Towards an expanded farming. Vicky Benítez’s botanical occupations and other ethico-political modes of inhabiting

Abstract

This text analyses the work of artist and gardener Vicky Benítez within the framework of the curatorial project Polítiques del sòl (‘Soil politics’, Centre d’Art Maristany, Sant Cugat del Vallès, 2019-2020), and beyond. The exhibition departs from an on-site research that aims to critically reflect on the geopolitical, biopolitical, and necropolitical dynamics that determine the existence, and to act up modes of life that do not involve oppressive dynamics. Vicky Benítez builds gardens of non-native plant species with varieties listed in the Spanish Catalogue of Invasive Alien Species, and inscribes the biological discourses about the eradication of the invasive and the protection of the native in the broader sociocultural context. Pivoting around the gardens, the artist carries out participatory activities, such as tours where attendants identify and learn more about the uses of edible adventitious plants, urban garden construction workshops, and popular meals with weeds. Drawing on the ecosophy of Félix Guattari as a paradigm of ecological thought that allows the proliferation of new forms of sensitibility, relationality, organization and social action, we argue that the value of Benítez’s botanical occupations lies in three interrelated aspects. In the first place, they operate as devices that allow examining the otherness-construction processes that justify policies of control, repression, and extermination of human and non-human forms of life. Second, they develop new forms of affect, experimentation and sustainability of non-anthropocentric modes of life. Finally, they are involved in a sociobiotechnical farming that paves the way for the emergence of relational, creative and transformative subjectivities.