Oh Rats! It’s Deceiving!

Antoine Renard

Following from his research on consumption cycles and cognitive representation, and based on a long interest in narcotics and altered states of reality, Antoine Renard encountered a naturally growing specimen of Datura stramonium in the summer of 2010 – a plant that, through thousands of years of coexistence alongside human activities, has obtained a significant cult status for its various properties. Harvesting the Datura’s seeds, he cultivated a large number of plants in his studio and garden using hypertonic methods. The outcome was a crop of organic art objects steeped in potential, altered and sculpted. Photographer Maxime Ballesteros, in his trademark stark and bright style, caught the artist with his creations. Alongside with Merel Cladder’s writing and comments over the course of the book, the result is a project that crosses the fields of contemporary art, biotechnology, shamanism, consumerism and the global sharing of anecdotal experiences found on the Internet.

Plant project texts: Merel Cladder

Photographs: Maxime Ballesteros

Design: FUK Graphic Design Studio www.fuklab.org

Editor: John Holten

September 2013, English, French

14.8 x 20 come, 62 pages, 10 colour ills. Softcover

ISBN: 978-3-943196-19-1

€10

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First Edition: 100

Published by Broken Dimanche Press

Sonnenallee 27

12047 Berlin

www.brokendimanche.eu