Unearthing the Colonial Flower Archive

Join us for a screening of "The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing" and workshop with Theo Panagopoulos and Hannan Jones on Thursday 2 April at 11.30am-4pm at Botanic Garden in St Andrews supported by the Centre for Screen Cultures, the Centre for Contemporary Art and the EDI fund at the University of St Andrews.

Hannan Jones and Theo Panagopoulos will host a workshop at the St Andrews Botanic Garden inspired by their process collaborating on "The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing" (2024). Prompted by Theo's recent discovery in Glasgow of a 1930s colonial film archive of Palestinian wild flowers and his collaboration with Hannan on reclaiming the archive during the ongoing genocide and ecocide in Gaza, the workshop invites participants to question the role of an archive connecting the geographical and historical contexts of St Andrews and Palestine.

We will explore how narratives of flowers and their relationship with people emerge through different forms of narrative-making and we will work directly with sound in unearthing the narrative of the existing Levantine flowers in the Botanic Garden. The participants will watch together the recent award-winning film "The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing" directed by Greek-Palestinian filmmaker Theo Panagopoulos with sound design by Hannan Jones. After the film screening, the session will continue with a guided walk through the Botanic Garden and will culminate in a writing and recorded sound session using phones and geophones in response to, and in conversation with, the site and the garden's archives. Working in small groups, participants will create a sonic collage of the garden inspired by Deep Listening exercises.