FREE HERBAL MARKET:

Healing planT products

MOTIVATION LETTER: Time - i s what we need!

Town - Urbanity and the speedness of the life constantly make the pressure which makes people feel stressed. Body's intelligence gives sIgnals which are usually hardly recognizable. And it continues to live under the stress. When the system is overwhelmed with the pressure, disease appears.

Technology – Free Herbal market is a mixed media project of etnobotany free market products. Artist subverts the chain of market logic since the artist plays the role of the donor, aiming to bring holistic approach into the healing usage of city dwellers. The Artist aims to bring knowledge of phytotherapy into the common fruit and vegetable city market or the square adapted for this purpose. Holistic medecine is known for its understanding of a human as a whole, where the bodys' sufferings are provoked by psychological ones. Nowadays alternative medicine has become popular but very expensive! I want to share this knowledge the common people and offer them temporary relief for free.

Trauma - Conservative western medicine has been treating the body as an object and thus removed the self healing potentials of the human psyche to help the body.Body as a subject is a missing link (an empty space) in the western culture. Inverse relation to the body as the object has been implemented due to the capitalistic logic of control of knowledge incarnated in the authority of official medicine and complemented pharmacology. Everyone knows that nutrition and health are among the first spheres of economic power. Next are issues of death. City life is a death productive mechanism where alcohol, tobacco, drugs and other forms of self denial are dominatng as the answers to daily stress.

Transition - Transition is a period which itself needs to overcome aspects of a mechanic daily routine and to become adaptable to inner change! Transition is a period of the state maturing. Dealing with the issues of public work, in the form of the artist's positioning, this work could raise the question of incorporating post socialist art as products on the EU trade market!

These are the reasons for implementing such a project through the Air Cruise 2006., in the EU food trade market as a form of Cultural Healing Strategy!

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT:

Short:

FREE PLANT MARKET is a mixed media artistic project made in the form of relational aesthetics. The project aims to bring knowledge from Serbian and Montenegrian traditional etnomedicine into the cities of western Europe in the form of the gift. The project will help in changing the nasty media image created during the '90. over the population from S&M. On the other hand, it will bring temporary relief for EU city dwellers- my audience on Free herbal marke due to Healing PlanT products.

Thesis - The history of icons refers to the economic and political condition through time. Graphics systems as models of representation have been known since pre-history. Primarily they were used to signify magical and healing powers. Fear of the unknown and the projection of power have been linked since the concept of objectivity first appeared. No doubt, ancient time's history is remembered today due to icons of power. Since the first reign of the pharaohs, Greek and Roman tsars, Christian fresco art, and bourgeois portraits: all iconography represented the political and economical power. They have gained authority and glory in the temples of eternity. In the information era, we witness new paradigms of power related to the distribution of information and manipulation. Goods and their delivery are now forms of power distribution. The owners of corporations have been building the temples of capital and taking over the media space. TV advertisements, billboards and other marketing strategies are tools of power. In the holy trinity of consumerism: Brand-Design and Goods have become replicates of aesthetic experience as everything is subject to the utilitarian logic of mercantilism and goods fetishism. Consumerism and the electronic media enabled spirituality to become packaged: “order now!” We don't doubt that marketing analysis use the message of animist's paintings: » Paintings have the power!” As the populist variation of image representations: billboards, posters and advertisments affect our perception today!

Since I've learnt that “Culture is essentially falsification”, digital technology encouraged me to take on the role of manager of Healing Cultural Strategy (HCS). Therefore, relying on pop-art, conceptualism and digital technologies referring to marketing strategies of product popularisation, I claimed: Plants have the power!

Using traditional natural plant products, secret instructions for removing fears, stress & blockades and inquiry, I'll present art as the HCS. While self-positioning, I'll navigate in between different roles of power, such as the donor, the phytotherapist and the psychological advisor.

TO DO:

Trade spot – To rent a moonlight or a cardboard kiosk which should be settled on the square or on the market. I plan to make a marketing campaign for the products I aim to donate. To prepare announcments in dailly newspapers, posters, and if possiblly on city billboards offering Serbian and Montenegrian traditional products of etnomedicine for free . Each product has its purpose and generally they are designed as preventive and supplementory treatments for everyday problem (such as stress, circulation, rheumatism, colds, digestive and other less serious health problems). The artist will communicate with the „customers“/audience's problems in the form of an inquiry and make a record of it. The organizer should provide funds for the free of charge distribution of the etnobotany products from S&M which I will buy from certificated healing plant producers. Each product will be coverd by „genuine“ label -digital graphic prints of my artistic brand: Healing planT.

Therapy - The kiosk will be equipped with the following elements:

•  Inquiry list book of fears and other health problems.

•  List of genuine healing herbs from Serbia and Montenegro and their usage.

•  Paper printed bags of seeds of healing plants with the secret instructions packed in each bag.

•  Extracts of the selected plants oils and tinctures made as a traditional etnomedicine cure.

•  Herb teas with manuals,

•  and a variety of planted healing herbs in clay flowerpots.

Tradition - In my everyday life, since 1985. I have been practicing bioenergy and since 1994, also head shiatsu massage, helping over 300 people, temporarily resolving their energy blockages. Since 2000 I have been collecting plants on the mountains of Serbia and Montenegro. My now passed away mother was curing a cancerous melanoma for 3 ½ years with selected herbs and thus helped her biological defense mechanism fight the illness without using classical medicine. Herb teas and tinctures are the common health cures in my familly life.

Follow up:

During the Air Cruise 2006., the project will explore the types of fears and traumas people experience in post-capitalist societies. In the second phase, on my way back home, the project will compare the citiy life we have in transition.

December 2005. Belgrade

Gabriela Vasic

Since 2000. (Project Gifting, Gallery Zvono, Belgrade ), Gabriela Vasic has been using donations and gifting as forms of art positioning and gaining the registering data of the audience. Look for:http://www.gabrielavasic.com/projekti/index.html