D’EST launches chapter 6 ½: Signals From Roots To Leaves – A Post-botanical Assembly

With contributions by Anna Zemánková (Selected images), Anna Zett (Screening: Freiheit 3), Ina Röder Sissoko (Conversation: The Language of Plants), Marwa Arsanios (Screening: Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 1 & 2), Naomi Rincón Gallardo (Screening: Resilienca Tlacuache) and Phuong Linh Nguyen (Screening: Memory of the Blind Elephant)

Curated by Suza Husse with and for Maguey (Agave), Ceiba, Qirnefîl (Carnation), Riesenschilf (Giant reed) and Đa búp đỏ (Rubber tree) in the Botanical Garden Olomouc

A co-production of PAF Olomouc – 19th Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art and D’EST – A Multi-Curatorial Online Platform for Video Art from the Former ‘East’ and ‘West’ in collaboration with the Botanical Gardens in Olomouc.

Sowing pumpkin, maize, beans, chickpeas
And common lands
Among assemblies and collective decisions
Organization of life without political parties

Your parents taught you to love the land
That’s why you defend it in times of war
In times of war called dispossession
Ecological catastrophe disguised as development
Extractive industries hiring killers
Destruction of millenary worlds

– Excerpt from the song Rosy by Naomi Rincón Gallardo and Yadhi Boz ft Doma, in: Resiliencia Tlacuache (Opossum Resilience), 2019.

Signals From Roots To Leaves: A Post-botanical Assembly approaches the Botanical Garden in Olomouc as a site where post-socialist and post-colonial ecologies and cultures intersect. Here, Agave, Ceiba, Rubber tree, Reeds and Carnation who live in the palm house, the subtropical greenhouse and under the open sky in Olomouc are convened with a group of artists and healers whose work and knowledge resonates with specific trans*species connections, histories and futures they embody.

read more: www.district-berlin.com and www.2020.pifpaf.cz/en/

3 – 13 December 2020 Online exhibition at PAF 2020 – 19th Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art
3 – 31 December 2020 Online Screening Chapter at D’EST
Works by Anna Zett, Marwa Arsanios, Naomi Rincón Gallardo and Phuong Linh Nguyen in dialogue with Maguey (Agave), Qirnefîl (Carnation), Riesenschilf (Giant reed) and Đa búp đỏ (Rubber tree) in the Botanical Garden Olomouc

There’s always a strong parallel between the massacre of nature and
that of women*. We, the women*s movement, had to protect our existence.
[…] The less people are aware of their links with nature the more likely
they are to become liberal individuals which have only loyalty to the
state. The more we are connected to natures the more likely we are to be
conscious of ourselves, of our place in the universe. The state is trying
to destroy that connection for itself to be legitimized.

– Pelshin in Marwa Arsianos: Who is Afraid of Ideology? Part 1,
2017.

PROGRAM

#1 MAGAZINE: The Language of Plants
A conversation between a Ceiba tree in Olomouc and the knowledges of healer and midwife Ina Röder Sissoko and Suza Husse about medicinal, spiritual and political powers of plants at the intersection of Black feminism and post-/socialist herbalism. Accompanied by post-botanical imaginaries by Anna Zemánková, Anna Zett, Marwa Arsanios, Naomi Rincòn Gallardo and Phuong Linh Nguyen.
Download pdf here.

#2 #3 #4 TALKS
Artist Anna Zemánková dreamed through plants, her imagination and inner knowledge manifested in hybrid vegetative shapes. What would a dreaming in reverse look like? Art works as realities cogenerated by plants in a pluralism of life forms that suspends modern-colonial understandings of life and death, time, space, memory, communication or intention. The conversations moderated by Suza Husse open living channels between the participating plants in Olomouc and the contributing artists and their works.
4 December, 5 pm Carnation & Marwa Arsanios
5 December, 5 pm  Giant Reeds & Anna Zett
6 December, 5 pm Rubber Tree & Phuong Linh Nguyen

#5 AGAVE LIVE VIDEO CHANNEL
from Maguey (Agave) in the palm house of the Botanical Garden Olomouc
3 December, 1 pm – 6 December, 6 pm CET

D’EST Chapter 6 ½: Signals From Roots To Leaves – A Post-botanical Assembly is a co-production of PAF Olomouc – 19th Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art and D’EST – A Multi-Curatorial Online Platform for Video Art from the Former ‘East’ and ‘West’ in collaboration with the Botanical Gardens in Olomouc. Funded by Der Deutsch-Tschechische Zukunftsfonds, Goethe-Institut Tschechien and The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

TEAM – Organized by Nela Klajbanová (curator, project manager, PAF) and Suza Husse (curator, D’EST / District Berlin) with Markéta Polášková (production manager, PAF), Nela Beislová (curatorial assistant, PAF), David Richardson (English proofreading), Jan Ciosk (translator Czech, English, German), Jaromír Pražák (live streaming), Johanna Ekenhorst (communications, D’EST / District Berlin), Lucie Pokorná (Czech proofreading), Madalena B. Guerra & Pieterjan Grandry (web editors, D’EST), Monika Abrhámová (photographer) and Ulrike Gerhardt (artistic co-director, D’EST).

Supported by Václav Dvořák (Head of University Botanical Gardens Olomouc), Pavel Souček (manager of greenhouse’s collections, Flora Olomouc), and Zuzana Chalupová (exhibition manager, Flora Olomouc).