Multi-species commingling and augmented reality come together in Untidy Objects, a gardened site, where we are invested in revealing the untidiness of property, rights, and obligations, in proximity to joy, survival, play, dirt and code.
Untidy Objects is a living sculpture situated behind the Logan Center for the Arts. The living sculpture has introduced terraforming and hugelkultur, thousands of plants and their co-evolved companions both flora and fauna, soil enrichment, a pond, and two bio-swales. From this we have seen rapid growth and multi-species co-mingling. Beyond a sculptural proposition, Untidy Objects is also a political proposition. The work asks its audience to consider that humans are the only living organism in the site that benefits from legal and political rights. The autonomy and the human exceptionalism we take for granted is a cultural and legal fiction. When one expands their sense of self to include what surrounds and co-constitutes them, questions of who is deserving of legal and political rights and who also holds obligations, grows complicated. Every seed, every tree, and each new plant or emergent relationship suggests such an obligation–but not so cleanly through a human lens. We are responsible for one another in ways that precede and underlie our basic existence, and that are not currently captured by rights or law. But if we experience ourselves as co-constituted with other “untidy objects,” we have grounds for the making of an alternative political and legal framework: A Co-Constitution.
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