Spurred by the impending completion of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault,
Archiving Eden explores the role of seed banks and their preservation
efforts in the face of climate change, the extinction of natural
species, and decreased agricultural diversity. Serving as a global
botanical backup system, these privately and publicly funded
institutions assure the opportunity for reintroduction of species should
a catastrophic event or civil strife affect a key ecosystem somewhere in
the world. Since 2008 Dornith Doherty has worked in collaboration with
renowned biologists at the most comprehensive international seed banks
in the world: the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural
Research Service's National Centre for Genetic Resources Preservation in
Colorado, U.S., the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in
the U.K.; and PlantBank, Threatened Flora Centre, and Kings Park Botanic
Gardens in Australia. Utilising the archives? on-site x-ray equipment
that is routinely used for viability assessments of accessioned seeds,
Doherty documents and subsequently collages the seeds and tissue samples
stored in these crucial collections. The amazing visual power of
magnified x-ray images, which springs from the technology's ability to
record what is invisible to the human eye, illuminates her
considerations not only of the complex philosophical, anthropological,
and ecological issues surrounding the role of science and human agency
in relation to gene banking, but also of the poetic questions about life
and time on a macro and micro scale. Doherty is struck by the power of
these tiny plantlets and seeds (many are the size of a grain of sand) to
generate life and to endure the time span central to the process of seed
banking, which seeks to make these sparks last for two hundred years or
more. Use of the colour delft/indigo blue evokes references not only to
the process of cryogenic preservation, central to the methodology of
saving seeds, but also to the intersection of east and west, trade,
cultural exchange, and migration. This tension between stillness and
change reflects her focus on the elusive goal of stopping time in
relation to living materials, which at some moment, we may all like to
do.
