Paper leaves and other constructions
a reading companion to Always Already
compiled and edited by Karen Christopher & Tara Fatehi Irani

Always Already is an 8-hour performance installation by Karen Christopher & Tara Fatehi Irani, which uses materials, text, sound and movement to explore the weaving together of plant, human and machine, including human/plant and human/machine hybrids.

Paper leaves and other constructions is a 32-page booklet, introducing the themes and content of the project, and responding to many of the questions that arose in the creative process. Drawing parallels between a path through life and one through the making of a particular work of performance, the booklet answers the question “how did you do that?”

The booklet includes contributions from Karen, Tara, Payman Kassaei (Professor of Mathematics, Kings College), Felipe Ribeiro (performance artist and researcher), Omikemi (poet), Eirini Kartsaki (performance writer and teacher), and an interview with Henry Dagg (sound sculptor and builder of experimental musical instruments).

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two ways of knowledge together.

Third issue of the literary journal of sexuality and erotics. On botany and eroticism in three essays and seven poems.