Cinema Botanica (An Introduction to the World of Plant Porn)

Cinema Botanica, by Jonathan Keats (2009) 

As a floraphile, I have a certain interest in and admiration for the work of American artist and experimental philosopher, Jonathan Keats; particularly his attempt to create a Cinema Botanica that incorporates a pornography for house plants and suburban shrubs and bushes. 

I find it amusing that whilst the majority of people who like to look after plants feel they are doing their bit if they remember to water regularly and perhaps administer an occasional drop of Baby Bio, Keats has expressed his concern that plants in a domestic environment might be bored and in need of entertainment designed to cater for their tastes and desires. 

And so he has filmed explicit scenes of floral pollination by honeybees, using specialized techniques developed for organisms that whilst lacking eyes, are nevertheless sensitive to light and shade. These edited but uncensored scenes are then projected directly onto the foliage. For human beings, there is very little to observe other than a silent flickering of light and so their enjoyment is strictly limited. However, as Keats points out, Cinema Botanica was developed for the titillation of the plants and not those who tend them.

Note: Cinema Botanica was screened in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater on October 1st, 2009, as part of Arse Elektronika, the world's foremost sex and technology festival, organized by the international art and theory collective, monochrom, founded in 1993, in Vienna, by Johannes Grenzfurthner. 

For further details, see Of Intercourse and Intracourse, ed. Johannes Grenzfurthner, Guenther Friesinger, and Daniel Fabry, (RE/SEARCH, 2011), or visit the monochrom website: www.monochrom.at/english