plants

" It’s a story that begins in April 2019.
I am asking to repeat my year because I cannot no longer go to school and do what is expected of me. They expect me to talk but my words are empty. For some time now, I didn't leave my home. I feel depressed and disconnected to the world.

With all that free time, my priority was to find a way to get back to living in the school. When I managed to go out, I walked past the school and noticed the garden that had been abandoned by students long ago. The wild plants had taken over. I started to come everyday to pull them out.

As the garden is located in the school's forecourt, it's a busy area where all the students come and go, smoke a cigarette, sit for a while and eat. From the outside of the building, I was observing the comings and goings.

Sometimes students who knew me would come up to me and ask how I am doing, and what I was doing. While they were helping me to stir the soil to remove the roots, we talked about plants, their grandparents' vegetable gardens, or which flower they suggested me to plant. But often, I was gardening on my own, listening to the conversations around me and responding to the brief greetings of others, who were beginning to get used to my constant presence.

The sun only reaches the kitchen garden for two hours a day. At that time, I was trying to position all my seedlings pots on this thin zone of light.

I was part of the ecosystem, as I was becoming part of the school microcosm again."

I firmly believe that there are many different ways of interacting with our environment. This need to rethink them becomes all the more urgent when we're on the margins. It's not just about performance or artistic protocols, because on the outside these are tools that enable us to reclaim our own subjectivity, to inhabit the world as an alienated subject. It was in this way that my interest in plants became a global way of connecting with the world.

For several months, when I lived in Saint Jean de Moirans, early in the morning I would go for a walk when it was still cool.
I always followed the same route, with a few deviations.
It was a small, straight, tarmac road that ran alongside the railway line, with a large grassy embankment in between. Between the two, and on the other side of the road, there were houses and their gardens, then fields. After a while, this road came to the foot of a viaduct where the A48 passes.

I remember that you could hear the noise of the cars very clearly. I particularly liked the grassy embankment alongside the road, because you could find all sorts of plants there: burnet, pimpernel, which smells very strongly of walnuts and cucumbers, alfalfa, marjoram and sorrel. I was interested in the changes in certain plants, where I systematically stopped to look at them closely. I was particularly fascinated by seeds, so I filled all my pockets. One pocket for each type of seed, to avoid confusion. When I got home, I put them in little envelopes with their names on.

Area 2: Passion for restricted interest(s)

Mrs xxxxxxxxx confirms the presence of her friend's restricted interests, which are often sudden and massive. For the past few months, it's been plants and gardening. That's all Mrs Choley talks about, and she finds ways of relating to gardening in every context. She may, for example, arrive late for an appointment because she has discovered some plants along the way. Her interests are not based on rote memory. Mrs Choley uses and shares her knowledge. She can garden with friends, but there's often a gap because they're not as interested as she is.

Criterion present (2 positive items out of 3)

-extract from the ASD diagnostic file-

constellation of narratives

ESAD Grenoble - january 2020
performed speach and video installation
seeds collection
bouquets

Even the grandmother's stone house's flowers, I went into her courtyard to pick seeds on them. People in the neighborhood started to get used to me, and some would say hello to me when I passed their house in the morning. From a certain distance from my starting point, I retraced my steps to return.
I often brought a bouquet with me to put in a small vase. It made everybody smile, that I did walks to see the plants.