Herman de Vries - Nature vs Culture (original) (raw)

'On the Nature of Botanical Gardens' at Framer Framed in Amsterdam features nine contemporary Indonesian artists who look critically at botanical gardens, colonial power, knowledge building and the economics of nature, its legacies and current consequences of approaching nature and plants. The exhibition seeks to decolonise the concept of botanical gardens and their role in building a Dutch colonial empire in Indonesia.

Botanical Drift explores the hermeneutics, historicization, semiotics, and symbiosis of plant diversification, species cultivation, and destruction—past and present, extant and extinct—around the globe. Plant histories are explored as commodities and colonial as well as decolonial devices by significant and diverse feminist, art-historical, and anthropological voices—from Germaine Greer to herman de vries—bringing new perspectives through photo-essays, fiction, performance, and interventions in ecological, film, and translation archives. Reflecting on experimental ecology—the undiscovered, underestimated, and undesired non-European flora and fauna—it challenges perception and inspires potentialities to bring new understandings of the undergrowth of the Kew Gardens botany collection. Design by A Practice for Everyday Life December 2017, English 16.7 x 23 cm, 240 pages, color and b/w ill., softcover ISBN 978-3-95679-353-0 €22.00

REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7) focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Heritage such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participation of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘re-appropriation’ (www.recall-project.polimi.it). The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Download the book or browse it on ISSUU.

Despite J.M. Coetzee’s ostensible interest in the issues of - largely speaking - visuality, the links between Coetzee’s oeuvre and ‘images’ have not been sufficiently explored either by art or literary critics. The paper offers a detailed discussion of the cooperation between Coetzee and the Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere which has so far resulted in one installation and two art books co-authored by Coetzee and De Bruyckere. Special attention will be paid to the piece “Cripplewood/Kreupelhout” shown in the Belgian Pavilion of the 2013 Venice Biennial and the catalogue published in its wake. Also, a number of questions related to the nature of Coetzee’s contribution to both projects, the role of a curator and his relationship with the artist, as well as the catalogue’s generic affiliation and its position in Coetzee’s body of works are thoroughly addressed.

The Nul group was a collective of Dutch artists who manifested themselves between 1961 and 1966. Artists Armando, Jan Henderikse, Jan Schoonhoven and Henk Peeters formed the core of this group, which felt a kinship with the international ZERO movement that had started in Düsseldorf. They shared a quest for a new objectivity in art.

Why "starting from Venice"? If exhibitions represent the main focus of the debate for many scholars, the Venice Biennale is of particular interest, with its long history, constant presence and ongoing renewal that allow us to trace origins and developments of the success of contemporary exhibitions practices. [...] Starting from Venice is a first step towards a still unaccomplished work: the promotion of the studies on the Venice Biennale and the establishment of a point of reference for those who want to keep up to date with the latest trends in studies and research about the Biennale.

This MA thesis is concerned with histories of flower selling in Cape Town. Since the late 19th century, images and imaginings of the flower sellers in Adderley Street and to a lesser degree in other areas of the city attained an outstanding place in visualisations and descriptions of Cape Town. The flower sellers were thereby characterised in a particularly gendered, racialised and class-specific way as predominantly female, coloured and poor. This characterisation dominated to an extent that it is possible to speak of a discursive figure of the 'Cape Town flower sellers'. In tourism-related media and in personal memoirs, the 'Cape Town flower sellers' often came to represent both the city and the inhabitants of Cape Town. The images and imaginings of the 'Cape Town flower sellers' can partly be traced back to representations of 'flower girls' in fictional stories, paintings, photographs and film in Europe, particularly in Great Britain. In Cape Town, this European discourse about flower selling developed in a specific way within colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid contexts.