Arrival of the Ferns

by Amalie Rugård Jensen

What future would come out of a past where ferns wrote poetry and people started photosynthesizing?

A better one, I imagine. The project Arrival of the ferns is centered around Franciska Birchen, a scientist that I made up. She’s a DanishGerman therolinguist, member of the psychochromatic society and translator of the writings of ferns. The project borrows its title from the first selection of poetry written by the ferns of the Oslo Nordmarka in translation by Birchen. If it sounds strange, that’s ok. There’s something compelling about making art that makes people stop and wonder for a second or more, is this really true? Well. What if it was? A lot of scientists who also happened to be women have been grossly miscredited or entirely written out of history over the years. So maybe it isn’t so unlikely that someone with the name Franciska Birchen who translates plant poetry actually existed without you hearing about it.

Image Credit for all of the following images: Amalie Rugård Jensen.

With this, and other related projects, I’m trying to make room for those who have been uncredited. By creating worlds that, although fictional, are close enough to this one, I imagine other ways of being and make people wonder.

I envision a future where people take the time to read the poems of ferns, stones and grouse. If more people would listen and put themselves in the place of the marginalized, maybe this could be a more caring and considerate world. And if they also learned photosynthesis, oh boy, there would be no end to the beneficial effects!