Curatorial Statement. The Museum of New Local Flora is a conceptual local-history museum dedicated to the plant life of a world fundamentally altered by a future ecological intervention. Its collection features speculative organisms whose morphologies reflect the consequences of human endeavors to organize, restore, and sustain life. The project explores the ecological coexistence of nature and technology by creating an alternative botanical collection. Each organism embodies a specific model of interaction between living systems, technological environments, and their surroundings. Their forms emerge from relationships of interdependence, selective permeability, resource exchange, disruption, and alternative modes of perception.

The conceptual foundation draws on ecological philosophies and interpretations of the work of Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Anna Tsing, and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa. Ideas of becoming-with, material agency, unstable ecological relationships, and ethics of care inform the development of the imagined flora. Rather than presenting an idealized vision of ecological restoration, the project examines its ambiguities. Attempts to protect, organize, and sustain life may simultaneously alter its conditions, redistribute resources, and produce unforeseen dependencies. The museum becomes a way to document and investigate these transformations, presenting speculative organisms as material expressions of different possibilities and limitations of ecological coexistence.

Six principles guiding the coexistence between nature and technology inform the development of the organisms and the exhibition’s visual language:

Together, these principles form a framework for exploring how different models of coexistence can be expressed through speculative biological forms.

The sound component is based on the artist’s processing of bioelectrical signals from real plants. By introducing signals originating from living organisms into the museum’s collection, the project extends its documentary system beyond conventional visual representation. The sound collection establishes a connection between real biological processes and the speculative forms presented in the exhibition. Sound becomes another mode of approaching the living world, expanding the museum’s archive into an auditory register.

The design component extends the museum’s visual language beyond the exhibition space. It includes a proposed visual identity, posters and invitations, digital communication and social media materials, and printed promotional and informational objects. The visual system draws on the aesthetics of local-history museums, scientific documentation, botanical classification, and archival systems, creating a coherent identity for the project.