Wild Thing

A recent exhibition at Edinburgh College of Art that involved the laying of turf on a gallery floor brought about a realization: that the encroachment of plants or animals onto the workplace or domestic space is a trope that has appeared a great deal recently; particularly in advertising, but also in wider culture in general. What's interesting is the duality within this trope - it seems that the image can be used either to suggest a nightmare vision in which the human is no longer in control; or a dream vision in which humankind has finally learned to live with nature. The latter connotation tends to be the preserve of advertising - think of Tropicana's 'Trees' ad from a couple of years back (most memorable perhaps for its use of Nouvelle Vague's cover of Depeche Mode's song 'Just Can't Get Enough') , in which a city abounded with beautiful, life-giving fruit trees, accessible to all. Or the similarly dated spot for (if I remember correctly) a Channel 4 food programme; which made keeping pigs in an office look not only viable but downright pleasant.




Film, on the other hand, tends to utilize the trope's potential for suggesting the apocalyptic. Channel 4 recently screened a documentary entitled Life after Humans, which revealed the extent to which our cities will be swallowed by wilderness once we are gone. Joe Johnston's 1995 film Jumanji had the forces of the jungle tearing suburbia to shreds. Both resonate with a significant fixture of the contemporary imagination: the knowledge that, 13 years after the disaster, plant- and animal-life is flourishing in the wastelands of Chernobyl.

Ecological control or ecological chaos? Agrarian utopia or post-apocalyptic anarchy? It is rare that a single image should stand so strongly for such opposite notions. A compromise is perhaps made by an advert currently running for some sort of over-the-counter medicine. A bear is seen wreaking havoc in an office, but is eventually placated by said medicine, and transmogrified into an ordinary office worker. The Wild Thing In The Workplace is tamed and mastered.