Illustration

Mahindra Blues Festival Poster

[Coming soon]

Saudade

Nature Knows Best

Nature Knows Best is an initiative by The Plenary Co. aimed at exploring the relationships between people and the planet. Through art, science, and story, we explored the ongoing journey from geo-mimicry to biomimicry, lessons and insights that emerge from the study of natural systems, traditional relationships of reciprocity, and modern human exploitations.

Each piece is a meditation and reflection on the myriad relationships different communities have with nature – as teacher, muse, partner, and, on the darker side, exploitable resource. These lessons and relationships are investigated through four distinct pieces:

  • Living and non-living systems play by different rules and timescales, yet many societies mimic earth's processes (geomimicry) without adjusting for finite resources. By more intentionally leveraging insights and resources from non-living systems, we can craft more sustainable living systems.

  • Water is the connective tissue of nature. Through rivers, lakes, oceans, and the atmosphere, the whole world is entangled. That connectedness creates an integrated tapestry where life can thrive, but it's also marked by fragility: changes to one element can have ripple effects on the entire system.

  • Nature doesn't produce waste. Matter that one being disposes provides sustenance for another. Ecosystems thrive on balance, reciprocity, diversity, and cycles. Through biomimicry, we can wisdom of plants, fungi, microorganisms, and the life cycles they fuel, we can improve our own.

  • In early human history, we were inextricably part of nature. With expanded cities and industries, we've created barriers to separate the human world from the natural world. Thoughtfully reintegrating our practices, technologies, and designs with nature can help support all life on earth.

There are many ways to define our existence and give our lives meaning. But above all, what shapes our future, is in fact, our past. Man’s ability to hold on to fragments of what happened days, months and years ago is what sets us apart from other species, but this also one of life’s cruellest ironies. Our memories serve as a private archive of light and dark: our greatest loves, passions, successes, fears, disappointments, and regrets. These manifest in disconnected visions of places, spaces and faces that are familiar and yet completely different from the original events.
Is our perception of the past our new reality?