Detail of a zine prepared for the Fools’ Experiments exhibition at the Bournemouth Natural Science Society (BNSS), 24 August 2009 – 5 September 2009.

Untitled (detail)
Pencil on paper
42cm x 30cm
© 2009 Tammy Lu

“In the naturalist’s collection things happen to plants that have never occurred since the dawn of the world. The plants find themselves detached, separated, preserved, classified, and tagged. They are then reassembled, reunited, redistributed according to entirely new principles that depend on the researcher, on the discipline of botany, which has been standardized for centuries, and on the institution that shelters them, but they no longer grow as they did in the great forest. The botanist learns new things, and she is transformed accordingly, but the plants are transformed also. (…) Knowledge derives from such movements, not from simple contemplation of the forest.”

Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope (1999)

Many thanks to Rachel Worth, Dominic Shepherd, Richard Hurst, Jamie Yeates, Pauline Stanley, Denise Poote, John Cresswell, and Melinda and Terry  Williams-Wilson for their great help and support. This project was sponsored by The Arts University College at Bournemouth (AUCB) Research Fund.