There comes a time in an artist’s career when accumulated coincidences begin to resemble something more, a masterpiece or a magic trick. Visual artist SMITH, the third person invited to the INSTANTS photography residency after Paul Cupido and Henrike Stahl, discovered that his maternal grandparents, Pierre and Michelle, actually met at Château Palmer. This nudge from the past then encouraged him to delve deep into the fertile strata of the present, to look closer at the secret ramifications of the living world from vine to compost, to hone his sensitivity to phantoms and to shape his own visions through a form of trance, welcoming chimeras, tentacular tubers, incandescent bodies and complicit networks of vines.

Working with neon, burnt wood, sculptures and thermograms, SMITH celebrates the porosity of the body and the absence of borders. His new project, Dami, an intimate, psycho-geographical investigation into connection, roots and faith, was partly born in Château Palmer’s vineyards.

Château Palmer: You have found yourself among the Château Palmer vineyards, where you took part in the INSTANTS residency, and in the farthest-flung corner of Wales, where you travelled for a report for L’Œil de Palmer. Yet wherever you are, by some fantastic twist of fate, you find yourself guided back to your family roots.

SMITH: Yes, these coincidences are amazing, almost mystical! A year ago, L’Œil de Palmer commissioned me for report about the island of Bardsey in Wales. While there, I discovered that my paternal grandfather, David Smith, a British gardener, was born in a small village on the mainland opposite the island. This was the first sign. Six months later, at the start of the INSTANTS residency, I went to visit my grandmother – this time on my mother’s side – who lives in the Dordogne region. When I said the words “Château Palmer,” I saw her face light up. She told me that she used to go there during the holidays when she was young. Her grandfather ran a café in Labarde, a small town just outside Margaux. In the summer, the château would host fairs with sports competitions for local children. Not only did she take part, but that’s where she met her husband, my grandfather!

Château Palmer: And this synchronicity didn’t stop there…

SMITH: That’s right. Around the same time, I was teaching as a guest professor at the Le Fresnoy National Contemporary Arts Studio in Tourcoing. I knew the place very well, having studied there myself. The studio is housed in a former dance hall and community centre, and it was in this very building that my other grandparents, on my father’s side, first met. In less than a year, without meaning to, I’ve been closely confronted with my origins. These family echoes are both funny and disturbing for someone like me, who has always worked on ghosts and the visible and invisible connections with others and the past. I felt that I had developed an intimate, almost genetic relationship with these different areas. After this series of coincidences, I felt I had to explore them further as if I were an investigator, entrusting events to chance and intuition while trying to pay attention to even the smallest signs. Accepting invitations as if they were portals to be stepped through.

“I felt that I had developed an intimate,almost genetic relationship with these different areas”
SMITH

Château Palmer: Was it this cluster of clues and coincidences that led to your new project, Dami?

SMITH: With Désidération (2017-2022), I laid down a conceptual and speculative framework for our estranged relationship to the cosmos, the stars and infinity. For my next project, I wanted to focus on self-experimentation and explore a more autobiographical dimension to my work. My theoretical investigation was underpinned by a more personal, psycho-geographical search that would end up leading me to the earth and, through it, to my roots. The mystery I am trying to unravel remains the same – the great metaphysical questions of transcendence and immanence, of what binds us together – but I am going about it in a different way. This time, I am getting closer to plants, animals and insects; looking less for messages from the heavens and more for their earthly effects, which are reflected into the unity of living things.

Make no mistake; I am a pure product of rationalism, materialism and capitalism. I grew up in a town in the Paris region, where I still live. It wasn’t until I travelled to Peru in 2022 that I began to feel our profoundly intimate connection to the plant world. I understood what it could mean not only to live among non-humans, in a horizontal and respectful way, but above all to live in real symbiosis, with each part of the relationship helping to create a desirable, sustainable and liveable world for all its participants. This led to my encounter with master plants – named as such in traditional Amazonian medicine because of their ability to transmit knowledge through visions (visual, auditory, dreams) and intuitions. These teaching plants, which have essential healing powers, are now threatened by Amazon deforestation. While humanity looks on with almost total indifference, tens of thousands of animal and plant species are being driven to extinction. Some of these plants open the mind to physical and spiritual experiences that can only be described as visionary.

Château Palmer: And isn’t this the literal meaning of the word “dami”?

SMITH: In several Panoan languages, “dami” refers to the first images that appear when working with visionary plants, including ayahuasca. A curandero – the name given to the healer, the person who “takes care” – guides you through a ritualised initiation for ingesting these plants, which in return, if they see fit, pass on their knowledge to you for healing purposes. In this way, you communicate with the spirit of this vine, with the spirits it summons. In this space of connection, of hybridisation via the plant inhabiting us with its subjectivity, we can be granted access to visions, which often begin with light signals, images of transformation. My arm may become a branch and the branch might become a snake, for example. Our perception then shifts radically; we no longer find ourselves creatures moving through an environment, like avatars in a video game. We are the very environment itself. We have access to the unity of the living world, with all its interactions, interdependencies, mutations and hybridisations.

There’s nothing strange about what I’m describing. I believe that traditional Amazonian culture can serve as a laboratory for the future of the living world. When Sabrina Pernet, Technical Director of Château Palmer, talks about the vines as sociable plants in constant interaction with their environment, she is echoing the idea that if we know how to perceive plants, how to care for them, how to look after our environment holistically, then this will bring about transformation on a far larger scale. We are viscerally linked to the non-human – animal, plant, mineral – but sometimes we need to go through this sort of self-experiment to realise it, to feel it in our bones, and perhaps modify our way of life as a result.

Château Palmer: So when you practice cognitive trance, you do it to experience and imprint this feeling of unity and change?

SMITH: I “trance” to extend my field of perception, to be more sensitive to minute signals. I adopt a porous state of consciousness, which enables me to let things pass through me, to welcome other thoughts, other stories, other information than in the waking state where my ego occupies all the space, and to feel all of this intimately. When I started working with a thermal camera 15 years ago, I was already trying to connect with the invisible, observing the imperceptible heat that spreads among people, the unseen interactions between bodies and their environment.
Then I met Corine Sombrun, a writer and expert in Mongolian shamanism, who has helped lead a great deal of neuroscientific research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. She was the one who introduced me to self-induced trance, which doesn’t involve ingesting plants but rather a cognitive effort, a conditioning process linked solely to willpower and used to achieve this altered state of consciousness. I’m interested in anything that sharpens our perceptions and helps to make us more porous, to accept this porosity. We are constantly surrounded by invisible micro-elements, particles, waves, and hormones – all of which contribute to our ongoing, daily metamorphosis. Trance makes me more aware of these encounters, drawing a heuristic map of a hidden world that is now accessible to me.

“I trance to extend my field of perception, to be more sensitive to minute signals”
SMITH

Château Palmer: And is that how you ended up in the vineyards of Château Palmer?

SMITH: When I discovered the estate for the INSTANTS residency, I knew nothing about the world of wine. I’d never even drunk a drop of wine in my life! However, I did know that “vine” can also mean “creeper,” and that the vines of the Médoc and the plants of the Amazon are connected. I slept outside among the vines for several nights. Alone, in a trance, I tried to communicate with the vine and listen to its needs. I also spoke at great length with Sabrina, Viviane and Émilie, who I see as the “curanderas” of this terroir, indispensable, caring, curious figures. During periods of frost, I saw the men and women rush out at night to save their plots of vines and protect the plants by dint of intense physical effort. This effort, this ritual, this discipline of the body, this extrasensory communication, it’s all part of a form of devotion, openness and faith, much like walking or trance.
I often think of the fantastic book by the late philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, L’Adoration, which describes an openness to what might happen, a physical relationship to wonder. His phrase Ici grand ouvert (“Here, wide open”) acts as an invitation that goes beyond any speech to offer a gesture of pure faith, a “bet” – which is not too far removed from the faith of the winegrower when practising biodynamics.

Château Palmer: Compost is the other raw material and symbol of your work. Why?

SMITH: The first time Viviane showed me the compost, I spotted a small green root in the black expanse. A potato tuber emerging from the darkness like a divine apparition. Then, under the eye of the thermal camera, I immersed myself in the compost, improvising a ritual to connect with this landscape which bore the trace of my ancestors. The material is soft and grainy, like crumble, it smells of flowers, plants and potpourri. This compost in its final phase really does give off the smell of sanctity! It is the quintessential site of metamorphosis, of continuity, of the porosity between life and death. It’s quite Buddhist, in many ways. Compost is the illustration that nothing that has lived dies, but rather is transformed into a new form. Compost produces heat constantly and releases energy, as you can see on the thermal camera. It is not waste but living matter – and the heart of biodynamics.

Château Palmer: What draws you to Donna Haraway’s quote, “We are all compost”?

SMITH: In Staying with the Trouble (2016), the American philosopher evokes the interdependent relationships between fellow species within what she calls the “Chthulucene,” meaning the great whole, the earth as it functions in “sympoiesis,” strengthened by natural alliances and an environmental balance that must be preserved at all costs.
Composting is the practice of transforming biological waste into nutrient-rich soil. Haraway takes up the idea of compost metaphorically to envisage a post-human history of our planet. In this hypothesis, she prefers the concept of “post-humus” to “post-humanism,” suggesting the need to reconnect ourselves to the soil and proposing new ways of “worlding,” of living together on this planet – by composting ourselves harmoniously.
I share this vision, which I try to convey through my images. At Château Palmer, I photographed the vines knotting together, and you can feel the heat being transmitted between the plants. I also photographed animals, in particular a pig that seems to be transforming into a fern through the network of veins on its ears. In some of my self-portraits in the compost, I look like an octopus, a tuber or a comet. In others, I look like a half-plant, half-insectoid creature. At night, species merge and threads interweave underground. Energy, knowledge and life circulate.

“At night, species merge and threads interweave underground”
SMITH

Château Palmer: Your artistic work itself unfolds like a vast root system, complete with rhizomes and almost infinite extensions. Could you speak to this?

SMITH: I try to develop analogies. I like the idea that my works communicate with each other through concatenations, through associated ideas. Thought also “tubers,” like a nervous system. My most recent works have ended up forming a web, a constellation. The residency at Château Palmer infiltrated the Dami project before becoming a catalyst. For example, for the Panorama group show at Le Fresnoy this autumn, I created a sculpture of my body being transformed into a plant, inspired by the shape of the potato tuber I saw in the château’s compost. I built the sculpture in 3D using photogrammetry, on the very spot where my grandparents had met in this root-place. The posture of the body, captured in levitation, evokes the iconography of Christian ecstasies, of Teresa of Avila or Joseph of Cupertino, while simultaneously summoning the visual imagination of space exploration, particularly from the Soviet era.
I later worked with a generative artificial intelligence that I powered with my family memories. I asked it to process these images like natural compost. As a result, we see my memories deteriorating within the sculpture, not rotting but transforming into lights, flashes, will-o’-the-wisps.
Alongside the photographs taken during the residency, I am thinking about creating another sculpture, perhaps using the vine shoots and stumps that Sabrina collected for me, which look surprisingly like the fulgurites I collect. These are a type of rock that forms when lightning strikes sand. This work would be a response to the elevation of “Mr Potato Head” from Le Fresnoy, depicting the incarnation of celestial elements in the earth, our bodies, mineral and vegetal, all “wide open” to the living world.