A way of resisting (Athens Data Garden), 2020

Edition of 3 + 2AP.

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The first chapter of Data Garden, A way of resisting (Athens Data Garden) started in 2018 and was finalized in 2020. The second chapter of Data Garden, was created in 2022 under the title The mountain islands shall mourn us eternally (Dolomites Data Garden).

An imaginary community of digital citizens stores its most valuable digital data in micromeria acropolitana – a small plant that is endemic to the Acropolis. The community protects the network of plants by concurrently defending its members’ right to self-disposal of information. As the storage space transitions from the computational “cloud” to the Earth, and as control passes from the companies to the users, the life cycle of data follows that of a plant, fostering a relation of interdependence and care. In a peculiar garden, users become the plants’ gardeners, whereas plants in their turn become gardeners of the stored information.

Can anyone think of the future of connectivity beyond surveillance, minimizing the consequences of technological infrastructures on the natural environment? Is it possible for the bond between human and non-human worlds on this planet to be substituted? Can plants, as organisms on which life itself is depended, contribute to the creation and adoption of new practices of an everyday life that is mediated by technology? Data Garden investigates this set of questions by recounting a fictitious narrative that contains elements of truth. The narrative of Data Garden unravels in spring 2020, amidst the global pandemic that brought the violent awareness of the extreme climate crisis.

Data Garden received in October 2020 the INSPIRE PRIZE 2020 from the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki, Greece – MOMus.