Xylem X was an interactive portal to a utopian world where people have evolved from plants. Performers Beatrice Schleyer, Jay Orellana and Levon Kafafian activated an alleyway in the Artist Village of Old Redford, becoming slow-moving extraterrestrial humanoid plants. From inside the installation, ash Arder’s live sound composition further textured the landscape of this unfamiliar world.

The imagining of this world grew out of our desire to expand the ways people engage with the processes and products of textile and material making and to consider what life might be like at the speed of plants.

Commissioned by Sidewalk Festival and Cranbrook Art Museum for Material Detroit.