ‘Thinking anew’, to learn from plants, this article proposes that one way to begin considering performing with plants as a somatic practice could be, simply, breathing with plants.