Group performance around installation Hortus Whittensis, the former Whitten Timber Yard
now named Area10, London SE15, 28/03/04.

Made solely from matter found on site, Hortus Whittensis is an indoor weed garden, where – beneath the resident pigeons’ main defecation area - I’ve transplanted and labelled specimen of every species of plants that I found colonising the yard of the former timber warehouse. For Carmen Horti Whittensis, a choral performance to inaugurate the weed garden, singers in floral attire chant the scientific plant names, Gregorian style: alto voices call out the various herbs (Sisymbrium officinale etc), bass voices respond with grasses (Poa annua and Hordeum murinum only). All voices join up for the final benediction in spoken Latin, expressing the hope the pigeon dung may act as fertilizer. (As it turns out, it will kill them.)