Domesticated and genetically engineered organisms are usually overlooked by natural museums and institutions for cultural history. There is no space for artifacts such as dogs, chickens and corn. The Center for PostNatural History is the sequel to the natural history museum, and takes agriculture’s evolution as a starting point. CPNH focuses on the deliberate alterations of life forms that humans perform, at the scale of individual organisms rather than changes in the environment and landscape. If you are not sure if you have met a postnatural organism, check the form and share a postnatural encounter.

Richard Pell [1] an artist, the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History says that the patient Zero in the PostNatural History is a self-domesticating human. The rest of the subjects under the PostNatural umbrella are captives where the story of evolution becomes specifically anthropocentric. In the last century, with the proliferation of genetic engineering, humans created a “mess of life”. Pell frames the PostNatural History into four registers by historic succession yet concurrent today: Captivity, Breeding, Engineering and Rewilding.

We asked Pell about postnatural scopes interesting specifically for landscape architects but you can find much much more in the book This is Not an Artifact, published by K. Verlag.

Where in time or with what event does the PostNatural History begin? 

It’s a bit blurry, but the start of postnatural history brings us back to the first domesticated plants and animals somewhere north of 10,000 years ago. It’s blurry because we don’t know exactly what order things occurred in and they happen in different ways in different places, but from our postnatural perspective there actually is a circumstance we are looking for. It starts with captivity. It begins with human beings separating a breeding population from their wilder cousins. Technologies such as the leash and collar, or fence are essential for this to work. Once an organism is no longer free to breed with whom it chooses, its evolutionary path has begun to fork a bit. And that’s where we would situate the start of its postnatural journey. It begins when people become responsible for their habitat.

But let me be very clear, there is usually a LOT of co-evolving that happens prior to that moment. For example, we know that dogs were domesticated from wolves. The earliest cave paintings of domesticated dogs show them to be on a leash. However, the story of dogs and humans doesn’t just begin there. Humans and wolves were co-evolving, learning and living in close proximity for a very very long time before it occurred to anyone to put a rope around its neck. But when they did, the rules of the game were radically changed. The reproductive possibilities of that animal shifted dramatically, and the possibility of further interventions into the animal’s evolution was opened up. Subsequently developed practices of breeding, and later engineering becomes possible only when there exists a population in long-term reproductive isolation from the rest of the wilds. This is where we view postnatural history beginning.

In the case of human beings themselves, the answer is in the root of the word “domesticate”. Domus means “house” in Greek, and appears in various forms all over Eurasia. The root “dom” can be traced back 5000 years. Domesticated animals are the ones we share our home with, ourselves included.

You start the book by stating that “human desire, curiosity, and fear shape the evolution of certain plants and animals just as they shape architecture, art, music, and sports. Portions of the living world are cultural works, with provenance, attribution, responsibilities, and consequences”. As such, these changes produced by a variety of tools, you say, are “products of culture, rather than its by-products”, which brings “a hard kink into the evolutionary trajectory of other species”. Can you develop on products of culture vs. products of nature?

As much as human beings are a part of nature, we also appear to be an exception. We follow a different logic than non-human natural systems. Our thousands of generations of self-domestication have cultivated in us an aesthetic and organizational logic that is measurably different. PostNatural History is the body of evidence. Without humans, nature does not create concentrated animal feeding operations. That is a product of human culture. It has never produced giant pumpkins the size of cars. But people have. Nature doesn’t cover whole regions in vast monocultures that are so vulnerable to pathogens that they require constant applications of herbicides and insecticides. Humans alone appear interested in pursuing such things. No amount of conventional interbreeding will produce a goat that produces spider silk in its milk. But human genetic engineers have managed to explore this evolutionary path. People are capable of breaking rules that nature otherwise is unable, or unwilling to break.

Myths often include gardens which influence and in turn, are influenced by local cultures. Perhaps you can explain your view on the Garden of Eden and the impact of the (biblical) view on working with the soil as punishment. Since landscape architecture finds its “origin” in a garden, which must be fenced off, I’m most curious what the conditions a fence and a greenhouse create. What is a garden from a PostNatural History perspective?

A garden is the archetypal postnatural habitat, at least as far as plants are concerned. It is a type of “enclosure” that separates the plants of the garden from many of the animals of the wild, while remaining dependent on the sky above and Earth below. A further degree of separation would be a “container” such as an indoor hydroponic growing facility in which all of the needs of the plants are met artificially. A greenhouse, I suppose, is a step between the two.

Origin myths that are associated with domesticated plants and animals always fascinate me. They acknowledge a divine and existential significance that places the plants and animals closest to us in a different category. Oftentimes kinship with these organisms is a part of the story.

The biblical story of the Garden of Eden fascinates me because of its differences. In Eden humans are in God’s garden, a domesticated postnatural wonderland of a habitat where everything is safe and edible. It’s humanity’s childhood. God even lets Adam name the domesticated animals as he creates them. Everything is all taken care of, until things go badly. Humanity challenges God’s (Dad’s) authority by eating his special secret smart fruit when they were specifically told not to, and gets kicked out of the safety of the garden forever. Outside the garden are the wilds. Nothing is taken care of. At this point, humanity has to restart the process of domestication on its own, but with no special powers. God gives them “dominion” over the animals and tells them that their punishment is to work the soil. It seems to me that this origin story leads to a different set of responsibilities and relationships. In this story, the labor rather than being the consummation of a kinship relationship that is central to society, is a punishment that should be externalized whenever possible.

Grafting is attaching a compatible plant to the base of another compatible plant, which was allowed even in the Bible, yet with some “yuck factor” concerns. What does it mean and where does public perception influencing decisions on evolution lead today? 

Western myths are loaded with creatures that are hybrids of two or more species. And in the western tradition that is rarely a good thing. They are warning signs. Often the product of divine trauma. These myths set the stage for an intuitive rejection of genetic engineering that involves splicing DNA from various species. There are even biblical prohibitions and commentary that share these intuitions with regard to plant grafting. Basically, two plants of the same species may be grafted together, like with like. But two plants of different species being grafted seems to go against God’s intentions. The first wave of genetically modified produce essentially fell victim to an overwhelming response from a public that saw products such as the Flavr Savr Tomato, which used genes from several different bacteria, as monsters. It didn’t help that the products were also substandard for the consumer, and only improvements from an industrial agriculture perspective. The catch phrase “yuck factor” became the widely used descriptor for this phenomenon.

There are high regulations on the import and export of soils, plants and animals, for obvious reasons. Yet, many escape and transverse borders nonetheless. Some are intentionally brought. Kudzu, for example, was first used as a plant to control soil erosion, and heavily altered North American landscape. Does that fall under the “peoplescape”, can you elaborate on the term? 

I use the term “peoplespace” as a very informal way of acknowledging what the postnatural landscape of agriculture and shipping might look like from the perspective of the plant or animal. The peoplescape affords all sorts of unique possibilities. Organisms accidentally hitch a ride from one part of the world to another, where they suddenly find themselves free of predators and all of a sudden they are considered pests or invasives. This term “invasives” is a problem not only because it presents the relationship as an act of war, but also because it completely misattributes the responsibility. These organisms arrive in a new habitat because of PEOPLE. We moved them intentionally, or unintentionally, to a new habitat that is unprepared for them. This is the problem. It has more in common with an oil spill, where at least the cost of cleanup has some relationship to who caused it. Instead of naming “invasive” organisms based on where they are imagined to be from, perhaps we should name them after the shipping company that brought them. If there were a highly publicized eradication program for “The ConglomCo™ Spotted Lantern Fly” perhaps there would be an ongoing incentive for companies to consider mitigation strategies.

To conclude …

Farming and agriculture irreversibly changed the Earth’s surface and its life. Human choices made today, will oblige future generations to certain kinds of care, labor and recreation; in short, how humans make the world now will determine innumerable future relationships, just as so much of our present has been shaped by the actions of previous generations who tamed, sowed, and wondered before us.

About the Author

[1] Richard Pell is the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History, co-founder of the Institute for Applied Autonomy and Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Pell’s work has been exhibited in museums including the V&A, Wellcome Collection, Museum für Naturkunde, Mass MoCA, CCCB, ZKM, 2008 Taipei Biennial, Gregg Museum, NHM, and Carnegie MNH. He received  fellowships from Rockefeller New Media, Creative Capital, Smithsonian Artist Research, and generous support from Waag Society and the Kindle Project. Pell is a National Academy of Science KAVLI Fellow and 2016 Pittsburgh Artist of the Year.