Botanical Letters

Guest post: “Saxony’s Arboreal Curiosities, or: How to Root (Hi)Stories” by Solvejg Nitzke

Esther Helena Arens — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 09:32:52 +0000

Trees are trending, in novels, nature writing, and politics. Take, for example, “The Overstory” by Richard Powers, “Two Trees Make a Forest” by Jessica E. Lee, and here in Germany the protests to protect the Hambacher Forst from open pit coal mining. Of course, trees have been objects of historical research for a while, especially at the intersection of colonial history and the history of botany. When I came across memorialised trees in the source genre of the European festschrift, they were of two …

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Just published: Rumphius’ Naturkunde. Zirkulation in kolonialen Wissensräumen

Esther Helena Arens — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 08:58:45 +0000

In the early stages of the interdisciplinary Rumphius project, I read Richard Sennett’s „The Craftsman“, and I underlined a paragraph in the editor’s foreword to Het Amboinsche Kruid-boek from 1741: „[…] this great Man was so skilled in this work, that at the time all sorts of Plants that were unknown to other people, were sent to him from the remotest parts of the Indies, even though he was already robbed of his vision and of the light of day. He could discover the …

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The Plantation and the City: Rubber, Labour, Cologne (2)

Esther Helena Arens — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 11:18:56 +0000

After dipping into research on the Kölnische Gummifäden-Fabrik, its colonial connections, and the lack of collective memory on the site, I wanted to explore different ways of writing with the historical material. After the workshop “Speculative Actions” at the Akademie der Künste der Welt in September, I took part in the subsequent sci-fi-a-thon and played with a few ideas. Here’s the text I wrote and read. School Is Over. They Said Ok I can take you, I had said in an unguarded moment, and …

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The Plantation and the City: Rubber, Labour, Cologne (1)

Esther Helena Arens — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 11:08:04 +0000

Late summer, a nicely curated gift shop. Between children’s books a few gimmicks, among them a small rubbery hand you might put on top of a pencil. The proportions seem a bit off and I find the grey-brownish colour disconcerting. After I realize that there are yellowish and pinkish hands as well, intended as representations of different skin colours, I go back to buy a right hand in each colour. I still don’t see a human limb, but something monstrous, perhaps because of the …

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“The reader of the trace”: Colonial materials and mediality

Esther Helena Arens — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 11:37:00 +0000

In the framework of the research project on Rumphius at the University of Cologne, I handled botanical and conchological materials that had been transferred or translated from the late 17th century Moluccas to the archives, libraries, and museums of the 21st century Netherlands. These include Rumphius’ manuscripts and printed books as objects in their own right, as well as illustrations and specimens. Also, I analysed historical material represented in Rumphius’ Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet and Ambonese Herbal. In the Herbal, there are many passages on …

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Leaves and Limbs. A Visual Essay

Esther Helena Arens — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 12:34:07 +0000

4th image from the topof performance “Ina Kwana Baja – Hallo Slaaf –Hello Slave”by Onias Landveld Photographyby Esther Helena Arens at Tropenmuseum Amsterdam,25 September 2018.

Bananas: From Local Food to Global Research

Esther Helena Arens — Sat, 19 May 2018 12:01:14 +0000

In the second Garden Broadcast at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, the designer Johanna Seelemann talked about the Banana Passport for a single fruit, a joint project with Björn Steinar Blumenstein (more here). While the banana has become an everyday food item, the fruit undergoes a complicated global journey from the tree to the supermarket shelves, and the passport illustrates this process mostly hidden from our perception. Before, when I spoke about plants between Asia and Europe in the colonial context of the 17th …

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Materia medica in the Water Indies: Categories and Boundaries in Rumphius’ Ambonese Herbal

Esther Helena Arens — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 12:56:59 +0000

Presentation at the conference “Materia medica on the move II” Amsterdam, 4-6 October 2017 Introduction: The Materials of the Ambonese Herbal As we are focusing on materials on the move during this conference, I would like to start with the Ambonese Herbal as a moving object in different spaces. The different parts of the Dutch manuscript for the Amboinsche Kruid-boek went from the hands of G.E. Rumphius in Kota Ambon via the governor-generals in Batavia to the Heren VII of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie …

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