A Plant Concert in a Newburgh Ruin

What is the sound of three plants vibrating? Behind the
brick façade of a roofless brick building in Newburgh, an installation by
Martin Roth seeks to find out.

Martin Roth (1977-2019) was an installation artist whose
work often incorporated living organisms in pieces that unfolded narratives
through poetic site interpretations. The titles of some of Roth’s work give a
sense of his process and the scope of his imagination and ambition: In October 2014 I rescued laboratory mice so they could play Swan
Lake, In June 2012 I flooded a gallery in Austria,and From July to August
2012 I lived with sheep in Europe, and In November 2017 I collected a
plant from the garden of a mass shooter. In Roth’s work, the environment
itself can become a collaborator. Roth told the Creative Independent shortly before his death: “For a lot of people, nature is an app or
something that they listen to in order to fall asleep, a digital recording of a
rainforest or something. My work creates a strong reaction, because, of course,
you don’t believe that grass or trees or lavender could live inside a gallery.”

Kelly
Schroer, who runs Strongroom,
an organization promoting and curating contemporary art that interacts with
Newburgh’s architecture and history, invited Roth to come Newburgh in
2017 after seeing his work at Bard’s Hessel Museum (From January to March
2015 I grew corn for a plant concert performed in a museum). The site Schroer showed to Roth, 120 Grand Street, has a special
place in the city’s history. The Newburgh “City Club” was originally built as a
private home in 1852, designed by renowned architects Andrew Jackson Downing
and Calvert Vaux. It’s one of the Downing’s last buildings in the city still
standing.

“Standing”is a relative term, however, as the
building is now an empty shell, having been slowly overtaken by nature over
ensuing decades. Roth’s installation, From 2017-2021
Martin Roth transformed a ruin into a garden for a plant concert, turns that
accidental process into an intentional one, as he noted at the start of the
project. “While citizens of Newburgh are very aware of nature overtaking
buildings and mainly see this as an eyesore, I want to alter and shape the
environment inside the building to emphasize the beauty in nature reclaiming a
site in an urban setting,” Roth wrote.

While Roth died in 2019, his vision is coming to fruition
this weekend. “I wouldn’t normally create a huge installation by a dead artist,”
says Schroer. “The only way this
is possible is because Martin set up a framework for the artwork and let the
artwork make itself. That’s just how he worked. When he passed away in 2019,
the framework was very far along. He also left notes on different types of
plants to use, and the path through the installation was already underway.”

What Roth envisioned and started, and what Schroer has completed, is a botanical fantasia amidst a
ruin. A jungle of plants and mature trees grow out of the top of the roofless
structure while more recent plantings have been installed under the tree
canopy. “Martin wanted to make it feel like you were experiencing a magical garden
in an abandoned building,” says Schroer.

Among the piles of brick and trees and plants is also a
sound installation in a natural amphitheater. “It’s a concert made by the
trees,” Schroer says. How it works:
According to Roth’s specifications, sensors were attached to three trees—”at the
root and the leaves—”which transform the electrical frequencies of the plants
into musical notes which are broadcast through speakers. The ambient sound
creates a plant concert performed by a mini-orchestra of flora. Like much of
Roth’s work, the site is a clever cultivation of exiting conditions. “I
believe that if you change reality just a little bit, everything changes,” Roth
wrote.

From 2017-2021 Martin Roth transformed a ruin into a garden for
a plant concert, located at 120 Grand Street,will be open Saturday and Sundays 12 to 5pm, July 10 through
October 31. Admission is free. Some
upcoming talks at the site include:

Johanna Yaun, Orange County
Historian, will lecture on “Downing and Vaux: Collaboration and
Friendship,” on Saturday July 17, at 4pm and on Sunday, August
22, from 11 to 12am.

Art historian Arnaud Gerspacher
will speak on “Martin Roth and the Critical Possibilities of Wonder” on August
28 from 3 to 4pm.

Botanist Peter Del Tredici will
give a talk titled “A Walk on the Wild Side: The Hierarchy of Plants” on
September 25, from 3 to 4pm.

This article appears in July 2021.