PHOTOPHAGIA: The Secret Life of Plants will be described by gardeners and shown without the picture

Video,  99 minutes.  2019.

A graphic illustration of a portrait of a black person with pink hair and matching shirt. Their lips are red and what looks like a palm leaf covers part of their face. Two larger palm leaves are on either side of them, and round flowers on vine-like stalks are also in the background.
Illustration by Elise Conlin

The Secret Life of Plants is a 1979 documentary based on a book by the same name.  The content of the book and movie has been critiqued as pseudoscience, yet continues to inspire reverence for plant life and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness.

The soundtrack was created by Stevie Wonder, a fact that conspiracy theorists hold up as evidence that Stevie Wonder is not actually blind.  As noted on The Organist podcast, Stevie Wonder was probably able to experience the visual aspects of The Secret Life of Plants through a simple technology:  audio description, likely provided in a casual way by his assistants.

I invited community members who have relationships with plants (gardeners, florists, biologists, herbalists, master gardeners, farmers, foragers, weed-pullers, nature geeks, makers of gooseberry jam, plant-eaters, and plant-lovers of all kinds) to each describe a scene of the film. These informal descriptions play alongside the documentary, which is screened without the picture, inviting “viewers” to sit in relative darkness together and listen.

PHOTOPHAGIA was produced by Ontario Culture Days and presented by Culture Days and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in a relaxed screening for DO BLUE BUTTERFLIES EAT PARTS OF THE SKY? an exhibition curated by Dave Dyment. It has been exhibited at The MacKenzie Art Gallery as part of Chyrons for the Future, curated by Crystal Mowry, and at Charlottetown’s Art In the Open 2022, curated by Amish Morrell and Kirstie McCallum. A web version of the project can be experienced here. A transcript, including experimental sound descriptions, is available in PDF format.

Many thanks to all who made this project possible:

Community description by Rachael Chong, Yvonne Ip, Aura Linsley, Theo Linsley, Maya Linsley, Sara Brubacher, Patti Lennox, Abhi Dewan, Kai Reimer Watts, Clara Jenner, Rodger Tschanz, Fan-Ling Suen, Janet L’Abbe, David Shumaker, Chris Earley, Candace McCutcheon, Anna-Marie Larsen, Marcel Visser, Dennis Murphy, Stephanie Jenner, Felix Morrell, Marlene deGroot-Maggetti, Sally Ludwig, Lea Tran, & Maria Brown.

Editing and tech support by Nathan Saliwonchyk.  Additional support from The Commons Studio.

I gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts’ support of the research and creation of this work.