A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
research and development
‘weeds’; herbarium; listening; writing
Gathering ‘weeds’ from the Forest Garden, documenting their arrival and their tenacity; the ‘(un)planted’.
Plants, paper
Inspired by the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, ‘teaching the names of plants and ignoring their songs’, (un)planted is a developing project which aims to give emphasis back to the plants themselves by avoiding orders of scientific identification - systematising the plant world in order to name, to classify, to take DNA as a way of knowing and controlling all that needs to be known. But rather to delve into a broader, deeper understanding of plants as physical elements of our shared ecosystem. To listen to their ‘songs’. In particular, to savour the strength, courage and migratory journey of self-seeded ‘weeds’ in the Forest Garden. To share the 500 year old practice of the herbarium as an opportunity to gather, press, dry and collate plants, when removed or expired as a way of remembering their presence, their sounds, their aroma, their touch, their colours and their dependant fauna.
Location: Forest Garden Project, Suffolk, UK
The Forest Garden Project is a developing concept which exists somewhere between ecological research, quiet activism, ritual, experiment and performance. A space of contradiction, slowness and listening in collaboration with the flora and fauna. In response to a search for the ‘rural idyll’ in places of increasing marginalisation, where the rural and industrial intersect and elide; where genetically engineered technologies turn fields into labs blurring the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic. The Forest Garden Project attempts to counter this lonely place of silent disquiet which reflects a bewildered disbelief at the damage we wreak on the natural world.
ecosystem, marginalisation, migration, plants, ‘weeds’, quiet activism, documenting, sharing, listening, community, herbarium, song
© Sophie Standford