【未來植物計畫】
【Gida Explorations】
Future Plant Project Gida Explorations
文——Baden Hitchcock
By Baden Hitchcock
Baden是來自澳洲托雷斯海峽群島的塞拜島（Saibai）原住民，同時也是巴布亞紐幾內亞中西部Motu與Kiwai語族的後裔。2022年，他開始在台灣生活，並透過創作，思考不同地域原住民族的處境。
在Motu的文化裡，也有類似「GAYA」這樣被作為族群精神導引的象徵，引領族人思考著自己的身分、世界觀與生命。他們稱之為「Gida」。在【未來植物計畫】中，Baden提出了一個奇思異想，當人類消失後、在這個沒有人類侵擾的宇宙中，世界上的植物可能會長成什麼樣子？他透過肢體表現，引導參與者將他們想像中的植物型態、情緒甚至情感表達出來，創造了一個奇特的跨物種幻想時空。
【Gida Explorations】是他作為一個離鄉並生活在現代城市的原住民，對各種經驗與價值觀衝突、差異…的反思。他回到「Gida」的概念裡，試圖在複雜的情境中找回平衡。在這部舞蹈影像中，他與阿美族舞者潘巴奈合作，兩個殊異的肢體漸次踩出一致的節奏，並在他母親的家鄉、巴布亞紐幾內亞海灣婦女的歌聲中，回到規律的內在連結裡。
Baden Hitchcock, an Indigenous person from Saibai Island in Australia’s Torres Strait and descendant of the Motu and Kiwai language groups of Papua New Guinea’s central-western region, began residing in Taiwan in 2022. Through his artistic practice, he examines the varied circumstances of Indigenous peoples across different geographical contexts.
Within Motu culture exists a concept analogous to “GAYA”—a symbolic spiritual guide that directs community members toward contemplation of identity, worldview, and existence. This guiding principle is known as “Gida.” In his “Future Plant Project,” Baden presents a provocative speculation: in a post-human universe, liberated from anthropogenic disturbance, what evolutionary pathways might plant life pursue? Through embodied expression, he facilitates participants’ manifestation of imagined botanical forms, emotional states, and sentiments—creating a remarkable cross-species fantasy temporality.
“Gida Explorations” embodies Baden’s reflections on the tensions and disparities between diverse experiences and value systems as an Indigenous person displaced from ancestral lands and navigating contemporary urban environments. Returning to the foundational concept of “Gida,” he seeks equilibrium within complex contextual intersections. In this choreographic film, his collaboration with Amis dancer Pan Panai allows their distinct physical vocabularies to gradually synchronize into shared rhythmic patterns, reconnecting with regulated internal cadences through the songs of Gulf Province women from his maternal homeland in Papua New Guinea.
