The MedicineFactory

Workshops
Participants are invited in weekly workshops led by herbal experts to look for herbs and plants in the Amstelpark to collect the ingredients for the medicines, which are then displayed in the exhibition and laboratory. Workshops Intuitive place approach for beginners took place on different days.

About the artist

EGBG (Research & Design, Art & Development) is an autonomous registration-and research office established in 1996. EGBG undertakes research which focuses on the ways people react when invited to look in another way at things which are taken for granted. The audience is explicitly invited to respond to the research and their responses become part of the work. The various forms of research are closely related to the forms people encounter in daily life. Thus EGBG made explorations through garbage bags with bags bearing the text Discontent Bags, billboards which read Don’t Disturb and a counter script to question telemarketers. Contrary to more typical research offices, the procedures are not established in advance and there are no desired results. Breaking through, enlarging and mirroring of expectations plays on all levels (for EGBG itself, the participants and clients) an important role (www.martijnengelbregt.nl).

MedicineFactory is a low threshold art project in which health, responsibility, social cohesion and the care for nature and environment meet each other at the work place. Medicine Factory is a public accessible work place in which people are given access to the healing effects of nature and make their own medicines. The term healthy is increasingly and more powerfully claimed by food manufacturers, pharmaceutical and technologically innovative organizations. These organizations react en masse to the priority of the consumer to stay as fit and healthy as possible. In the Orangerie a place will be created in which people will search for and produce their own medicine. The pavilion will be installed as a work place/laboratory/factory with all of the objects that description entails such as centrifuges, industrial ovens, food scales, microscopes etcetera. Participants are being invited to find a new connection to nature and recognize what is and is not good for them and to ascertain basic knowledge about the healing and edible nature in our cities that is available to us. In weekly workshops participants are being invited to search for herbs and plants to collect the ingredients for medicines which will be produced and showcased in the exhibition.

Every Friday and Saturday at 11-12.30, 12-45 –2.15 en 2.30–4 PM workshops Intuitive Plant Approach for Beginners. Participants search together with herbal experts in the park for ingredients to make their own medicine in the medicineFactory. Costs E3.50. Sign up at info@medicijfabriek.nl