Anytime Dept, Cincinnati: Songs the Plants Taught Us

Ken Gonzales-Day, “Franklin Ave.” Erased Lynching Series,  2006

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Originally made as a two-channel video, Marijuana in the U.K. juxtaposes texts by Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire on the effects of hashish.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

Learn more at:  Anytime Dept.