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Contribution short abstract

Garden Me Tender speculates on a legal institute as a performative act through which spontaneous plants could claim land. In a space co-constituted by plants, urban ruins, and environmental sensors, their “passive” persistence is documented through AI-generated images based on collected data.

Contribution long abstract

Garden Me Tender is a speculative investigation into how land ownership might be reimagined through the performative act of usucaption—a legal institute in which continuous possession over time constitutes the acquisition of property. The project focuses on marginal, residual terrains co-inhabited by spontaneous vegetation, post-industrial ruins, and environmental sensing technologies, exploring the forms of non-human agency present.

Environmental data—light, humidity, temperature—collected in specific locations are captured by sensors embedded in the landscape and translated into numerical scales derived from Ellenberg ecological indicators. These values are then used as prompts for an AI model (Stable Diffusion) retrained on the Czech floristic and vegetation database Pladias.cz. The resulting images depict fictional plant forms that could grow under specific conditions, thus documenting, through the performative act of the sensor, the “passive” act of persistence.

By intertwining legal frameworks, technological mediation, and artistic practice, Garden Me Tender reframes questions of property beyond anthropocentric constructs. In this poster version, the focus is on presenting the network of actors within this more-than-human ecosystem.