Interwoven – Exercises in Rootsystem Domestication

For the past eight years, Scherer has focused on developing the interdisciplinary project Interwoven.This publication will discuss research, new craft and its relevance to biotechnology in addition to the artworks. Contemplative essays will play a central role in the conceptual design. Authors are Giovanni Aloi, Judith Elisabeth Weiss, Phillip Fimmano and Norbert Peeters. In their essays, the four authors from the disciplines of art, textiles and botany reflect on the different facets of the project. In 2015, Scherer began developing Interwoven from idea to material, grown dress -sculptures to large-scale installations.

 On the Cultural Performance of Destruction, Uprooting, Annihilation

Diana Scherer sets in motion a kind of dialectic of cultural forms and cultural behaviour in her art in the interplay of collaboration with nature and the opposing mastery over nature. She not only spreads out the lush verdant green of caring horticultural work for us to witness – but also the opposite – destroying what she tended beforehand. The carpets of grass devotedly grown by the gardener therefore hardly differ, in terms of plant physiology, from a meadow that grows naturally. Two spheres can be differentiated from one another phenomenally – one of latency and one of manifestation. The underground sphere comprises the network of roots, the sphere that is above-ground displays the abundant growth and lush verdancy. The next step of Scherer’s artistic work draws our attention to the hidden world of the roots. At the end of the growing phase follows what the artist terms ‘the harvest’, again resorting to agricultural metaphors. A radical act lies behind the harmless expression, a procedure that literally zeroes in on the roots of things – the roots are cut off and then the carpet of root systems is lifted out of the ground. The harvest of the roots presents a drastic image of the inversion of cultural history, an image that has also political implications. The domestication of plants and the associated practice of harvesting represent a key turn in the history of humankind since it began to settle the land in the neolithic revolution, literally establishing roots. In face of the impact of life depending increasingly on technology, the ruthless exploitation of the Earth as the other side of the coin of harvesting and the increase in human migration make Scherer’s artworks appear as if they were presenting the other side to the history of cultivation.

From the Essay:  On Roots and Men: Interwoven Narratives in the Age of Hybrid Realities

by Judith Elisabeth Weiss and Herbert Kopp Oberste Brink

Contributing Author:

Giovanni Aloi, Chicago

Colin Huizing

Philip Fimanno Paris, New York

Judith Elisabeth Weiss & Herbert Kopp Oberste Brink, Berlin

Jiwei Zhou, Delft

Norbert Peters, Leiden

Publisher: Jap Sam Books  2023. https://www.japsambooks.nl

Design: Mainstudio https://mainstudio.com