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Authentic Drama - It's Called Life |
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Why is the imagination so highly valued in our culture?
Is everyday reality so unsatisfactory that the splendor we
crave is only fulfilled by mental gymnastics?
Why do we relish contrived spectacles and processed drama?
Are our real life experiences too mundane to provide
extraordinary experiences?
Why is it necessary to spend multimillion dollar budgets,
concoct technological wizardry, and assemble casts of thousands to keep us entertained?
Are perceptions that are free and accessible also humdrum and
predictable?
The more time I spend producing my own food, the less need I
have for imagination, contrivance, and entertainment. Drama surrounds me.
The frog’s demeanor was calm, despite the fact that one of
its hind legs was lodged deep in the throat of a yard long garden snake. It was
the snake that was agitated, struggling to widen its flexible jaws enough to
swallow its prey, but thwarted by the chubby leg that dangled beyond its grasp.
Eleven goslings settled down to sleep into the cozy down
comforter of each other’s young plumage. In the morning, the pastoral scene had
become a grave site. Four bodies lay strewn in the long grass, downed by a
single bite on their infant necks. The others goslings vanished without a
trace. We suspect coyotes performed the deed. There was no choice but to
participate in the carnage. The abandoned babies were cleaned and simmered in
red wine flavored with wild chives and mushrooms. The chickens ate the innards
and the pig ate the bones.
Herons help themselves to fish from the pond. Broad-winged crows
swoop silently into the poultry pen and alight with freshly laid duck eggs. Chickens nibble on my lettuce sprouts. Chipmunks
ravage my strawberry plants. All critters get hungry. Every living entity is
driven to maintain itself. These facts lie beyond the reach of morality and
sentiment. They simply are. They ‘are’ sumptuous, astounding, wondrous examples
of authentic drama.
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The stream that is a major feature on my property, contributing
offerings of visual delights and opportunities of engagement all four-seasons of the year,
was not among the reasons why my husband and I purchased the parcel of land upon which we currently reside. The stream
was hardly present then. Gradually it emerged as Skip and I removed the multi millennial
accumulation of leaves, twigs, branches, trunks, silt, pebbles, and boulders
that choked the lateral depression running from high ground to low. Opening the channel funneled the rainwater and
cleared the clogged heads of springs that now contribute steady
trickles of cool, mineral-rich water that ultimately feeds into Sepasco Lake below.
As we worked, the elongated zone of amorphous dampness was
transformed into a crisp meandering bank that bordered flowing, crystalline
waters. The lugubrious and dull sameness of the disheveled terrain gradually
morphed into a vibrant setting where liquid, stone, soil, moss, bush, and trees
regained their individualities. They invited new populations of frogs, blue
gills, water beetles, wood thrushes, fox, coyotes, chipmunks, and salamanders to
engage with them in new functional alliances. Even age-old trees sprouted young branches and clothed them in fine new greenery. Year by year, in steady increments, vitality
and diversity replaced insipidness and sameness.
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Cynicism, that nasty kid on the contemporary art block, suddenly
seems less entrenched than it has for the past few decades. Love is sprouting
in its cracks. Two staunch advocates of the sweetest and most innocent sorts of
love include Yoko Ono and Jiri Kovanda.
Ono, the cutest, high-spirited veteran of tender feelings, is
currently traveling the globe as a self-appointed ambassador of love. She is so
endearing in this role that she is inspiring lifelong misanthropes to lift the
tiny plastic flashlights she distributes and joyfully comply with her
instructions to learn the code of a language that says it all with just three
words. One flash means “I”. Two flashes mean “love”. Three mean “you”. Flashers
of love are proliferated in auditoriums and stadiums around the globe, eagerly replacing
their willfulness with willingness to proclaim their affections to the great, all-embracing,
anonymous “you”. Their thumbs seem never to weary.
The Czech artist Jirí Kovanda has promoted love by positioning
himself behind a large window, holding up a note that asks passers-by to kiss him through the glass. Remarkably, they do,
expressing the range of affection that attends this loving act: shyness,
passion, tenderness, and so forth. In a culture where institutions and authorities
excel at hostile actions, Kovanda provides a vital arena to practice the art of
loving actions.
These artists are presenting love as a viable alternative to
distrust, aversion, suspicion, fear, defensiveness, aggression that have long been
in vogue. Please join me in reinforcing their efforts. I send you my heartfelt
good wishes, and would be delighted to receive yours in exchange. I also pledge
to devote love to the waters, the air, the soils, and critters who occupy
them.
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Imagine that you had the opportunity to send one
communication to Mother Nature.
What kind of message would
you send her?
Condolences or congratulations?
Love letter or hate letter?
Advice or request?
Bill or payment?
Invitation or rejection?
Warning or assurance?
Announcement of win or loss?
Summons or release?
Other?
By what means would you
transmit this message?
High tech or low tech?
Personal or mediated?
Emissary or delegation?
Human or non-human?
Slow route or instantaneous?
Sensory or extra-sensory?
Other?
Please send me your responses.
Thank you.
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Dear
Friends,
May I
share heartening evidence of the deepening partnership between art and ecology?
Recently
I began to notice that galleries and museums were hosting exhibitions that
resembled many eco-art works. I started collecting examples in a file named
“Exhibitions: Ecological Models of Organization”. It is quickly filling up.
These exhibitions share the following characteristics of ecosystems:
Structurally,
they function like systems of energy flow patterns (art) within habitats
(museums) for communities (arists and audiences).
Formally,
they depend upon relationships between these elements.
Temporally,
they instigate local perturbations that ripple beyond their borders and
initiate evolutionary transformations.
By
elevating responsiveness over preservation and vigor over longevity, these
eco-display strategies cultivate the same conditions that assure the robustness
of ecosystems - they willingly teeter at the brink of chaos. Biologists report
that vitality is maximized in precarious states. Does this apply to museum
display?
Eight
examples of such display practices are posted on this web site Click "essays".
If anyone
is working on exhibitions that display these qualities, or knows of
other examples, please share this information. I'm also eager to hear your
thoughts about this phenomenon. Is it an anomaly or a trend?
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The ground remains frozen, but the air throbs with expectancies.
It is readying itself to receive the coming season’s offerings of winged insects,
powdery pollens, and bird songs. Today I, too, anticipated this annual event by
inserting seeds, one-by-one, in tiny soil packets and setting them in the warm,
dark shelf beside the refrigerator. There they will hopefully and healthfully renew
their genetic stock.
This process has been performed before by uncountable
unknowable people. Despite the onset of gridded networks and cyber exchanges,
it remains a vital connective tissue linking seed-planters across time and
space.
Turning the ignition to start my car, and booting up my
computer, and switching a station on the radio don’t offer the same inspirational
enrichment. I wonder why, since they too have been performed by uncountable
strangers before me. What constitutes a solemn and uplifting ritual of renewal?
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Landscape's Feet, Mouths, Eyes... |
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Foothills
Headland
Mouth of river
Eye of storm
Face of cliff
Brow of ridge
Shoulder of valley
Arm of sea
These words and phrases indicate that the landscape and the
human body are natural extensions of each other - that the physicality of one
is correlated with the physicality of the other. This seems odd since the contemporary
experience with landscape is primarily a visual aesthetic experience. Shoes don’t
get muddy. Fingernails stay clean. It is virtual not corporeal. Perhaps these
words indicate that it is also metaphorical, not actual.
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