The Danish Cure All: MEDICINE GARDEN

Paeonia lactiflora
Chinese Peony
The genus is supposed to be named after the physician Paeos who cured Pluto and other golds of their wounds received during the Trojan War.

It is used as a medicinal herb in traditional Chinese medicine.  The root is used to reduce fever and pain and on wounds to stop bleeding and prevent infection.


According to Global Herbal:
anti-allergic
anti-convulsant
anti-inflammatory
anti-spasmodic
promotes digestion and increases appetite
cognition enhancer
immune enhancing
skeletal muscle relexant

When you are a gardener, you are used to looking underneath things to find other things.  You need to be tenacious to find the Medicine Garden in Tranekaer, Denmark.  It's hidden behind the sugar beet factory, not far from the Souvenir "Museum" and  Tranekaer Castle looms above it.

The garden was began in 2010.  It is a project in conjunction with the CEBI (The Center for Bio-Resources and Innovation).  The first of the 9 system of the body gardens  is The Respiratory Garden.  The garden occuplies 8 hectares and currently has 60 different plants. In 2012, PRFO expect to increase the number to 250. 

PRFO (Plant Research Langeland) will also use the garden to grow experimental plantings, for example energy grasses that can be used for heat, and artichokes, whose roots can be used for fuel.

The CEBI  have their work cut out for themselves.  Their mission is to create "new opportunities for business, research institutions, private investors, farmers and consumers" using plants to solve the environmental challenges facing "society in general."  That is a pretty big mission for a small group of volunteers on the island of Langeland. 

I prefer the words written by Mads Jorgensen:

"There have been planted so many plants and it looks good."

"The garden is built on a slope.  There are many fine curved flower beds and paths with castle ruins.  But we have a prolbem with the landscaped flower beds and paths merge.  This happens especially when it rains heavily.  There fore, we have purchased 330 metal band to be up around the flower beds to retain soil.  Gardening Group has installed the first.  We got us a good surpirse because it looks actually really nice.  Metal edges make it that you get to see the subtle curves in the garden.

This is a major task, as have the group can not handle alone.  Therefore, we need to come and help us."

(this is a bad google translation)

I wanted to help.  I wanted to have the time to help.  If you find yourself in Tranekaer, on the island of Langeland, in Southern Denmark contact:  bjarnempetersen@gmail.com. 

or the following websites:
www.prfo.dk
(Plant Resource Langeland)
www.cebi.dk

Additional information about PRFO:

"PRFO has received grants from Nordrhein-Westfalen, LAG Langeland, Outdoor Council and several foundations, but most funds were matched by demand for fiancing of 25-50 percent. The big challenge is thus to provide the remainig money.  PRFO can gain some income by making attempts to collaborators.  Another option is to draw people's shares.  The association currently has 70 members."
Bjarne Moller Peterson

Ruminations on the meaning of HOME

LIVING
Louisiana Museum

 of Modern Art
Denmark

"In other words creating a home is not just about a physical setting but about the customs we associate with "being at home".  Where and how are we at home?  How does home reflect our identity?  How do we create the feeling of home through cultural rituals, traditions or special kinds of architecture?  How do you take your homeland with you when you move away or emigrate?"

These are some of the pieces that moved me:

Bottari Truck - Migrateurs
(video of performance art)
2007
Kimsooja

"Bottari Truck - Migrateurs is a performance where the Korean artist Kimsooja travels through Paris for ten days seated on top of a mountain of bottaris.  Bottari is the name the Koreans give to the coloured cloth bundles used to transport both Korean traders' goods and migrants property.  Korean women themselves sew these wrappings and bed linen from left-over cloth, and for Kimsooja this practice signifies a kind of absorption in and encapsulation of personal memories as well as family history.

Kimsooja's performance results in an account of the traveller and the way in which the Korean woman takes with her not only her home, but her whole identity, the memory of her origin and the history of her people, as something constantly on the move in the fluid, almost endless space of Korea".

In the video of this piece, the woman moves in slow motion through the streets of Paris.  One sees the onlookers, who are not shocked, maybe slightly confused.  They seem to accept this woman riding  down the rue.  For me, the description of this piece has more meaning, then the piece itself.  As in a lot of performance art, the artist gains meaning and experience and the audience are simply onlookers.

The Tub
2010
video
Katja Bjorn

"The work is about yourself, Katja Bjorn and about all of us, about being human and feeling that being human involves something as simple as taking a bath."

Yes, we have all washed our hair and most of us have never seen this perspective of that act. 

Koolhaas HouseLife
Video 2008
Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine

Unlike the other two videos, the Koolhaas video has a soundtrack.  The cleaning lady, Guadelupe Acedo comments on the house designed by Rem Koolhaas/OMA ub 1998.  From her perspective the house definitely is form over function.  We laugh as she makes her way through the house, siting one problem after another.

Although each of three videos has very different subject matter, they are centered in one way or another around the idea of home and everyday rituals. 

Here is the "egg house" on Langeland in Denmark.  I love the simplicity.  This is a case where form does follow function.