Shannon-project proposal

Project Proposal

1 What do you want to make?

Flower producers exercise control and violence, the flowers are seemingly submissive, the consumers are voyeurs ignorant to the violence, taking pleasure in its effects.

I am making an audiovisual work incorporating moving image, sound, and text, looking at the way humans grow and interact with plants, while taking a perspective of emotionally identifying with the plants’ experiences and positions. It will explore two levels:

1. The level of my personal experiences involving dynamics of power, that have borne an emotional identification with flowers, and

2. The societal relation between humans and plants, which in Western society often involves dynamics of manipulation, control, and dominance specifically in the large scale cut-flower, home gardening, and agriculture industries.

Shots will mainly focus on locations in the Netherlands such as the Royal FloraHolland flower auction, the Rotterdamse Munt community garden, the Keukenhof garden, flower bulb fields in Lisse, greenhouse locations to be determined, and the parks by my house in Rotterdam.

The work is shot on my iphone to retain a quotidian view, keeping at the level of the flowers and their experience. Phone footage is accessible, mundane, easily reproducible, illustrating the commonality and mundanity of the flowers and of the violence enacted onto them.

Sound will layer references to the commodification of beauty and feminine sexuality in the form of cosmetic advertisements, and surgical procedures, alongside the native soundtracks of machinery and crowds chatting and laughing. These references contextualize the seemingly innocuous scenes.

Text may become a voiceover for the video, or it may take on a form separate and adjacent to it.

2 How do you plan to make it?

I began shooting in April 2021 at the Keukenhof garden. This November I will visit the trade fair at Royal FloraHolland, and I will begin working with the gardeners at Rotterdamse Munt, which will continue every month. In early Spring 2022 I will visit the greenhouses and the flower bulb fields in Lisse. Throughout this time I will continue visiting the parks close to my house. On visits to each of these places I will shoot footage, record audio, and write notes.

Alongside these visits I will be reading, thinking, and writing about vulnerability and its relation to violence, and psychoanalytic frameworks around trauma. I will write my thesis alongside this project, and writing for that may overlap here.

3 What is your timetable?

The project began in April 2021 with shooting at Keukenhof. I am in the process of visiting and shooting at more locations and will have additional segments complete at the end of the year. Writing is in process and will continue into the spring. Shooting will continue through May 2022 to include the topping of the flower bulb fields. Editing and post production will commence with the work completed in July 2022.

4 Why do you want to make it?

In 2017 my mother and I went to a garden in spring time, and saw voluptuous flowers spilling their blooms everywhere. They looked soft, inviting, and yielding. I reached out and touched them, fondled their insides, stroked the revealed stamens, knocking off drooping petals, and tore off crisp pink petals.

I saw the flowers standing gently, displaying themselves for my pleasure. It occurred to me that I could defile them, that no one would stop me. I could do what I wanted. So I did, and that became the video "Sweet little flower,"

My impulsive actions towards the flowers echoed experiences I myself had, of being manipulated, violated, and controlled. In this case I both identified with the position of the flowers, and was enacting the role of perpetrator of violence onto the flowers.

"Compulsive repetition of the trauma may provide a temporary sense of mastery or even pleasure (but ultimately leads to chronic feelings of helplessness...)" (Psychology Today, "Why Do We Repeat The Past In Our Relationships?")

The Netherlands is the largest flower exporter in the world. Every year, endless rows of colorful and photogenic flowers bloom. In late May, and Mid-October tractors come and behead the flowers, a practice known as ‘topping,’ which prevents the flower—the sexual organ of the plant—from going to seed. This keeps the energy in the plant’s bulbs, which will be sold to home gardeners. The heads roll into the gutters between rows.

At Keukenhof Garden, 7 million flowering bulbs are cultivated in carefully designed geometric shapes and patterns. Visitors to the garden pour in armed with cameras big and small. The flowers are displayed as in a well-engineered beauty contest—their pictures are taken endlessly from every angle, and we look for the most brilliantly attractive colorations, the most alluringly parted petals, the healthiest stems.

The flowers are bred to be as beautiful as possible through extreme means—viruses are introduced into tulip bulbs to create striking striped and feathered patterns. These viruses progressively weaken and stunt the growth of the bulb over generations. These gestures echo the commodification of feminine beauty and sexuality—as with cosmetic plastic surgery in humans, invasive medical procedures are undertaken to improve beauty or maintain the appearance of youth, often at the expense of health.

5 Who can help you and how?

Tim Leyendekker - discussions of plants and flowers as they relate to transgressive desires Katerina Sereti - (biologist specialized in Phytopathology) discussions and information around medical procedures in plants Nor Greenhalgh - mentorship, knowledge around psychoanalytic frameworks and references Adele Gregoire - sound composing and mixing knowledge, discussion and feedback Marianne Gerritse - gardening knowledge

6 Relation to previous practice

The video work "Sweet little flower," (2017) is the starting point for this work.This project also ties to the book "See You Soon" which explores vulnerability and power dynamics in an intimate relationship.

Like my previous works, this project will be shot on my phone, and similarly focuses attention on highly personal and often mundane subject matter.

7 Relation to a larger context

As extractive practices continue to deplete natural resources worldwide, perspectives of human domination over other living beings requires urgent examination.

In terms of related works, I think of Sophie Calle’s work Take Care of Yourself. Calle took an email sent to her by her then-boyfriend, breaking up with her, and sent it off to 100+ women of various different professions (ballet dancer, lawyer, proofreader) to analyze the email based on their respective professions, and compiled all of these responses into a book (with dvds of multimedia responses). Here it seems she works through the emotional stress of this personal event by going through it again, over and over, with more than a hundred other perspectives.

In my project I am working to process emotionally stressful events that happened in my life by reenacting them with flowers and plants, and by seeing a parallel of my experience in the way that humans relate to plants in the large scale flower growing and agriculture industries.

Also, in Tim Leyendekker’s film Feast, flowers injected with viruses help to further explore the complex dynamics of transgressive desires. My project relatedly considers the violence involved in the plant growing industries, alongside the perhaps transgressive pleasure that consumers derive from the results of the violence.

8 References/bibliography

James Baldwin, Another Country

James Baldwin, The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity

Sophie Calle, Take Care of Yourself

Karen Horney, Self Analysis

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Tim Leyendekker, Feast