Mal Journal x Serpentine Galleries: PLANTSEX

Published in collaboration with Serpentine Galleries, Mal Journal's Issue 3: PLANTSEX is part of Serpentine’s year-long symposium General Ecology, an ongoing project researching complexity, posthumanism, interspecies landscapes, the environment and climate change.

The evening, among other things, marked the launch of the first print edition of Mal, which is now available to order.

After a round of short introductions by organisers and editors, Mexican novelist Chloe Aridjis took the stage to read her essay ‘Uprooted’, published in Issue 3. Her reading was followed by a lecture by Emanuele Coccia, Associate Professor at the EHESS in Paris and author of The Life of Plants (2018), and a video and live performance by artist Alex Cecchetti, both of whom contributed to the issue’s print edition.

A break mid-way in the program allowed guests a moment to socialise over drinks and look through copies of the issue, which were available at the event at special reduced price. The evening also included readings and performances by Jenna Sutela and Laurence Totelin and films by Melanie Bonajo, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Victoria Sin, and ended close to midnight.

The print issue of PLANTSEX features Chloe Aridjis’s essay on Mexican flora and its foreigners, a sequence of poems by Bhanu Kapil, an essay on the sex lives of plants by Emanuele Coccia, a sci-fi story by artist Victoria Sin, a personal exploration of the queerness of gardening by Julia Bell, an essay on queer botanics by film critic Teresa Castro, a sequence of botanical nursery rhymes and artworks by artist, poet and gardener Alex Cecchetti, a new poem (and somatic poetry ritual) by CAConrad, an essay by writer and poet Daisy Lafarge asking ‘Can you be a revolutionary & still love flowers?’, and artworks by Australian artist Yi Xiao Chen.