I remember to have been named, I remember to have been called, I am now calling myself (2020) |
| The work emerged from a casual visit to the Berlin Botanical Gardens in 2019. Instituted in 1679 as a “model agricultural garden” by the Great Elector Friedrich, the gardens today host a series of
greenhouses, each exhibiting plants of separate and distinct geographical regions. We were particularly stricken by Greenhouse C, described as housing "tropical crop plants and other useful plants, arranged according to main uses". A disturbing, depressing space littered with plants far away from their natural environments.
Three sticks of half-dead sugarcane, one papaya tree, one banana tree, a small pepper vine,
a lone pandan shrub … Each plant was labeled by way of an aluminum plaque declaring a Latin name, taxonomic classification, place of origin and use. We were shaken by the issue of “use” here. How is a plant considered useful? To whom, for what, from which perspective? We instinctively developed and performed a site-responsive action in the following week, addressing the violence embedded within scientific classification systems as well as the botanic gardens as both tool and museum of European colonial extraction. |
| WITH stefan pente |
| TYPE Publication |
| PART OF Beyond Repair︎︎︎ |
| EDITED BY Natascha Sadr Haghighian with Ernest Ah |
| DATE 10.2020 |
All contributors to Beyond Repair : Fritz Laszlo Weber, Virgil B/G Taylor, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Oumayma Khaled, Ernest Ah, Avery F. Gordon, Aino Korvensyrjä, Sami Khatib, Nida Ghouse, Rene Gabri, Ayreen Anastas, Marina Vishmidt, Ashkan Sepahvand, jee chan, stefan pente, Aboubakar Soumahoro, Luisa Eugeni, Marco Omizzolo, Paola De Meo, Rex Osa / editors: Ernest Ah, Natascha Sadr Haghighian / published by: Archive Books / printed by: hinkelsteindruck sozialistische GmbH / ISBN: 978-3-948212-42-1
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