Alejandra Melian-Morse

My short ethnographic film Interkingdom Ensemble features the Montreal plant sound project, Plantasia. The film, as well as its plant and human subjects, look at the communication that can happen within the triad of plant life, human life, and technology. I follow and speak to artists Ola Kado and Matt Stoker, and together we explore the idea of sentient ecologies and how that sentience might just have to be approached on levels other than or beyond linguistic communication—through the senses. Although sound is the dominant sense, I explore in this film, the music created in the project could not come to be without the sense of touch, making the communication that happens between plants and humans full of intimacy and tactile understanding. Although this project exists on a small scale, it opens up conversations about what an interspecies (or interkingdom) approach to our planet might look, sound, and feel like.