Lucent

LUCENT is an interactive media installation based on the history of shared community healing through plant medicine.

This work draws on the writing of Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, who explore the history of witches, midwives and nurses – contextualizing healing practices alongside land-based learning. In their writing Ehrenreich and English address how plant-based medicine has evolved over time, and has been used as a source of empowerment for underprivileged communities. The rise in surgical practices and medicine as a profession in history lead to the persecution of those administering plant medicines. This history is steeped in religious, class and gender conflicts that continue to limit the study and dissemination of plant healing to present day.

LUCENT uses notable healing herbs such as rosemary, sage, and lavender within the context of the circle, an important symbol of spiritual medicine. Designed to engage the body, the installation's sound and illumination are activated by the viewers presence. Subjectivity, disallowed in science, nevertheless allows a broader way to ground plant healing in the social, historical, and personal histories of our bodies and land. This work acknowledges the sooth-saying history of plant medicine, from its early scientific foundation to the mythology that both empowered and was weaponized against its practitioners - finding footing in the belief that all magic is science we don’t understand.