Roundabout (Circuition)

Video still from Roundabout (Circuition) © 2021

Roundabout (Circuition) continues my focus on bringing to light the underlying socio-cultural and environmental questions present when considering human entanglement with botanical biodiversity, and more specifically, the role of agrobiodiversity in viticulture. Created in collaboration with Dr. Allison Miller and the Missouri Botanical Garden, Roundabout (Circuition) is inspired by the story of human/environmental entanglement, cycles and and exchange surrounding the phylloxera blight. A two-channel video projection explores the visual poetics of the bond between wild & domestic grapevine root & scion. One video, a stop motion animation created from hundreds of digitally collaged frames of wild and domesticated grapevines, cycles through flourishing, decay and regeneration of stems and leaves. The second video presents a digital composite of three CT scans of the unseen, internal and external details of diverse indigenous American grapevine roots.

Accompanying the videos are six panels that present highly magnified scanning electron microscope images of phylloxera galls. Printed on metal panels, these lustrous sepia toned photographs make reference to the mid-19thCentury, a time when photography was invented and the phylloxera blight occurred. 

Project Background

The history of the insect pest grape phylloxera and its destruction of European vineyards has its roots in the Columbian Exchange, when the newly formed link between the eastern and western hemispheres led to an explosive interchange of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas in the 15th and 16th centuries. In an effort to improve crops, agricultural plants and their wild relatives were often removed from the specific location in which they had evolved and adapted, and were transplanted into a new ecosystem.

Although grapevines were part of the earliest interchanges between east and west, there is evidence to suggest that the accidental introduction of the phylloxera organism to Europe from American vines did not occur until the mid-19thCentury, when the speed of travel increased with the development of steamships, allowing the insect stowaways to survive. 

The remedy for the infestation and the related blight was to graft domesticated European grapevines onto wild American phylloxera-resistant rootstock. These new plants (part wild/part domestic) were hybrid entities, expressing characteristics derived from both the scion and the rootstock. These plants reconstituted the French vineyards and grafting continues to be standard practice in the present era.  

Details about the collaboration

I am very grateful to the many people and institutions that collaborated on this project. I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Allison Miller and the Miller Perennial Plant Biodiversity and Evolution research lab (University of St. Louis and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center) for generously sharing research into native grapevine biodiversity and loaning native root specimens for imaging; Keith E. Duncan, manager of the X-ray imaging facility and research scientist in Chris Topp's lab at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, for making the CT scans of the rootstock used in the video, Roundabout (Circuition) no.2; Laura L. Klein, Ph.D, Head Curator, Director of Herbal Research, LeafWorks Inc. for help with grapevine identification; the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design for their small grant support for equipment use; Dr. David Jaeger and Saul Sepulveda at the UNT Materials Research Facility for their scanning electron microscope expertise; and Dr. Alex Roach, Director of Modified Atmospheres, Australia, for supplying phylloxera specimens. Last but not least, heartfelt thanks to Nezka Pfeifer, Museum Curator at the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum at the Missouri Botanical Garden for inviting me to participate in Grafting the Grape and for facilitating this in-depth collaborative project.