Strange Seed

Strange Seed

Strange seed ‘was inspired by the notion of the relic as power device interplaying on the notion of the seed containing a certain history, a materiality which is impossible to ignore and a virtuality and its potential to create worlds.

It is an assemblage of technology and biology: I used obsolete 4GB of Dynamic Random Access Memory (RAM) from an old laptop which I could no longer access and extracted solely the memory chips by crashing with pestle and mortar. RAM, also called a ‘volatile memory’ because without power source it disappears is not used for permanent storage. My practice oscillates around biological process and I thought of these obsolete memory chips as seeds which I dropped and then placed on an agar surface and soil in an attempt to perhaps speculate about what would grow out of old memory chips. These ‘strange seeds’ are also accompanied by actual seeds of a red poppy flower. ‘Strange seed’ is an assemblage and primarily a living sculptural work which, although functioning here as a postcard or documentation of the process it can also be planted.

Artist Bio

STARZYKOWSKI Pati

London-based artist researchering at the intersection of art, biology and physics. Interested in the intimate and mediated relationship with the vegetal and virtual worlds. Through drawings, sculpture and video I speculate about the dynamics of culturally sanctioned polarities and looking at the symbiotic relationship between nature and technology, or naturecultures from a queer perspective.