Joachim Koester and Stefan A. Pedersen

You too want to move, to become something or someone else

“We imagined this narratively sequenced playlist as a journey through a dense and slightly bewildering vegetation where unexpected things can happen — a place that lies somewhere in extension of our original contribution to The Botanical Mind.”

Listen to Koester & Pedersen’s sound piece - Insect Silver Noir 2018 – in the As Within, So Without chapter.

Johnston Sheard

“The music connects through recurring pastoral themes. The Baroque pieces, even when not specifically mentioning plants, are all taken from the sub-genre ‘Pastoral Opera’. Since Ancient Greek times urbanised humans have lamented a lost period (The Golden Age) where humans lived in harmony with nature. The pastoral as a mode strips back to a less convoluted imagery. Like patterns in nature or Jung’s archetypes, vegetative metaphors fit smoothly with the organic behaviours of the psyche, a self-prescribed antidote to the neuroses created by the over constructed symbolism of the ‘civilised’ age.”

Johnston Sheard is an artist and composer combining short operas with installation and sculpture. His work depicts adventures within an after-life mythology.