The Film Club: Silphium & The Offspring Resembles the Parent

The film “Silphium” (2014) is based on a long-lost plant of the same name. The plant is thought to have become extinct through overexploitation as it became incredibly valuable, partly because of its use as a contraceptive. It is depicted on coins from the Greek colony of Cyrene in present-day Libya, the only place where it grew. Silphium is thus remembered by the thing that killed it – money. The film “Silphium” examines the image as surface; embossing or projection and as memory; the “coining” of a specific place in an undifferentiated space.

The title of the film ‘The Offspring Resembles the Parent’ (2015) is taken from Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ where he argues that it is unnatural for money to earn interest. This is because, unlike natural resources such as livestock or crops, it cannot actually reproduce itself – “Money exists not by nature but by law”. The film is based on emergency notes from the 1920s, money printed during periods of crisis and inflation, or for enclaves with no predefined forms and clear boundaries, such as ghettos, concentration camps or colonies.

When Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was ‘translated’ from Greek to Latin, she became Moneta, the origin of our coin and English ‘money’. Lina Selander’s films return to the observation that memory and economy are inseparable in the sense of a capital we manage or pass on.

After the screening, Lina Selander and film curator Martin Grennberger will be in conversation

Lina Selander

Lina Selander’s films and installations can be read as compositions or models of thought in which ideas and conditions are explored and weighed. She examines the relationship between memory and perception, photography and film, language and memory.

Selanders soloexhibitions include; Kunst Haus Wien; Argos – Centre for Art and Media, Brussels; Iniva, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal. She represented Sweden at the 2015 Venice Biennale in an exhibition organised by Moderna Museet.

Martin Grennberger

Martin Grennberger is a writer, film curator and co-founder of the magazine Walden. He has curated film screenings at EXiS (Experimental Film and Video Festival, Seoul), Light Industry (New York) and Moderna Museet (Stockholm).