LELONEK, Diana
Wasteplants Atlas / Atlas śmiecioroślin

The Center for the Living Things is the research pata-institution founded in 2016, in order to examine, collect and popularise the knowledge concerning new humanotic nature forms. All exhibits gathered in the Institute’s collection are abandoned objects, used and no longer needed commodities – wastes of human overproduction, which have become the natural environment for many living organizms. Specimens were found in illegal waste dumping site, where the transgression of man-derived objects and plant tissues take place. These hybrids of plants and artificial objects are difficult to classify, as they are contemporaneously animate and inanimate. Exhibits collected in Center for the Living Things can’t be conventionally classified. Recently, wastes have been taking over behaviours from living matter. In the process of overproduction , ceaseless demand of constant update of possessed goods is the reason why most of unnecessary products seem to be out of control. Center for the Living Things is aimed to describe mechanisms appearing in the sphere of rejection and uselessness. In this sphere, products are no longer tools used by people. Products participates in almost every process that occurs in biosphere, hence we can’t definitively devide economic or social processes from so-called natural process.

A book made in the aftermath of The Center for the Living Things’ founder Diana Lelonek’s exhibition, Anthropogenic Forms of Life — The Center for the Living Things at the Botanical Garden of the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. This “atlas ”of detritus and objects in found in wild junkyards and industrial waste dumps, shows how some plants, moss, lichens, fungi, can adapt and survive in environments polluted by polymers, textiles, etc.. The book combines photographs with specific scientific descriptions of some improbable botanical / artificial blends; it also gathers texts by Diana Lelonek, Andrzej Marzec et Marek Wasilewski.

Published by Galeria Miejska Arsenał, 2021
Design by Krzysztok Pyda
Artists' Books / Ecology / Crafts