Reading by Osmosis. Nature Interprets Us

Reading by Osmosis. Nature Interprets Us shows works of art that were not made by human hands: an overgrown fence overgrown, an underwater video, a battered disco ball. The makers? Ivy, an octopus and time. If we acknowledge that animals and plants can 'read', interpret and ‘artistically’ transform the world around them, is the traditional opposition between culture and nature still tenable?

Semâ Bekirovic is a visual artist and curator. She minimizes her own contribution to her work, by collaborating with plants, animals and natural processes and phenomena. Reading by Osmosis is the provisional culmination of this process. Here, she removes herself from the making process altogether, in order to provide non-human artists with an opportunity to showcase their work. Reading by Osmosis raises the question whether making art is a process as unintentional and plant-like as, for example, osmosis.

The book includes the essay 'On Art as Planetary Metabolism', in which philosopher Michael Marder expounds his theories about non-human art making.