The Longest Living

The research uses artistic practice as a means to explore plant/human relations, between scientific study and popular culture, allowing for a consideration of the different forms of the othering of nature in, and through, documentary and fictional storytelling.
The single screen video The Longest Living (2021), utilises cinematic and televisual languages, within the context of fiction and the documentary, and is part of a wider body of research formed from archival research, taxonomical discourses and fictional speculation. The research connects a group of detailed orchid models (made by Edith Blackman), held in the archives of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew to economic botany and global colonial networks.
The research considers “natural othering” as a potential tool in mitigating anthropocentric views of nature. Rather than a humancentric view, it indicates the possibility of the importance of othering as a recognition of a necessary separation to provide vegetal agency. Considering the depiction of plants through forms of popular culture, on screen and in literature, the research discusses the ‘electric plant’ and ‘weird fiction’ to frame this discussion. It considers what artistic research frameworks can be generated to mitigate anthropomorphisation through an ethical othering and what role speculative fiction could have in revealing these potentials.
The work was screened at Midlands Conference In Critical Thought 2026, University of Warwick, May 21st 2026