Botanic Mind Garden

va­ni­tas va­ni­ta­tum

Posted on by Botanic Mind

When people talk about immortality it is very likely that they don’t speak of the same thing. What does it mean to live forever? To stay young and actually never going to die? To believe in an afterlife or rebirth? Must we create something unprecedented up to now, gain fame and praise or simply pass on our genes to our descendants? Science, art, religion… Choose your personal life jacket, perhaps you will not sink into oblivion.

LocusSolus_BotanicMind

BOTANIC MIND FERTILIZERS:
»Locus Solus« (1914) by French novelist, outstanding personality and eccentric Raymond Roussel. In the novel a prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country estate, Locus Solus. As the group tours the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of ever-increasing complexity and strangeness, amongst other things the preserved head of guillotined Georges Jacques Danton. Canterel discovered a way to resuscitate the brain matter of the French revolutionist with electricity, so that Danton’s lips form soundless words…

»The Cryonics Institute« (USA) cools legally-dead people to liquid nitrogen temperature where physical decay essentially stops, in the hope that future scientific procedures will someday revive them and restore them to youth and good health. The institute has also a special offer to remove and cryopreserve only the head of a deceased person. The theory is that only the information contained in the brain is of any importance, and that a new body could be cloned or regenerated at some point in the future…

Defrost your mind!

THE MIND BOTANIST
D.B.

 

Beaten Meat

Posted on by Botanic Mind

It’s a thin line between worshipping a woman and lacerating her. Are women victims of a capitalist cannibalism? In our patriarchal society, as we know, there are many strategies by which women’s bodies are disempowered, controlled and degraded to (pleasure) objects. Something similar happens to (farm) animals, which are literally branded as mere consumer goods, and have to satisfy the culinary lusts of their oppressors. Is the trade in female flesh as sexual and social capital comparable to the animal meat market? Are not both based on exploitation and/or violence? An exaggerated idea? Or simply a fact too painful to be allowed to be true? Perhaps it is time to put our finger deeper into the wound…

BeatenMeat_BotanicMind

BOTANIC MIND FERTILIZERS:
»The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory« (1990) by Carol J. Adams: In her book Adams illuminates the connections between sexist and racist discrimination and the dictate to eat meat, and draws a link between feminism and vegetarianism. In her argument, she elaborates a cultural link between fanatical meat-eating, masculinity mania, and violence. She shows the masculine lustful view of women and animals that is bent on consumption. In her view, refusing to eat other living beings is an act of solidarity and a meaningful form of resistance to patriarchy.

»Figure with meat« (1954) by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. The figure in Bacon’s painting is based on the Pope Innocent X portrait by Diego Velázquez. In the Bacon painting the Pope is shown as a gruesome figure and placed between two bisected halves of a cow. Bacon weds the imagery of worldly decadence, power and carnal sensuality, and he contrasts those things with his own far more palpable and existential view of damnation.

Beat your mind!

THE MIND BOTANIST
D.B.

A Payne In The Arse

Posted on by Botanic Mind

There are photographs which hunt us through the years. One of them is the portrait of Lewis Payne (or Powell), taken by Alexander Gardner in 1865, which inspired my collage against death penalty. Payne was involved in the Lincoln conspiracy and attempted to assassinate U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward on April 14, 1865. For that he was sentenced to death by hanging. We deeply detest his deeds, but we also detest the fact he died (aged 21) on July 7, 1865 after he struggled for nearly five minutes at the gallows.

Today’s horrible fact: This seems a short time considering executions gone wrong in the U.S. over 150 years later. In Arkansas criminals were killed in a rush before the State’s death drugs expired… Some of the convicted suffered terrible pain. The beautiful face of national justice has a rotten and vindictive side.

LewisPayne_BotanicMind

BOTANIC MIND FERTILIZER:
Roland Barthes’ »Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography«. Barthes captioned the photograph of Lewis Payne: »He is dead and he is going to die«. What makes this photograph special, its punctum, is the future death by hanging of its subject. In this sense this punctum is relevant to all photographs showing a future death and trauma.  Its unique feature is that it relates both to the future (what is going to happen next) and to what has happened (as information that is brought in by the viewer).

A Handbook on Hanging (1928) by Charles Duff. The book is a Swiftian tribute to that unappreciated mainstay of civilization: the hangman. With barbed insouciance, Charles Duff writes not only of hanging but of electrocution, decapitations, and gassings; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of the bloodlust of mobs and the shabby excuses of the great. This coruscating and, in contemporary America, very relevant polemic makes clear that whatever else capital punishment may be said to be justice, vengeance, a deterrent – it is certainly killing.

Replant your mind!

THE MIND BOTANIST
D.B.

The Head

Posted on by Botanic Mind

Let’s inspect the mind of the current U.S. Head of State. It’s your choice to agree or disagree with my impression.

TheHead_BotanicMind

BOTANIC MIND FERTILIZER:
Donald John Trump, lout, businessman, television personality and the 45th President of the United States. In exactly this sequence.

Dig over your mind!

THE MIND BOTANIST
D.B.

 

Crotch Blossom

Posted on by Botanic Mind

Would you call a flower ugly, just because its petals are bigger than the petals of other flowers? It may be a question of fondness. Some like roses, others prefer clitoria. (Yes, that’s also a real flowers genus.) But you can hardly say, that one of them is ugly. Of course a vulva is not a flower, although their appearances are similarly varied. Is that a bad thing? No? Then why all this fuss and false shame on the subject of vulvas?

In developed countries labia »correction« by puffing or cutting is a beauty trend. In some African countries little girls suffer genital mutilation, because it’s a traditional practice. The oppression of women is a global problem and misogyny has many faces. What are the reasons? Who’s afraid of an unmodified vulva? Are these questions just appropriate for feminists to ask? What do we know about the female genitalia at all? How many people still believe that the clitoris is a tiny nodule, even though it can be up to 12 cm in size? Why do men (and women) still believe the myth of the hymen? And why is talking about menstruation (and diseases such as endometriosis or the PCO syndrome) such a taboo?

I think, it is time to set the razor blade on our ways of thinking and no longer between women’s legs…

CrotchBlossom_BotanicMind

BOTANIC MIND FERTILIZERS:
The Somalian model, author and social activist against female genital mutilation (FGM) Waris Dirie. She suffered genital mutilation when she was three years old. In her book, »Desert Flower«, she tells her autobiographical story.

The American sex toy entrepreneur Brian Sloan. Originator and host of the world’s first vagina [sic] beauty contest. It’s up to you to judge…

I hope you will discuss this collage.
Flower out your mind!

THE MIND BOTANIST
D.B.

Propaganda

Posted on by Botanic Mind

This first collage starts the Botanic Mind project. It is my artistic reaction to propaganda which affects us today even more than we consciously perceive. I leave it up to you to analyse and interpret this illustration. Hopefully it makes you raise some inner questions…

Propaganda_BotanicMind

BOTANIC MIND FERTILIZER:
The artwork was inspired by the book »Propaganda« (1928) written by Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward L. Bernays, father of Public Relations. The book explores the psychology behind manipulating masses and the ability to use symbolic action and propaganda to influence all areas of our society.

Grow your mind!

THE MIND BOTANIST
D.B.