25/10/2023
Oneiric Soils is a space where artists, researchers, activists, and visionaries come together to dream with plants. Our intention is to diffuse the myth of separation and reestablish symbiotic, co-creative partnership by exploring the liminal realms with more-than-human intelligence.
Through dreaming modalities, play, and embodied practices that reconfigure person-plant relations beyond the current paradigm, we will cultivate proposals for regenerative coexistence and ecosocial renewal.
Plant neurobiologist Monica Gagliano says that the plants gave her a word that translates to 'thank you for listening'. And that word is Oryngham. This is what the plants are asking of us now: to remember how to listen.
The research of and other plant scientists in this field, such as , have shown us that plants can see, hear, taste, touch without the sensory organs of perception we associate with these functions. They've also demonstrated the ability of plants to learn, remember, and problem solve. So why would we assume that they can't also think, imagine, or dream?
In many cultures and cosmologies, plants communicate in our dreams and in altered states of consciousness. They occupy the mythical and imaginal realms, the liminal spaces where intuition, precognition, and insight dwell.
When we allow ourselves to play in these spaces and to cultivate a practice of deep listening, and as individuals, as communities, and as leaders, we begin to question and make decisions from this space of co-creative partnership, we open up new pathways of perception and emerging potentials.
As a group, we will explore speculative ecologies, ecosystem resilience, and interspecies communication.
As visionaries, we will navigate the role of emerging technologies and AI in fascilitating interspecies relations and mitigating climate breakdown.
As liminal architects, we will look at biomaterials, biophillic design, and building new worlds.
As regenerative dreamers, we will consider alternative narratives for systems of value and exchange, production and welfare, land guardianship and land tending, interspecies rights, and community.
