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<p>We're delighted to announce the publication from Open Humanities
Press of<em> </em><a
href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/dark-botany/"><em>Dark
Botany: The Herbarium Tales</em></a>, edited by Prudence
Gibson, Sigi Jottkandt, Marie Sierra and Anna Westbrook. </p>
<p>Available in open access and print: <a
href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/dark-botany/"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/dark-botany/</a></p>
<p><i>Dark Botany</i> activates the material and sensorial wonder of
plants—their energy, their mysterious allure, their capacities and
skills, their independent might. In this <em>Wunderkammer</em> of
critical plant studies essays and plant+artworks, the herbarium
emerges as a site of multiple materialities and reflexive forms of
counter-narrative. Herbaria specimens come alive as assemblages,
telling truths about their dark histories and darker contemporary
currents, while reflecting on the complexity of texture, movement,
memory, compound structure, chemical emissions and rapid evolution
of plants and languages. What one discovers is that herbaria are
not static: they are as vital, energetic and enigmatic as the
plants in their collections—and as diverse.</p>
<p>With contributions by Giovanni Aloi, Matthew Beach, Tamryn
Bennett, Edward Colless, Prudence Gibson, Ryan Gordon, Lisa
Gorton, Sigi Jöttkandt, Nick Koenig, Verena Kuni, Anna M.
Lawrence, Vanessa Lemm, Rebecca Mayo, Aunty Deirdre Martin, Arina
Melkozernova, Elaine Miller, Jacob Morris, Anna Perdibon, Anna
Madeleine Raupach, Georgina Reid, Heather Rogers, Betty Russ,
Erica Seccombe, Marie Sierra, Christina Stadlbauer, Anna-Sophie
Springer, Bart Vandeput, Juliann Vitullo, Anna Westbrook and Maya
Martin-Westheimer.</p>
<p><em>Dark Botany: The Herbarium Tales</em> is an Open Humanities
Press Labs <a
href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/labs/seedbooks/">Seedbook</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/labs/seedbooks/"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/labs/seedbooks/</a></p>
<p>It is also part of <a href="http://theherbariumtales.org">The
Herbarium Tales</a>.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>The Herbarium Tales</p>
<p><a href="http://theherbariumtales.org/"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://theherbariumtales.org/</a></p>
<p>This is a plant studies Australian Research Council Linkage
project 2020-23. It is a collaboration between University of NSW,
Bundanon Trust and the Sydney Botanic Gardens Herbarium. The
interdisciplinary team includes Prudence Gibson UNSW, Sigi
Jottkandt UNSW and Open Humanities Press, Sophie O’Brien Bundanon
Trust, Marie Sierra Melbourne University and Brett Summerell Royal
Botanic Gardens, Sydney.</p>
<p>The project outputs will include three films, two major outdoor
artworks, a living book, a city forest, a monograph called <cite>The
Herbarium and Me</cite> and this network of people and plants.
Our team is dedicated to redefining the ways plants are understood
and valued, and also to deepening recognition and understanding of
the ways plants are important actors in political, economic and
social relations.</p>
<p>We hope to celebrate and interrogate the agency,
in/inter-dependence, and performing subjectivities of plants; we
also hope to develop critical understandings of plants as
performing actors in bio/phyto-political relations. Lead CI of
this project, Prudence Gibson, has written a book entitled <cite>The
Plant Contract</cite> (Brill 2018), which charts a new deal for
the vegetal world that centres on an aesthetic of care, via a
promise between one person and one plant to take care. This
project aims to enact such a philosophy.</p>
<p></p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/">https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/</a>
Website: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.garyhall.info">http://www.garyhall.info</a>
Follow on Mastodon here: @garyhall@hcommons.social
Latest:
Blog posts: 'A Brief History of Writing: From Human Meaning to Pattern Recognition and Beyond', with Joanna Zylinska, The Writing Platform: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/">https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/</a>
'Creative AI: Thinking Outside the Black Box', Media Theory: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mediatheoryjournal.org/2024/05/24/gary-hall-creative-ai-thinking-outside-the-black-box/">https://mediatheoryjournal.org/2024/05/24/gary-hall-creative-ai-thinking-outside-the-black-box/</a>
'Oxford and the Observer Do Social Mobility', <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/6/10/oxford-and-the-observer-do-social-mobility.html">http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/6/10/oxford-and-the-observer-do-social-mobility.html</a>
</pre>
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