MORGAN MUELLER

ABOUT

Unsettled Ecologies

Multimedia Installation (2022-2023)


FIELD

What does it mean for a plant to perform a political action?

Field is part of a larger body of work focusing on this question through engagement with the ecological politics of invasive species and the ways they relate to New York's historically industrial waterways and landsapes. Phragmites Australis is considered an invasivve species that outcompetes its native counterparts in the region. Often characterized as harmful, invasive plant life also perform tasks that subvert theri own characterization. Such tasks can range from assisting in the remediation of human caused damage in post-industrialized landscapes to providing barriers to protect against sea level rise in marshlands around New York.

Field acts as a representation of the complicated dynamics taking place in waterways polluted by human activity and poignantly, which form of life has the power to define and designate the other.

Exhibited at Pier 17, South Street Seaport, Lower Manhattan, NYC

Dimensions: 84" x 84" x 72"
Foraged Phragmites Australis, found rocks and concrete, soil, 25 modified HDPE budckets

Supported by NEW INC at The New Museum & Science Sandbox


SWAMP

Swamp is a reinterpretation of the 1971 collaborative between Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt. Giving the viewer the experience of being both within a phragmites filled marshland while being confronted with a series of artifcats from both the past and potential future. Relationships and scales of multi-species violence are confronted in this short piece.

Exhibited at the Embodied Ecologies Groupshow hosted by the New Museum