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In the greenhouse pavilion of the outdoor gardens of Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, the artist creates an installation based on the Botanical Museum’s data collections of algae, available on the internet-based The Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (1). The art/science-oriented work is inspired by romantic theater sets from the end of the 19th century (date of construction of the greenhouses in Kaisaniemi), scientific data management, and contemporary A.I.-generated landscape study. In the greenhouse pavilion, two sets of pieces, initially intended to function as a theatre stage frame are reversed, from the periphery towards the centre, shifting perception and triggering a new imaginary in relation to theatre, biodiversity and new technologies of representation.
The work is part of Roumagnac’s series Reacclimatizations, which started in 2018 for the Night of the Museums of Barcelona, in the Museum of Scenic Arts of Catalunya, and resumed last summer in Finland at Mustarinda (Hyrynsalmi) for Kasviaika Festival 2022. Through several experimental settings on the scenographic representation of “nature” in the history of Western theatre, and the place of vegetal and data in the contemporary transformations of imagination, Roumagnac invites the viewer to be with the following questions: What happens to theatre when the other-than-human is not anymore only populating the backstage but enters the very centre of the stage, displacing the human presence at the periphery? What drama is put on when the botanical garden is speculatively displaced into a future, in which, after having been this historical place dedicated to ensuring the survival of biospheric biodiversity, it becomes a stage where artificial creatures, made from the memory of the former then-extinct biodiversity, grow?
The work is supported by Niilo Helander Foundation.