Paper Short Abstract:

How can arts-based methods contribute to our understanding of interspecies co-existence? Moving away from historically positivist botanical research, this paper uses embodied actions and collaging-assemblaging methodologies to map the interconnected lives of the asparagus plant and the socialities which it is a part of.

Paper Abstract:

In our contemporary commercial food systems, plants are often regarded as unconditionally available for use and exploitation by humans. With agribusiness models' growing prevalence and the use of technology in food farming, the interaction between humans and edible plants is restricted to the supermarket.

The asparagus plant, however, requires specialist care. It needs to be hand-picked carefully and at the right time - by humans. Asparagus bunches contain only the shoots of the plant, which are never allowed to reach their full size or flower. The white varieties are even deprived of sunlight for photosynthesis. This short but intensive care for a vegetable deemed almost a luxury item creates interesting constellations around this plant. Following a place-based logic, the PhD research is situated in Northern Italian villages infamous for their asparagus seasons.

Art-based methods including walking in fields with people caring for asparagus, mapping its historical routes, creating assemblages, and making and eating food are used in this study to define plant socialities beyond common stereotypes. This kind of ‘deep mapping’ moves beyond the dualist human-nonhuman perspective and can make important conclusions without a quest for a complete map (Modeen & Biggs 2020).

A theoretical perspective of posthumanism is used alongside critical plant studies to analyse the asparagus’s role in the vision of planetary coexistence. Overall, the study allows for the definition of ‘asparagus socialities’, based on human and non-human agents' needs, experiences, and communicative acts around the asparagus plant.