In this conversation with Anaïs Roesch, Thierry Boutonnier retraces his unique trajectory as an “arboricultural” artist, a practice situated at the crossroads of art, ecology, agriculture and the social sciences. Thierry Boutonnier advocates for a transformative form of art, in which planting a tree or distilling roses becomes an act of resistance, care, and co-construction.
Throughout the interview, he reflects on emblematic projects such as Prenez racines!, Eau de Rose, Pont Ver(t)s and Appel d’air, exploring the concrete conditions under which these contextual works emerged, their temporalities, the institutional dynamics that support – or constrain – them, and, above all, the role of inhabitants as co-authors.
Through their dialogue, Anaïs Roesch and Thierry Boutonnier question the place of the artist in society, the thresholds of environmental toxicity, the alliances possible between humans and non-humans, and the sensitive forms that struggles for environmental justice may take. This text thus bears witness to an artistic commitment that rejects cultural extractivism and instead proposes a living, grounded, demanding, and deeply relational art.
Anaïs Roesch: Could you describe the path that led you to become an artist?
Thierry Boutonnier: My name is Thierry Boutonnier, and I’m an arboricultural artist. I grew up on a farm, and I was a significant helping hand in my parents’ conventional dairy and agricultural operation. I grew up in a domestic space shaped by the contradictory pressures of food production and much subtler cycles – water, soil, and so on. It was a rather heavy atmosphere, yet also one of freedom and experimentation. I learned to build treehouses, where I would hide whenever I wanted to escape the cowshed and the task of mucking out. I also used to draw – it was a way of representing the landscape around me and going beyond the limits of words to convey sensations.
Later, I took a general science baccalaureate and thought I might synthesise all these interests by becoming a landscape architect. To pursue this, I went to art school, where I discovered Beuys, Duchamp… At that time, I didn’t yet know about Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield – A Confrontation in Manhattan. The art school teachers told me there was something political in the artistic gesture – in this way of bringing together ecological sciences, drawing, the idea of shelter-making, doing things with trees, and so on. Through my training, I became aware of the issues of representation, which led me to develop a social and economic critique of dependency relations. In other words, I had an intuition that our relationship to food was not as natural as it seemed, that the need to eat wasn’t purely biological, and that the ways in which we produce food were far from natural – especially when you’ve grown up surrounded by fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, the scent of glyphosate.
This reversal of perspective happened during a study trip to Concordia University in Montreal, where sustainable development issues were clearly embedded in both artistic practice and critical questioning.
I left art school in 2005, but I’ve never stopped learning. In 2007, I resumed studies in ecology, pollution and nuisance at Claude Bernard University in Lyon. I’ve been committed to lifelong learning ever since. In 2013, I joined SPEAP – Bruno Latour’s School of Political Arts at Sciences Po. Then in 2021, I pursued training at the CFPPA (a French agricultural training centre) in orchard design and installation – a practice I’d already been involved with for over a decade.
Anaïs Roesch: Could you describe your practice and how you’ve integrated issues of ecology and territory?
Thierry Boutonnier: In 2005, faced with the precarity of life after graduation – I couldn’t afford equipment, for example – I developed a post-situationist practice of transformative action through the creation of situations. In 2009, I initiated Et in Arcadia Ego, which explored agro-pastoralism in urban environments, and launched Prenez racines!, an urban tree nursery in the Mermoz neighbourhood in Lyon. In 2010, I received the first COAL Prize, which helped validate these kinds of practices – in particular, the possibility of creating an urban nursery through tree sponsorship.
My work draws on post-situationist critique and socio-economics, examining how our systems of representation contribute to waste, the destruction of ecosystems, and the degradation of socio-ecological fabrics – especially in agricultural contexts.
The decade from 2010 to 2020 marked an acceleration of these practices, thanks to the COAL Prize and the growing recognition by actors and institutions in the art world of practices in which form emerges from interaction.
Personally, I position myself within the legacy of Joseph Beuys and his concept of social sculpture¹. That’s also how I came to assert that the gesture of planting belongs to a lineage and history of art worthy of study. Planting a tree, making one’s own olive oil or wine alongside farmers – these are artistic gestures, an art of the land. Even in the 1970s and 80s, Beuys was already drawing attention to the misunderstandings that could arise between creation and ecology if we didn’t interrogate what truly makes us free, and how interdependence itself might be a form of freedom.
Anaïs Roesch: Could you tell us a bit about your method? How do you intervene in a given territory? How do you choose where to work – for instance, through a project like Prenez racines!?
Thierry Boutonnier: Starting in 2009, with Prenez racines!, I began integrating survey methodologies and rating systems drawn from ecological sciences and remediation techniques, and combined them with the approaches I encountered at SPEAP – from anthropology and sociology, including interview practices where quality of listening is key. In other words, I learned to combine map-reading, water quality analysis, soil bioactivity – all the tools that help us observe heavily human-impacted non-humans – with social interactions, to see how they are traversed by the more-than-human.
This investigative methodology often begins with an invitation. Not necessarily a commission, but a prompt to meet, to explore…
With Prenez racines!, for example, the invitation came from the city’s urban policy programme, the MJC (youth and cultural centre), the ENEC Mermoz, and the popular education network – particularly through Géraldine Lopez, a cultural mediator and director, now head of the MJC La Duchère. So we can already see that a framework for institutional collaboration was in place, enabling the idea of hosting an artist. However, the funding was granted on a yearly basis, limiting the possibility to develop a project that matched the scale of the issues at hand.
One of the unexpected consequences of Prenez racines! was Eau de Rose. In that case, too, there was no formal commission. What’s interesting is that, through the diplomacy of trees, the logic was stretched over time. We weren’t in a classic format where an artist is paid for a three-month residency, produces a work, and then leaves.
What was equally striking was that the residents we met – going door to door and so on – weren’t fooled. They had that same image of the artist who makes their project, adds it to their CV, and moves on.
That changed everything, because I took their questions seriously. I didn’t want to be just passing through. Even today, some of the residents still contact me – for example, to ask for advice on pruning their rose bushes. A kind of ongoing relationship has taken root.
To this day, I’m still invited to reflect on practices around rose pruning and more. There’s a need to shape forms in tune with the trees. People have come to understand that trees respond to what we impose on them – often negatively, because our interventions aren’t always appropriate. It’s about learning to shape in the direction of the trees, to understand their responses, and to adjust our actions.
Ultimately, what I wanted – through Prenez racines!, which branched out into Eau de Rose², and later Pont Ver(t)s³, which was another phase where I was invited to explore issues of food justice in the Camargue – is to show that these projects emerge. They’re not commissions handed down from above.
Anaïs Roesch: So, coming back to Prenez racines!, how did you go on to develop the project with your collaborators?
Thierry Boutonnier: To co-create the project, we began by visiting local residents to present several scenarios. This was a phase that really took time — door-to-door visits, sketches of different possibilities… Then the trees themselves also contributed to anchoring the project in the long term.
After a year of interviews and encounters in 2009–2010, the idea of an urban nursery was ultimately chosen. We created a plant palette of tree species, and the residents selected the ones they wanted. Through the door-to-door work, we managed to raise awareness among around 50 to 75 households. That formed a critical mass that helped public authorities and urban planners begin to hear differently what we were proposing — and what residents could imagine, choose, and contribute.
In a way, we mimicked the logic of urban planning processes. Often, when people talk about “consultation”, it’s really just information — the very first level on the ladder of participation. In this case, we truly engaged in co-construction, developing a form of maîtrise d’usage — user-led expertise — alongside the project owners (ANRU, local authorities), the project managers (landscape architects), and the residents themselves.
What’s striking about urban renewal projects is that human residents are often involved at the start (during the consultation phase) and again at the end (for the inauguration), but never at the heart of the transformation process. During the construction works, they’re usually seen as obstacles. The same goes for non-humans, like existing trees, which are seen as a nuisance — they have to be protected, they slow things down… The aim of Prenez racines! was to change that perception, to make companies and public authorities see residents no longer as a hindrance, but as full participants with valuable lived expertise.
In the end, they allocated a 1,000-square-metre plot of land where we planted the trees chosen by the residents. We arrived just before the landscape design tender specifications were finalised, which meant we were able to integrate into the official public procurement and implementation processes. This allowed residents, the artist, and the Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture (MJC)⁴ to play a genuine role in shaping the project alongside the commissioning authorities. It was through this interplay of institutional actors, combined with on-the-ground engagement with both human and non-human residents, that the landscape architects incorporated the transformation we were initiating into their design process.
Anaïs Roesch: If you hadn’t gone through this more institutional route, you probably could still have done the project — but not on this scale, right?
Thierry Boutonnier: Exactly. It’s really this interplay between institutional actors and grassroots practice — with both human and non-human residents — that enabled the landscape architects to incorporate into their designs the transformation we were undertaking.
And once the project managers said, “Yes, we’ll take on what’s being co-created with the residents,” that unblocked the situation. The project owners were then able to recognise that the initiative fit within the framework of a conventional urban planning process. In a sense, the project managers sponsored the work. That kind of professional goodwill made the realisation possible.
It’s worth noting that in this constellation of actors, it was mostly women who played key roles: Alice Conjansen, in charge of works at ANRU and the Métropole; Géraldine Lopez, cultural director of the MJC; Anne-Laure Giroux, the landscape architect; Anne-Sophie Lacroix at the City of Lyon, responsible for urban policy and cultural strategy… There was genuine collective listening — a shared attentiveness — which enabled the project to come to fruition. The institutional ecosystem came together — without prior planning — to allow us to genuinely transform our practices together on the ground.
Anaïs Roesch: So at the beginning, your funding was primarily cultural in nature. But where did the main financial support come from later on?
Thierry Boutonnier: The funding came from ANRU, the Fondation de France, and also the organisation COAL. The COAL Prize acted as a catalyst. It gave us visibility, helped attract attention — including through media coverage — and that helped to legitimise and strengthen the project as a whole.
Anaïs Roesch: And so the project then took shape?
Thierry Boutonnier: Concretely, the trees were planted in November 2011. They stayed in the nursery for three years, until 2014. We eventually transplanted them permanently into a former car park, which used to be a concrete slab.
That project gave rise to another planting initiative, this time with roses: Eau de Rose. With residents from different neighbourhoods, we distilled the roses using a still we had acquired. In 2017–2018, the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art took an interest in the project, and together we planted new Damask rose bushes on other sites across the metropolitan area — in Lyon’s 7th arrondissement, Vaulx-en-Velin, Rillieux-la-Pape, Givors and Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d’Or.
Then, in parallel, in 2015, we began discussing the project Appel d’Air as part of the Grand Paris initiative. In this project, we looked at how to support trees at the scale of the Grand Paris construction works. What is this Grand Paris territory? Who are its inhabitants? And we quickly realised that planting trees in a nursery somewhere doesn’t necessarily create community or meaning for people in places like Noisy-le-Champs or La Courneuve. So there was also a more complex and challenging task around engaging with the public.
Anaïs Roesch: Could you describe in more detail the public you work with — how you brought them together and how they became engaged in the project?
Thierry Boutonnier: Absolutely. I can give the example of a current project, Pont Ver(t)s, which I’m developing in the Camargue, at the invitation of Le Citron Jaune, the National Centre for Street and Public Space Arts in Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône. The role of the public is embedded in their mission — you can tell just by their name. They’re genuinely interested in artistic practices rooted in outdoor and community-based contexts.
My approach clearly aligns with John Dewey’s philosophy of art as experience, and with the idea that the public is co-constitutive of the work through active engagement in practices that concern them. In the case of Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône, I began with an investigation of this hybrid territory, situated between the so-called “natural” Camargue — a wild park and Rhône estuary — and Fos-sur-Mer, a major hub of global petrochemical production. I needed to understand how I could responsibly integrate the proposed orchard-planting project. I wasn’t going to plant fruit trees and offer food to local residents if the trees would grow in conditions of non-edibility and polluted soil or water. That would amount to poisoning them.
Scientific studies show that the region has unacceptably high levels of toxicity and cancer — roughly 23% higher than the departmental average. There are also serious issues with asthma, lung and heart conditions. In reality, public policy should be to evacuate the area, shut down factories, and remediate the land.
At first, I thought planting new trees might be pointless. Given the salinity of the water, the toxicity of the Rhône, and air pollution, their chances of survival were slim. So instead, I began with urban drift walks, looking for fruit trees already growing in the streets — even those in poor condition. And I found them: olive trees bearing olives, pomegranate trees, fig trees full of fruit… These trees were already there, producing in spite of everything.
That’s when I came across the Institut Éco-Citoyen, which supports citizen science in collaboration with a research lab at Aix-Marseille University. From this encounter, the question became: how do we make citizen-generated data perceptible and meaningful?
This led me to develop the concepts of the nourishing marker and the observatory orchard — tools for monitoring the transmission of phytotoxicity in the environment. The Institut Éco-Citoyen brought their expertise in phytosanitary analysis, and we cross-referenced their methods with others, such as lichen analysis — as lichens are extremely sensitive to air quality.
That’s when we began planting olive and fig trees. The olive tree seemed especially relevant: a civilisation-forming species, now often reduced to decorative use, stripped of its nourishing potential. So we asked ourselves: how could we restore it to a productive, edible role? Why not produce olive oil in Port-Saint-Louis? A local vegetable oil to be compared with the mineral oil from petroleum. Is it edible? Is it polluted by hydrocarbons in the soil?
We carried out this investigation with the residents, involving them at every stage. Many already had their own forms of expertise, often linked to the illnesses they were living with. This diplomacy of trees, as I call it, allowed them to shift from being perceived as victims to becoming active agents.
The planting workshops also raised important health and safety questions: should we wear masks when digging? Was it dangerous for children? If rain brought airborne pollution back to the soil, could we still plant safely? These very specific questions led to deeper ecological awareness — far more effectively than a traditional public meeting.
Over the course of a year, we harvested olives — but we didn’t eat them until we had the test results. Together, we even bought an olive press. We picked fruit from private gardens, parks, and highly polluted land, including within our observatory orchard. The Institut Éco-Citoyen eventually produced a report. It found that people could consume up to 800 grams of olives per day, or 1.5 kilos of lemons, without exceeding thresholds for heavy metals or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). But for figs, the threshold was just 300 grams — three to four figs. That’s not a lot if you like figs.
We realised that different plants respond differently to pollution. Olive oil, overall, remained consumable. But a fig preserved in that oil? Maybe useful for a form of herbal medicine — but in small quantities. That’s where the idea of thresholds really takes shape. Once again, trees helped us translate these complex issues and create a form of sensitive diplomacy for recalibration.
And I must emphasise: I didn’t do this alone. I’ve mentioned Émilie, Géraldine, and Laure for Prenez Racines!, but in Port-Saint-Louis too, many people contributed: Laury Huard, Pascal Servera, Emeline Ribeiro, Eva Habasque, Angélique, the Secours Populaire…
That’s why, in 2023 and 2024 — the idea was already germinating in 2022 — we decided to found the Association des Artistes Arboricoles together. These projects had revealed their deeply collective nature — the symbiotic alliances between humans and non-humans. Arboricultural art is an art of shaping in the direction of trees, and through trees, reflecting the co-evolving interactions that structure our lives.
Anaïs Roesch: What’s at stake for you in the Association des Artistes Arboricoles that you’ve created?
Thierry Boutonnier: The Association des Artistes Arboricoles was co-founded in January 2024 to develop practices of inquiry, co-evolution, experimentation, and scientific support — to assess the quality of soil, water, air, biomass, and so on — and to explore how these living beings can help us rework the quality of social interactions and reshape a shared understanding of what’s happening in a given territory. Beyond the tangible transformation of the landscape through plants that become part of people’s everyday lives in a different way, this kind of project also contributes to changing how the territory is perceived — not by idealising it, nor by pretending that it offers some ready-made solution. We’re not going to turn every place into an orchard. And clearly, not every place is edible. We need to take the issue of thresholds seriously, and approach it with care. Finally, there’s also a vital question around passing on these working methods.
Anaïs Roesch: In the way you speak about it, and in your methodology, how do you position yourself within an artistic practice?
Thierry Boutonnier: That’s an interesting question — it reflects a lingering doubt around these hybrid forms of arboricultural art. But we’re in the midst of a paradigm shift. Perhaps until now we were told that symbolic thinking allowed us to represent things differently — but the “anthropic pressure” of our representations is bringing us to a point where we might no longer be able to represent anything at all.
Perhaps today, the best indicator of whether something is an artwork is a biomarker — the vitality of trees over an undetermined time span, perhaps even beyond what cultural services can measure. We are part of the continuum of life, and trees structure that continuum.
Anaïs Roesch: From a legal or administrative point of view, what does this association make possible?
Thierry Boutonnier: Financially and administratively, it allows us to move beyond the ambiguity of the informal collective, which could otherwise lead to uncertainty in how we organise ourselves. Thanks to this legal status, for example, we were able to win a participatory budget from the city of Villeurbanne.
Anaïs Roesch: Within your association — this collective body — how do you address the question of artistic status and co-authorship?
Thierry Boutonnier: That’s a real point of discussion. If we understand the term “artist” in its anthropological sense, it means “maker” — it’s a kind of catch-all word that helps us bypass the rigidity of professional categories. Most of the members of the association are people who themselves inhabit these points of intersection and hybrid forms.
In reality, all of us care deeply about being recognised for our unique contributions, as co-authors. The “artist” label is something we actually desire. I don’t think the question is about no longer calling oneself an artist. For many, it’s a way of claiming the capacity to transform reality. That’s equally true for nurses, embalmers, farmers, and public speakers: all of them can develop their own art, their own gesture, as a sensitive form of contribution to transformation. There’s still so much to invent.
¹ Social sculpture is a concept developed by Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) – a major figure in twentieth-century art – which posits that society as a whole can be shaped as a work of art. Beuys argued that every individual has creative potential, and that this creativity can be collectively mobilised to transform the world.
² Eau de Rose is a project by Thierry Boutonnier in which Damask rose bushes are sponsored and planted by local residents in unexpected corners of their neighbourhood; petals are harvested and distilled to produce rose water; moments of collective construction are followed by times of celebration…
³ This project by Thierry Boutonnier involves planting fruit trees with local residents at the foot of housing blocks. The resulting orchard, bringing together between 10 and 20 edible species, will be organised to allow free and open harvesting by all. In time, it may lead to the production of processed goods such as jam, made from the collected fruit.
⁴ A Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture (MJC), or Youth and Cultural Centre, is a community-based, non-profit organisation in France that promotes access to culture, arts, education, and civic engagement for people of all ages, with a particular focus on young people. MJCs offer a wide range of activities such as theatre, music, dance, visual arts, language courses, and social events. They are spaces for creativity, dialogue, and participation, fostering social cohesion and personal development. Each MJC is locally rooted and often works in partnership with schools, municipalities, and cultural institutions.
