Transmission Cluj: He who spoke to the plants - art review by Ana Sisoi, 2nd year ITA

  An era during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment, the Anthropocene or, as some would call it - Capitalocene (arguing that what changed the modern history was, in fact, the capitalism) is, undoubtedly, a time of major, irreversible climate change.

In an attempt to draw attention on this controversial subject, on the International Light Day, that is 16th of May, the artist-researcher and President for life of Ouest-Lumiere Company, Yann Toma developed, within his Transmission Roumanie project, belonging to the 2019 France-Romania Season, a transmission chain of light Morse signals using modules placed in different points across Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Interes, Horea Street, Unirii Square and Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden. Taking place at a national level, the project started off in Bucharest, on April 19th, in the context of Spotlight Festival and will continue in Iași and Timișoara.

Professor of art and art science at the Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne University and member of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, Yann Toma is a French contemporary artist who developed the concept of artistic energy, as a means or an “impulse which would enable us to link to each other without us being forced of asserting our culture, our religion, our ancestry”. Through his artworks, he approaches the topic of collective energy and solidarity, getting involved at the same time in political and social events.

Within the episode of Transmissions that took place in Cluj, Yann Toma’s installation made use of the plants from the Botanical Garden and the former Tehnofrig plant, that is the current building of the Centrul de Interes, generating a narrative that raises the topic of planetary ecological consciousness. Thereby, Yann became the translator of these plants and transcribed their thoughts on the walls of the expositional space, hence the subtitle “He who spoke to the plants”. On the night of May 16, these thoughts were conveyed through light in the central places  of Cluj-Napoca mentioned above. 

The reference to plant intelligence or consciousness which, as well as climate change, is a largely debated subject, is easily recognizable in the concept of Yann’s installation. There are numerous studies that suggest that plants are sensitive and problem-solving organisms. However, there are people who accuse those who believe that plants are capable of humanlike, intelligent behavior of anthropocentrism. Nonetheless, some specialists argue that plants are capable - without the brain activity and self-consciousness that we assume is necessary for intelligence - of storing memories and learning from them, memories that our artist, by his means (consisting, among others, of some special sort of technology) - maybe a little difficult to understand for the rest of us, even for the general curator of the exhibition, Cristian Nae, as he admitted within the discussion with Yann that took place before the exhibition opening - manages to gain access to.

Although it was an only one-day exhibition, by approaching a controversial topic with appeal to the masses, yet transposed in an installation with a narrative that talks not only about climate crisis and the need for a planetary ecological consciousness, but also about memory, energy flows, about the relationship of the individual with the world, Yann Toma’s project manages, beyond the aesthetic dimension of the eye-catching installation and schemes with jungle vibes to sensitize the viewer regarding the future of humanity and raise a series of questions of rather a philosophical nature. 

We might, therefore, say that Yann’s project and artwork, in general, is a visionary one, trying to find a meeting point not only between contemporary art, science and philosophy but also between people from different generations, social classes and with different origins.