Healing Plants: Folklore and Ritual

October 6th to 18th 2021

Our intention when we applied for a residency at Eleonore was to continue our current personal and artistic research on the traditional uses of medicinal and healing plants and their relationship to local folklore and rituals in different locations and the performative application of this knowledge through artistic and scientific methods to find artistic strategies of healing the landscape from the ecological impact of human industrial exploitation and the drastic consequences and changes in the natural landscapes and flora.

For the specific purpose of this residency we wanted to investigate the diversity of healing plants of the Danube river bank as well as the different traditional application of these species, not only in the specific area around the Eleonore boat but all along the river. We understand the river as an artery through which communication and exchanges, not only human but also interspecies, have been established since long before humans started navigating, cultivating and establishing their settlements along it.

During our first week at Eleonore we used Dérive (drifting) as a method of psychogeographical observation of the Industrial zone surrounding Eleonore boat, we formed an alternative ecological network-map of the riverbank - triggered by our meetings with medicinal plants. The plants are then collected, documented and preserved through herbarium-making practices, as well as through different forms of fermentations, oil-inductions and tinctures.

Fabricio Lamoncha is an artist, designer and researcher from Spain, currently based in Linz. His practices explore the entanglements of media ecology and bioethics. After graduating MA at Interface Cultures, Kunstuniversität Linz, he moved to Berlin to be part of the Design Research Lab, UdK. Since 2016 he is back in Linz to work as technical assistant and lecturer at the Interface Cultures Master Program, and since 2018 he pursues his PhD under the supervision of Univ. Prof. Dr. Christa Sommerer. He is member of the UCLA’s Art|Sci Center, led by UCLA Prof. Dr. Victoria Vesna, and regular instructor at the Sci|Art Lab+Studio summer program, Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited internationally and awarded with the Art and Artificial Life International Award Vida14. https://fabriciolamoncha.com/

Smirna Kulenović is a transdisciplinary artist, activist and researcher with a background in theatre, performance art and philosophy. Her practice currently focuses on performance, participatory art, and public art — as methods of addressing cultural, personal and environmental embodiments of memory. In her latest artistic research, she focuses on inventing interactive methods for documentary-based participative performances and site-responsive stagings for public spaces. Her nomadic project TAZ 22 is a transient collective for spontaneous movement research in context, working with different international artists and settings each time it emerges. It currently grounds itself in Linz, in collaboration with local dancers, performers, musicians and sound artists. https://smi-smi.com/

This is an ongoing project to be continued further and for more information please contact the artists