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Hans Nickmans, Green Collections Manager Bokrijk Aboretum — Transcriptions

The oldest recorded tree in the world. (VID_20181206_122254.mp4)
HN: There was one doing his PhD or research on that — and he just went — he bought a brand new corer to try and count the rings. And he went to the park with the forest guard and everything and he tried to take a core and his corer got stuck, which can happen because they have a different type of tension in the trees and everthing. And he asked the forest guard: ‘OK my corer got stuck, but what do I do?’. And he said: ‘We have a lot of that tree here, just cut it down. It’s no problem, you can just take — take the part of the tree and you can count it in the lab.’ And he took it with him and already on his first day of counting, he was already — it was already older than the oldest recorded tree in the world. So he found the oldest tree in the world, but he cut it down. So it’s actually a really tragic story. I don’t know what happened to his PhD afterwards, but it is just one of those stories that you never forget, because that’s just horrible if it would ever happen to me.

The blind botanist (...120023.mp4)
HN: Yeah I met the developer at the beginning of this year, and he’s just very — because he’s almost blind — so he just knows. He was just like: ‘OK, just go to that field’ — he was talking to the person with the [indecipherable]. ‘Just go to that field’, because he knew in his head how it all worked. But he – yeah – at this point he’s becoming — he only had — he says: ‘I’m starting to fall down stairs’ and stuff like that. So he’s just — but because he couldn’t see anymore, he started losing his sight, he said: ‘I want to do something else for botany than what I would like to do’ — which is working with microscopes and working with flowers and very indepth. And so, that’s why he changed towards software development. For—to try and collect data for botanical gardens, to be sure that there is continuity and longevity in the data in those collections. So that’s, yeah.

A-L: That’s why he developed that.

HN: That’s why he started, or that’s why he started working in database, for database, because there are a lot of different databases that you can use for plant collections requirement, but this one is just so extensive. And the next one, the next update will be even more extensive because, as I said, you have new regulations about transfer of wild materials so you need certain certificates that you have to be able to, to sign. The people of country of origin, they have to sign it because — that by signing it they say that if you propogate it and you get a profit from it we don’t want any part of that profit. So, in the new software you will also be able to produce these type of certificates. Also, if you are exchanging material between gardens, for example, if it goes across borders you will have to take, for example — and also add that information and certificates and everything. And so, those transfer agreements, everything will be important in that [gestures to screen].  


How does the databse system allow for plants to take care of the humans who take care of them?











I stumbled upon this online and though it was interesting 
love relationship / human - spirit - trees / 
human and trees domain mediated by spirit(technolgy)
MAGIC SPELL AGAINST AROUSAL  / too much passion may cause anger and anxiety in the person who is working the spell, or an unbalanced sexual desire may prevent the sorcerer(ess) from winning over the beloved´s heart. Will is at the root of magic, but many times we jeopardize our chances by cultivating an unconscious fear of achieving our goals. The image that came to me is that when one works a love spell, one should keep unbalanced sexual desire, impatience and anger at bay as much as possible. It is necessary to keep the flame of love burning steady, happy and free instead of fearful of success or failure..

Arousal is coming upon me like a wild bull,
It keeps springing at me like a dog,
Like a lion it is fierce in the coming
Like a wolf it is full of fury
Stay! I pass over you like a threshold,
I walk right through you like a flimsy door,
I span you like a doorway.
I turn back your approach like a hobble,
I drive out the fieriness of your heart.


There is a Greek myth on the birth of Eros (Kerényi, Karl. Hermes the Guide of Souls, Spring Publications, Dallas, Texas, 1992):
"Need came begging at the door [where the banquet took place]. Resource was there, and she lied by his side and in time brought to life Eros. As the son of Resource and Need, it has been his fate to be always needy; nor is he delicate and lovely as most of us believe, but harsh and arid, barefoot and homeless, sleeping on the naked streets, in doorways, or in the very streets beneath the stars of heaven, and always partaking of his mother´s poverty. But, secondly, he brings his father´s resourcefulness to his designs upon the beautiful and good, for he is gallant, impetuous and energetic, a mighty hunter, and a master of device and artifice - at once desirous and full of wisdom, a lifelong seeker after truth, an adept in sorcery, enchantment and seduction".

The healing for anxiety quoted the spell against arousal and the almost masochist version of the birth of Eros above lies very much in holding on to Inanna´s girdle, She of Joy and Sex Appeal, who never tires to bring delight to the whole of humankind. When making a love spell, fight anxiety, impatience and unrealistic desire, and wait in perfect love and perfect trust for results to come up, true to the Spirit of the Goddess that blesses and goes beyond all love sorceries, because She is herSelf the Beloved and the Lover united as One, Pure Enchantment and Seduction.


A database anxiety

Labels nailed on trees. Trees identified by numbers in the green collection. Numbers entered in the database. Database queried to access numbers. Knowledge retrieved from the computer.  Illness of the green collection manager. Papers accumulating in red boxes in the office. Illness infecting the database as threatening blanks. blurring the aliveness and deathness of trees unaccounted for.  alive alive : excellent condition alive : good condition alive : fair condition alive : poor condition alive : questionable status alive : indistinguishable mass dead dead : deaccessioned/removed dead : unable to locate dead : deaccessioned/removed dead alive : indistinguishable mass alive : questionable status alive : poor condition alive : fair condition alive : good condition alive : excellent condition alive  Life Domain Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species Subspecies Hybrids  Taxonomy. Nomenclature. Names to control them. Code. Changing code. New code.  A vibration. A fleeting feeling of discomfort. Uncertainty About the health of the database. About the health of the collection. About the health of the green collection manager. About the sameness of the calculated world and the experienced world.  A database anxiety. That radiates from the green collection manager's computer. and passes through each of us.  That only the rain can cure when the office of the green collection manager becomes a shelter.  Speaking the words of the database. Questions. Answers. Questions. Answers. Questions. Repeat. Embodying the database. The database in one computer in the office. Knowledge from botany, taxonomy, books, delivery manifests, other places and other worlds, condensed in the office. Humans repeating the words of the database.  "A worldwide social engineering apparatus penetrated into every community." as told me Suzanne Treister's ironic tarot card. to answer my question.  database anxiety as un unbalance.  Repair in the form of an IF, an algorithmic function and an ontol
ogical speculation. Which entities compose the community ? Are unaccounted for ? in the database.  A spiral of concerns about representing faithfully or addressing respectfully the world out there the world beneath and the world within.  Knowledge retrieved from the computer. Database queried to access numbers. Numbers entered in the database. Trees identified by numbers. Labels nailed on trees.



Intention/Proposal

Market universalism
‘Market Fundamentalism’ is an overarching and universalising condition, in which efforts to remove obstacles to commodification and the movement of capital, to open up of goods and services to markets and the development of financial products are accepted as being ‘good’. It is conceivable that all forms of life can somehow be fashioned into financial products and traded on markets, however value predominantly returns to an elite few. What are the implications for forms of life who hold different points of view and practice alternative methods of worlding? Under these conditions is it possible to simply ‘keep the market at bay’?

Risky business
One proposal is that such groups might be able to develop ‘New Economic Spaces’ (NES) on blockchain secured platforms such as Ethereum. Communities would effectively develop financial products based on their lifestyles and beliefs, issue coins and trade, ultimately returning value to themselves and the groups they are in solidarity with.

Within ‘Rights of Nature’ discourses, it has been discussed how Indigenous people living ‘on Country’ contribute to the slowing down global warming. Hypothetically this ‘contribution’ to managing climate change could be financialised and traded (for example as an offset). Nevertheless, this is a risky business, given that such forms of life would significantly increase their exposure to market fluctuations and in particular to takeovers, ‘devaluation’ and the biases of investors who currently dominate markets. This emphasises the need for strategic cultural programs to accompany such developments in NES and ‘prepare’ potential investors to act in accordance with, for example, Indigenous interests.

Code(x)
The proposal is to develop a suite of protocols and syntax — an algorithmic spellbook — that can be used to support alternative modes of living via the proliferation of ‘spirits’. These programs faciliate the proliferation of specific desirable entities by fashioning those who are subject to their algorithmic processes into ‘vessels’, suitable for incorporation.

More links:
    the queering session: http://etherbox.constantvzw.org/pad/p/queeranalytics.databaseanxiety  
    http://etherbox.constantvzw.org/pad/p/Bokrijk  

How to include the audience ?

Offering hans a magic bundle


αe 
αK 

I would like to hear
what are other ways people can contribute
and  how can we help each other 
through more cooperation.