In collaboration with Framer Framed, we organize a performative lecture with artists Amy Pekal and Marit Mihklepp. The performance On the Nature of a Name will be held outside of the Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam.

When a universal system takes precedent over the particularities of ecologies, complex systems become covered up, disconnected and unmade. The Western knowledge of plant uses is gathered not by listening to the plants themselves but by an instructional knowledge of utility. Artists Amy Pekal and Marit Mihklepp create a playful performative lecture entitled ‘On the Nature of a Name’ that investigates the etymology of plant species. With the use of the Latin and indigenous names in the Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam, Pekal and Mihklepp draw attention to the relations between plant species and how they might communicate and evolve with each other. The performance, operating alongside Framer Framed’s exhibition ‘On the Nature of Botanical Gardens’, embodies decolonial lens to challenge the garden and begins to make efforts in the reparations of lost indigenous knowledge within the institutions botanical collection.