LOST AND FOUND IN THE SIGHT Guangzhou

Olga Kisseleva’s EDEN project was exhibited at the Guangdong Museum of Art as part of an exposition entitled “Lost and Found in the Sight”. This was one of the first art exhibitions in China to deal with ecological themes. The research on Bodhi Jiulian tree was carried out in collaboration with the Sorbonne’s Art & Science Laboratory and the Art and Science Research Center of Tsinghua University in China. Its object is the study and creation of artworks on the subject of the plant legacy.

Olga Kisseleva carried out an experiment with the two trees, and this became the basis for the “Lost and Found in the Sight” idea. She used the T2T network to connect two trees, and initiated a dialogue between them with the aid of sensors. The results of this “conversation” between two legendary trees were investigated by scientists, transformed into English text, and then translated from English into Chinese.

This “triple” translation fixed the principles of a special “technical” language, which serves to facilitate both tree-to-tree and tree-to-person communication. The work on this arboreal “text” has produced a poem that reflects both the language of the tree itself and the outcome of the peculiar “dialogue” between Beijing and Guangzhou. Exhibitions dedicated to this project have been held in both Beijing and Guangzhou.

Because of mistaken interpretations of the ancient texts, historical studies contain numerous errors. One such error is the misidentification of the two trees deemed sacred to the Buddha. Olga Kisseleva and the French-Chinese scholarly team have managed to expose this biological error, which has ramifications for Chinese beliefs. The information handed down over the generations has turned out to be incorrect. This study has led the scientists to conclude that historical or religious sources are insufficient to identify species of sacred trees; one must also perform a biological analysis.