Plantón Móvil
"Plantón" is a Spanish word meaning both sapling and sit-in or peaceful protest.
A Plantón Móvil is a social art piece. Participants create a walking forest, or other plant-based biome, by parading with plants attached to their bodies in some way. The parade ends at a park or other site in which the sprouts are planted in the ground to grow as the forest they marched in.
The project was begun by artist Lucia Monge in 2010 in her home city of Lima. It has now spread around the world, taking place annually in locations from Providence, Rhode Island, to Peckham, London. And this year it's coming to us: Hamline University, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Our job in Plantón Móvil isn't just to add plants to our ecosystem, but to learn from them. In walking with and among the pieces of a soon-to-be prairie, we give the plants motion. Perhaps more importantly though, the plants give us slowness. Come and be part of our plant-human prairie on Saturday October 21 2017.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
October 6: The Hamline Campus Sustainability class will be gathering at the Southbound Snelling A-line Stop near Hewitt Avenue at 1:30 to go on a tour of the stormwater infrastructure in the neighborhood with guides from the Capitol Region Watershed District
October 13: The Hamline Campus Sustainability class will be printing shirts and building plant-human connectors at 845 Snelling Avenue at 12:40 PM (rain location: Manor Main Lounge, across Englewood from the Hamline Methodist Church entrance.
October 21: The big day! Meet at 845 Snelling Avenue at 10:00 AM to begin the march to the site. It's ok if you don't have anything built, all we really need is you! Refreshments will be served while planting continues at the planting site.
WHY PLANTÓN MÓVIL
Social practice art is art that creates connections, and Plantón Móvil extends those connections into the botanical world as well.
Credits for all photos to Lucia Monge, Tatiana Guerrero, Thad Russell, Alonso Molina, Eugenia Ivanissevich, Brian House, Illari Orccotoma, Josip Curich, and Rob Harris http://luciamonge.com/en/portfolio/participatory/671