A R C H I E F1 9 9 8  
16th
  Fiona Tan
Linnaeus' Flower Clock
  The Netherlands 1998
Videotape, 16:55, colour & black-and-white, stereo
 
Is this a letter to a lover? Is the love already over and is this an attempt to organize memories? Is it the longing to hang on to moments and to find a way to go on remembering, even after thirty years? The anonymous 'H' addressed at the beginning and the words “Love, F” at the end point directly to the idea of a letter, a personal letter based on shared memories. Like the memory of the turtles burying their eggs on the beach, something they both watched on that small island across the world. Or of the first time when 'H' gave her flowers. And just as a child wants to hear the same story repeated over and over again, here recurring images are strung together to form a compilation of moments and old archival film footage. Will these be the images that F and H will remember in thirty years time? In her mind she tries to replay her favourite scenes time and again. Maybe it would help if she organized them like the Swedish botanist Linnaeus (1707–1778) did flowers. He was the first to formulate principles to define genera and species and devise a uniform system for naming plants. Starting with the idea that nature is exceptionally punctual, he described the flower clock: certain species open and close at specific times of the day. Could such a scheme be helpful in holding on to memories? Or will these, like flowers, turn out to be transitory and is that the core of existence for both, the essence of their beauty? Like all flowers, the ones H gave to F have long since withered, but perhaps the images are a means of opening up the memory.

– Carla Hoekendijk

Sound: Hugo Dijkstal, Thanks to: N.F.M., Joke Treffers, Stéphane Carrayrou

Fiona Tan ° 1966, Pekan Baru (Indonesia)
Lives and works in Amsterdam (The Netherlands)


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