***News " Garden: A Cabinet of Curiosities" will be featured for six months during the 2026 Venice Biennale from 9th May until 29th November in the European Cultural Centre at the Palazzo Mora on Strada Nova in Cannaregio, Venice, Italy.
Artists currently involved: Tamiko Thiel, Nataša Prosenc Stearns, John Sanborn, James Bloom, Will Pappenheimer, Fernanda D'Agostino, Terry Flaxton, Nina Sobell
Artists currently involved: Tamiko Thiel, Nataša Prosenc Stearns, John Sanborn, James Bloom, Will Pappenheimer, Fernanda D'Agostino, Terry Flaxton, Nina Sobell
LATEST IMAGES - Garden: A Cabinet of Curiosities
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So far there have been a series of 3 iterations of this work as we get nearer to exhibition - for UMA artists this has been an extraordinary procedure as every one of us in the past has been the sole creator of a piece - so we move forwards in a spirit of collaboration.
United Moving Image Artists initially proposed an installation called "Paradise Garden" which was a 3 metre square table-height area, full of plants interspersed with small digital acrylic frames upon which UMA artists had imagined new plant species to then interrogate propositions around ideas implicit in ecological thought (for instance the meaning of "Deep Ecology" where 'righteous living 'is part of the story) and what issues were most imperative in not only saving our world, but ourselves. This was accepted at the European Cultural Commission based in Amsterdam and their Italian section based in Venice, Italy will put this work on from 9th May 2026 to 22nd of November 2026 under the banner of the Venice Biennale.
Significantly the curator of the Venice Biennale, Koyo Kouoh, has said of the inspiration for the Biennale: "“The exhibition In Minor Keys stands as a collective score composed together with artists who have built universes of imagination. Artists who work at the boundaries of form, and whose practices can be thought of as intricate melodies to be heard both collectively and on their own terms. These are artists whose practices seamlessly bleed into society. Artists who accommodate daily life as part of a logical and aesthetically consistent relation of parts. Artists who are exceedingly generous and hospitable to life.” Full text here. So with that in mind we have discovered whilst collaborating together exactly what Koyo has expressed as an imperative for the Biennale - and significant to UMA and our working process, arguably the metaphor of free jazz composition has been working for us in this process throughout. We now discover together that we are to create "A Cabinet of Curiosities": which, were you to come upon it some time in the future, (and this would already have become part of our own future), such that the visitor come upon something not stuck in time metaphorically is a philosophical imperative, both always in the past and always in the future. This is in fact something that has a relationship with Deep Ecology where we are all a party to eachother's world.
Early Cuneiform Tablet maybe 5500 years old
Early Cuneiform Calculations Tablet maybe 5500 years old
Examples of Leonora Carrington inspired Felt Plants and Vines
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Image: Will Pappenheimer
The Rationale for the 3rd iteration of the Installation:
The CABINET OF CURIOSITIES The 3rd iteration will change more probably into a cabinet of curiosities draped with vines viewed as if from our future…. where acrylic screens are interspersed with artefacts to represent exograms. An exogram is an artefact in the physical world where humans export knowledge into carriers, from arrangements of stone, to baked cuneiform tablets, to scrolls, to codices, to books, to computers where the end goal of this information evolution is data without form - which humans inherently grasp the meaning of) (Merlin Donald, The Origins of the Modern Mind) but from the audiences present it will be as if they’ve found this, still working, in an abandoned museum, the meaning of which is a window onto a past mentality before we humans worked out our place in the universe. 
Image, River Estuary concept Fernanda Agostino
Examples of artefacts UMA may interlace between screens
Sketch of a cabinet and an extra piece of staging: a tree and the moon
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The History of this work until the present
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The 1st Rational for the Installation: PARADISE GARDEN
The following images & text are included to show the evolution and development of the work until the 2nd Rationale "GARDEN" Paradise Garden
Paradise Garden Early Iteration
Nodding to ancient ideas concerning the garden, literally as part of paradise itself – the Garden of Eden in ancient Aramaic referring to a specific place within the desert in which there is shade from the sun, where water flows easily and the foods and fruits for sustaining life are readily available. In Aramaic both the ideas of ‘garden’ and ‘paradise’ are synonymous. The secret garden has long been a place where people can dream of freedom – and in this sense UMA’s artists, nodding to Nam June Paik’s twentieth century ‘TV Garden’ have freely allowed themselves to imagine new growth, itself symbolic of the need for new ideas, in a world where contemporary human behaviour not only threatens our biome, but also generates the possibility for a renewal of that same biome. We invite curators, festival & gallery directors to accompany UMA in asking the audience to reflect on what this installation might mean. (Image below not accurate, but included to suggest possibilities).
So this small garden of plants interspersed by 12 frames in portrait aspect ratio, with images of imaginary plants growing within the frames demonstrates an intention to enforce the idea that artists add to human culture, just as human culture can itself add to our biome in a sustainable as opposed to destructive way. 
Most of the frames will face to the front of the installation with some facing to the back and to the sides – so that as the audience circle’s the work they see it from all sides.* The frames are self-illuminated; the soundscape will be generated by the frames themselves each carrying a part of the overall soundtrack comprised of the sound of water and soothing background elements such as wind chimes (the exhibition location will be able to set the overall sound level so that it does not interfere with other artworks nearby). UMA would prefer this work to be exhibited in its own space – but we can see how it could be a centrepiece in larger gallery. What we offer below are current tests of UMA’s visual experiments to align our thinking such that curators may join in with our visual musings. (Video tests below, each with different temporary soundtracks).
Technical Details for the 2.75 meter square installation
The overall structure will have an ’inner tank’ the depth of which is 25cm deep – but the surrounding sides that the audience will see will be 120cm at the front, with each side rising to 150 cm at the back. The ‘Garden’ element will be filled with lightweight wood chips in the ‘upper tank’ for the frames and plants to sit in**. Underneath this at a depth of 5cm, 12v DC cables run from 3 x 5 outlet dc chargers). The overall structure will require power into the unit and 3 small spotlights (or similar) with gobos on them to cut-up the light, will be suspended above ‘the garden’ – and these will produce a dappled light. Light levels should be low nearby. * Nb there is an argument for one or two ten inch or 5 inch frames to vary the sizes ** UMA and the exhibition directors can debate whether we use plastic or real plants if the real plants were given the correct nutritious light were available at night – or if we use real plants then these can be rotated in use in the installation with some plants spending the day outside and swapped in to the installation to give other plants a break. |
The 2nd Rationale for the Installation: GARDEN
To the left an earlier video iteration to show the working process The Dimensions of Garden were 275cm wide x 275cm long x 120cm high at the front (think of that as basically a square area you look over) where the part of the installation furthest away from the initial viewing position will be 150cm high – such that the work has a slight incline down to the front. The audience will be able to move around the whole looking in from every side. (Video to the left not accurate, but suggests possibilities). 
United Media Artists, propose for the ECC in Palazzo Mora, an installation of video works presented on transparent acrylic screens called Garden (i). For this UMA’s artists have created a set of works with the common theme of not only new forms of growth - but also failing growth for a speculative herbarium of “uber-plants,” suggesting various processes of growth, degeneration, and transformation relating to future-past ecological and psychic conditions. The ‘Garden’ in this installation (the arabic word for Paradise) relates to the inextricable continuum of humans with our ”natural” environment where posthumanism critiques the anthropocentric worldview and redefines the concepts of agency, morality and ethics where ecological and technological concerns clash. The bed of charred black charcoal chips which the screens are embedded in suggests on the one hand a potential termination of life on earth but at the same time the potential cycle of regeneration: cycles that also permeate the human psyche. Garden, named to question what the installation actually is and what it represents, creates an agile new context for these issues, while at the same time embracing the artist’s complex and circuitous presence. We intend to provoke a thoughtful response.
Nature has served as a fundamental and enduring subject for artists throughout history, both as a source of inspiration, a challenge to technique and a source of symbolic meaning embodying themes like the cyclical stages of growth, decay, and rebirth. Referentially, UMA notes Nam June Paik’s TV Garden (1974), a seminal media installation that fused technology and organic nature, as well as recognizing previous artists such as Hilma af Klint who fused and evolved their professional studies of botany into annotations and abstractions of the human psyche via surreal gestures. We echo these contradictions here with an overgrowth of fabric vines - necessarily being hand made of a natural substance (in this case wool to add animals to our thesis) - to raise the attendant questions. In the age of fully digital and AI infused creation, UMA’s interpretations of the nature of “nature” will produce provocative metaphors for the human experience by simply incorporating technology into our ‘natural’ works in order to express the philosophy of posthumanism - which in itself questions humanity’s dominance of the earth. 
On approaching the exhibition space you hear a very quiet choral sound drifting towards you to lead you in (ii) which tells you something ‘special’ is happening within the next room. On entering you see a 2.75 x 2.75m sculptural vitrine, waist height (iii) with a solid base, appearing like a hybrid between a raised garden and a museum display box with a open canopy, reflecting the garden-display bed below in mylar reflective material . The entire object is covered by artificial woven vines - made of dark green, dark amber and dark maroon felt, like a web draped over by artificial woven vines. This growth indicates that perhaps in the future, when this vitrine may have been made, nature has already begun to overgrow it and, at the same time, suggesting that this installation was made in the past (iv). All of this initially glimpsed In reflection reflected in a mylar canopy (v as well as the audience as they approach and look into it.
As you arrive at the work and lean over to see on the surface of the vitrine a set of 5 inch, 7 inch and 12 inch acrylic screens, spaced in rows of 5 screens some in portrait aspect ratio some in landscape aspect ratio where the images depict “uber-plants” - imagined distortions of natural organic plants and systems, exhibited as if precious museum objects or botanical specimens - which refers to a time when many will be lost. Each frame plays a video of the artists participating in the project which itself is a kind of interpretation or notion of the garden and it's relationship to ecologies. Next to each frame are text tags with imaginary latin names with dates of appearance or extinction on earth. This is a cataloguing gesture which indicates the end of the Enlightenment project, itself giving birth to techno futurism, which not only catalogues but destroys what it lists. Individually each of the video frame works employ qualities of aesthetics, humour, irony, investigation and transformation. Collectively, the flickering collage of diverse perspectives presents a contemporaneous snapshot of digital artists’ responses to the elemental, addressing the innate state of thinking beings’ existence in a setting where they are both caretakers and destroyers. |
Notes
(i) The Arabic word for garden is حديقة (ḥadīqa). Other words for garden include janna (janna), which can refer to a paradise garden, and bustān (bustān), which is often used for an orchard or vegetable garden. I think we need keep the name simple Paradisus Paradsus is Latin for Paradise Garden so let’s cut it down - Paradise Garden (Paradise Herbarium – Phantom Flora?). could be mentioned but We need a name that works easily in all languages. This is Chinese: 天堂花園 - Pardusus - like an epiphany…
(ii) The audio components of the installation. will come from a 4-speaker sound system, with speakers being placed beneath the vitrine. The aural mix will be dynamic, ranging from the edge of perception, to a mix of the audio tracks of the videos below - and whispers from memories of both the past and the future.
(iii) 1meter high – rising to 1.5 meters high at the back with a 50cm gap from the wall. Dimensions might be slightly adjusted but with 2.75 x 2.75 x 1.5 m
(iv) These are to be specially commissioned from SEAM, a fibre art collective and each vine will be singularly created and have its own character - as if from nature itself - but due to it being fabricated ‘man’s hand’ can be seen to be everywhere - this is a surrealist gesture to alert the audience to the ideas being played with
(v) In consultation with ECC we are considering creating a reflective overhead mylar canopy where distortions of the screens are reflected, to further ask the audience to consider their part in what is taking place. We’d like to discuss with the ECC the construction of this as we believe this is not a difficult task to execute - its a lightweight frame clad in lightweight mylar which also affords the possibility of hanging artisanal vines from it.
(i) The Arabic word for garden is حديقة (ḥadīqa). Other words for garden include janna (janna), which can refer to a paradise garden, and bustān (bustān), which is often used for an orchard or vegetable garden. I think we need keep the name simple Paradisus Paradsus is Latin for Paradise Garden so let’s cut it down - Paradise Garden (Paradise Herbarium – Phantom Flora?). could be mentioned but We need a name that works easily in all languages. This is Chinese: 天堂花園 - Pardusus - like an epiphany…
(ii) The audio components of the installation. will come from a 4-speaker sound system, with speakers being placed beneath the vitrine. The aural mix will be dynamic, ranging from the edge of perception, to a mix of the audio tracks of the videos below - and whispers from memories of both the past and the future.
(iii) 1meter high – rising to 1.5 meters high at the back with a 50cm gap from the wall. Dimensions might be slightly adjusted but with 2.75 x 2.75 x 1.5 m
(iv) These are to be specially commissioned from SEAM, a fibre art collective and each vine will be singularly created and have its own character - as if from nature itself - but due to it being fabricated ‘man’s hand’ can be seen to be everywhere - this is a surrealist gesture to alert the audience to the ideas being played with
(v) In consultation with ECC we are considering creating a reflective overhead mylar canopy where distortions of the screens are reflected, to further ask the audience to consider their part in what is taking place. We’d like to discuss with the ECC the construction of this as we believe this is not a difficult task to execute - its a lightweight frame clad in lightweight mylar which also affords the possibility of hanging artisanal vines from it.
Examples of Potential Frame Works Below
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Barrier Reef by Terry Flaxton
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