The Disinhibition of the Persistence of Gaia or Nature Finds a Way

During the Owl Trail Walk, which the Leeds Psychogeography did on July 27th, we spotted a number of plants emerging out of the brickwork of the buildings in Leeds. Mark Jaffe took some great photos of these, despite the fact that some were many floors up from street level:




I love these images and am always fascinated about how it is that despite man's attempts (intentional or not) to silence life, it manages to find a way. Deleuze and Guattari talk about this when discussing the 'molecular' and they give an example of a particular rhizomatic nettle plant that can work its way through a wall, a molecule at a time.

Here is a really nice film that Gregory Reveret has made on the subject:

Nature Finds a Way

I'm always reminded of Chernobyl when I see plants emerging through some seemingly impervious material. I saw an amazing documentary on TV of how Chernobyl looks today. Here is a photo that I found online:

Nature Consumes Radioactive Chernobyl

It literally looks like a frozen moment in time. You can almost hear the fairground noise and see the people having fun driving into each other in the bumper cars.

This image is particularly interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it shows a place of 'pleasure': a fairground in a region that subsequently has the notion of 'tragedy', even 'horror', attached to it. I would love to do a psychogeographical project at Chernobyl. If any funding bodies out there are reading this, please contact me.