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Vegetal Entanglements Editor in Chief antennae THE JOURNAL OF NATURE IN VISUAL CULTURE SPRING 2021 vegetal entanglements Editor in Chief Giovanni Aloi – School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sotheby’s Institute of Art Academic Board Steve Baker – University of Central Lancashire Melissa Boyde – University of Wollongong Ron Broglio – Arizona State University Matthew Brower – University of Toronto Eric Brown – University of Maine at Farmington Carol Gigliotti – Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver antennae Donna Haraway – University of California, Santa Cruz THE JOURNAL OF NATURE IN VISUAL CULTURE Susan McHugh – University of New England edited by Giovanni Aloi Brett Mizelle – California State University Claire Parkinson – Edge Hill University Cecilia Novero – University of Otago Jennifer Parker–Starbuck – Royal Holloway Annie Potts – University of Canterbury Antennae (founded in 2006) is the international, peer reviewed, academic Ken Rinaldo – Ohio State University journal on the subject of nature in contemporary art. Its format and Nigel Rothfels – University of Wisconsin contents are inspired by the concepts of ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘widening Jessica Ullrich – University of Art Münster participation’. Three times a year, the Journal brings academic knowledge Andrew Yang – School of the Art Institute of Chicago within a broader arena, one including practitioners and a readership that Global Contributors may not regularly engage in academic discussion. Ultimately, Antennae Sonja Britz / Tim Chamberlain / Conception Cortes / Lucy Davis / Amy Fletcher / Katja Kynast / Christine Marran / Carolina encourages communication and crossovers of knowledge amongst Parra / Zoe Peled / Julien Salaud / Paul Thomas / Sabrina Tonutti / Joanna Willenfelt artists, scientists, scholars, activists, curators, and students. In January 2009, the establishment of Antennae’s Senior Academic Board, Advisory Advisory Board Board, and Network of Global Contributors has affirmed the journal as an Rod Bennison / Helen J. Bullard / Claude d’Anthenaise / Lisa Brown / Chris Hunter / Karen Knorr / Susan Nance / Caroline indispensable research tool for the subject of environmental and nature Picard / Andrea Roe / David Rothenberg / Angela Singer / Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson studies. Contact the Editor in Chief at: [email protected] Visit Copy Editor and Design our website for more info and past issues: www.antennae.org.uk Erik Frank and Giovanni Aloi Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (ISSN 1756-9575) is published triannually by AntennaeProject, Chicago. Contents copyright © 2020 by the respective authors, artists, and other rights holders. All rights in Antennae: The Jour- nal of Nature in Visual Culture and its contents reserved by their respective owners. Except as permitted by the Copy- right Act, including section 107 (fair use), or other applicable law, no part of the contents of Antennae: The Journal of Na- ture in Visual Culture may be reproduced without the written permission of the author(s) and/or other rights holders. By submitting your article for publication, you grant Antennae the right to reproduce the work and associated images in elec- tronic format or on paper format derived from the on-line work. If the work has been solicited or commissioned by Antennae, the intellectual property of such contribution rests with Antennae. If such category of work is published in Antennae, and this Front and back cover: Raksha Patel, Myrtle, and Rose, Acrylic on canvas, 2014 © Raksha Patel also represent the first published instance for the work, a written request for a re-print needs to be forwarded to the Editor in order to obtain authorisation for partial or full reproduction of the work. Interview questions written for Antennae and relative answers supplied by interlocutors become, upon publication, intellectual property of Antennae and a written request for a re- print needs to be forwarded to the Editor in order to obtain authorisation for partial or full reproduction in other publications. vegetal entanglements contents 14 24 29 67 78 82 Lois Weinberger: Fieldwork Katrin Petroschkat The Flowerless Ones: Unearthed: Bahia Shehab: Raksha Patel: Air Heads UNUNKRAUT text and images: Raksha Patel text: Franziska Weinberger A Vegetal/Human Encounter- Photography’s Roots The Chronicles of Flowers text and images: Katrin Petroschkat images: Lois Weiberger interviewee Alexander Moore text and images: Bahia Shehab text: Dawn Sanders interviewer Giovanni Aloi This series of works explore Ununkraut is an offline/online artwork At the center of Lois Weinberger’s The Chronicles of Flowers is a personal ideas of renewal and decay. We and cyber-alchem- ical research Seeded with texts from both fiction work is the idea of a garden as a Unearthed: Photography’s Roots at document of Bahia Shehab’s long- are presented with oval shaped on human-plant relations by Katrin and ecological science, a timeframe “perfect temporary territory” in Dulwich Picture Gallery in London is paintings; works that mirror the size Petrosch- kat. It focuses so called is constructed in which emergent lasting relationship with flowers. In marginal areas. Their focus has the first exhibition to trace the history of our faces, whilst challenging the “weeds” and the human-plant plant life, in a domestic garden, is the spring of 2011, when Shehab always been on biodiversity and the of photography as told through broke her left knee, her mother came traditions of portraiture. Heads are interaction between the binding relations that term entails. placed in counterpoint to the ending depictions of nature, revealing how from Beirut to nurse her in Cairo. replaced with a variety of leaves, forces of cultural growth and nature. of a human life. the subject led to key advancements Every morning, she created a flower each bearing antromorphic qualities. in the medium, from its very arrangement from the garden next to beginnings in 1840 to present day. Shehab’s bed. 34 58 52 87 100 112 Vivien Sansour: explorations Anna Ridler: Time-based trees: Becoming Plant: A Supple- Earth Voice: plant blind- The Seeds of Change text and images: Shaun Matthews A Contemporary Tulipmania A sequel to animated ment to Roger Caillois’s com- ness, magic, and art interviewee Vivien Sansour interviewee Anna Ridler text: Prudence Gibson interviewer Noura Al Khasawneh explorations embodies a simple aesthetics interviewer Jean Marie Carey pendium of ‘le fantastique images: Maria Fernanda Cardoso idea, to reduce our physical and text: Martin Bartelmus images: Cyprian Gaillard naturel’ emotional disconnection from Anna Ridler is an artist and researcher Vivien Sansour is the founder of text: Junko Theresa Mikuriya Colombian-born Australian artist Aotearoa New Zealand’s natural who is interested in exploring how Maria Fernanda Cardoso works the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. In Cyprian Gaillard’s) 3D filmNightlife systems function and are built. She with vegetal elements. One of Trained in the field of Anthropology, environment and re-establish native (2015) trees play the leading role. The French sociologist and Surrealist works with new technologies and her public art installations draws Vivien worked with farmers flora’s importance and uniqueness. Especially in the context of video art, renegade Roger Caillois is known upon 19th-century traditions of scientific knowledge, exploring how worldwide on issues relating to trees are not sculptures, because for his writings on mimicry. Caillois scientific observation, whilst also they are created in order to better agriculture and independence. they grow and are no immobilized defines mimicry as a “dangerous engaging with the conatus and understand society and the world. agency of the bottle tree. dead artefacts. luxury of nature”, thus setting himself apart from Darwinian evolutionary 6 theory. 7 contents 123 131 150 Carsten Holler & Stefano Extremophiles: The Act of The Empire and Mancuso: The Florence Ex- Performative Habitat The Hissing Folly text: Egle Oddo and Basak Senova text and images: Cole Swanson periment images: Egle Oddo text and images: Carsten Höller and Stefano Mancuso The Hissing Folly is a collaborative, multidisciplinary artwork by Cole Egle Oddo creates living sculptures Internationally acclaimed Swanson that employs invasive by installing evolutionary gardens artist Carsten Höller and plant phragmites, or European common that function as public artworks. neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso reed (Phragmites australis subs. She plants seeds of wild species have collaborated on The Florence australis) in both its material and cultivars together, fading the Experiment, a project enabling the construction and critical foundation. demarcation line between sites for study of the interaction between agriculture, untamed soil, and urban human beings and plants. green areas. 160 168 180 Bruno Côrte: Manuela Infante: Hybrid Fruit: cross-breeding Vegetal Materialities Estado Vegetal botany, art and science interviewee Manuela Infante text and images: Bruno Côrte text and images: Niki Sperou interviewer Giovanni Aloi Vegetal organisms are potent Bruno Côrte’s work addresses Since its first staging in 2016, metaphors for bio-political concerns human-plant relationships through Manuela Infante’s riveting piece of within my arts practice. Plants are the proximity and intimacy of experimental performance, Estado manipulated in their various forms; vegetal manipulations. A forager and Vegetal, has been celebrated as the whole plants, cut flowers, sprouted collector of plants,
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