Talk:
Plants as Signifiers
Karel Doing
Salt Beyoğlu
July 11, 2026 18.00
Still from A Perfect Storm (2022)
©Karel Doing
©Karel Doing
Walk-in Cinema
Artist, filmmaker, and researcher Karel Doing will give a talk on his phytography practice, exploring the interaction between plants and photosensitive film.
Doing will examine phytography as a technique that draws on the chemical and optical properties of plants to create traces on filmstrips without the use of toxic chemistry, electricity, or conventional darkroom equipment. Through examples from his own work, he will discuss how botanical material functions both as subject and image-making agent, and how these processes challenge distinctions between the organic and the technological. The talk will also address low-tech, environmentally conscious approaches to filmmaking developed within a broader network of artists and filmmakers, highlighting practices based on collaboration and the interdependence of human and more-than-human worlds.
Organized as part of This Porous Earth, the talk will be held in English and is open to everyone.
Karel Doing is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose work investigates the relationship between culture and nature through analog and organic processes, experimentation, and co-creation. A graduate of the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem, he was among the founding members of Studio één, a DIY film laboratory, and Filmbank, a foundation dedicated to the promotion and distribution of experimental film and video in the Netherlands. During his doctoral research at the University of the Arts London, he developed “phytography,” a technique combining plants and photochemical emulsion to explore forms of exchange between human and vegetal realms. His writings on eco-literacy and cinema have been published internationally, and he currently teaches contextual studies at Ravensbourne University London.
Artist, filmmaker, and researcher Karel Doing will give a talk on his phytography practice, exploring the interaction between plants and photosensitive film.
Doing will examine phytography as a technique that draws on the chemical and optical properties of plants to create traces on filmstrips without the use of toxic chemistry, electricity, or conventional darkroom equipment. Through examples from his own work, he will discuss how botanical material functions both as subject and image-making agent, and how these processes challenge distinctions between the organic and the technological. The talk will also address low-tech, environmentally conscious approaches to filmmaking developed within a broader network of artists and filmmakers, highlighting practices based on collaboration and the interdependence of human and more-than-human worlds.
Organized as part of This Porous Earth, the talk will be held in English and is open to everyone.
Karel Doing is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose work investigates the relationship between culture and nature through analog and organic processes, experimentation, and co-creation. A graduate of the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem, he was among the founding members of Studio één, a DIY film laboratory, and Filmbank, a foundation dedicated to the promotion and distribution of experimental film and video in the Netherlands. During his doctoral research at the University of the Arts London, he developed “phytography,” a technique combining plants and photochemical emulsion to explore forms of exchange between human and vegetal realms. His writings on eco-literacy and cinema have been published internationally, and he currently teaches contextual studies at Ravensbourne University London.
