Abstract
At First Sight, in a glimpse, the blue flowers that are the result, the objects of Common Flowers / Flower Commons1 present an absence. They seem to manifest the missing, a ghostly presence, a substitute or placeholder. They provide a reservoir, field, root (or riot) of the imaginary. Blue flowers, more specifically blue roses and carnations exceed the familiar, the normative, the natural, the being there, while simultaneously they are already too removed from our understanding of these definitions or forces. In the immediate sensation there are elements of something parasitic, sublime, hybrid, multiple, rhizomatic, heterogenous, distributed, and non-systemic, if you like. There is movement— something alien, foreign, some thing has taken over a plant, has potentially penetrated the genomes of the flower petals. There are thoughts around notions of completion (for example towards a full colour spectrum: white, pink, red, green, black, orange, cream, purple, blue) and a desire for realising a totality. Underlying are economies of modelling, classifying, dis/ordering, dissecting, arranging 2.
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References
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Gfader, V. (2011). Imaginary Agents—Flowers and the Common. In: Russegger, G., Tarasiewicz, M., Wlodkowski, M. (eds) Coded Cultures. Edition Angewandte. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0458-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0458-3_11
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