Tag: Vegetal photography

Cronoscopia presents the work of Rapainú, an artist whose work exists at the intersection of art, biology, and experimentation with natural and technological processes. His practice unfolds in multiple directions, from photosynthetic photography—where images are imprinted on leaves through the process of photosynthesis—to performative interventions that engage with landscapes, cartography, and the traces of extractivism on the land.

Photosynthetic Photography: Living Images in Dialogue with the Ecosystem

According to the manual created by the artist:

“Photosynthetic photography is an alternative technique that consists of imprinting images on the surface of leaves from different species. It is carried out through the natural mechanisms of photosynthesis, which include photosynthetic pigments such as chlorophyll and the influence of external factors, such as sunlight intensity and humidity, on the plant. Although these images are ephemeral (if the leaves continue to be exposed to the same intensity of light after the photographic process, the images tend to fade), and the technique is quite susceptible to unpredictability, it is possible to achieve figures with remarkable photographic sharpness and interesting gradients of green.”

This process not only introduces a new approach within photography but also invites us to reflect more deeply on the dialogue between art and nature, on time as a living and ephemeral element, and on the coexistence between the human and the vegetal realm.

Cartographic Intervention and Geolocation: Drawing the Boundaries of a Moving Landscape

Rapainú’s work is not limited to experimenting with organic materials; his exploration extends to the landscape as a living archive and to how cartographic representation technologies can be intervened to reveal the fragility of human-imposed boundaries.

As part of his artistic research, Rapainú has worked with satellite images altered with graphic markings generated from the geolocation of his walks, exploring the marks that land extractivism has imprinted on the landscape. In his photographic series on Villa Epecuén, he reflects on the flood that devastated the town in 1985, a disaster caused by both climatic and political factors.

His performative action not only maps the scars of a territory but also reconfigures them. Through these gestures, Rapainú invites us to think of the landscape as a space in constant transformation, where borders are not immutable and where art can become a tool for critically revisiting the environmental and political history of a place. His work, in dialogue with both the organic and the technological, reminds us that all cartography is also an inscription of power and that the boundaries we draw on the earth are subject to the unpredictability of nature and geological memory.

---

Interview:

In the Anthropocene era, where humans have produced irreversible geological marks, how do you think your work intervenes in the way we perceive our inscription on the planet?

In my work, I explore what emerges from the simultaneity of realities, taking as a starting point the relationship between the human species and its environment as a fragile and geologically ephemeral space-time.

Like any genuine artistic pursuit, there was a process that led me to this inquiry. I grew up in a rural area of virgin forest where, as a child, my relationship with the woods was fluid: I drank water from the river, knew how to recognize dangerous animals, took small naps in the trees, etc. Over time, I witnessed how various factors degraded the ecosystem around me. This led me to dedicate over 10 years to community environmental activism. After studying the strategies proposed by international organizations to combat global warming and participating in extensive discussions at various COP^[1] conferences, I realized there is great difficulty in translating global policies into actionable measures on the ground. In my view, this is due to the lack of fieldwork experience among the members of these international panels—something that could be easily resolved by increasing diversity in these debates—and the way decision-makers and influential groups perceive the natural world.

Later, reading contemporary authors, I was able to conceptualize what I had previously identified: the cosmological model inherited from modernity presupposes culture over nature, exerting a violent relationship with the latter. This is especially concerning today, considering that humanity is now regarded as a geophysical force and the Earth as a political agent.

I believe that the subtle thread binding this understanding is not easily grasped through reason alone, but perhaps it can be accessed through sensitivity. This is what I aim to achieve with my work, unifying my path as an artist and environmentalist.

Perhaps if anthropology declares the urban ruin of this “sick cosmological building,” art can sign the demolition order and leave an open space for a park.

Your work seems to exist on a threshold where the distinction between human and non-human dissolves. How do you conceive the relationship between the artist and the landscape in terms of ontological assemblages?

A few years ago, I worked in Villa Epecuén, Buenos Aires, Argentina. In this small town in the southwestern part of the province, on a stormy night in 1985, heavy rains and winds caused the embankment holding back the lake to collapse. The water devastated the town. Beyond the political responsibilities for this event, I reflected on how only humans understand limits as fixed—whereas in nature, boundaries are always permeable.

In my case, after embodying these concepts, I seek ways to translate them into artistic practices. In Epecuén, for example, I traversed the embankment built by humans to contain the lake (which ultimately failed to do so) and reflected on its permeability and how the flood itself created its own new boundary. I began by intervening satellite images, adding graphic markings based on the geolocation of my walks. Over time, the line that represented the limit took on a life of its own. My action was to draw this line, dislocate it, project it, illuminate it, and cross it. A performative exercise that sought to give movement and plasticity to a fixed boundary, highlighting its mutable nature.

Could we think of your work as a cartography of interspecies encounters, where the vegetal, the human, and the mineral co-determine each other?

I like to think of these encounters as alliances because alliances are not something that can simply be imposed; they are built through a continuous process of negotiation and redefinition.

In Éxtimo Presente, for example, by using the technique of photosynthetic photography[2], I decided to form an alliance with a species called Colocasia Esculenta, which originates from Asia and is cultivated in various parts of the world for its nutritional tubers and ornamental use. Working with this technique means engaging in dialogue with the ecosystem, adapting to natural time, understanding living energies, and taking responsibility for having a plant as a collaborator. The leaf has the ability to influence the artwork almost autonomously. Its reactions depend on the season, UV ray exposure, humidity, the moon, and even the plant’s “mood.”

Today, the ecological imaginary is saturated with apocalyptic narratives. Do you think art can function as an anti-apocalyptic tool? How does your work challenge or subvert these discourses of collapse?

Amid so much functional dystopia and echoes of fascism, the artistic community has the responsibility to build a qualitatively different space for the experience of a possible and desirable future. Artistic practice should be oriented toward proposing horizons that guide our expectations as a political community.

One of the ways in which art can serve as an anti-apocalyptic tool is by imagining and representing new ways of relating to the non-human. Akira Kurosawa does this with The Peach Orchard dance, Andy Goldsworthy with his ephemeral sculptures that complete themselves as the sunrise melts them, or the musicians of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, when they play the Violín Sachero to recreate the song of the coyuyos (cicadas).

In my case, in Éxtimo Presente, I express my desire—born from the anxieties and contradictions of a transitioning present—for different realities to coexist and overlap in a non-hierarchical way. If I had to describe this desire visually, as a movement, I would say it is a shift in perspective and axes: a spatial transformation where the relationships between humans and non-humans move from being organized along a vertical axis to a horizontal one—but not in a lateral arrangement (side by side), rather in a sequential depth arrangement (one behind the other from the observer’s perspective).

The concept of extimacy, coined by Lacan, refers to the intimate that paradoxically feels foreign to us. In Éxtimo Presente, there is an exploration of this threshold between the self and the other. How do you articulate this tension between subjectivity and otherness in the image?

To overcome the dualism between self and other, it is necessary to maintain a balance between continuity and difference, as the dialectic between connection and alterity is key to interaction. Viveiros de Castro states: “It is not about erasing contours, but about folding them, densifying them, iridescing them, and diffracting them.”

The way I found to articulate this tension was by making space for transparency, and with it, the in-between that the term extimacy refers to. The images in Éxtimo Presente are generated through superimposition, creating a translucent, living blend in which the vegetal image is projected onto a human body. Later, the result of this superimposition is revealed on a leaf, using the photosensitive properties of chlorophyll.

Francisco Pazzarelli, an anthropologist who accompanied my work, says that the beings of the mountains and the jungles—the plants, the humans, the animals, the invisible ones—define themselves as beings in continuous transformation. Not an abstract transformation, impossible to imagine, but a concrete one, mobilized by the forces of ingestion, chewing, and digestion. We are always being digested by others. That is existence.

Viveiros de Castro speaks of a perspectivism that subverts the centrality of the human subject. In your work, how do photography and audiovisual material engage with the possibility of a non-human gaze? Can the lens serve as a vector for translation between worlds?

More than a non-human gaze, I would say it is a human gaze distinct from the one that is hegemonic today.

In photographic terms, and considering what I previously mentioned about the superimposition of planes and the importance of transparency, Éxtimo Presente proposes a kind of “multifocal image” in which there is an overall reading, while each plane also offers something unique. In this sense, the lens represents our attention through the act of focusing, while also serving as the connection between these different planes—worlds—realities.

Currently, I am working on a project called New Doors to Understanding Smallness. In this project, I am exploring on a millimetric scale using a scanning microscope to examine native medicinal plants from the forests of my homeland. Once again, the lens, as you suggest, becomes a vector for translation between worlds.

---

[1] Conference of the Parties (COP), the supreme body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

[2] A handcrafted technique that reproduces images on leaves or plants by leveraging the photosynthetic properties of pigments, primarily green chlorophyll.