Nothing of Importance Occurred
Recuperating a Herball for a 17th century Angolan midwife at the Cape
A project of recuperation of missing narratives at the Cape through artistic research, speculative investigation and transversal encounters
Nothing of Importance Occurred has as a focus on retrieving a library of plant-medicinal knowledge that might have informed enslaved ancestor, Maaij Claesje of Angola, midwife in the Company Slave Lodge in Cape Town. The project follows streams of contraceptive plant knowledge that flowed to the Cape through the bodies of enslaved women from Angola, Moçambique, and Madagascar, and from India, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, as well as through the bodies of women emigrating from the Netherlands, and Huguenots fleeing France. The investigation traces practices already existent at the Cape in the healing ecologies of Khoi, Nama, and San women. Because upwards of four million Angolans were trafficked to the Americas, the project follows recorded practices among women there too.
The project manifests through collaborative Fieldguides, performative Travelogues and Processions, polyvocal Herballs, Plant Duets and Clandestine Radioworks, and a series of Returns.
Nothing of Importance Occurred is the initiative of Wendy Morris who works through the entities of The Company : the Wandering Womb, Orlando Preternaturalist, Muriel Emissary to the Past, I the Ear and !midwif.
Recipe-as-Archive
Kerrievis, or Pickled Fish as it is also known, is a dish that entangles histories…
Compounded
Navigating legacies of contract labour / Namibia / Compounded : Navigating legacies of contract labour…
Fieldguide Gathering
Polyvocal Reading of Fieldguide vol 1 with Orlando Preternaturalist, Nadia Kamies and Ten Voices at…
Clandestine Radio
RADIO HUSH HUSH / HET HUIS PAVILION / MIDDELHEIM MUSEUM / ANTWERP / 2023 Radio…
Travelbreath
Intermediaries of the wind / BITTER WALK WIND SING / Ostend 2024 TRAVELBREATH : Lois…
Bitter Walk Wind Sung
Viatrix and the Journeywomen lead the procession back to the beach. Photos by Wannes Cré
Wind Sing
Viatrix sings the Midwife’s Herball into the Wind VIATRIX : Wen Hui Tsang. Photos by…
Taste Bitter
Great Yellow Gentian (Gentian lutea) grows in the hills of the Pyrenees. The root of…
Bitter Walk Wind Sing
The Company of Fifty carried the Midwife’s Herball out to meet the winds of the…
A Certain Herb / Folder
Setting out a story of a contraceptive pessary, a plan to lend an ear to…
Bitter Walk Wind Sing
A PROCESSIONAL WORK THAT HONOURS BITTER PLANTS, FORGOTTEN MIDWIVES AND UNLICENSED FEMALE PRACTITIONERS In BITTER WALK…
Call for participation
BITTER WALK WIND SING A Performative Procession DE LANGSTE DAG / OOSTENDE / KAAP &…
A Certain Herb
WHAT SHALL I DO IF I AM MADE PREGNANT BY YOU? I SHALL BE DISHONOURED…
An Ear to Ethnobiologists
SETTING UP A SERIES OF DIALOGUES WITH ETHNOBIOLOGISTS FOR THE PROJECT ‘A CERTAIN HERB’. Last…
Midwife’s Herball Middelheim / Diagram
TABLING THE VIRTUES, SOMEWHAT ABBREVIATED, OF TWELVE PLANTS ONCE KNOWN TO BE VERY USEFUL TO…
Mary Lowndes and Suffragette banners
The form of the banners made for Procession at Middelheim Museum is influenced by the…
A Hysterie of Guiné Weed and Sorrow Seed / lyrics
Procession of Contraceptive Plants and Forgotten Midwives / video
The Procession is a part of Nothing of Importance Occurred, a project of recuperation of…
Conversation between Wendy Morris and curator Pieter Boons
Conversation between Pieter Boons, curator of the Artistic Research Project, and Wendy Morris, in the…
Installation / Radio Hush Hush / Middelheim Museum
Summer installation Middelheim Museum Radio Hush Hush was accompanied to het huis pavilion at Middelheim…
Belly Full of Blind Highways
A Letter by Wendy Morris / commissioned by KAAP and artist collective Dear, The third…
Strain Against the Archives / Fieldguide Gathering / Cape Town
A gathering around Fieldguide #1, UNPICK, RESTITCH – Doilies, Medorahs, Labouring Plants by Nadia Kamies. Read more…
There, Listening / Fieldguides Gathering / Kamiesberg
A three-day gathering in Kamiesberg/Namaqualand. Read more here
Fieldguide Gathering / Strain Against the Archives
Deep Histories Fragile Memories,in collaboration with Cape Town Museum,invite you to Strain Against the Archives…
Rooted Encounters Symposium and Fieldguide Gathering
Rooted Encounters: Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings + Ecologies of Artistic Research. 8-9 November, 2022…
The Return
We are picking a path northwards, along sandy tracks and mountain passes. This is an…
Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist
An ambulatory library of ten chapbooks that mark a return from Cape Town to Angola. Volumes 1-3…
Exhibition / Ninguém teria acreditado / Pinacoteca Sao Paulo
The audio installation, A Hysterie of Guiné Weed and Sorrow Seed, is a part of…
A Hysterie of Guiné Weed and Sorrow Seed
A duet across the Atlantic of two esteemed weedworts with long histories of use as…
Lost Volumes
Sixty stories will make up a set of Volumes, twelve in all. Lost Volumes, scattered…
Travelogue of the Wandering Womb, Her Fantastic Encounters and Curious Utterings
As a Thread Winding Backwards, an Audio Eerie + Prologue + A Tale of Eleven…
Exhibition
NO ONE WOULD HAVE BELIEVED – NIEMAND ZOU HEBBEN GELOOFD – PERSONNE N’AURAIT CRU HENRIQUE…
Emissary to the Past
The suitcase stands empty in the studio. The thousand letters once crammed into it have…