The Language of Plants

The publication features 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. The conversation is accompanied by the post-botanical imaginaries by Anna Zemánková as well as materials from the video art and films by Anna Zett, Marwa Arsanios, Naomi Rincòn Gallardo and Phuong Linh Nguyen.

It is part of the D’EST Screening Chapter #6 1/2: Signals From Roots To Leaves: A Post-botanical Assembly which 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. Eco-poetical and queer/kuir*feminist soundings of counter worlds to the coloniality of botany in the service of extraction, these dialogues are accompanied by a group of opulent post-botanical hybrid bodies that have been dreamed up by Anna Zemánková in 1960s and 1970s Czechoslovakia.

Contributors: Ceiba, Ina Röder Sissoko and Suza Husse in conversation, images by Anna Zemánková

Visual materials from video art and films by Anna Zett, Marwa Arsanios, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Phuong Linh Nguyen

Maguey (Agave), Qirnefîl (Carnation), Riesenschilf (Giant reed) and Đa búp đỏ (Rubber tree) in texts by Suza Husse and images by Monika Abrhámová

The publication is part of D’EST Screening Chapter #6 1/2: Signals From Roots To Leaves: A Post-botanical Assembly 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 in collaboration with the Botanical Gardens in Olomouc.

Language: English

The publication can be downloaded here.

© Ina Röder Sissoko, Ceiba and Suza Husse Almere, Olomouc and Berlin, November 2020