Shubhangi Singh: The Fascination With Decay, Imagination and Mystery

Against the backdrop of Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, The Fascination With Decay, Imagination and Mystery functions as an interlocutor between individuals, cultures and the setting that these actants operate within. In addition to the educational, conservational and medical values that are often attached to the present day botanical gardens, they also have equally been complicit in Economic Botany that links scientific knowledges to anthropology and the colonial powers that have exploited and commodified botanical studies to advance commercial and imperialist aspirations.

The three channel video work was produced during the exhibition Evergreen Inner Jungle organised by Porin kulttuurisäätö in September 2021. The video and installation can be perceived at the same time as a documentation of the exhibition and as an individual artwork.

Evergreen Inner Jungle artists: Océane Bruel & Dylan Ray Arnold, Tuomas Alatalo, Ramina Habibollah, haus de pnojekt (Anni Haunia & Rita Vaali), Nadiye Işik, Teresa Kari, Inka Kynkäänniemi & Iiris Kaarlehto, Lauri Linna, Leena Reittu, Shubhangi Singh, Anna-Sofia Sysser, Marjolein van der Loo, Eero Yrjölä

Credits, in order of appearance:

00:00:19 –– Untitled, Leena Reittu

00:00:24 –– Untitled, Nadiye Işik

00:00:38 –– Untitled, Ramina Habibollah

00:01:16 — Kari Karppinen | Luomus, Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden

00:03:00 –– Innominabilis innominabilis, haus de pnojekt (Anni Haunia & Rita Vaali)

00:03:37 –– Aino Anttila | Luomus, Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden

00:03:54 –– Timo Janhonen | Luomus, Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden

00:04:30 –– Monument of Sugar by Lonne Van Brummelen and Siebren De Haan | World of Matter The Triangle trade and the colonial table, sugar, tea, and slavery | Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

00:05:51 –– The Touristes Tristes’ International Pavilion, Océane Bruel & Dylan Ray Arnold

00:06:11 –– Jane Pietilä | Luomus, Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden

00:09:09 –– Notes on Nutmeg, Marjolein van der Loo

00:11:48 –– Helsinki Times, 5.11.2021

00:12:31 –– European Regional Development Fund

00:12:56 –– Fibre Innovation From Finland May Change Textile Industry | This is Finland

00:13:29 –– The British Invasion of Egypt, 1882 by David J. Mentiply

00:13:43 –– Egypt’s Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism by Aaron G. Jakes | Stanford University Press

00:14:07 –– Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert | The Atlantic

00:14:10 –– Britain in Egypt, Department of History and Philosophy of Science | University of Cambridge

00:15:07 –– Them, Eero Yrjölä

00:16:26 –– Lily Padding, Inka Kynkäänniemi & Iiris Kaarlehto

00:19:33 –– The Red on Yellow: Chiquita’s Banana Colonialism in Latin America by David B Lauterwasser

00:19:40 –– United States Department of Justice Documents

00:19:50 –– The Chiquita Papers by Michael Evans | The National Security Archive

00:20:14 –– Lauhkeat palmut / Temperate palms, Anna-Sofia Sysser

00:23:13 –– You Dropped A Bomb On Me, The Gap Band

00:23:25 –– The Banana Massacre by Wesley Tomaselli | OZY Media

00:25:27 –– How botanical gardens helped to establish the British Empire, by Jim Endersby | Financial Times

00:27:23 –– Untitled, Teresa Kari

00:28:03 –– Neulaset, Tuomas Alatalo

00:28:20 –– Curatorial drawings, Anna Jensen

Images by Shubhangi Singh, Roxana Sadvokassova, Utkarsh Raut, Carlos Perez

Commissioned by Porin kulttuurisäätö in 2021

Supported by Kone Foundation

Thank you LUOMUS – Finnish Museum of Natural History and gardeners Kari Karppinen, Aino Anttila, Timo Janhonen, Jane Pietilä & Merja Pulkkinen

For more, please visit: https://porinkulttuurisaato.org/projects/evergreen-inner-jungle/