Enquête sur l'affaire du Botaniste Extraterrestriel, 2014

Exhibited at Cirque du Soleil HQ, Montréal
Installation, hydroponics, plant tissue culture, microscopy, electronics, video

Enquête sur l'affaire du Botaniste Extraterrestre is the first major iteration of The Extraterrestrial Botanist, a pseudo-research project examining experimental botany, plant–technology interfaces, and the ways scientific methods influence human relationships with plants. The project engages with hydroponics, tissue culture, microscopy, and plant-signalling concepts to explore how scientific and technological practices shape perception, remove plants from ecological context, and separate sensory experience from plant–human relations.

The installation combined several components:
– a modular hydroponic growth chamber with video and animation;
– four light boxes displaying phase-contrast microscopy images of pollen, salt, leaf tissue, and water;
– a plant-signalling sculpture using LEDs, conductive thread, and air plants;
– and a tissue-culture chamber containing one hundred potato plant clones.

Each element corresponded to a distinct phase of technical research. The hydroponic modules were constructed from repurposed Styrofoam forms coated in aqua-resin and fitted with pumps, valves, felt, and water reservoirs. The plant-signalling sculpture presented a simplified model of electrical communication between living organisms through programmed LED pulses. The microscopy series documented material structures central to plant biology. The tissue culture component, produced in collaboration with plant scientist Cristie Lovat (McGill University), extended the project’s engagement with laboratory-based propagation.

A fictional narrative panel accompanied the installation, describing a covert lunar research station operated in the 1970s by an isolated botanist studying extraterrestrial plant life. This speculative framework allowed me to situate the exhibition objects as recovered artifacts from a failed experiment in off-world botany, drawing attention to the broader cultural narratives associated with space research, technological utopianism, and human exceptionalism.

The project also raised questions about transplantation—both literal and conceptual. Working with soilless systems, rootless air plants, and laboratory cultures highlighted how plants are displaced, transported, or recontextualized in scientific and technological settings. It also reflected my interest in how plants are framed as sensors, data sources, or experimental subjects within controlled environments.

Throughout the project, I examined the aesthetics and ethics of 1970s-era space science, including gendered imagery in technological advertising and the portrayal of expertise in extraterrestrial research. By centring an “invisible” female researcher as the protagonist of the fictional lunar station, I positioned the installation as a critical reworking of these historical narratives.

Enquête sur l'affaire du Botaniste Extraterrestre established the conceptual foundation for subsequent iterations of The Extraterrestrial Botanist, where I continue to investigate plant–technology relations, material research, and the epistemological gaps created when plants are removed from ecological systems and placed into highly mediated environments.