Check out Requiem for Lost Plants, an interactive project developed by local artists Alice Yuan Zhang and Alexander Kaye! Requiem for Lost Plants aims to shine a light on how whole ecological communities have been uprooted without acknowledgement as a result of the colonization and urbanization of Tongva, Chumash, and Kizh land here in Los Angeles.
The project digitally resurrects diminishing plant elders to share their stories for a global public through an immersive online environment: https://tinyurl.com/requiemforlostplants
Web-based visitors find themselves in an anthropocentric representation of urban Los Angeles, juxtaposed by the brightly-lit presence of five ancestral plants. Salix gooddingii, Salvia apiana, Sphaeralcea ambigua, Pseudognaphalium californicum and Layia carnosa dot the environment, hailing from diverse local communities of wetlands, sand dunes, chaparral, and coastal sage scrub habitats.
You can also interact with the project in person at a number of "culprit" sites across Los Angeles, including Rio de Los Angeles State Park!
Throughout the many millennia that these plants have called the land home, long before human concepts of ‘property rights’ and ‘manifest destiny’, they have cultivated know-how for not just their own survival but for the wellbeing of whole ecosystems. Each plant holds a nuanced story of collaboration and generosity so bountifully found in nature. We risk losing this wisdom as our own challenges of greed, neglect, and myopia continue to push aside and erase the deep generational knowledge of Indigenous peoples and make it increasingly difficult for the ecosystems themselves to survive. In sharing the stories and narratives of these "lost plants," the artists hope to inspire a deeper connection between people and the land, and to further advance localized ecological justice.
Requiem for Lost Plants is created by Los Angeles-based artists Alice Yuan Zhang and Alexander Kaye for 3hd Festival 2020: UNHUMANITY, commissioned by Creamcake and NAVEL. The Audubon Center at Debs Park is happy to have played a small role in the creation of this piece by providing ecological background and guidance.
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