Aktuell wird Uriel Orlow im Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst und im MCBA Lausanne gezeigt. Während er in Zürich für ‹Knowledge Is a Garden› Sammlungswerke mit eigenen kombiniert, zeigt er in Lausanne neben seinem neuesten Film erstmals Steinskulpturen. Im Gespräch gibt er Einblick in seine Kunstpraxis mit Pflanzen und deren Kulturgeschichte.
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Uriel Orlow is currently being shown at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst and the MCBA Lausanne. While in Zurich he is combining collection works with his own for ‘Knowledge Is a Garden’, in Lausanne he is showing stone sculptures alongside his latest film for the first time. In conversation, he gives an insight into his art practice with plants and their cultural history.
Unmade Film, Perfomative Film, Future Film: An Ethics of Witnessing, Essay by Uriel Orlow, to Film Undone. Elements of a Latent Cinema, edited by Philip Widmann.
Film Undone presents contributions introducing unmade and unfinished film projects, film ideas realised in non-filmic media, as well as films that remained unseen in their intended form and at their intended time. These tentative and careful probes dedicated to singular projects reflect the importance of primary materials before and beyond the film. Bringing them together as Elements of a Latent Cinema opens a space to consider cases from various political geographies and historical moments in relation. Latency prompts to think differently about what has remained invisible in cinema than under deficit-centred categories such as failure, loss, or incompletion. It marks a sustained potentiality for things to change their condition, to affect us and set us in motion.
Memories, Archived: Contemporary Views from South Asia is a book that explores contemporary South Asian views and provides new ways to engage with archives.
The book includes an interview with Uriel Orlow as well as other artists, including Asavari Gurav, Ashish Phaldesai, Keg de Souza, Leticia Alvares and many others.
Haunting: Plant ghost and Chrono-gardering, Essay by Uriel Orlow, to Contemporanea: A Glossary for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Michael Marder and Giovanbattista Tusa
Contemporanea is a nascent lexicon for the twenty-first century edited by seasoned philosophers and authors Michael Marder and Giovanbattista Tusa. The collection showcases perspectives from a range of noteworthy thinkers in philosophy, ecology, and cultural studies, as well as artists, from across the globe, including Slavoj Zizek, Timothy Morton, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, and Vandana Shiva, who each describe what they anticipate will be the concepts shaping the trajectory of this century—everything from the world state to the nuclear taboo, automation to Teslaism, plant sexuality to arachnomancy, and ecotrauma to resonances, to name a few.
With contributions by Mieke Bal, Claudia Baracchi, Amanda Boetzkes, Erik Bordeleau, Anita Chari, Emanuele Coccia, Valentina Desideri, Roberto Esposito, Filipe Ferreira, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Claire Fontaine, and many others.
Breaking sedimented divisions between rural and urban, this issue centres agricultural imaginaries and human-soil relations that challenge us to rethink our understanding of agriculture, its relation to histories of colonization, and the futures of agroecology, as well as our connection to land itself.
The first reader in critical plant studies, exploring a rapidly growing multidisciplinary field—the intersection of philosophy with plant science and the visual arts.
In recent years, philosophy and art have testified to how anthropocentrism has culturally impoverished our world, leading to the wide destruction of habitats and ecosystems. In this book, Giovanni Aloi and Michael Marder show that the field of critical plant studies can make an important contribution, offering a slew of possibilities for scientific research, local traditions, Indigenous knowledge, history, geography, anthropology, philosophy, and aesthetics to intersect, inform one another, and lead interdisciplinary and transcultural dialogues.
Vegetal Entwinementsin Philosophy and Art considers such topics as the presence of plants in the history of philosophy, the shifting status of plants in various traditions, what it means to make art with growing life-forms, and whether or not plants have moral standing. In an experimental vegetal arrangement, the reader presents some of the most influential writing on plants, philosophy, and the arts, together with provocative new contributions, as well as interviews with groundbreaking contemporary artists whose work has greatly enhanced our appreciation of vegetal being.
With contributions by Giovanni Aloi, Maria Theresa Alves, Marlene Atleo, Monica Bakke, Baracco + Wright, Emily Blackmer, Jodi Brandt, Teresa Castro, Dan Choffnes, Mark Dion, D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, Braden Elliott, Monica Gagliano, Elaine Gan, Prudence Gibson, Manuela Infante, Luce Irigaray, Jonathon Keats, Zayaan Khan, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Eduardo Kohn, Wangari Maathai, Stefano Mancuso, Michael Marder, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Elaine Miller, Samaneh Moafi, Uriel Orlow, Mark Payne, Allegra Pesenti, Špela Petrič, Michael Pollan, Darren Ranco, Nicholas J. Reo, Angela Roothaan, Marcela Salinas, Catriona A. H. Sandilands, Diana Scherer, Elisabeth E. Schussler, Vandana Shiva, Linda Tegg, Krista Tippet, Anthony Trewavas, Alessandra Viola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, James H. Wandersee, Lois Weinberger, Kyle Whyte, David Wood, Anicka Yi.
“I am not an invisible, objective observer of the world” – Uriel Orlow in conversation with Andrea Thal and Giovanni Carmine on the occasion of receiving the Swiss Grand Prix d’Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim 2023.
“Stories Broken Up, Taken Apart, and Told Anew: Uriel Orlow”
Interview with Uriel Orlow by Lisa Andreani for Mousse Magazine, June 2023.
Read full interview at Mousse Magazine website.
Carte blanche to Uriel Orlow: featuring still images from Dedication (2021).
in Balance 1970-1990. Kunst, Gesellschaft, Umwelt by Marianne Burki, Katrin Steffen (eds.), published by the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Switzerland, May 2022.
This collection of essays reflects on the mobile ground beneath our feet, questioning the soil as both material and narrative in our interconnected territories. Texts by artists, curators, historians, engineers, environmental scientists, architects, gardeners and poets peer into the bright and dark worlds of the underground, look at memories, molecules and resilience on the ground, industry, migration and spectral presences on the overground. Throughout, authors revisit their own practice confronted to present earthly attachments and ecological pressure. It stems from a series of workshops organised in 2019 as part of the Baustelle und Botanic project.
Edited by Anne-Laure Franchette, Jose Caceres Mardones, Gabriel N.Gee
With contributions by Paloma Ayala, Kenza Benabderrazik, Jose Caceres Mardones, Laurie Dall’Ava, Nikos Doulos, Errol Reuben Fernandes, Anne-Laure Franchette, Gabriel N.Gee, Brack Hale / Moriah Simonds, Monica Ursina Jäger, Elise Lammer, Gnanli Landrou, Maria Joao Matos, Uriel Orlow, Jan Van Oordt, Grit Ruhland, Caroline Wiedmer & Rafael Newman, Huhtamaki Wab.
Pflanzen und Gespenster by Sabine Rohlf: Interview with Uriel Orlow
Springerin Heft 4: Zeuge/Zeugin sein
Wer sich die Arbeiten Uriel Orlows, zum Beispiel in der Ausstellung Earth Beats. Naturbild im Wandel im Kunsthaus Zürich, anschaut, lernt ihn als einen Künstler kennen, der sich sehr für Pflanzen interessiert: Geranien, Heilkräuter, uralte Bäume oder die Strelitzienart Mandelas Gold schaffen in seinem Theatrum Botanicum Verbindungen zwischen Kolonial- und Apartheitsgeschichte Südafrikas und einer neokolonialen Gegenwart. Soil Affinities thematisiert die Verlagerung des französichen Gemüseanbaus nach Westafrika, Learning from Artemisia behandelt den von internationalen Pharmakonzernen behinderten Anbau eines Malariamittels in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo. Diese mehrteiligen, kollaborativen Projekte sind untereinander wie auch mit anderen Arbeiten vernetzt. Sabine Rohlf traf Uriel Orlow unter einer Robinie in Zürich und unterhielt sich mit ihm über alpine und tropische Pflanzen, unterschiedliche Zeitrechnungen und das Thema Zeugenschaft.
The invisibilization of political violence, its material traces and spatial manifestations, characterize (post)conflict situations. Yet counter-semantics and dissonant narratives that challenge this invisibility have been articulated by artists, writers, and human rights activists that increasingly seek to contest the related historical amnesia. Adopting “performance” as a concept that is defined by repetitive, aesthetic practices—such as speech and bodily habits through which both individual and collective identities are constructed and perceived (Susan Slyomovics)—this collection addresses various forms of performing human rights in transitional situations in Spain, Latin America, and the Middle East. Bringing scholars together with artists, writers, and curators, and working across a range of disciplines, Performing Human Rights addresses these instances of omission and neglect, revealing how alternate institutional spaces and strategies of cultural production have intervened in the processes of historical justice and collective memory.
With contributions by Zahira Aragüete-Toribio, Pauline Bachmann, Vikki Bell, Liliana Gómez, Joscelyn Jurich, Uriel Orlow, Friederike Pannewick, Elena Rosauro, Dorota Sajewska, Stephenie Young.
Preface, Introduction and Bibliography of Theatrum Botanicum publication Access here
Introduction: “A Prisoner in the Garden” Uriel Orlow and Shela Sheikh
A Prisoner in the Garden, courtesy The Nelson Mandela Foundation.
In 1977, in his thirteenth year of incarceration in Robben Island prison, a photograph appeared in the global press of Nelson Mandela, dressed in prison clothing, leaning on a spade. This image, which appears on the dust jacket of this volume, had been taken on 25 April, during a visit by local and overseas press organized by the South African Prison Authorities. The image was captioned “A Prisoner Working in the Garden” by the authorities.[1] Shortly thereafter, Mandela and 28 other co-signatories wrote a letter (the first page of which is also reproduced on the dust jacket) addressed to the Single Cells Section of the prison, protesting against the purpose for and manner in which the visit was organized and conducted. In the letter, they complain of the deliberate violation of the prisoners’ right to privacy by taking their photographs without permission, and of the specification by the Minister of Prisons that the visit only occur on the condition that no communication whatsoever take place between the press and prisoners.[2]
Beyond this protest against the self-representation denied to them, the letter challenged the manner in which the press visit was organized so as to “white-wash the Prison Department; pacify public criticism of the Department here and abroad; and counteract any adverse publicity that might arise in the future.” Moreover, this representational white-washing was slyly enacted precisely through a form of what one might nowadays call “green-washing”; as the prisoners relate in the letter, “on that particular day, the span from our Section was given the special work of ‘gardening’ instead of pulling out bamboo from the sea as we normally do when we go to work.”[3] As such, the image was used to cleanse the reality of the hard labor and lack of rights that the prisoners endured,[4] and the image of gardening in particular was fully capitalized upon. As the letter attests, prisoners and authorities alike were all too aware of the potential use of this image and of this seemingly leisurely, therapeutic, and apolitical activity.
But if the letter protests the lack of agency granted the prisoners, there is also a flipside to the image. As Mandela wrote in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he had a “lifelong love of gardening and growing vegetables.”[5] A few years into their 18-year-long incarceration, Mandela and his fellow Rivonia trial inmates had in fact set up a garden in the courtyard of Robben Island prison.[6] This had started informally with a few tomato seeds given to them by well-meaning prison guards. On their way to the stone quarry where they were forced to do hard labor, the political prisoners collected ostrich droppings as fertilizer. In time they also planted chilies and other vegetables to complement their meager prison diet. Later, as Mandela was writing the manuscript for what became his autobiography, the completed pages would be buried in cocoa tins in the garden to hide them from the prison authorities. As such, the seemingly benign activity of gardening became a highly politicized gesture—that of claiming and cultivating a patch of land and using it subversively to undermine the oppressive regime—and as a consequence the garden itself became entangled in historical events.[7]
[1] This image now forms the centerpiece of the Mandela Prison Archive, “a living record of Mandela’s 27 years in prison.” See Nelson Mandela, A Prisoner in the Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela’s Prison Archive (Johannesburg: Nelson Mandela Foundation/Penguin, 2005) and https://www.nelsonmandela.org/publications/entry/a-prisoner-in-the-garden.
[2] In their view, the minister acted with “impropriety” insofar as “total strangers are now in possession of photographs and films of ourselves.” In the letter, the prisoners protest against not being allowed to take and send their own photographs to their own families.
[3] More recently, the term “green-washing” has been used to describe the process by which a given organization, company, or institution’s products or policies are made to appear ecologically friendly, precisely through the use of the PR or marketing image, often masking their true ecological costs. However, this is nothing new and can be applied to environmental movements more broadly throughout history. For instance, the “green imperialism” described by Richard Grove can be read through this lens. See Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). In the words of Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George Handley, Grove’s history of ecological thought demonstrates that “the environmental sciences that tell us that we can no longer afford to ignore our human impact on the globe are an ironic by-product of a global consciousness derived from a history of imperial exploitation of nature.” Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George Handley, “Introduction: Toward an Aesthetics of the Earth,” in Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment, ed. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George Handley, 3–39 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 12. See also the discussion of the paradoxes of conservation in the South African context in Bettina Malcomess, “appear and they…” in this volume, xx–xx.
[4] The co-signatories note the fact that they had not been given the status of political prisoners: “We are fully aware that the Department desires to protect a favourable image to the world of its policies. [sic] We can think of no better way of doing so than by abolishing all forms of racial discrimination in the administration by keeping abreast of enlightened penal reforms, by granting us the status of political prisoners.”
[5] Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 2013 [1995]), 41.
[6] The Rivonia trial, which took place between 9 October 1963 and 12 June 1964, led to the imprisonment of Mandela and others. Mandela spent 18 of 27 years of imprisonment on Robben Island.
[7] As Mandela writes: “A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom.” Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 592–83.
“Seeing world events unfold from South Africa, where I am currently working on a film project, provides a useful historical perspective on the question of art as a form of protest and as a conduit for change….”
The Air Will Not Deny You – Zurich’s other globality.
Kurjakovic, D., Koch, F., and Pfäffli, L. (Eds.).
Zurich/Berlin: diaphanes. 2016
Contributing Authors: Autonome Schule Zürich, John Barker, Monika Dommann, Ines Doujak, Kijan Espahangizi, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Pascal Germann, Dominik Gross, Lea Haller, Cathérine Hug, Rohit Jain, knowbotiq (Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Huebler), Lucie Kolb, Koyo Kouoh, Franz Krähenbühl, Gesine Krüger, Konrad J. Kuhn, Roland Lüthi, Robert Menasse, Eva Meyer, Katharina Morawek, Souvik Naha, Uriel Orlow, Lea Pfäffli, Barbara Preisig, Sophia Prinz, Patricia Purtschert, Marcelo Rezende, Roma Jam Session art Kollektiv (Mustafa Asan, Mo Diener, Milena Petrovic), Romy Rüegger, Vittorio Santoro, Sally Schonfeldt, Ursula Sulser, Jakob Tanner, Andreas Zangger, Tim Zulauf.
In partnership with the Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich; Visual Arts (ZHdK – Zurich University of the Arts), Bachelor of Art & Media (ZHdK); IFCAR Institute for Contemporary Art Research (ZHdK); and the Chair of History of the Modern World (ETH Zurich).
“Stories Broken Up, Taken Apart, and Told Anew: Uriel Orlow”
