I See Plants Shaking Hands
For seven days straight I lived, slept and worked in my own greenhouse in the middle of the Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam. During this week I tried to capture all live surrounding me during that week. Plants, animals, visitors: they all appeared in a series of drawings that grew steadily during my stay there. Zooming in on the smallest details I created a new and personal perspective on this 379 year old garden. A selection of these drawings ended up in a book celebrating this project called I See Plants Shaking Hands. Designed by Bas Koopmans it includes a 7″ single including 4 tracks by Eefje de Visser, Sef, I am Oak & Matteo Myderwyk, who all visited me in my greenhouse and recorded these songs sitting right next beside me. Printed in an edition of 300.
After being their first ever artist in recidence, Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam invited me back to their garden to make an installation based on my experiences living there for the annual Museumnacht. I placed three of my quotes in their biggest greenhouse, hidden between plants, shadows and trees. Each of these quotes questions the relationship between human and nature, inviting people think about the way we look at ourselves and look at our surroundings.
Photography by Elise Borsboom.
On the last evening of my artist in residency at the Hortus Botanicus Eefje de Visser and Nuno dos Santos came by to record a song together. We walked around the garden, talked about plants, the creative process, life and got to know each other this way. When we got back to my greenhouse they started working and while the evening progressed I slowly heard a song come alive, lyrically inspired by everything we talked about earlier. Two remixes of this song were released on 12 ” vinyl by SoHaSo in a limited, hand printed and stamped edition of 300.