Interview With Flavia Pinheiro About Mimosa Experiment #2

Mimosa explores the memories and experiences of ‘’touch and touch me not’’. Taking inspiration form the Mimosa Pudica plant that, after years of being touched by humans, has learned to stop reacting and remain motionless. Can you tell a bit more about your fascination with the Mimosa Pudica plants and what inspired you to make a performance out of it?

I am deeply intrigued by how we learn, remember, and forget things. Even though we might not always have access to certain memories, I believe that all of them are somehow stored within our bodies. It’s fascinating to me that plants, like the Mimosa Pudica, also have the ability to remember, learn, and forget. This inspires me to explore how we might learn from different species, imagining new choreographies based on these processes. Through this exploration, I aim to build up imaginaries that relate to how we remember, and to speculate on how we might reprogram our memories, allowing us to envision multiple futures.

In your performance you explore different experiences of touch. Some are negative or traumatic—touch experience through violence, displacement or captivity—and others are healing—as seen in pleasure, community and comfort. Where do these stories come from? Are any of these experiences your own or are they shared experiences related to gender and or race?

I have been exploring modes of living that are not exclusively human through a work called Antilope, which focused on collectivity and rapid movement, as well as the ability to navigate these movements. Following that, I delved into a deep investigation into bacteria, contamination, and shapeshifting to build new imaginaries.

When I started the DAS THIRD program, I initiated research on touch and chose the Mimosa plant as a companion on this journey. I’ve been speculating with this plant for several years, examining its history in botany as a weed, and exploring micro-level aspects like measuring its electrical activity and water usage. I’ve visited many greenhouses across Europe—in Leiden, Stockholm, Helsinki, Brussels, and more—where I’ve continued this research.

As part of this exploration, I began reading stories from figures like Linnaeus and Darwin, contrasting them with many other narratives. Some books have been particularly influential in this journey, including Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Decolonial Ecology by Malcom Ferdinand, and Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space by Stacy Alaimo.

In the studio, I work with many collaborators who help translate this research into different media, such as music and video. Currently, I’m working on a small publication that will include scores, practices, and texts. Throughout this process, I’ve also taken care of Mimosas, and whenever I return to Brazil, I seek them out in the wild.

The research wonders if a plant exists even if it has never been named yes. Trying to understand the consequences of captivity to all species and categories, specially the “natural” entanglement between nature and femine, questioning this not allowed or touch without consent due to the perpetuation of this portrait of nature and woman as otherness. I am also intrigued by how the entire field of Science, from Carl Linnaeus, to Darwin , to Freud, to Hegel  and all these males figures determinate still the European gaze.

For this performance you become a Mimosa Pudica plant. A plant known to be touched so many times it has learned itself to play dead. What has that been like? How do you choreograph such a vulnerable experience with touch?

After learning that the Mimosa Pudica plant had stopped reacting to touch in various greenhouses across Europe—or in other words, had slowed down its response—I began to reflect on how migration, displacement, and the shift from freedom to captivity, as well as the absence or violence of touch, affect the way we move. This phenomenon is not limited to the plant; in my case, it made me stop dancing.

As a child, Mimosa was a plant that was always around, growing in the pastures of our garden. We played together, and I was fascinated by its “playing dead” response, just as I was with the tonic immobility of other species like snakes, ants, and possums as a defense mechanism.

I realized that I stopped dancing during my migration process, as the environment and its “touch” somehow anesthetized me. This led me to imagine how it might be possible to learn from the plant’s “playing dead” as a survival response. I understood that this could be a new technology for me—learning not to always react to the touch of others, who often viewed me as “otherness.” At the same time, learning from other species, especially those from the Global South, serves as a way to question how we live and to open possibilities for reimagining alternatives to climate catastrophe. It also challenges us to reconsider the image we have of nature as merely a place of exploitation, resource extraction, and otherness.

What do you hope the audience takes away from your performance?

It has been a fantastic journey of transformation and wisdom. Rather than feeling vulnerable, I find that exploring these bodily states and gestures with others allows for a collective imagination about how and whom we touch, and how we can engage with nature in a wiser, more thoughtful way.

First and foremost, I hope the audience has fun and enjoys the experience. But beyond that, I want them to open their imaginations to the connections between nature and the feminine, to reflect on the history of species classification, and to envision new ways we could inhabit this world, entangled with other species.