Wanting Waiting Wailing, Wailing Waiting Wanting

2023 – 2024

three-stage institutional compost system (trash collection, bokashi fermentation, composting), UV print on mounted acrylic, existing architecture, pine, recycled steel, recycled foam, recycled acrylic, HDPE, peat moss, vermiculite, compost, full-spectrum lightbulbs, remote controls, humidifier, fan, electrical wiring, hardware

species: Fragaria vesca, F. virginiana, Rubus canadensis, R. fruticosus, R. idaeus, R. occidentalis, Vaccinium ashei, V. macrocarpon, Cydonia oblonga, Ficus carica, Ribes odoratum, Citrus aurantiifolia, C. meyeri, C. sinensis, Lonicera caerulea, Cymbopogon citratus, Allium tuberosum, Origanum vulgare, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium, Rosmarinus officinalis, Thymus citriodorus, Camellia sinensis, Viola sororia, Symphytum grandiflorum, S. uplandicum

10 x 10 x 13.5 ft

with particular thanks to Vibha Vijay and Jules Loman

Wanting Waiting Wailing, Wailing Waiting Wanting is a two-part set of durational installations: the introduction of a compost system to the University of Virginia’s Ruffin Hall and the architectural conversion of two-thirds of my office into a public edible garden that surrounds the participant and confronts them at eye level. The elevated garden bed houses under it the decomposed organic matter from the institutional compost system, which is then incorporated into the garden. The architectural conversion forces me into daily intimate cohabitation with plant life and adjacent subjects (soil, insects, fungi, bacteria) as sets of agents with their own demands, and turns a previously private space into a public forum. The conversion also makes the office significantly less usable and navigable; here, my choice to live with plants despite the inconvenience emerges not from love or habit but from a desire to overcome indifference towards other species, such that the cultivation of plants is really a cultivation of desire for other forms of care for the nonhuman.