WITHERED CUT FLOWERS(2021)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

06:54 min, single channel video, HD, sound
Filmed and edited by Minhee Oh
Sound by Yun and Minhee Oh
Performance by Yifan Su

Cut flowers’ journey from field to consumer is incredibly complex, because cut flowers are highly perishable products. They are grown in hyper technical flower factories and transported in a refrigerated lorry to airport. Having cleared customs, normally within 24 hours, they then travel to a warehouse, where they are arranged into bouquets, and then make their way from distributors to vendors to be sold to the general public. After reaching the customer, the length of time flowers can stay fresh is then usually 12-15 days. And they are thrown away by human in the end.

Cut flowers are quite an integral part of my life. I buy flowers from the supermarket on a weekly basis. I always feel guilty throwing withered flowers away and pity for their lives, even though they are just emotionless. I’ve been questioning myself. Do I ever really think about where they come from? Is there a way to use withered flowers instead of just throwing away? These questions became a starting point of the project.

I scattered withered cut flowers on the path of the park and spent a few days observing the interaction between people and withered cut flowers. There was an old couple picking up flowers, a man who was observing the flowers for a while, some people who were just passing by, children who were wondering about the flowers and a sniffing dog. I recorded all these scenes on my camera and developed images with the developers made with withered cut flowers. The experiment with these developers is still in progress.

The accompanying video and sound is made in collaboration with Yifan Su(performance) and Yun(sound design). We extracted sound sources from cut flowers by designing electronic sound modules. You can hear what flowers might sound like on this video.