For the next session of the THELEME-Interarts & Intermedia Seminars 2022-2023, Magdalena Krzosek-Hołody (PhD Student, Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw) will be presenting a paper entitled “A Curious Case of Yellow Marigolds: Gardening, Technology, and Visual Culture”. An abstract and biographical note can be found below.

This session will take place on May 18, from 3pm to 4.30pm, in-person and online (room B112.G, FLUL Library; Zoom link).


Abstract:
A Curious Case of Yellow Marigolds: Gardening, Technology, and Visual Culture

In Paul Newman’s film from the early 70s ‒ The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a young girl named Matilda grows yellow marigolds (Tagetes erecta) for her school project. The flowers accompany her throughout the film, becoming her friends and saviors. Abused by her unstable and miserable mother, Matilda sees the only opportunity to overcome her situation in devoting herself to science1. The yellow marigolds symbolize her strong will and determination. They are, though, not just regular garden flowers. ‘Man-in-the-Moon’ variety has a very curious history. It originated from American gamma gardens of the 50s ‒ special horticultural facilities developed in the national laboratories to test the influence of radiation on plants. The so-called gamma or atomic gardens were part of the nationwide ‘Atoms for Peace’ program announced by newly elected U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 during the meeting of the United Nations general assembly. Experiments with the use of radiation on plants continued mainly in the late 50s and early 60s, being later replaced by genetic engineering. They were a vivid example of the post-war techno-optimism and a signifier of a very specific approach to nature which is no longer present in cultural narratives. Inspired by Newman’s movie, I would like to follow the representations of the phenomenon of atomic gardening in visual culture. By doing so, I would like to discuss the role of scientific experiments on plants in popular imagery and the inevitable entanglement of nature and modern technologies.

The presentation will be based on my academic research as well as a small exhibition I designed in 2022 titled Atomowy ogród dla Jazdowa. The exhibition featured, among others, a Polish poster for the film The Effects of Gamma Rays… (1972) designed by Włodzimierz Terechowicz. The artist somehow portrayed a completely different species of flowers than those shown in the movie. The Polish translation of the film’s title followed this mistake as well. Instead of aksamitki (Tagetes) it said nagietki (Calendula). I also discovered that most of the Polish critics' reviews of Newman’s film show a great extent of ignorance on what the experiment carried out by Matilda was really about. This all led me to the concept of an exhibition which challenged common knowledge of the technological history of plants in the XXth century.


Magdalena Krzosek-Hołody (1989), graduate of the University of Science and Technology in Cracow, with specialization in visual communication and sound design. Currently affiliated with the University of Warsaw, Faculty of ‘Artes Liberales’, where she teaches courses on the entanglement of art, visual culture and environmental sciences. Her academic research concerns environmental history, public art and critical design. She specializes in cooperation with cultural institutions and NGOs. For the last few years she has been getting expertise and training in landscape architecture, botany and floristics, currently enrolled in urban gardening program at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. She runs a small research based studio: Mikroklimaty (https://mikroklimaty.com/)

Academic profile:
http://al.uw.edu.pl/kadra/krzosek-holody-magdalena/