The Unearthings
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
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 proposition, a developing concept which exists somewhere between ecological research, quiet activism, ritual, experiment and performance. A choreography of inter-disciplinarity. A space full of contradiction, where time confuses and dissipates. A site for the interrogation of the relationship between nature and culture, wilderness and order, freedom and control, and for the gathering of many different species not determined by human will; an active dialogue with living material under the open sky.
ecosystem, marginalisation, migration, plants, ‘weeds’, quiet activism, documenting, sharing, listening, community, herbarium, song
© Sophie Standford