Plants as a Site of Knowledge
■ DATE:
■ LOCATION:
Praterstern 5, 1020 Vienna
Online
GPC Online Screen
■ ARTISTS:
■ CURATED BY:
■ FOLLOWING Q+A WITH THE FILMMAKERS:
Besides the screening, which will happen at flucc and will be available online via the GPC Online Screen for a week, there will be also a “botanical walk” around the flucc area lead by Birgit Lahner, and artworks by GPC member Pille-Riin Jaik will be presented on the flucc billboards.
BILLBOARDS
Pille-Riin Jaik, "Communal Weeds", 2023, intervention on billboards
Weeds like to thrive on disturbed lands. Their favourite locations being next to train stations and roadsides. They adapt with ease to rather cruel conditions and enrich the damaged soils during transitory phases. Where there is a need, there's weed. Deemed quite often unuseful and of disturbance by the pragmatists, weeds have developed various forms of counteractions and elaborate skills of perseverance. Like a many-headed monster, if it's plucked out, a new, more-headed version will appear.
WORKSHOP
Birgit Lahner, "Past, present and future from a plant perspective", botanical walk around the Flucc, 2023
The diversity of urban plants, especially the fragmented floodplain landscape in the 2nd district, but also the inconspicuous flora of the city's wastelands and pavement cracks, often perceived at best as a backdrop, gradually come to the fore on this walk. This new view of urban vegetation allows us to recognise the manifold interrelationships between humans and plants and to marvel at their adaptability.
Max. 15 participants, registration at office@birgitlahner.at
Please wear appropriate clothing, the walk will also take place in the event of rain.
Program
■ SHIREEN SENO: TO PICK A FLOWER
2021, 17 min.
A potted plant is placed on a pedestal: It becomes a stand-in for an absent groom in a wedding photograph. While this plant seems to bear a certain agency, the plants in the images to follow have been broken apart in ever smaller pieces, in order to be transported by workers and then sold. Using photographs taken during the American colonial era in the Philippines, Shireen Seno traces the sticky relations between humans, nature and their entanglements with empire.
■ PATRICIA ESQUIVIAS: CARDÓN CARDINAL
2020, 38:37 min.
In 1992, a giant cactus from the desert of Baja California was moved to Spain in order to be showcased at the Mexican Pavilion gardens of the Sevilla Universal Expo. Esquivias’ film tells the history of this journey, the cactus’ life afterwards, currently surrounded by the pavements of a parking lot, and many entangled stories. The narrated collage constructed by Esquivias, which partly happens in front of her computer screen, as it’s characteristic from her video works, draws careful and unpredictable lines between past and present.
■ HANNA RULLMANN & FAIZA AHMAD KHAN: HABITAT 2190
2019, 16:34 min.
“Habitat 2190” takes as protagonist a site in Calais (France) which served as a migrant camp and is planned to become a nature reserve area. This essay film reflects upon the artificialities of borders, and the intersection of mobilities, while questioning how value is constructed, how nature is imagined and which species get to be protected. Rullmann & Ahmad Khan’s work juxtaposes conversations, official documents, and on-site recordings in order to reveal complex issues from contemporary Europe.
■ TIN WILKE & MIGUEL GOYA: LAS FLORES
2022, 19 min.
Trios of magic bells are neatly lined up on the shelf of a supermarket. In “Las Flores”, the people whose labour is behind the immaculate appearance of these flowers become visible. Through the eyes and ears of their mobile phones, Vicky, Roca and Tincho, three Latinx immigrants document their work in a German flower factory during the first lockdown in 2020. A dazzling film told from the interstices, reflecting on labour, the fear of what comes next and the moments of freedom in between.