This project was inspired by the Bible Genesis, which tells the story of God punishing Adam and Eva through the toil of eating food from the field and growing painful thistles. We rearticulate Genesis by illustrating a hypothetical phenomenon of future New York City as the Cursed Eden Garden. Spear thistle has been considered a noxious, non-native, invasive weed that has been banned by communities and even regulated by law. We apply different actors to trigger the four distinct forms of spear thistles to allow this weed to grow and reproduce, feed insect species, and help produce food in the community garden. However, human society tries to build “Eden Garden” upon the waste colonialism towards other regions worldwide. Spear Thistle practices her physical property as a litter collector, possibly mitigating the waste colonialism process and turning it into the curse originated by human actions. In this project, we examine the relationship between “bad” plants, the ecosystem, and human society by showing the consequence of extreme situations of so-called invasive plant spear thistle and environmental clean-up human actions.
