Buchsbäume, 2020

Buchsbäume is a sensor-driven rack from Jordan’s Artificial Stupidity (2016-ongoing) series, which is about allowing errors and regaining the area of robotics in relation to non-intelligence. Buchsbäume is supposed to draw boundaries, but they can’t. There are three box trees on each of the three moving frames. A box tree is a plant that often used as a border between houses, as a separation between private and public space. The box trees on the moving frames form a hedge and revolve through the room freely like shifting borders. This plant, also known as Buxus, has been viewed in the past as a threatening, devilish, and anti-lust plant. In the Middle Ages it was used as a plant for curing venereal diseases. Boxwood leaves are still boiled out in France and administered against influenza infections. In the seventeenth century, the boxwood became the central actor in the Jardin à la française, which heralded the idea of progress and the superiority of the human spirit over nature, in which everything had to yield to rationality and technological progress; a new form of absolutism.

Buchsbäume (2020) Material: plastic bushes, sensors, motor frame Dimension: 30 cm (h) x 30 cm (w) x 1 m (l) Technical engineer: Andreas Marckscheffel Photo credit: Si Wachsmann Text: Pauline Doutreluingne Exhibited at A Handful of Dust, 2020, The Ehrenhalle at the Lilienthalstraße cemetery, curated by Pauline Doutreluingne & Petra Poelzl