Transcript:

So, hi Landon. Thank you for coming today. How are you doing?

Great.

Okay. Can you tell us what the story behind the original Trigger Planting piece, your collaboration with Kadambari and Maureen, what is unique about this current iteration that is in the Milstein Center lobby?

So, the original piece, which was entitled Trigger Planting, That was, this iteration here that's at Milstein is an iteration of that first piece. And in 2022, we created a work in partnership with AIR Gallery and National Women's Liberation for Frieze New York. And if you remember, back in 2022, there was the leaked draft of the Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization that had leaked before the June ruling, which overturned Roe versus Wade. So that was right after the leak was when we were set to create this piece for Frieze. And we were working very quickly and ended up creating this piece, which is on the website. There's imagery of it, but it's a field, and superimposed over the field is a map, an outlined map of the United States. And we installed a garden, a vertical garden, of abortifacient and amenagogic plants and herbs, outline all of the states that had these trigger laws. And so we titled the peace Trigger Planting. And the trigger laws which would go into effect should Roe be overturned, had very, state by state, either total abortion bans, bans after 15 weeks, and the piece was about highlighting and calling attention to those states. And part of the context for that, too, goes back into our collaboration, the three of us. Maureen had founded this collective called How to Perform an Abortion. And back in 2018, I was connected with them. I had presented a piece at the Queens Museum as a part of the Open Engagement Conference. And the piece was titled The Abortion Herb Cart. And that's a piece that is a part of an ongoing project that I started back in 2012, 2013, which specifically focuses on plants that have these abortifacient amenagogic or contraceptive properties. This is like a long backstory, but yeah. So Maureen had reached out to me and we started collaborating in 2019. And so the project, so yeah, this collaboration has been going on for many, many years. And bringing us now to around actually this time last year in 2024, Miriam had reached out to Katamari and Maureen and I to create a version, a trigger planting 2.0 version of this piece for Barnard. And obviously, this is post-Roe, and this is before the election. So we wanted to create the piece that was still talking about access to abortion in the United States, but how that has changed since Roe and how that's going to change for the election. So we installed the piece in the fall of 2024 before the election and have made different updates and changes and collaborations to it since after the election and today and going into the future. That's sort of a long...

That was good. Can you describe what parts of the collaboration have been the most rewarding for you?

I think really the collaborative nature of this project, being in conversation with Barnard, being able to be an artist and engaging with students and faculty and staff here has been really incredible because I think for me I also really believe in how collaborative art practices change over time and really there's no sole authorship of a work and really leaning into how how different places and points in time can really change a piece. And so that has really been the most rewarding part is coming into this community as a part of a collaborative and as an artist and as a gardener and really seeing how all of that changes.

So can you talk more about the abortion garden and the dried earth displays and the iNaturalist maps? You kind of touched on the maps in the first question. And the story being told with the plants and how they're connected to the conversation about abortion access, which you kind of already touched on. Yeah.

Well, a really important piece in the exhibition is that all of the dried plants, which are hung up on the shelves behind the main large poster. All of those plants are cuttings from the plants that were in the 2022 original trigger planting exhibition. So that piece was created in 2022, in the spring, And it was up for the duration of the Freeze New York Art Fair, which only lasts about a week. After which, when we de-installed, all of those plants were then driven up by Maureen and I to a permanent abortion herb garden installation that is at the Denniston Hill Artist Residency in the Catskills in upstate New York. And we were able to replant all of those plants there. And because they're all, most of them are perennial plants, and they grow and change over the years and seasons. And so when we were getting ready to install, this exhibition is in the fall, in September. And so all of those perennial plants, the growing season, they're nearing the end of their growing season, everything is really huge and big. And so I went back up to Denniston and harvested all of these plants and brought them back down into the exhibit. So that's just this really beautiful element when you're talking about plants in general and the regenerative nature of plants. But when you're talking about plants in relation to abortion, it sort of takes the conversation into this space of deep time. So people have been in collaboration with plants for millennia. People have been using plants for plant medicine for millennia. People have been having abortions for millennia. Plants sort of take this conversation from right now where abortion is extremely restrictive. It's no longer legal nationally. And there are daily new updates of different legal attacks. But plants sort of ground this history and this type of care, bodily autonomy care, in this other time frame. And so it was so important to use, to note that those same plants are still up here as part of the conversation. And another aspect is all of these plants, too, of many are really familiar culinary herbs. So you walk out there and you'll see thyme, you'll see sage, You'll see mugwort. You'll see all these really familiar plants. And I like to think about how the different, what is the difference between an abortion herb garden and a culinary garden? And the difference is the name and how you title it. Because these plants have myriad uses. A plant can have abortifacient properties can be used in that way. It could also have anti-inflammatory properties and be used in that way. And so it's sort of like, if you can recontextualize that with a plant, of course abortion is a part of a huge, no, it's not just about abortion. It's about reproductive justice, it's about miscarriage, it's about, it falls into the cycle of all of these different things. And so that's something that is really important when you're talking about how the plants kind of fall into this conversation. Because of course, in this exhibition, Trigger Planting 2.0, we're really tracking how states' laws have changed over the years. And you'll see little updates on the big poster of laws that are repealed or denied. And so sort of bringing real-time legal access with plants in the background, sort of like framing that conversation. And of course, underneath that, the bookshelves and the different components that sort of play into it too. So it's sort of bringing all of these different elements into conversation with one another.

Thank you. That was really great. I know when we attended the tour, it was very interesting to see the different states who had passed it and then a few weeks later was like, actually, take this back. So can you tell us what do you hope visitors are taken away from the exhibition, especially during this current time in art?

I think we all feel something about this exhibit. There are so many different elements coming together. So my hope would be that you learn something or make a different type of connection that you hadn't had before, whether that's with a resource, whether that's with a class here at Barnard, or a faculty member here, whether that's a new understanding of maybe the state that you're from, or you grew up in, or you know someone who lives, whether that's a new relationship with the plant. Yeah, I think I don't know, maybe that's a really basic answer.

This question isn't on here, but can you tell us, like, why do you think this is such an important, the information is important for people to know and it's an important story to tell.

Yeah, I think, I mean, it's important because we're talking about, when we talk about reproductive justice, we talk about care for the entire self and care for a system of people. It's not just about abortion. Wait, will you ask the question again? Interviewer Can you tell me why do you think this is an important, like why do you think this is exhibited so important and the meaning behind, well, you told us the meaning behind it, but why you think it's important for more people to know about it and know the history, especially the history surrounding the plants, because I thought that was really interesting when I attended the tour. Landon Yeah. I mean, colleges are so, are incredible places. Students, faculty, staff, they're places of like often radical action, radical thought, deep thought. These are really important spaces for learning and thinking and developing new models and new ways of approaching things. And things are changing really quickly in our country and in the world, and students I believe that students have a really unique perspective of what that is, because you are in this, like, hyper-focused space, and you have the opportunity to have different types of conversations. It's a really unique time and place, and so having conversations, you know, we're trying to, like, point at abortion and what conversations about abortion can like open up and change. And so I think from that conversation starter you can go so many different places and I think people have so many different perspectives that they're coming in with and I hope that it is like a catalyst in that because and I think that students' voices are really, really powerful. And we've seen what institutions are trying to do to those voices. And so that just also speaks to the power of what it is people are saying and thinking about. So yeah, coming as someone who's not a current student, who's been a student, who's worked with students, being in this place is really special to be a part of. And I'm, yeah, I'm learning so much by being here. It's really, it's really been incredible.

Thank you. Those are all the questions that got you today.

Thank you for doing that.