Episode 5 with George Gessert

In the fifth episode of Symbiotopics, Noortje and Gijs invite American artist George Gessert to the podcast. Together, they take a closer look at the works by Gessert, his impact on BioArt and how he got inspired. He began working with plant breeding in the early 1980s, but started out as a painter. He was interested in using various Asian papers to paint on, as ink flows through the paper in an uncontrolled, natural way. At a certain point, George became interested in art that in some way “creates itself”. While he had always loved gardening and more specifically, ornamental plants, only later he would realize that he could breed plants as an art practice. The idea of breeding ornamental plants, purely for the sake of art, had never been done before, which led to exhibition opportunities. Gessert began by breeding beautifully vibrant North Pacific irises on the West Coast of the United States. He would accumulate more and more seeds, and started manually dispersing the plant wherever he could. While plant breeding for aesthetic purposes has had a long history, very few have stood still to analyze where our preferences come from.

With his work, George Gessert attempts to emphasize the question of “control”. Is the relation with nature one in which I am trying to control or collaborate? In a world where we are in danger of causing ecological collapses, thinking about ourselves will not benefit us in the long term. “What makes us the most alive that we can be? It’s not controlling everything!”