This call is directed to artists, researchers, scholars and artistic researchers who are working with the vegetal in various ways. 

 

Plants and vegetation are receiving increased attention in the context of the current climate crises and the rapid extinction of species. With the developments in plant science and the post-humanities artists, artist-researchers and scholars are looking at plants in new ways. Historically speaking, there is no lack of artistic engagement with plants, from vegetally inspired music or ornamentation on textiles, pottery and architecture, to paintings, poems and science fiction stories of plants. Living plants are used as material in practices as divergent as garden design, sonification, floral arrangements and contemporary bio art. 

 

The growing interest in plant studies, to some extent as a further development of the burgeoning of animal studies and post-humanist thinking, is influencing artistic research as well. An emerging field of critical plant studies can be linked to "art's return to vegetal life" and to looking at plants in art. Other discussions have focused on plant rights, plant philosophy or plant thinking, plant theory, the language of plants, queer plants and more. There is a current "plant turn" in science, philosophy and environmental humanities, accompanied with an abundance of popular accounts of recent scientific research on plant sentience, intelligence, memory and communication. With this issue, which develops material from the seminars Working with the Vegetal at Stockholm University of the Arts in 2018–2019, we want to join and contribute to this flourishing field.

 

Rethinking our relationship to other forms of life that we share this planet with is a central task for artists today. Artistic research can contribute through its capacity to allow and to generate hybrid forms of thinking and acting. We invite all artists and researchers with an experience of working with plants and vegetation in various ways to contribute to this issue with expositions or articles, accounts of work in progress and artistic experiments. 

 

We invite expositions related to the theme of this issue of RUUKKU - Working with the Vegetal - in English or in Swedish. The editors of this issue are Annette Arlander, Jerry Määttä, Malin Lobell and Janna Holmstedt. We ask you to write your proposals for research expositions in the Research Catalogue at www.researchcatalogue.net. Note! The creation of an exposition requires registration and a complete RC user account (see ‘register'). Please submit your proposals (complete expositions) via the Research Catalogue (‘submit to publication', ‘submit unlimited publication to', and ‘ruukku') no later than 1st February 2020. In need for additional information, contact annette.arlander@uniarts.fi

 

Draft submissions can be discussed with the editors before 15th January. In this case the exposition should be shared with the editors using the RC link share function. Use ‘share', keep the exposition private but select the last option (‘When enabled…'), confirm the selection and send the link via e-mail to the address above. If you need assistance, please contact tero.heikkinen@uniarts.fi

 

Detailed instructions for submitting and draft submissions can be found from https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/661336/661337

RUUKKU is a multidisciplinary, multilingual, peer-reviewed rich media journal on artistic research launched in 2013. RUUKKU is published and supported by the University of the Arts Helsinki, Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture and the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland, with a particular focus on multi-lingual publication. The primary languages of publication are Finnish, Swedish and English.