2020
To the video: Herbarium by Other Means
A first specimen of the research performance of Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden by Zrinka Užbinec and Hannah Star Rogers.
A site-specific dance and a first specimen in the Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden research.
Poem used in the video:
The Loves of Plants, Erasamus Darwin (1791), verse numbers (25-38)
The Loves of Plants, Erasmus Darwin (1791), verse numbers (25-38)
[_Vegetable Loves_. l. 10. Linneus, the celebrated Swedish naturalist, has demonstrated, that ail flowers contain families of males or females, or both; and on their marriages has constructed his invaluable system of Botany.]
25 Ye painted Moths, your gold-eyed plumage furl, Bow your wide horns, your spiral trunks uncurl; Glitter, ye Glow-worms, on your mossy beds; Descend, ye Spiders, on your lengthen’d threads; Slide here, ye horned Snails, with varnish’d shells;
30 Ye Bee-nymphs, listen in your waxen cells!–
BOTANIC MUSE! who in this latter age
Led by your airy hand the Swedish sage, Bad his keen eye your secret haunts explore On dewy dell, high wood, and winding shore;
35 Say on each leaf how tiny Graces dwell;
How laugh the Pleasures in a blossom’s bell; How insect Loves arise on cobweb wings,
Aim their light shafts, and point their little stings.