[Pollinator] Reuters: Artist opens first plant porn theater

[Jennifer Tsang]

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN0720247820070907?pageNumbe
r=2




Artist opens first plant porn theater


Fri Sep 7, 2007 4:45PM EDT

By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - An American artist has come up with a new form of
movie -- pornography for plants featuring uncensored pollination.

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats said he came to appreciate the impact of
entertainment on non-human audiences while choreographing a ballet for
honeybees last year, selectively planting flowers among hives to direct the
bees' moves.

He decided to try to entertain plants, arguing that they were sensitive to
light so cinema was "practically made for them." But rather than let them
watch a film he decided to make a film to project on their leaves so they
could absorb it.

Keats said he could not judge plants' mind-set so he decided to settle on
the one thing that was bound to be a hit -- sex.

"I knew enough about their reproduction process to make an educated guess at
what might titillate them and that was pollination," Keats told Reuters.

He filmed a six-minute long video of plants getting pollinated then edited
his uncensored footage into a gritty black-and-white porn video. The result
was what he claims to be the world's first plant porn movie, "Cinema
Botanica."

"It is very boring but that is part of the essence of pornography, that it
is very repetitive," he said.

During September his film will be projected onto an audience of 60 house
plants lined in rows at the 1078 Gallery, an alternative arts space in
Chico, California - a venue Keats has dubbed "the world's first porn theater
for house plants."

The gallery will be open to people to go and watch.

"This project is an initial effort to bring cinema to the plant kingdom but
also it gives humans the chance to reflect on themselves by stepping away
from everyday experiences and looking back on themselves," said San
Franciso-based Keats.

"The work gets done through the interaction and the conversations that take
place around this."

Keats, 35, who studied philosophy at Amherst College, Massachusetts, has a
track record for large-scale thought experiments which he hoped triggers
conversations and challenges people's views.

In 2003 Keats copyrighted his mind and recently he exhibited
extraterrestrial abstract artwork. But he is best known for trying to
genetically engineer God in a petri dish in collaboration with scientists at
the University of California.

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requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

 

Jennifer Tsang
Coevolution Institute <http://coevolution.org> 
423 Washington St. 5th Fl.
San Francisco, CA 94111-2339
T: 415.362.1137

F: 415.362.3070

www.nappc.org

www.pollinator.org

 

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