Esther Zandberg, Haarez 9 July 2009

The complex relationship between humans and the flora around them comes to light in an exhibition of the landscape architect and artist Relli De Vries through the fascinating story of the Akuvit Hagalgal (Gundelia tournefortii).

Wherever we go and look, allow ourselves to observe well and follow the small scale happenings in the landscape, strata will certainly surface, coincidences come out and the political story of this place will be unearthed,” says the landscape architect and artist Relli De Vries. She exhibits the findings of her observations in the Israeli landscape in the exhibition “Akuvit Hagalgal and the Society of Bad Weeds” curated by Norma Musih at Zochrot Gallery in Tel Aviv.

“People are excited by nature and search it for calm and serenity, for refuge from daily troubles,” says De Vries, “but nature is also a means of political and cultural oppression and exclusion. The society of plants and human society have a complex, fascinating, real and symbolical relations, often problematic and troubling, and it begs and deserves to be read and deciphered.”

The Akkub is a widespread, uncultivated thorny plant in Israel. It blossoms in spring and dries out in the summer, when the stem disconnects from the root and the plant rolls in the wind so as to spread its seeds. Herein is the origin of its name in Hebrew (Galgal meaning wheel). In the 1960s the encyclopedia issued by the Israeli ministry of agriculture defined Akuvit Hagalgal as a ‘bad weed’ that disrupts the cultured crops, and thus in need of elimination. In Arab-Palestinian society on other hand it serves as food and is considered a delicacy. Its Arab name is Akkub and the plant is attributed curing qualities. In Jewish society it was recognized mainly as an exotic delicacy served in fashionable Arab restaurants. Rising demand for the plant was followed by soaring price. The picking of the Akuvit became gradually more commercial, and in an ironical twist it was declared by the ministry of the environment as a protected plant. Today the law forbids the picking of uncultivated Akuvit plants and the picker risks penalty and fine.

A Real War

De Vries first noted the Akuvit and other tumbleweed plants because of their behavior in space and the spiral movement that drew her attention. She published her impressions a few years ago as a work of art in a book dealing with space, periphery and gender (Relli De Vries, “Movement in Potential Space: Travelogue, photography, Text,” in Henriette Dahan-Kalev, Niza Yanay, Niza Berkovitch, Eds., Women of the South: Space, Periphery, Gender . Tel Aviv: Xargol, 2005, pp. 163-187). The Akuvit’s “random, direction-less movement, unrestrained by place and time,” served as a gender-spatial metaphor “that draws a potential space even when it is bounded by the boudaries of the Negev.”

The Akuvit is mostly found on side-roads we occasionally pass by, and, De Vries argues, its movement happens at the margins of our glance. A TV reportage on the enforcing of the law against the picking of the Akuvit accidentally got into that glance and took it right into the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and then led to the present exhibition. The Akuvit, De Vries says, is the next Tzabar, the prickly pear cactus.

The reportage was shown a year ago on the Israeli channel 2 under the amusing Hebrew  title “Alia Vekotz Ba”, literally a thorn in the finest part of the sheep’s tale  (that is, ‘a fly in the ointment‘‏‏‏‏, or ‘mixed blessing’). In the exhibition the reportage is shown in a horrifying loop, documented the chase of the “Green Commando” people after the breakers of the law protecting plants. The Akuvit turned from a troubling plant that has to be destroyed into the rock of our very existence. The thugs of the commando were sent to the fields to hunt the lawbreakers that were responsible for the ‘extermination’. The Green Commando did not for example run after the shapers of the urban sprawl policy in Israel, which is largely responsible for the extinction of the plant. Instead they chose to target severely the weary Palestinian women in the occupied territories who try to gather a few cents from selling the Akuvit – with force, violence, rudeness and humiliation that have turned here a second nature.

“It did not take too long before they were caught red-handed,” the channel 2 reporter applauded the commando. In the combative language of news reporters the protection of the nature is ‘a real war’, ‘a battle over the life of the beautiful thorn,’ not merely a picking, not even an unlawful picking, but ‘a terrible destruction, a sort of a terrorist-attack on our nature, the nature of the state of Israel.’ The words of the commando man say it all.

With all due respect nature protection is only an excuse masking injustice, oppression and occupation. Protecting various plants is paramount, says De Vries, but one “has to note those who are harmed here, those for whom the plant is part of their culture and who are reluctantly forced to eliminate it and also pay the price. Someone took this plant and abused it as a weapon in the national conflict, and this is clarified by the reportage in every body gesture and in every word.”

De Vries is a daughter of a longstanding family of farmers in Israel’s Sharon plain. She studied at the Pardes Hanna agricultural boarding school, “where I flourished and experienced the most wonderful moments of my life. I grew there on the linkage between nature and culture, between the gorgeous library and the botanical garden below.” She studied art with painter Rafi Lavi. At a later age she studied at the Technion in Haifagraduating in landscape architecture. She practices architecture and writes, and combines art work and exhibitions with political activism in art and in architecture. “From start I was interested in what happens in the landscape and the basic questions it raises – what moves what, who produces the ‘homeland landscape’ and what the latter does, what is seen and what is unseen.” At the same time she contently designs Villa gardens. What is a good garden: “A garden that would outlive you, without the planner and the gardener. This is the most difficult thing to do. There are many objective parameters in gardening, but the combination is a miracle.”

The flora is distinctly present in space, claims De Vries, and the botanical language is practically drawn from human language. Therefore the two societies negotiate a complex and charged relations. It is becoming clear that many take care of plants and develop strong emotions towards them – loves, hates, taste. De Vries herself has no taste in plants, “I am against taste. It is true that I don’t really like the bird-of-paradise flower (Strelitzia Reginae) but I will protect its right to exist. I used to hate thorns because they after the Six-Day war it was common to place them in houses in shell casings. But here I m hypnotized by the Akuvit which is a thorn.”

Plants have always been recruited for various purposes, for use and ornamentation, for religious rituals and for national and cultural struggles. Most of all they have turned into symbols of rootedness, “and rootedness is a metaphor for territorializing, and from there the road is short to occupation. This symbolism is in my opinion an abuse of the society of plants by the society of humans.”

The Akuvit and other ‘tumbleweed’ plants raise the flag of the botanical revolt against violent rootedness and against the occasional violence associated with land settlement. The root is a creature with aggressive behavior, De Vries explains the behavioral characteristics of many of plant families; it dominates its surroundings, and in order to get food and survive it can also break rocks. “I am not against trees, but the root and the rootedness are always in struggle to preserve themselves.”

Akuvit Hagalgal on the other hand is free. Its disconnection from the ground is her means to survive, and upon dying it sows new life. It is carried by the wind, crosses borders and identities, runs accidently into places and has a kind of ‘passive refugedom’ – a variety of qualities as if agglomerated together only to find a respectful place in the contemporary critical discourse.

De Vries’s artworks are accompanied by botanical findings. The paper-thin drawings of the Akuvit are particularly beautiful. Transparent vivariums (life-places) are spread around, reminiscent of the nature rooms and museums of our childhood. From the ceiling hangs a huge Akuvit, turning around in a terrifying dance by the wind of the gallery’s air-conditioner. Not in vain the desert settlers named such tumbleweed plants and others like them ‘desert satans’, as well described by Michael Zohary, one of the founding fathers of Israel’s botany, in his book The World of Plants (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1954). The story the exhibition tells is not anymore the national story of nature as it was thousands years ago and hardly innocent. This is not news. The Akuvit is just another allegory.