About plants, humans and economy

As the cooperation partners of our semester are from a sustainability PhD program the term sustainability started to pop up everywhere. In the supermarket I discovered a plant which was labelled as an “easy care” plant, supplemented by the phrase ‘SUSTAINABLE PLANTS - quality that lasts...’: I bought the plant and regard it as the starting point and material for my investigation.

The plant was a Sansevieria cylindrica (African Spear) from the Asparagaceae family, native in the dry lowlands of Angola and adjacent countries. Care instructions describe it as an almost fool proof plant which thrives on neglect.

Looking for African Spear species in shop windows and Viennese buildings open to the public I realized in how many of them you will find plants. I got interested in their placement, their diversity (or uniformity), their function and how humans relate to them.

Observations and interviews concerning those indoor plants and experiments with plants will be the raw material for an installation dealing with the relationship of plants, humans and economy.