The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions transplants, reroots, and propagates a queer, feminist gardening society founded by 12th century mystic and musician Hildegard von Bingen.
Still from bingenTV (2023) (HD video, running time: 43 minutes 43 seconds), by Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo. Performer in the image: Alice Morgan-Richards.
Image description: A person with long blond hair in and 80s ponytail on top of their head, is seated on a fake patch of grass in a tv studio with colourful perspex triangles all over the grey-white wall. Behind them are fake plants and plastic flamingo decorations. They’re wearing a flashy colourful exuberant blouse that’s sliding down revealing a tattoo on their upper arm. They’re wearing a white skirt and pink sliders. Next to them is a mug showing the logo of the TV show bingenTV. The image has a slightly grainy quality mimicking an old VHS tape.
In 2020, Dr Sophie Seita and Dr Naomi Woo co-founded The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions, which brings together an international collective of artists, gardeners, farmers, archivists, researchers, designers, as well as members of the public to share knowledge and build community across borders, to decolonise and queer gardening histories, botany, and archives through community workshops, gatherings, performance, and public art.
This collaborative research has actively fed into an exhibition at Mimosa House in London (Oct-Dec 2023) and public programming at Tete a Tete Opera Festival (London), Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham), Grand Union (Birmingham), Ruta del Castor (Mexico City), Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), and elsewhere.
The project has received external funding from the British Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, The Canada High Commission in the UK, Farnham Maltings, Arts Council England.
Sophie Seita also received internal funding from Goldsmiths’ Early Career Research Fund (ECRF) and the College’s International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF)– the ISPF Institutional Support Grant (ODA).
Still from bingenTV (2023) (HD video, running time: 43 minutes 43 seconds), by Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo. Performer in the image: Steffi Walker.
Image description: A person hugging a tree and smiling. They are wearing a beige fisher’s hat that partially obscures their face and an 80s rain jacket and jeans. Their right leg is attempting to wrap itself around the tree. The camera is pointing at them through the leaves of the tree which appear blurry and as if the camera was interrupting an intimate scene, eavesdropping.
bingenTV
In 2023, Sophie and Naomi presented a collaborative solo show at Mimosa House, titled bingenTV, in conversation with the Society, and produced by Queer Art Projects.
Working with video, textile, autofiction, and various installation processes, Sophie Seita’s and Naomi Woo’s exhibition pulls out and reroots the speculative potential of archives and queer history. Developed in conversation with The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions, a queer-feminist collective originally founded by the German mediaeval mystic and musician Hildegard von Bingen in the 12th century and ‘propagated’ by the artists in 2020—the exhibition centres on a queer gardening talk show, bingenTV, supposedly shot in 1987 and never aired, until now. Playful and flirty, this genre-bending talk show features a cast of queer characters real and fictional, past and present, in a whirlwind jaunt through space and time.
In addition to the three episodes of bingenTV, the exhibition also features new texts, two textile works, and installation pieces made specifically for the show.
1. and 2. (top row) Installation views of bingenTV, by Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo, Mimosa House, 2023. Photo: Laura Cobb. 3. (top row) Still from bingenTV (2023) (HD video, running time: 43 minutes 43 seconds), by Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo. Performer in the image: Ishmael Kirby. 4. (bottom row) Installation view of bingenTV, by Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo, Mimosa House, 2023. Photo: Laura Cobb.
Image description: 1. An A5 acetate rendering of a photograph of two women linking arms. The woman are Nadine Hwang and her life partner Nelly Mousset-Vos. 2. Installation view showing a textile piece from the side, an intro text in black vinyl on the right, and a wall piece, Unlearn what it means to move in this garden, 2023, using vinyl, yarn, pins. Underneath is a footnoted quotation in pink vinyl. 3. A scene from bingenTV (the film) with Ishmael Kirby in the Women’s Art Library. He’s wearing a Pits & Perverts t-shirt and a red 80s blazer, holding copies of Women Artists Slide Library magazine. 4. On the left wall is the title of the exhibition, name of the artists and producers. The white cube space shows a white, pink and black textile flag on the right which protrudes from the wall, held up by a pink fluorescent pole. The flowery lettering on the flag says ‘FLOWERS ARE OUR CURRENCY’ which curves around a pink-white circle, inside of which we see a black triangle and a white stitching cross. These crosses are also found on the other textile piece, a large, almost 3m long Jacquard knit textile piece that hangs from the ceiling, the lettering is the same as on the flag, and reads: TO TEND / TO SOW / TO GROW / TO MEND / TO MIX / TO TEACH / TO LEARN / TO MAKE / TO WEEP / TO HEAL / TO SING.
Sembrando Humedad, part of mare-a-ndo:
This project centres on a five-day learning gathering in Xochimilco (Mexico City) in April 2024 on the topic of community relationships with water. The encounter is hosted by the political public arts collective Ruta Del Castor, in Mexico City, in collaboration with Iniciativa Agroecológica Xochimilco (IAX), Arca Tierra, and the Escuela Campesina of Xochimilco—as well as local community members, farmers, artists, ecologists, academics, students, and others.
Ruta del Castor describe their curated gathering like this:
‘mare-a-ndo arises from an instance of language play that facilitates the animation of the movement of water through a verbal conjugation, asserting the inherent trait of continuity and periodicity of both the natural phenomenon and the word itself. mare-a-ndo is a durational curatorial project that gathers representation efforts around our relationship with water. Our starting point is the urgency of regenerating our agreement with water, acknowledging it as an indissoluble organism between communities and territories.’
The project’s aim is to share knowledge about sustainable indigenous farming, water conservation and environmental stewardship, increase awareness and empower communities to participate in dialogues and decision-making about water-related issues, and use art and collaboration to raise awareness and lead to collective action. Radio Nopal, a local collective station that uses its own transmission system, broadcast activities and reflections on the last day of the gathering.
On behalf of The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions, Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo facilitated a multi-disciplinary artistic workshop on the topic of preserving knowledge about water, survival, care, listening, and queer community. The workshop will be delivered in collaboration with Jehan Roberson and Victoria Perrie.
The artists will also work towards a collective publication in collaboration with the magazine Disonare.
Sembrando Humedad, curated by Ruta del Castor, 2024. Photo courtesy of Ruta del Castor and Eduardo Velasco Vasquez and Andrés Jurado.
Image Description: A group hug following ‘Tributaries: A Wet Ritual for Witnessing’ led by Victoria Perrie, Sophie Seita, and Jehan Roberson, at Sembrando Humedad. The group of people are gathered on a farm, educational institute, and conservation area in the wetlands of Xochimilco, Mexico City.
Sophie Seita
Sophie Seita is an artist who uses language as a material within and across performance, books, videos, sound, textiles, and installation. Their work has been commissioned, supported, performed, and published internationally, most recently, by the Roberts Institute of Art and Hunterian Museum in Glashow; Ma Bibliothèque; Queer Art Projects; Canada Council for the Arts; British Council; Arts Council England; Creative Darlington; Literarisches Colloquium Berlin; Kunsthalle Darmstadt; JNU (New Delhi); the 87 Press; Stanford University Press; and others. In 2020-2021, Seita was one of nine artists on the Constellations artist development programme run by UP Projects and Flat Time House, which focused on socially engaged practices and public art. In 2022, she was the Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence at Freie Universität Berlin; and in April 2023, they were artist in resident at Brown University and an invited guest lecturer at Cornell’s Humanities Center. Currently, she holds the transdisciplinary Werner Düttmann Fellowship 2023/2024 at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin.
Sophie is the Director of Critical Studies on the BA Fine Art Extension programme, and studio tutor on the BA Fine Art & History of Art joint honour programme. She also serves as Deputy Director of Research, working with Nina Wakeford and Becca Voelcker, as part of the research team of the department.
