CHRISTINE MACKEY – Balsam Bashing

During my time at Rejmyre, I explored ‘unmarked’ forest paths, notating, drawing, collecting and photographing things encountered on foot. I came across an expansive ground of Himalayan Balsam ‘Impatiens Glandulifera Royle’. Listed as one of the ‘top five’ most invasive species, the language that surrounds this and other ‘weeds’ constructs images of science-fiction aliens, militaristic enemies, and dangerous foreign nationals/immigrants. Juggling in-part, historical fact with fiction ‘Balsam Bashing’ illustrates the socioeconomic connectivity between humans and plants in our shaping of a landscape and the destructive ideology behind ‘nation states’. Balsam Bashing Term used to mobilize people in the collective destruction of the Himalayan Balsam.