John Baldessari

In 2015, the German author Peter Wohlleben published The Hidden Life of Trees, revealing how trees communicate with one another. This work deepened our understanding that plants might indeed have their own language and that communication on Earth extends far beyond human languages. American conceptual artist John Baldessari already explored this topic in 1972, when he attempted to teach the Latin alphabet to a small banana plant. In his video work Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, we are watching a situation where teaching and learning unfold. We see Baldessari holding up a row of flash cards with both uppercase and lowercase letters, repeatedly intoning each letter in a loud and clear voice. This reminds us of the way the Latin alphabet was typically taught in primary school at the time. 

For Baldessari, teaching was a central aspect of his artistic practice. He posed questions that disrupted conventional thinking and instead encouraged new perspectives on the world. One such question was: “Can one teach a plant the alphabet?”

The repetitive, monotonous attempt at teaching a plant makes us smile, as it seems slightly absurd. Do the artist’s efforts stand any chance, or is he destined to fail? The scenario prompts us to reflect on the artificiality of an alphabet itself – after all, it is simply a collection of arbitrary signs that are disconnected from the sounds they represent. We realise that language is only one of many ways in which living beings might communicate.