06
Garden of the Other
A speculative narrative on the
ideological baggage associated with purportedly uncultivated land.
See garden, think terrain;
See terrain, think the world;
See the world, think invasive;
See invasive, think alien;
See alien, think neophyte;
See neophyte, think death,
See death and think the thriving of native.
By definition, it is a haven of peace and quiet. A garden shares the same expansive sky as the open landscape, yet it is as contained as a building1. Still, a garden can possess conditions for the mind to transcend reality2, perhaps an image of the world when it is planted with species originating from all corners of the world.
From the Jacaranda mimosifolia found in the tropical and subtropical conditions of South America; the paulownia and the maidenhair from East Asia; the weeping cedar hailing from Alaska; the Pueraria montana that grows 26 centimeters in a day, the Night-blooming jasmine (mesk-ellil in Persian), that exudes one of the most intense and sensual smells of the plant kingdom3, and Datura Stramonium that will put you to sleep, forever4.
The garden of the aliens;
The garden of the neophytes;
The garden of the invasives;
The garden of the non-natives;
The garden of the poisonous;
Michel Foucault prescribes garden to a type of heterotopia. His mythical image of the magic carpet as garden, which stems from the traditional Persian garden, inherits its ability to traverse space from the garden’s placeless status. Garden as heterotopia is a simultaneous representation of one small section of the world and of the entire world5. Dialectically defined, a heterotopian garden is at once attainable (real) and unattainable (cognitive dissonance), and perhaps it is by blurring the line between the real and virtual where the Garden of the Other is expanded6.
The Garden of the Other exists as a heterotopia, where the cycle of life is irrelevant, time is a continuous loop, exceeding the limits of our thought as a garden of cognitive dissonance. The Garden of the Other transcends and is constantly expanding to include an other, where boundary is constantly negotiated and renegotiated.
2 Johnson, P. (2013) ‘The Geographies of Heterotopia’, Geography Compass, 7 (11) 790–803.
3 Garden of Earthly Delights, an exhibition at Gropius Bau (notes taken on site in 2018)
4 Poison Garden at the Alnwick Garden, Northumberland, UK.
5 Foucault, Michel. 1984. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. In trans. Jay Miscowiec.
6 Artwork of Randall Packer: https://thirdspacenetwork.com/
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