Tate Modern Talk

On Behalf of Seeds

29 October 2022 at 15.30–16.45

A plant is held in the foreground and a performer is seen in the background of a field of long grass.

Adham Faramawy, The air is subtle, various and sweet 2020-21, film still. Courtesy the artist.

Hear from curators, filmmakers and artists about the various ways that they think through engagements with plants in this free talk

This roundtable discussion brings together participants from the Encounters Over Several Plants programme and invited guests to reflect on technology, knowledge and ways of being connected to the lives and processes of plants.

The ways in which plants, both real and imagined, remembered and present, have informed the filmmaking practices of Adham Faramawy, Kent Chan and Lawrence Lek will be highlighted. Artist Annalee Davis’s cultural instigations around her Barbados-based studio in a former sugar cane plantation will root the conversation in present social ecologies. Counter Encounters, the curators of this series, will also share their programming choices and future research pursuits.

Composed of Laura Huertas Millan, Onyeka Igwe and Rachael Rakes, Counter Encounters is a curatorial and research initiative active since 2019. They engage forms of anti- and alter- ethnographies in cinema and contemporary art. They have presented programmes and exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art of the Real at Lincoln Center, New York); and It’s a Mutant Space conference, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

The collective recently contributed a text to the catalogue for the exhibition No Master Territories at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and are editing the October issue of the journal World Records.

All Tate Modern entrances are step-free. You can enter via the Turbine Hall and into the Natalie Bell Building on Holland Street, or into the Blavatnik Building on Sumner street.

The Starr Cinema is on Level 1 of the Natalie Bell Building. There are lifts to every floor of the Blavatnik and Nathalie Bell buildings. Alternatively you can take the stairs.

There is space for wheelchairs and a hearing loop is available.

All works screened in the Starr Cinema have English captions.

Fully accessible toilets are located on every floor on the concourses.
A quiet room is available to use in the Natalie Bell Building on Level 4.
Ear defenders can be borrowed from the Ticket desks.

To help plan your visit to Tate Modern, have a look at our visual story. It includes photographs and information about what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.

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