Seeds Of The Nation
The good, the bad, and the ugly seeds
"He answered and said to them: "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one."
Since we human know agriculture, start to caligraph, and build up stories - seeds are with us.
Seeds represent God's will in bible, pomegranate seeds are symbol of fertilisation in middle age, fruits (fertilized seed) on a table in painting means delicacies in Renaissance high-society life, pineapple is a colonization trophy, according to DEA report, some may refer to cocaine, heroine, or marijuana as 'seed', and 'Seed AI' is self-code writing AI.
In Claire Denis's 2018 movie, High Life, she explore the poetic symbol of seed in far future when earth send a prisoners to mine an energy from black hole in a life-threatening process, at the same time, the prisoners also a lab rats of fertilisation experiment: A tares, bad seeds, from earth resisting a seeding science trial, finding a seed of hope in hopeless place.
'Seeds' A24 zine issue 09 by Claire Denis came out year after the movie. While High Life is investigation the idea of seed in symbolic way, 'Seeds' zine is gathering the contents about seeds in more bold straight way. We're talking about a rock band named 'Bad seeds', a park seed NASA send to space, film stills of seed growing, a seed contained flower photographs. Looking at seed in today culture with different lens and field, makes seeds not a complicated concept or art history fun facts - but plants in our everyday too.
Seeds live before us, upon us, and will definitely outlive us.
Not only 'Seeds' zine, A24 produce a numerous issue of zine by directors, actors, film industry veterans selling in a price of tacos (5-6$). I find it really interesting that the zines show vision of the people behind film by expanding the idea of their works into things farther than the film itself. It's cheap, creative, good for PR, and good for artists to exercise their vision. I'm impressed!
