Category: books

On the necessity of gardening: an abc of art, botany and cultivation

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On the necessity of gardening: an abc of art, botany and cultivation, Editor: Laurie Cluitmans
Contributors: Maria Barnas, Jonny Bruce, Laurie Cluitmans, Thiëmo Heilbron, Liesbeth M. Helmus, Erik A. de Jong, René de Kam, Alhena Katsof, Jamaica Kincaid, Bart Rutten, Catriona Sandilands, Patricia de Vries. Design: Bart de Baets

On the Necessity of Gardening appears simultaneous with the exhibition The botanical revolution, on the necessity of art and gardening that will be on view from 11 September 2021 to 9 January 2022 in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (NL). The publication is categorically not an exhibition catalogue, but is positioned as an autonomous project. Both the exhibition and publication stem from a longer-term research by Laurie Cluitmans into the development of the cultural-historical, philosophical and social significance of the garden in relation to our current way of life. valiz.nl

Henk Wildschut, Rooted, Zaatari Camp, Jordan-April-2018. Henk Wildschut photographed the improvised gardens of people who have lost their homes and ended up in refugee camps.
KJM in botanical revolution

The garden as a place of hope and resilience

Parallel to the exhibition in the Centraal Museum, the exhibition Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers? can be seen in Nest art space in The Hague.

Staying South by Logan Lockner

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Art in America, November 17, 2021 10:53am.

Lockner’s article surveys a sample of artists based in the American South, Coulter Fussell, Katz Tepper, and Adler Guerrier.

This series of overlapping, sometimes contradictory impressions is perhaps best conveyed by Guerrier’s use of techniques such as solvent transfer and collage in works on paper that create ghostly, overlapping black-and-white images of both natural and urban landscapes, often punctuated by cascading geometric shapes or intricate compositions. These works temper representation with more opaque visual poetics, creating images of a place that feel both familiar and far away. 

Rebecca Solnit – Orwell’s Roses

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To read, via nyer https://www.newyorker.com/culture/q-and-a/rebecca-solnit-on-the-politics-of-pleasure

…a natural history of gardening, a dissection of the rose as capitalist metaphor, or a defense of art and beauty as a bulwark against the annihilating forces of totalitarianism.
…pleasure as a form of resistance

roses–they became a symbol for the whole contemporary world.

Part of living in the contemporary world is knowing the conditions under which [ANYTHING & EVERYTHING]…are produced

…suggesting that meaning is inherent in materials, if you pay attention to them, and meaning is also inherent in the process of making.

Feminist City, Leslie Kern

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On creating the non-sexist city. Kern’s article in the Guardian.

society’s historical and ongoing ideas about the proper gender roles for men and women (organised along a narrow binary) are built right into our cities – and they still matter. They matter to me as a mother. They matter to me as a busy professor who often finds herself in strange cities, wondering if it’s OK to pop into the neighbourhood pub alone. Ask any woman who’s tried to bring a pram on to a bus, breastfeed in a park, or go for a jog at night. She intuitively understands the message the city sends her: this place is not for you.

Yet the city can be a place of great freedom. The anonymity of urban life breeds possibilities easily stifled in a claustrophobic small town or suburban enclave. Education, work, pleasure, politics: the city broadens our horizons and gives us choices our foremothers never had. Despite its hostilities, it remains our best hope for radical change.

Book by Verso.