Isadora Neves Marques

The Pudic Relation between Machine and Plant

Pedro Neves Marques’ The Pudic Relation between Machine and Plant shows a looped scene where a robotic hand touches a “sensitive plant” — Mimosa Pudica, a species characteristic for closing on itself when touched. The plant’s name was derived from Carl Linnaeus’s sexual taxonomy of plants: pudica referring to the external sexual organs, shyness, and modesty. In a poem written by Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather) titled The Loves of the Plants (1789), this plant is associated, jokingly, with British Botanist Joseph Banks’s famous sexual adventures during his botanical expedition to the tropics. Native to South America, today, this sensitive plant is an invasive species in Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, precisely the geography where Banks had his sexual adventures. The video, and its references, speak to environmental colonialism, the heralding of so-called pioneers as producers of knowledge. The film perhaps speaks to a new frontier, the cultural colonization through technology. The film subtly references the past and implores that we reconsider the previous methodologies in understanding sexuality, technology, and science.