PLANT STORIES #4: THE INTELLIGENCE OF PLANTS
Audiovisual Performance by Interspecifics & Guests
22 AUGUST 2025 / 20:00
THE BOOK OF TRANSMUTATIONS. CHAPTER 4: THE INTELLIGENCE OF PLANTS
As the final outcome of a speculative fiction workshop which the artist collective Interspecifics conducted with a group of over 20 people from June to August 2025, they will enact four co-authored short stories live at ZK/U by blending elements of audio drama and live cinema.
The workshop reimagined the human relationship with plants and the natural world through alternative futures storytelling; it brought together diverse research approaches, generative, AI-assisted technologies and a writing process framework rooted in Latin American futurism.
In the resulting hybrid, embodied format, narratives unfold in real time through a dynamic interplay of voices, soundscapes, rich visual atmospheres, and intentional glitches.
The performance interweaves multiple temporalities, cross-genre narratives, and symbolic language, embracing a non-linear, layered mode of sensorial storytelling. Drawing from an untold history and a collection of contemporary myths, it envisions new ecological and social possibilities while reclaiming imagination as a critical tool for decolonial speculation and ontological experimentation.
INTERSPECIFICS are an independent artistic research studio founded in Mexico City in 2013. Their work explores sound and artificial intelligence as tools to investigate the emergence of biosignal patterns and the morphology of living organisms, potentially enabling nonhuman communication. They have developed a collection of experimental tools and educational resources known as Ontological Machines. They were recently awarded the DAAD Fellowship for Music & Sound for a research residency in Berlin in 2025 and their work has been exhibited at Apophenies, Interruptions, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2024, among others.