Floral Experimentation
LOCATION: WHEREVER THERE IS LAND AND PLANTS
We were going to a birthday party. We didn’t have a present. Anna said ‘don’t worry we’ll just find plants and flowers on the way and make a big bouquet’. Mischievous smile on her face she stooped and reached, grabbing flowers and foliage from empty lots and sidewalks.
By the time we reached the party we had a huge, wild, spectacular bouquet. From that point on, flowers became part of everything we do. For example in the market we had a ‘Wildness Frame’, an old foraged bicycle tyre that hung from fishing wire in the middle of the old (former) church.
Every week, using a combination of leftover flowers given to us from a posh supermarket and foraged flowers and plants, the frame was decorated with a different design. We took people’s pictures in the frame, printed the portraits, and hung them around the space the following week. If they showed up we would give them their picture.
COMPOST
The story of our floral experimentation exemplifies a kind of economic theory we have, like the ‘working theories’ developed by children as they learn. For this first bouquet to happen we had to let go of some control, of having the future figured out. The idea that resources are all around, that one must only open one’s perceptions to dialogue with the surprise encounters that are right there, had to settle within us.
GERMINATE
The moment on the way to the birthday party sprouted an enthusiasm within us. We followed it, following the pleasure, the careful adventure of foraging, of new designs surprising us every week. This enthusiasm was contagious, later passed on to market goers getting their pictures taken.
CARE
We started cultivating floral techniques, following creative florists on social media, investing in tools, using every opportunity to try out new methods and arrangements. Through floral arts we created spaces of sharing, making crowns for people on different occasions, teaching people of all ages the techniques that we acquired.
