Urban natures

Bryan Joel Mariano, The Philippines

Plants will continue to thrive, but only if we let them. They resist and adapt because of external forces, including those that are exerted by humans. City life attests to constant renegotiations of ecological relationships. Depending on where and how we look at it — a bird’s or worm’s eye view, on a facade of brutalist architecture or through a glass wall, closer or farther — there will always be a connection through the art of noticing, where we will come to realize the multifarious ways that boundaries, rather than being discrete lines, become porous and transversal. In the time of the pandemic, we can learn from nature in cities as they continue to thrive and reclaim themselves. We can reflect on the forces that we humans exert to assert our desires to be in place. As Italo Calvino writes, “cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else”.  The collective desires and fears, both of humans and plants, are manifested in this series of diptychs. Urban natures intends to capture a representation of different meshworks of everyday life and the relentless desire of thriving in times of crisis.

Desire to escape and grow

© Bryan Joel Mariano

On remnants and boundaries

© Bryan Joel Mariano

Cemented territorialities

© Bryan Joel Mariano

Bryan Joel Mariano is the Knowledge Management Specialist of Forest Foundation Philippines. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Development Communication from University of the Philippines Los Baños. His interest in knowledge co-production, nature-culture relations, and more-than-human discourse was largely shaped by taking a Master of Science in Geography at the University of the Philippines Diliman and through his work at the Foundation. Currently, he is pursuing a Master of Communication of Science and Innovation at the University of Trento, Italy.

Twitter: @bryanmariano_