{"id":4657,"date":"2018-02-13T11:13:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T10:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/?p=4657"},"modified":"2018-02-13T17:50:35","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T16:50:35","slug":"nature-gone-astray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/?p=4657","title":{"rendered":"Nature Gone Astray"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nature Gone Astray<\/em> : Liu Xinyi, Miljohn Ruperto & Ulrik Heltoft, Zheng Bo. Edouard Malingue Gallery, Shanghai
\nFebruary 4\u2013March 15, 2018<\/p>\n

Texte de pr\u00e9sentation
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Life After People<\/em>, a 2008 documentary film broadcast on the History Channel in the US, conjectured: if every human being on Earth suddenly disappeared, what would the world turn into? The answer was disheartening: human civilisation and all human traces would be utterly wiped out in a few centuries as though we had never existed. Nature would find a new equilibrium and the Earth would continue rotating in the immensity of space. This documentary was premised on a thought experiment along the lines of \u201cwhat would happen if humans were suddenly removed from a certain geographical area?\u201d Nature Gone Astray<\/em>, on the other hand, inverts this thought experiment. If Nature can objectively remain unchanging since time immemorial\u2014or even become more perfect\u2014then how has it \u201cgone astray\u201d with human intervention?
\nLife After People<\/em>, un documentaire de 2008 diffus\u00e9 sur History Channel aux \u00c9tats-Unis, a fait cette hypoth\u00e8se: si chaque \u00eatre humain sur Terre disparaissait subitement, que deviendrait le monde? La r\u00e9ponse \u00e9tait d\u00e9courageante: la civilisation humaine et toutes les traces humaines seraient compl\u00e8tement effac\u00e9es en quelques si\u00e8cles comme si nous n’avions jamais exist\u00e9. La nature trouverait un nouvel \u00e9quilibre et la Terre continuerait de tourner dans l’immensit\u00e9 de l’espace. Ce documentaire \u00e9tait bas\u00e9 sur une exp\u00e9rience de pens\u00e9e du genre \u00abqu’arriverait-il si les humains \u00e9taient soudainement retir\u00e9s d’une certaine zone g\u00e9ographique?\u00bb Nature Gone Astray<\/em> inverse cette exp\u00e9rience de pens\u00e9e. Si la nature peut objectivement demeurer immuable depuis des temps imm\u00e9moriaux \u2014ou m\u00eame devenir plus parfaite\u2014 alors comment s’est-elle \u00ab\u00e9gar\u00e9e\u00bb avec l’intervention humaine?<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cVoynich manuscript\u201d has been called a Holy Grail in cryptography. Discovered in 1912 by the American book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in the basement of a Jesuit library near Rome, the 230 page manuscript, completed in the 15th century, portrays a diverse array of astonishing fauna and flora, celestial objects, mysterious figures, as well as a huge quantity of script as of yet undeciphered. Based on the wildly imaginative illustrations of plants and vegetation in the Voynich manuscript, Miljohn Ruperto\u2014a Californian artist of Philippine origin\u2014together with the Danish artist Ulrik Heltoft, have made textural photographic works by creating 3D models then making negatives from these and finally printing them in traditional gelatin silver format. Entitled the Voynich Botanical Studies, the series has been ongoing since 2013. Both in the \u201cVoynich Manuscript\u201d and Voynich Botanical Studies there is an absurd attitude of humans creating nature. If the former provided the concept, then the latter has \u201crewritten\u201d natural history by means of highly mimetic visual archives with the aid of modern technology. The mysterious plants in strange forms in the black background seem almost tangible with their crazy and beautiful leaves, branches and flower buds. Our love and curiosity for Nature are always accompanied by the desire to control it; such is the fundamental reason why natural history will \u201cbe led astray.\u201d
\nLe \u00ab\u00a0manuscrit de Voynich\u00a0\u00bb a \u00e9t\u00e9 appel\u00e9 un Saint Graal en cryptographie. D\u00e9couvert en 1912 par le libraire am\u00e9ricain Wilfrid Voynich dans le sous-sol d’une biblioth\u00e8que j\u00e9suite pr\u00e8s de Rome, le manuscrit de 230 pages, achev\u00e9 au XVe si\u00e8cle, pr\u00e9sente une faune et une flore \u00e9tonnante, des objets c\u00e9lestes, des figures myst\u00e9rieuses, ainsi qu\u2019une \u00e9norme quantit\u00e9 de script encore non d\u00e9chiffr\u00e9. Bas\u00e9s sur les illustrations follement imaginatives des plantes et de la v\u00e9g\u00e9tation du manuscrit de Voynich, Miljohn Ruperto \u2014un artiste californien d’origine philippine\u2014 et l’artiste danois Ulrik Heltoft, ont r\u00e9alis\u00e9 des travaux photographiques en cr\u00e9ant des mod\u00e8les 3D puis en en faisant des n\u00e9gatifs, eux en format traditionnel g\u00e9latino-argentique. Intitul\u00e9e Voynich Botanical Studies<\/em>, la s\u00e9rie est en cours depuis 2013. Tant dans le \u00ab\u00a0Manuscrit de Voynich\u00a0\u00bb et dans les \u00c9tudes botaniques de Voynich, il y a une attitude absurde des humains qui cr\u00e9ent la nature. Si le premier a fourni le concept, celui-ci a \u00abr\u00e9\u00e9crit\u00bb l’histoire naturelle au moyen d’archives visuelles tr\u00e8s mim\u00e9tiques avec l’aide de la technologie moderne. Les plantes myst\u00e9rieuses aux formes \u00e9tranges dans le fond noir semblent presque tangibles avec leurs folles et belles feuilles, branches et bourgeons floraux. Notre amour et notre curiosit\u00e9 pour la Nature sont toujours accompagn\u00e9s du d\u00e9sir de la contr\u00f4ler; telle est la raison fondamentale pour laquelle l’histoire naturelle se serait \u00ab\u00e9gar\u00e9e\u00bb.
\nLien > voir le fac-simile du Voynich Manuscript<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In Liu Xinyi\u2019s oeuvre one can often find some humorous yet revealing ways to discuss issues about the state and political authority. In the state of Nuevo Le\u00f3n in Mexico, there is a city called China. In the province of Quebec in Canada, there is also a municipality called \u201cLachine\u201d (\u201cChina\u201d in French). In New York State, there is a hamlet called \u201cChina.\u201d And around the world there are many other place names in various languages with the same name as \u201cChina\u201d. The artist Liu Xinyi has made airline advertisement with the local geographic relief, satellite imagery, texts\u2014\u201cChina welcomes you\u201d\u2014only that these are not about the large country that is \u201cChina\u201d. With an abstract \u201cgeographical event\u201d in the work Next Stops<\/em> (2018), the artist sparks our imagination for different political forms, histories, cultures, and social realities.
\nDans l’\u0153uvre de Liu Xinyi, il est souvent possible de trouver des fa\u00e7ons humoristiques mais r\u00e9v\u00e9latrices de discuter de questions concernant l’\u00c9tat et l’autorit\u00e9 politique. Dans l’\u00e9tat de Nuevo Le\u00f3n au Mexique, il y a une ville appel\u00e9e la Chine. Dans la province de Qu\u00e9bec au Canada, il y a aussi une municipalit\u00e9 appel\u00e9e \u00ab\u00a0Lachine\u00a0\u00bb (\u00ab\u00a0Chine\u00a0\u00bb en fran\u00e7ais). Dans l’\u00c9tat de New York, il y a un hameau appel\u00e9 \u00abChine\u00bb. Et partout dans le monde il y a beaucoup d’autres noms de lieux dans diff\u00e9rentes langues portant le m\u00eame nom que \u00abChine\u00bb. L’artiste Liu Xinyi a fait de la publicit\u00e9 a\u00e9rienne avec le relief g\u00e9ographique local, l’imagerie satellitaire, des textes – \u00ab\u00a0La Chine vous accueille\u00a0\u00bb \u2014seulement il ne s’agit pas du grand pays qu’est la \u00ab\u00a0Chine\u00a0\u00bb. Avec un \u00ab\u00e9v\u00e9nement g\u00e9ographique\u00bb abstrait dans l’\u0153uvre Next Stops<\/em> (2018), l’artiste \u00e9veille notre imagination \u00e0 diff\u00e9rentes formes politiques, histoires, cultures et r\u00e9alit\u00e9s sociales.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n<\/a>Liu Xinyi, Guerrilla Squad<\/em> (2018)<\/p>\n

From village to city, and then from city to the modern nation, the growth of civilisation has accompanied the desire to occupy territory as well as the struggle of spatial mastery. Another work by Liu Xinyi, Guerrilla Squad<\/em> (2018), vividly shows off the relation between ethnicity and borders, geography and goods, the will to power and democratic welfare. Seven wooden line-marking vehicles\u2014laden with salt, sesame, coffee, curry powder, chili powder, Sichuan peppercorn, tea leaves, respectively\u2014have one of its sides marked with \u201cboundary\u201d in Chinese characters, while the other side are marked with the words for \u201cboundary\u201d in Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, Burmese, Russian, Arabic, among other languages. The ingredients and herbs of different colours and scents, as well as the line-marking vehicles placed throughout the exhibition space, imperceptibly draw out a national boundary that is no longer familiar to us.
\nDe village en ville, puis de ville en nation moderne, la croissance de la civilisation a accompagn\u00e9 le d\u00e9sir d’occuper le territoire ainsi que la lutte pour la ma\u00eetrise spatiale. Un autre travail de Liu Xinyi, Guerrilla Squad (2018), montre de fa\u00e7on vivante la relation entre l’ethnicit\u00e9 et les fronti\u00e8res, la g\u00e9ographie et les biens, la volont\u00e9 de puissance et le bien-\u00eatre d\u00e9mocratique. Sept v\u00e9hicules de marquage de ligne \u2014charg\u00e9s de sel, de s\u00e9same, de caf\u00e9, de poudre de curry, de poudre de chili, de poivre de Sichuan, de feuilles de th\u00e9\u2014, portent d\u2019un c\u00f4t\u00e9 des caract\u00e8res chinois, tandis que l’autre porte les mots \u00ab\u00a0fronti\u00e8re\u00a0\u00bb en hindi, cor\u00e9en, vietnamien, birman, russe, arabe, entre autres langues. Les ingr\u00e9dients et les herbes de diff\u00e9rentes couleurs et senteurs, ainsi que les v\u00e9hicules de marquage de ligne plac\u00e9s dans tout l’espace d’exposition, dessinent imperceptiblement une fronti\u00e8re nationale qui ne nous est plus famili\u00e8re.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent years, the connections between plants and politics have become a main thread in Zheng Bo\u2019s \u0153uvre. Through his research and imagination, he has attempted to find links between two seemingly disconnected fields and through this forge new ways of understanding human society.
\nCes derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, les liens entre les plantes et la politique sont devenus le fil conducteur de l’\u0153uvre de Zheng Bo. Gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 ses recherches et \u00e0 son imagination, il a tent\u00e9 de trouver des liens entre deux champs apparemment d\u00e9connect\u00e9s et, par ce biais, a forg\u00e9 de nouvelles fa\u00e7ons de comprendre la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 humaine.<\/span><\/p>\n

In March 1945 Taiwan\u2019s Wild Edible Plants<\/em>, written by a Japanese botanical association in Taiwan, was published in Taiwan under Japanese rule. The book\u2019s mission in the service of the war was stated clearly in the preface: \u201cWinning victory in the war for food is a matter of imperial pride.\u201d Yet a few months after the book was published, Japan announced their surrender. In 1961 another similar book\u2014Shanghai\u2019s Wild Edible Plants<\/em>\u2014was published in Shanghai during a period of calamities, natural and man-made, with the aim of helping citizens to relieve their hunger by primitive means. Zheng Bo copied the two books (in the work Survival Manuals<\/em>), explaining via these two threads from different places and times how humanity responded to political crises with plants. Political delusion pushed human society to the edge of survival; as such, nature suddenly became exceedingly important. Only when a crisis emerges is humanity aware of the existence of weeds.
\nEn mars 1945, Taiwan\u2019s Wild Edible Plants<\/em>, \u00e9crit par une association botanique japonaise \u00e0 Ta\u00efwan, a \u00e9t\u00e9 publi\u00e9 \u00e0 Ta\u00efwan sous la domination japonaise. La mission du livre au service de la guerre \u00e9tait clairement \u00e9nonc\u00e9e dans la pr\u00e9face : \u00abGagner la victoire dans la guerre pour la nourriture est une question de fiert\u00e9 imp\u00e9riale.\u00bb Pourtant, quelques mois apr\u00e8s la publication du livre, le Japon annon\u00e7ait sa reddition. En 1961, un autre livre similaire \u2014Shanghai\u2019s Wild Edible Plants<\/em>\u2014 a \u00e9t\u00e9 publi\u00e9 \u00e0 Shanghai au cours d’une p\u00e9riode de calamit\u00e9s, naturelles et artificielles, dans le but d’aider les citoyens \u00e0 soulager leur faim par des moyens primitifs. Zheng Bo a copi\u00e9 les deux livres (dans l’ouvrage Survival Manuals<\/em>), expliquant par ces deux fils de diff\u00e9rents lieux et moments comment l’humanit\u00e9 a r\u00e9pondu aux crises politiques par des plantes. L’illusion politique a pouss\u00e9 la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 humaine au bord de la survie; en tant que tel, la nature est soudainement devenue extr\u00eamement importante. Ce n’est que lorsqu’une crise \u00e9merge que l’humanit\u00e9 est consciente de l’existence des mauvaises herbes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n<\/a>Zheng Bo, Pteridophilia 1<\/em>, 2016, 4k video, color, sound, 17 mn<\/p>\n

In the series of video works Pteridophilia <\/em>(2016\u201318), Zheng Bo invited seven males to walk into Taiwan\u2019s mid-altitude jungles and engage in intimate contact with ferns. They make tender love to the ferns, and take in the smells and textures, establishing an attachment to plants with the body and not with language. Only when we are happy to extend our fancy can we gradually come to realise the more complex existence of all living things\u2014only then will we ourselves learn to survive more intelligently on Earth.
\n\u2028Dans la s\u00e9rie d’\u0153uvres vid\u00e9o Pteridophilia<\/em> (2016-18), Zheng Bo a invit\u00e9 sept hommes \u00e0 marcher dans les jungles de moyenne altitude de Taiwan et \u00e0 entrer en contact intime avec les foug\u00e8res. Ils font tendrement l’amour aux foug\u00e8res, et absorbent les odeurs et les textures, \u00e9tablissant un attachement aux plantes avec le corps et non avec le langage. Ce n’est que lorsque nous sommes heureux d’\u00e9tendre notre fantaisie que nous pouvons graduellement r\u00e9aliser l’existence plus complexe de toutes les choses vivantes \u2014seulement alors nous apprendrons nous-m\u00eames \u00e0 survivre plus intelligemment sur Terre.
\nLien > http:\/\/www.villavassilieff.net\/?-Zheng-Bo-Pernod-Ricard-Fellow-2016-40-<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nature Gone Astray : Liu Xinyi, Miljohn Ruperto & Ulrik Heltoft, Zheng Bo. Edouard Malingue Gallery, Shanghai February 4\u2013March 15, 2018 Texte de pr\u00e9sentation Life After People, a 2008 documentary film broadcast on the History Channel in the US, conjectured: if every human being on Earth suddenly disappeared, what would the world turn into? The answer … Continuer la lecture de Nature Gone Astray<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,44,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-contemporain","category-everyday-life","category-green-attitude","category-reader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4657"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4677,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657\/revisions\/4677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}