Reptillia Cultivatus is a (un)functional sculpture that operates as both a speculative object and a working agricultural tool. Inspired by vineyard cultivators, it addresses the often overlooked damage caused by walking between grapevines, where compacted soil loses its breath and vitality. The object tills the soil as one walks, turning harm into productivity and creating a balancing force between disruption and restoration. Through its form and utility, the piece invites reflection on the complex, often contradictory relationship between humans and the land.

In performance, the prehistoric-inspired tool—resembling a vertebral spine—is worn and pulled by a performer dressed in a playful custom vest and headpiece, resembling a cyborg. The performance blurs the lines between nature and technology, evoking themes of civilization, labor, property ownership, and ecological exploitation. The piece gestures toward the agricultural revolution, industrialization, and ecological collapse, while also imagining new ways of engaging with land through embodied, intentional gestures.

Reptillia Cultivatus challenges dominant systems of knowledge by interrogating the notion of efficiency, long celebrated as a marker of civilization and progress. It questions whether the efficiency gained through the agricultural revolution was always beneficial, whether it was truly “productive” for the societies it transformed. And in the context of the post industrial era, it asks whether we can still call something productive when it comes at the cost of irreversible ecological harm.

The work opens up these questions by appearing to till the soil, yet in doing so, placing the burden of labor, of progress, on the body that carries it. Although the object is conceived through intellectual labor, it reverses this trajectory by demanding intense physical effort from the person who activates it. It asks what might emerge if we look again, differently at the soil, at tradition, at history, at the body. What happens when we accept the conveniences we’re offered? Or when we refuse the obligations we’re expected to carry?

Playing between fiction and function, the meditative and ritualistic performance challenges the audience to reconsider the narratives of progress and the ethical implications of our interactions with the land. When not in use, the sculpture becomes a contemporary object with instructions similar to those for assembling IKEA furniture.