Systema Naturae

Performing Creation

Oct 23, 2024

“I have lately taken in hand a rather lengthy performance. It is the taking photographical impressions of all, that I can procure, of the British algae and confervae, many of which are so minute that accurate drawings of them are very difficult to make” Anna Atkins

**Minna and Tuomo Kangasmaa,** **Chiaroscuro,** **2024**

Reading the conversation between Minna Kangasmaa and Sandra Vitaljic, I reflected on the title of one of the artist’s series, Systema naturae. This is the epithet under which Carl von Linné published his efforts to systematize nature. By counting stamens and pistils, he created a system that is still with us to this day. I am struck by the purely visual nature of his method. The accompanying text attempts to place Minna's work in dialogue with such visual efforts, as well as a meditation on the gaze, which is continually striving to regulate the flux of the universe.

The 19th-century botanist and photographer Anna Atkins (1799–1871) referred to her image- making of plants as a performative act. Her efforts to make photographic impressions of the algae and conifers growing in and around the British Isles, she proclaimed, were a ‘rather lengthy performance’. Today we can only imagine what this performance actually entailed, but it could’ve included collecting specimens, minutely preparing light- sensitive papers, orderly laying out the specimens on the paper, calculating the correct exposure time, developing, drying and finally arranging and printing in book format. A performance, and as such, it may be interpreted as a celebration of humans’ relationship to nature and a way for Atkins to establish her own personal relationship to technology, science, and the sun.

Indeed, sunlight did the job, much in a similar vein as Minna Kangasmaa approaches her work. Placing the actual specimen on top of the paper, the sun engraves a unique ‘photogenic drawing’. The dialogue between the plant and the image was immediate. In the case of Atkins, who aimed to free herself from the imperatives of scientific accuracy by pursuing an innovative use of the new photographic technologies. She did not set out to do scientific work but rather to merge art and science, on her own terms, and to claim a position as artist. Her focus was on visual properties - line and form, colour and space, transparency and opacity. The roots of her artistic language can be traced to one of the inventors of photography, Henry Fox Talbot who was a friend of the family and with whom she trained.

The desire to come close to nature, to fix its fragile presence on paper, was made possible by the invention of photography. Atkins could print her photograms in book format, and by doing so, carry a plant which already had wilted way into the future. The photogram also gave birth to possibilities of archiving and organizng, as well as new ways of sorting and relating in new ways. It became possible to observe nature irrespective of season and inhibiting weather circumstances. These photogenic drawings enabled the development of new relationships with nature, and established unique emotions as we were no longer dominated by nature’s own rhythm. This may in itself be referred to as a rather ‘lengthy performance.’

The title of Minna Kangasmaa’s work Systema naturae (1735) refers to Carl von Linné’s systematic inventory of nature, an inventory of not only organic materials such as plants and trees, but also of animals and minerals, which he set out to systematize. Based on a kind of homespun Latin, he invented the binomial naming system, which is still in use today.

His own family name came to give name to the Linnea plant (Linnea borealis). To honor his teachers and disciples, other plants were baptized in a similar manner. For instance, Alstroemia (Claes Alströmer) and Rudbeckia (Olof Rudbeck). Linnaeus’ vision was to organize the plants according to their reproductive system and in such an order that no one could mistake their position in his system. He summarized his own intent with ‘God created, Linné ordered.’

Compared to our contemporary society, Linné (1707-1778) lived at a time of sparse visual influences. The few illustrated tomes that existed were hard to come by. Prints weren’t in frequent circulation, and the camera was not yet invented. At a time of restricted image access, how did he come up with his visual system, and what may have influenced his visions?

Alongside his botanical activities, Linnaeus trained to be a physician. He assisted some of the autopsies carried out in the sparse light of wax candles at what is now the City Museum in Stockholm. Through his medical studies, he became familiar with what was a relatively recent discovery in Europe, the nervous system. He laid bare the fine threads of the root system of the Linnean flower plant and experienced visual similarities to the nervous system. He paid attention to drawings outlining military tactics and aimed at having his plants lined up as orderly as battalions and troops. Through the dynamic growth of world maps, many of them drawn by the famous Dutch map makers, the world became tangible, and he sent his disciples all over the globe. Through his strong network of global contacts, he was able to bring together thousands of plans and seeds.

As part of her PhD thesis at the Doctoral Studies program in Artistic Practices at the University of Gothenburg, Åsa Sonjasdotter focused both her research and artistic practice on locations where industrial farming methods, for instance, the spread of monocultures, came to replace traditional, local specific cultivation practices. The aim of her research was to find ways to return to diversity and abundance by implementíng a diverse range of cultivating techniques and practices. In her thesis, she relates to Linné’s Systema Naturae, which, by excluding the peasant knowledge systems and methods, historically came to divide the peasants’ way of living and of understanding into nature and culture.

Without doubt, Linné’s Systema Naturae came to have repercussions in many fields. His vision of an orderly arranged nature turned out to have some negative consequences. Not just for farming, as Sonjasdotter has demonstrated, but also for colonizing the human gaze and suppressing our perception of diversity. Distinguished from Atkins, Linné was also a performer in a drama that is still unfolding.