Diplomacy + Papermaking
Dormanting – Collecting – Publishing
Our project in the Christian A Herter Intercommunity Garden employs the process of paper-making as a method for producing tangible and symbolic representations, of the garden itself. These relationships reflect from the garden outwards to its surrounding environment and from the surrounding environment back to the garden. Reciprocity, in this way, is essential to the garden’s daily operations. The community garden is a dynamic space, which although works within an enclosed system, relies on logistics and cooperation from the outside world. Diplomacy in this sense, is not referring to elaborate but ultimately superficial impositions of politics. It is instead dispersing the garden’s integral ideas and practices related to continual maintenance and repair. A community garden operates through resourcefulness, communication and communal cooperation.
The paper, a byproduct of the garden, becomes an instrument by which the procedures and traditions of the garden can be amplified. The result is a “publishing” of the garden, pushing its elements into the public and ecological domain. Versions of this publication via paper could include: exchanged letters between the gardeners and other communities local and foreign, a compilation of garden-oriented manifestos for circulation to the greater community, written treaties that outline negotiations as well as materials for teaching in the context of the garden. The paper transposes ideas and forms a tangible network at a global and garden scale. Besides the human-oriented exchanges that flow to and from the garden’s domain, another facet of our project includes an interspecies exchange between gardeners and other species.
The installation combines a metal frame, hand-made paper, and cotton string to create a delicate yet structured representation of the garden’s systems and networks. Our project also introduces video as a narrative layer, projecting a visual score onto the paper. At the heart of the installation is a video that unfolds in three chapters—Dormanting, Collecting, and Publishing—each exploring a critical aspect of the garden’s life cycle and its transformation through our project.
We expand the garden’s influence beyond its physical boundaries. This project does not impose new bureaucracies but celebrates and magnifies the inherent wisdom of the garden, enabling reflection and insight into what makes the Herter Garden a vital and compelling space. In documenting and “getting it on paper,” we aim to preserve and share the garden’s stories, fostering an enduring dialogue between humans, non-humans, and their shared environments.
Lydia Ziqi Yan 