The Emergent Symbiocene. Audrey Walshe outlines her new project at Castletown House.

The Emergent Symbiocene

AUDREY WALSHE DISCUSSES A RECENT RESEARCH PROJECT FOCUSING ON THE PARKLANDS OF CASTLETOWN HOUSE.

WORKING IN COLLABORATION with artist, Marie Phelan, I recently developed a project exploring the historical imaginings of the parklands at Castletown House in Celbridge, County Kildare. During the developmental work, which was supported by Creative Ireland and Kildare County Arts Service, we considered the site’s botanical and river-scape histories, as well as its built heritage.

With an academic background in cultural studies and contemporary art, as well as a practice which is based around botany and gardening, I have always been curious about the deeper cultural and socio-political motivations which exist behind planting and landscapes. Gardening is a well appreciated activity globally; over the last year more than ever, people have found solace and stability in the predictable rhythms of nature during a chaotic and terrifying period. Yet the act of gardening in a contemporary sense often uncritically mirrors historic aesthetic desires, which were entirely uninformed by ecological understandings.

What appears to be a benign activity is ultimately an act of intervention, especially when science informs us that current environmental actions are promoting a mass species extinction event. Given that the UN has recently urged all signatory countries, including Ireland, to restore the world’s ecosystems within a mere decade (under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030), we realise gardening has a profound ethical dimension and must involve ecological understanding.

Th e eighteenth and nineteenth-century imperialist mindset had little understanding that many botanical or horticultural interventions were unsustainable for future generations. Few realised the consequences of uprooting or importing exotic specimen plants, nor how monoculture planting interrupts ecological systems. To address the eco-social challenges of today, state managed properties must promote ecological harmony for all species.

Our archival research examined the records pertaining to planting for the gardens of Castletown House, with particular interest in Lady Louisa Connolly’s time as custodian there. I wondered whether her connection to the place infl uenced its development, or indeed, if Lady Louisa’s activities were symbolic of a misguided worldview, which while carried out with good intentions, was neither inclusive nor sustainable in the long-term. Th e owners of these properties were concerned with showcasing beauty, as well as displaying and maintaining power – the taming of the land mirroring the colonial occupation of the island, with these show gardens often providing a veneer to obscure deeper social and ecological violence.

Marie and I wished to examine this notion of time and how the past, present and future are connected by the natural world. In the midst of the global pandemic, our thoughts turned to connection and fi nding humanity, as the world displayed a collective fragility. Taking our archival research as a starting point, we grappled with how to create our response, as our initial plans for interactive, site-specifi c, outdoor installations were impacted by the pandemic restrictions. We were lucky to have been able to complete several site visits, which retrospectively became the basis for the production of a short fi lm, Interventions, exploring the many layers of custodianship for the estate and the traces that exist today. In the absence of physical human connection and with limited movement allowed, we both retreated to continue working remotely – Marie focusing on audio and lens-based media, as I planted the same lilacs and rose varieties chosen for Castletown in the 1700s.

During this time, I was reading the work of environmental philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, a former professor of sustainability and leading thinker on the psychological, emotional and cultural relationships between people and place. In his book, Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Albrecht created a new vocabulary to express the crisis of our emotional relationship with planet earth.1 Th is quest for a new language is not only a way to express the challenges humanity is currently facing, but also an attempt to create ways of overcoming our ecocidal past, while imagining a future that fosters mutual benefi t for all living beings and ecosystems.

Albrecht put forward two key concepts – ‘solastagia’ and the ‘symbiocene’. Th e fi rst has already become widely accepted within the creative arts and humanities as a way of understanding the impact of environmental change, while acknowledging the severe trauma to people whose homes are damaged or degraded. Albrecht describes solastalgia as “the homesickness you have when you are still at home.” As a possible way out of our current age and mind set, Albrecht simultaneously puts forward the idea of the ‘symbiocene’, which opens up the possibility of an earthly ‘home’, symbiotically unifi ed with all living things and life processes. Albrecht notes that “in the emergent symbiocene, human identity will once again be anchored in place and region, however, it will not be the identity of the past. Th e new identity will have to be an act of creation.”

Th ese ideas were key for me to consider at Castletown House; it was as if Castletown manifested some of Albrecht’s concepts. An estate created from wealth and privilege in an unequal society – a place which had truly advanced horticultural practice for its time – now looks towards new ways of engaging with the concerns of contemporary society, evident in ventures such as the recently planted biodiversity garden. In a late-capitalist context, such initiatives help to build new systems that serve people and the planet in a more equal way, whilst recognising the geopolitical histories of power and the ecological damage attributable to colonial and patriarchal legacies.

Audrey Walshe grows fl owers from a greenhouse and garden in The Curragh, as part of a long-term art project. She is interested in the material culture and social history of fl owers and is currently researching histories around the documentation of bio-collections in Ireland.

Notes:

1Glenn A Albrecht, Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, New York, Cornell University Press, 2019