ARTWORK

Laura Cinti, The Living Dead – On the trail of a female

THE LIVING DEAD



Laura Cinti, THE LIVING DEAD: On the trail of a female (2022)
Laura Cinti is an artist, researcher and co-director of C-LAB, an award-winning bioart collective engaging with interdisciplinary use of cutting-edge science and technology. The collective often focuses on the modification of biological matter to create living works, which serve as ways of experiencing deeper and often inaccessible spaces.


“Isolated from their habitat, extinct-in-the-wild plants have been stripped of their ecological circumstance allowing them to be a reproductive member of their population. Here, the plants are merely living their life in a physiological sense – they are the ‘living dead’.”

No longer existing in the wild, Wood’s Cycad (Encephalartos woodii) is one of the rarest plants on Earth. One male specimen was found in 1895 in the Ngoye Forest in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was removed from the wild, and its offsets have been propagated in botanical gardens worldwide. The species has been able to survive through human-made cloning of the male individual, but while numerous expeditions have sought to find another female specimen to bring the plant back from the brink of extinction, they all have been without success. However, the Ngoya Forest hasn’t been fully surveyed, and there is a possibility that a female may exist…

The Living Dead - On the Trail of a Female, partakes in the search for the elusive female specimen of the Wood’s Cycad, using manned aircraft surveys and drone technologies with expert guidance. Materialising into an audiovisual installation, the project draws attention to the relationship between vegetable survival and human intervention, while reflecting on how the inability for plants to survive in the wild is also intrinsically linked to their isolation from their ecosystems, and their preservation in human-made habitats.

Image credits: Living Dead: On the trail of a female, STUDIO(dys)TOPIA – At the Peak of Humankind, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2022; Drone Mission Search for Encephalartos Woodii, Ngoye Forest, South Africa. Mosiac map: Dr Debbie Jewitt, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, 2022; Drone Mission Search for Encephalartos Woodii, Matrice 210 in flight over Ngoye Forest, South Africa. Photo: Dr Debbie Jewitt, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife; E. Woodii and Laura Cinti, Temperate House, Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, September 2021. Photo: Howard Boland. The E. Woodii in Kew Gardens is an offset of the only plant of this specimen ever found in the wild. It was sent to Kew in 1899; Aerial photograph over Ngoye Forest. Photo: Steve McCurrach, The Bateleurs, 2021; Living Dead: On the trail of a female, STUDIO(dys)TOPIA – At the Peak of Humankind, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2022.


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