Songs the Plants Taught Us
Mark Harris
March 30th- April 28th, 2019
Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday March 30th, 2019 6-9pm
Anytime Dept. is proud to present Songs the Plants Taught Us, an exhibition with expanded programming from Mark Harris.
Songs the Plants Taught Us celebrates the intertwined futures of plants and humans. The March 30 opening marks the start of a month-long program of artwork, conversations, plant therapy sessions, flower plantings, film screenings, poetry readings, and performances to stimulate civic dialogue around green improvements to the urban landscape. These gallery events work as a microcosm for understanding the green livability of Camp Washington, inviting partnerships with local business, civic, and arts leaders to unite behind an appreciation for, and celebration of, the value of plants and parks in the neighborhood.
The March 30 opening will include performances by Mark Harris of outsider vinyl records about plants, poetry by Elese Daniel and Katie Numi Usher, video by Heather Phillipson, and films The Garden (Derek Jarman) and Juliette of the Herbs (Juliette de Baïracli Levy), and masks by J.J. Grandville. Each Saturday in April Anytime Dept. will host conversations and talks on a range of plant, flower, and garden areas of interest. On these days new artwork will be installed in the gallery, other poetry readings and performances will take place, and Mark Harris will play other selections of strange plant records.
Included below is a list of participating artists and a schedule of events.
Artists
Britni Bicknaver, Carol Bove, Carmel Buckley, Mark Fairnington, Georg Frauenschuh, Audrey Galat, Ken Gonzales-Day, Mark Harris, Miyori Hayashi, Peter Huttinger, Birgit Jensen, David Mabb, Vicki Mansoor, Future Retrieval, Mark Patsfall, Heather Phillipson, Lydia Rosenberg, Jochen Saueracker, Rebecca Steele, Mary Tjotjos, Roxy Walsh, Gerlind Zeilner
Poems by
Sylvia Plath, Angus MacLise
Poetry readings by
Elese Daniel, Mark Flanigan, Matt Hart, Katie Numi Usher
Films
The Garden, Derek Jarman,1990
British experimental filmmaker’s feature film that uses his Dungeness garden as a set
Juliette of the Herbs,1998
Tish Streeton documentary on Juliette de Baïracli Levy, herbalist, veterinarian, and holistic medicine pioneer
Marijuana in the U.K., Mark Harris, 1999, 9 minutes
Originally made as a two-channel video, Marijuana in the U.K. juxtaposes texts by Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire on the effects of hashish.
WOW, Heather Phillipson, 2018, 4.30 minutes
A drum & bass eulogy to the power, endurance, and wonder of grass.
Masks
J.J. Grandville, 19th-century French illustrator
About Mark Harris As an artist and writer, Mark Harris’s approaches to studio work and text are linked by interests in the imagery of intoxication as a form of utopian representation. He researches the means by which individuals and groups use language, imagery, and music to make of their contemporaneity an aesthetic phenomenon distinct from everyday experience. He has written on, and made artwork about, intentional communities and avant-garde groups, including Charles Fourier’s 19th-century Harmony, the Surrealists’ literary circle, American 1960s communes, hallucinatory Beat poetry and film, and musician communities including Caribbean calypso singers, UK punk bands, and contemporary Chinese rock and roll musicians.
Recent exhibitions and performances include Plastilene, fluc, Vienna, 2018; Music To Die To–Eno’s “Music for Airports,” Studio 94, London, 2018;Sparrow Come Back Home, ICA London, 2016-17; The Nothing That Is,The Carnegie, Covington, Kentucky, 2017; Bad Music Seminar, Music from the Heartland, Colloquium for Unpopular Culture, New York, 2017; Bad Music Seminar, DIY Punk, Wave Pool, Cincinnati, 2016; John Cage’s Variations II (for 5 turntables) The Carnegie, Covington, Kentucky, 2016; Cherry & Lucic, Portland, OR, 2016; After the Moment: Reflections on Robert Mapplethorpe, CAC, Cincinnati; Bad Music Seminar 2, performance, The Showroom, London; Bad Music Seminar 3: Sex, Murder, Politics, 4: Song Poemsand 5: Becoming-Animal, performances, The Horse Hospital, London, 2014; London Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2012
Recent and forthcoming publications include ‘Music To Die To’, Ambient@40, University of Huddersfield, 2019; Artforum.com reviews, 2015-18; ‘Turntable Materialities’, Seismograf, Denmark, 2017; ‘Intoxicating Painting’, Journal of Contemporary Painting 2017; ‘The Materiality of Water’, Aesthetic Investigations, 2015; ‘Cinema, studio, tools’ in Proto-Tools 1, Flat Time House, London, 2014; ‘A Local Culture: tradition and risk in Cincinnati’ in here., PAFA, Philadelphia, 2011; ‘Countercultural Intoxication: An Aesthetics of Transformation’ in The Countercultural Experiment: Consciousness and Encounters at the Edge of Art, University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Conversations Schedule
Saturday, April 6 3:00 pm
Peter Huttinger on urban gardens and artist garden initiatives
Peter is an artist, art dealer, and publisher from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is Community Garden Program Director at Turner Farm and engaged in neighborhood-centered initiatives whose goal is to create urban gardens that provide in-depth, immersive hands-on gardening experiences for participants.
Saturday, April 13 3:00 pm
Susan Trusty on communicating with plants
Including a workshop on therapy for plants
Susan is a professor in Horticulture at the University of Cincinnati where she teaches classes on plant chemistry and cannabis cultivation, history and culture. She served as the director of education at the Civic Garden Center and is a Regional Director for the Garden Writer’s Association.
Saturday, April 20 3:00 pm
Alan Wight on planting fruit trees and vegetable bushes and foraging in the city
Alan is a professor at The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences. He has worked at Gorman Heritage Farm and was instrumental in developing their Community Supported Agriculture Program. He works with communities and schools to plant edible forest gardens. His research and advocacy agendas focus on raising people’s food and ecological consciousness via dialogues about the personal health, economic and larger ecological implications of our food system.
Saturday, April 27 3:00 pm
Emily Everhart on 19th century Paris parks, Baron von Haussmann and J.J. Grandville
A professor in Art History at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Emily’s research specializes in eighteenth and nineteenth-century European art. She has presented in national conferences and received grants and fellowships for research in the U.S. and abroad. A portion of her doctoral thesis will appear in a forthcoming publication by the Georgia Museum of Art. Her current research interest is in manifestations of eighteenth-century sociability in landscape architecture.