Cosmopoiesis of Mandragora
During the presentation ‘Cosmopoiesis of mandragora’ , Leonie Brander will talk about how the research into the medicinal plant mandragora transformed into a book in collaboration with Onomatopee and into a performance for a community choir of all ages in collaboration with Nina Guo.
Cosmopoiesis of mandragora
The Mediterranean-growing mandragora is a medicinal plant and one of the best-recorded gynaecological herbal substances across history. In Ancient Greece, it was used as an aphrodisiac, a sleeping aid and as a narcotic in surgeries, to induce labour and expel stillbirths. But the mandragora is much more than simply medicinal – the plant gets mysteriously depicted in drawings as half-human-half-plant. The stories that emerged over 3000 years around the enigmatic human-plant grew into a fairy-tale and even a belief known as the ‘Alraunglaube’ (eng. mandragora belief). The belief stimulated a blackmarket, was used in the hunt on witches as evidence of magic and was most potent where the plant itself never even grew: on the North side of the Alps. But by the start of the 19th century, the knowledge of the plant and its story vanished into obscurity.
The research Leonie Brandner conducted around the mandragora has taken on two forms: as a book titled Three Becomes Two Becomes One Becomes None - cosmopoiesis of mandragoras published by Onomatopee and as a sung performance for fifty singers and one actress in collaboration with the opera singer Nina Guo titled If Only.
Whereas the book is personal as much as historical research of the mandragora plant both as a plant and in narratives around Europe and Asia, the performance is a contemporary interpretation of the mandragora’s many myths, a homage to a magical plant in sung form.
