Open-Air Laboratory: An Approach from the Perspective of Plant Aesthetics

Abstract

This paper explores the ambivalence of the term ‘open-air laboratory’ within public discourse, where it can signify both scientific interest and a slogan of denunciation. Examining the laboratory as conceptualized in contemporary research, I analyze the sensoria it generates in relation to plant life. I propose that plants function as ecological maps, mediating biovigilance and capitalist extraction while also enabling alliances that reimagine material worlds. This argument highlights the aesthetic dimension of world-making, where images act as affective membranes and imagination as a sensitive mesh with compositional force.