Sighs of Plastic

Plants know very well what they must rebel against
Maurice Maeterlinck

The use of tourism as an escape route from the Western economy has brought with it certain unexpected obligations for society. Towns and cities have adapted to the gaze of those who exercise their right to experience and to hedonism, while locals have taken on new roles in order to satisfy the needs of those who visit. The in-between spaces and vacant lots where practicality and improvisation used to reign are increasingly sought after for the development and later the destruction, which is the same thing, of housing projects, airports, hotels, shopping centers.

The so-called “tourist monoculture” is an industrial practice that doesn’t allow anything to grow, develop or to take root, a system restricted in terms of desires and needs and based on the mandates of “having to,” with only two options, to produce and to spend. Located in a place of alienation, the locals wants to be tourists in their own territory, to be able from time to time to eat out, to have a drink, and to act as if nothing has changed.

We are faced with increasingly similar leisure spaces in which each consumer repeats the same sequence. In these non-places, a good part of the time is spent putting the word into practice, exchanging it and, in an attempt to cling to it as salvation from facts, placing it above material conditions. In these similar, clear and sterile environments, there is still some room for hope, and that is why, in some corner, perhaps on top of a shelf or on the door of the exclusive bathroom for customers, space is reserved for a small plastic plant.

In a culture of substitutes, in which only appearance matters, plants find their role, even if it is artificial. In bars, restaurants and hotels there seems to be a certain interest in paying attention to life (even if it is only in image), and thus owners often insist on buying and placing decorative elements that pass themselves off as plants, silhouettes that from a distance may look good but up close can only disappoint.

As rational beings, knowing how breathing is one of the essential activities for survival, our connection with the plant kingdom should be much stronger. The exaggerated inhaling of air when we climb mountains is proof of this. Without needing to leave the rhythm of the city, those green strips crossed by wires placed haphazardly in any corner try to create an environment that can calm us down.

The message is quite clear: “not here.” Here there is no time, no listening, no sustenance, no curiosity, no affection, no community, no real care for plants. In the service sector everything happens so fast, there are so many things to do with so little time, that a plant would be a nuisance, it would generate a loss. Which is why so little activity is dedicated to any living thing, whether it is the needs of a potted plant or the staff that carries the business on its back.

It’s hard to believe that plant life can be presented in such a fragmented way when it is well known that all plants connect with their neighbors, complement each other, support each other, communicate. How can we imagine, even if only decoratively, that four plastic flower pots evoke the presence of a whole kingdom studied by botany? At a time when society is hyper-connected and when we constantly receive messages generated thousands of kilometers away, we settle for copies of the cheapest flowers in places that do not disturb in an attempt to try to create a more pleasant climate. In the same way, we settle for living in houses that are stifling, disconnected from what is around it. Nature’s sustenance is also social. The roots of trees and people are severed, community dynamics between people, plants and animals become more difficult, and the support that makes it possible for an individual not to have to do everything always alone is lost.

We also see how in many streets where ornamental species such as orange trees, palm trees or jacarandas have traditionally been planted, it has become normal to avoid the co-existence between trees and weeds by covering the ground at the foot of the tree, thus avoiding connections of interdependence and leaving a gap in our vocabulary, since that gap that left space for water has always had a name, one of the oldest words in our language, a gift from the Sumerians.

Given what we have seen, just as the reproduction of a flower is to be as unobtrusive as possible, it should also cost as little as possible. From paper, feather, wax, bone, glass or silk flowers to the plastic ones today that fill the rooms with their unnatural aroma, the meticulous and repetitive task has been complemented by certain ailments due to postures, to the rush imposed by increasing demand, the scolding of mistakes. The person who made these supposedly delicate plants could well be the one who waits the tables, runs to the kitchen and who one January afternoon, at a silly hour, dedicates a few minutes to cleaning the accumulated dust from the leaves and petals of eternal plastic.

Perhaps a flower does not deserve to be in a bar that stinks of fried food or alcohol, and therefore the option of plagiarism isn’t so bad. Why should plants suffer inconveniences just for our delight and whim? If plants give their lives to survive through reproduction, would people let in something as dangerous and disruptive as a bee to carry out its pollination duties? The welfare state would never allow such a risk.

Specialist shops argue that these plasticized life stems are ideal for those who do not have time to care for a natural plant, that they are a long-lasting and attractive alternative that can be accommodated according to the needs of every space, and that they do not have the drawbacks of living plants. Life on demand, but without life. Evidence of this life-without-life has been given by the artist Paula Anta, who in her work Artificial Paradises, shows harmless and controllable recreations of possible and perfect paradises through a photographic record of different shops in South Korea where fake plants are sold. Her work is a questioning of the real and its opposite that Guillo Dorfles already anticipated in the 1980s, considering that “Fake flowers are thus welcome, like so many other artificial things, in the absence of real ones.”

In tourist environments, perhaps a golf course can be a vegetal paradise, alive but at the same time precisely controlled, with the height of its grass is trimmed daily. The playing space of this sport is described as a field, but it is nothing like it. A life-size model of an oasis, watered by plundered aquifers, where only a few people occasionally go to whack a ball into the distance, a made-to-measure paradise to which almost no one has access. In Spain, the majority of these replicated fictions are found in Andalusia, with more than 100 golf courses located in several of the provinces that have the highest risk of drought, places where the consumption of water in summer in the neighboring houses is limited by cutting off the supply or where on the TV news people are told to shower quickly for the common good. In cities with “better weather” (more sun and less rain), more fields are used to install this expensive artifice.

Time passes and purslane, poppies and nettles insist on sprouting in the cracks of consumption and tourism. Within the unnecessary, small flaws in a system through which everything is already exploding, little by little, it will be the flowers that live and die that will end up winning the game.