Art, time, nonlinearity with Manuela Infante and Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Art after Nature 5)

Estado Vegetal is Manuela Infante’s riveting experimental performance art through which plants are charged with an agency capable of uprooting culturally grounded conceptions of the world. The book Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking, edited by Giovanni Aloi, is the first book dedicated to this performance and features essays from scholars and artists, including a fictional continuation of Infante’s work by Mandy-Suzanne Wong. Here, Infante and Wong join Art after Nature series editors Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard in conversation.

Manuela Infante is a Chilean playwright, director, screenwriter, and musician who creates her own performances and tours in America, Europe, and Asia. Her works include Estado Vegetal and Metamorphosis. 

Mandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. She is an award-winning author whose books include The Box and Drafts of a Suicide Note.

Giovanni Aloi teaches art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is author or editor of many books on the nonhuman and art.

Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and founder of the Green Lantern Press.

A performance of Manuela Infante’s Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State), performed by Marcela Salinas, is available to watch on YouTube.

Art after Nature is a series edited by Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard that explores epistemological questions that emerge from the expanding, environmental consciousness of the humanities.

Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking is available from University of Minnesota Press and includes pieces by Maaike Bleeker, Lucy Cotter, Prudence Gibson, Michael Marder, Dawn Sanders, Catriona Sandilands, Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem, and Mandy-Suzanne Wong.

Episode references:

The Conquest of America / Tzvetan Todorov

Capitalist Realism / Mark Fisher

Horizon / Manuela Infante