Keith M. Armstrong

RE-IMAGINING UTOPIAS: THE BAT/HUMAN PROJECT

The making of the modern world has long been fuelled by utopian images that are blind to ecological reality. Botanical gardens are but one example - who typically portray themselves as miniature, isolated ‘edens on earth’, whereas they are now in many cases self-evidently also the vital ‘lungs’ of crowded cities, as well as critical habitats for threatened biodiversity. In 2010 the ‘Remnant Emergency Art lab’ set out to question utopian thinking through a creative provocation called the ‘Botanical Gardens ‘X-Tension’ - an imagined city-wide, distributed, network of ‘ecological gardens’ suited to both bat and human needs, in order to ask, what now needs to be better understood, connected and therefore ultimately conserved.