ICA Live Art Festival, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, April 2-3, 2022

The Centre for Plant Interpretation grew out of a two-day programme of the ICA Live Art Festival that took place in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden on April 2-3, 2022. This programme consisted of eight artistic interventions, and was co-curated by Melanie Boehi and Zayaan Khan.

The ICA Live Art Festival is a biennial festival that stages live art in Cape Town. Performances, installations and conversations usually take place on the premises of UCT, in museums and public spaces in the city. For the first time, a part of the festival took place at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. The selection of Kirstenbosch as a site allowed for a deepening of the ICA Live Art Festival’s ongoing exploration of ecological themes and questions pertaining to life in the Anthropocene and to expand the festival’s audience.

The eight performances all addressed questions pertaining to plants, gardens, ecology, history and politics. Sibabalwe Ndlwana is an artist and textile designer offered a demonstration on how to make dyes from indigenous plants harvested at Kirstenbosch and invited participants to paint on a community cloth. Karin Bachmann and Ayesha Price led a workshop in how to make flower arrangements with plants from Kirstenbosch as a vehicle for storytelling. Melanie Boehi invited twelve “plant interpreters” from various disciplines to explore transdisciplinary methods for studying plant communication, and guide festival goers through conversations with and about plants. Chanelle Adams led a ghost tour along Camphor Avenue, during which she guided participants through meditation and exploration of the colonial history and liberatory power inherent in the land and the plants. Collin Meyer (stage name Collin the Bushmen) did a performance with bow and other indigenous instruments that reflected on Khoisan ways of speaking to and from the earth. Ilze Wolff had prepared a lecture performance on gardening and the 1913 land act. Daniela Müller, together with three performers, mixed soil and text found on the internet into a reflection on multispecies co-habitation in the garden. Ntone Edjabe in a DJ performance revisited Stevie Wonder’s 1979 album Journey through the Secret Life of Plants to reflect on Wonder’s pioneering exploration of Black ecological experiences.

The ICA Live Art Festival programme at Kirstenbosch was kindly supported by Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and the Centre for African Studies Basel.