Theatrum Botanicum.
This multicomponent output explores the political role of plants from colonial times to today. Theatrum Botanicum is a widely exhibited multimedia project comprising works in video, sound, photography, installation, and a co-edited book. The project works from the dual vantage points of South Africa and Europe and looks to the botanical world as a stage for politics and history at large. It positions plants as both witnesses and actors across different geographies, histories and systems of knowledge, with a variety of curative, spiritual and economic powers. Orlow investigates: botanical nationalism and other legacies of colonialism, flower diplomacy during apartheid, the garden planted by Nelson Mandela and his fellow inmates on Robben Island Prison, and the epistemic consequences of classification and naming of plants. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- qv094
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- See details in portfolio.
- Brief description of type
- Other: Multicomponent
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- January
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Theatrum Botanicum is based on several years of research enabled by multiple funding sources. The research process encompassed international fieldwork trips, consulting primary resources at numerous archives, interviewing and meeting a wide range of experts, collating a dictionary of oral knowledge of plants, and translating many documents and materials. Developed through a complex production process entailing many collaborators from different fields, this multi-component output coheres as a singular research project of major scope. The main components are a filmic trilogy, an ambitious series of installations, photographic and sound works, and a monograph.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Funded by International organisations, Theatrum Botanicum proposes a new model of engaging with colonial historiography and its entanglements in the present, and makes a unique contribution to public discourse on history in South Africa. It develops new interdisciplinary models of engaging with the archive by intervening in it and thus proposing alternative ways of engaging with the past and its residues. Orlow developed this project over many years, involving fieldwork at the national botanical institute in Cape Town, The Nelson Mandela Foundation, and collaborating with interlocutors from botany, law, traditional medicine, and Mandela’s fellow ex-prisoners.
The main output components include: The Mafavuke Trilogy, a series of films that consider medicinal plants as dynamic agents; What Plants Were Called before they had a Name, an installation recording plant names in a dozen indigenous languages as a form of aural restitution; The Fairest Heritage, a video performance exploring the national botanical garden in Cape Town; Theatrum Botanicum edited book; and other multimedia works.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
