Markéta Neubergová
I remember learning about the red giant as a child. I imagined humans five billion years in the future experiencing it. Then the debates about climate change, we would destroy the world sooner, I thought. It wasn’t until I read the texts in the seminar that I realised we won’t be the last species on Earth. We won’t be witnessing the end. Yes, one day the conditions are to alter so much that the life we know will cease to exist, but that doesn’t mean there will be none.
I decided to create an installation “The last Daisy” inspired by this realisation. I chose Daisy as a symbol of our life, because it is a flower well-known to everyone living in Czechia. The sound of it and its surroundings is also an important part of the overall atmosphere I intended to create.
Everyone knows daisy, the sweet white flower, blooming on meadows, in gardens, on green flats along pavements and sometimes even on places we wouldn’t expect it to, such as seams in concrete.
Many of us won’t associate daisies with anything special, they don’t symbolise the end of winter like snowdrops, they are not connected with love the same way as roses, nor do they fill the air with heavy scent like lilacs or lilies. We just walk past them barely noticing their presence. They are just like small moments of happiness in our everyday life. Moments often overlooked because we are in hurry.
But how much of our time do these moments actually take up? How much of our time do we spend doing seemingly insignificant things like, enjoying the morning coffee, sitting by a window looking at the heavy rain outside, laughing at silly jokes, experiencing the last minute of consciousness before falling asleep, feeling first sunrays hitting our skin after winter, listening to a song we like for the hundredth time, taking shower after a long day, smelling the fresh air after rain, letting wind to mess our hair, or simply taking deep breath when everything feels heavy on a hot summer day?
Aren’t these the most intimate moments, that create our souls? Moments we enjoy but don’t consider interesting enough to share with others. Small ones, not like Christmas or summer vacations, the rare moments that we’re looking forward to when we are tired of the routine, because those moments don’t last long. They’re gone before we know it. And even though memories of them are much more vivid, they are only small parts of our existence. And just like we would feel dizzy after smelling lilacs for too long, we would become tired of the excitement. That’s why we have daises. To calm us. To make every day a bit better.
Today we can see daisies blooming almost everywhere. Today we live through these small moments. One day, however, there will be the last one. The last daisy. Maybe beautifully blooming surrounded by fresh green grass. Maybe weakly growing all alone in a grey city, hunkered down in dust. Or perhaps the last daisy won’t be alive at all, maybe it will be the one printed on a summer dress, torn to pieces, laying on a ground. And with the last daisy slowly slipping into nothingness the world we know will also come to an end. Leaving space for other lives, other lifeforms, other moments. Moments that won’t be ours to live. Moments that we might have considered extraordinary, had we been given the chance to experience them. Just like we consider extraordinary moments of lifeforms before humanity.
That day might be incredibly loud. An explosion changing everything at once. It might also be very quiet and peaceful. The last final change from chain of many others that went unnoticed. We cannot know what will happen, but we have many ideas of what it will look like. Some imagine the sun exploding wiping humans off the face of the earth, some that we will find another planet to live on, others imagine humans destroying the life, leaving the earth, a bare rock, floating through the space. We cannot know what will happen, we can only guess. But what are the chances that we will remain the same after the last daisy?
