Derridraw

Derridraw

Mixed Media; 2017

Marcel O'Gorman, Critical Media Lab, University of Waterloo

"Derridraw" is an iterative series of critical response to Jacques Derrida's failed collaboration with architect Peter Eisenman to design a garden for Parc de la Villettte. The collaboration was documented in a book entitled Chora L Works, which serves as a growth medium for the plants in "Derridraw." For this project, the artist reinterprets "chora" as "field," based on a close reading of Timaeus and also on the modern Greek word "chorafi," which basically means "farmer's field." In the end, "Derridraw" is about the inability of philosophers and critical theorists to "ground themselves," to embody their ideas in the physical world, which is the primary reason why Derrida's collaboration with Eisenman failed. While Prototype 2 is an attempt to get Derrida to grow a garden, Prototype 3 -- inspired by the agricultural thinking of Martin Heidegger, Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway -- will coax him into drawing by means of a robotic mechanism.