Movements of Plants: Speech of the Universe – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

“I cannot imagine looking at plants without the use of film. Without accelerating their reactions to the level of speed I know from my own life. The branch extends and bends towards the light. It seems similar to the movement of my hand, but for the plant, there is a revolution taking place inside of its body. I have to condense the time of the plants into our rapid gaze. I record in the laboratory, from the windowsill, in the forest. I buy cameras and hack them so that their interval and recording time is adapted to the plants instead of the pace of the setting sun. And when I later put the pictures together in a sequence and when I finally look at it, I notice that the most interesting things are out of focus, in the second or third plane. I will show a few short films, good and bad, about the life and death of plants. Some have been the subject of further, deep study, extending the analysis to molecular biology, biophysics, and have become sources of discovery. Others are, for now, only to be looked at.”

• We invite you to a performative lecture by Urszula Zajączkowska, botanist, poet and artist, professor at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, during which she will talk about the role of the film medium in her scientific work and present short films on plant growth and development, recorded with time-lapse photography and in ultra slow-motion.