BOUQUET OF WILD FLOWERS
As a way to look at forests as a found object, as a place of post - rationalisation, an entity that will never be seen for its truth. As I explored the forest, it became clear that humanity will forever look at the forest from an external perspective. What makes of humans such an alien to the forest, is reason. As they use
reason,
what
they
see
is
only
the
possibilities,
not
the
forest’s truth. The forest sees in itself the truth. First will come the presentation of myths re-written, then will come the bouquet, later will exist the present day schizophrenia vis-avis the forest.
VICO’S GIANTS
After Noah’s arc saved humans and animals from the storm, big dense forests covered the earth, and spread their canopees to the point of hiding the soil from the sky. Humans were free from rules and society. 1They
evolved
and
turned
into
beastial
incestious
wild
and
natural
giants, wandering in the forest, hunting an picking wild fruit from the trees. They lived in the darkness, as man in his happiest, most free state. He was free from the nostalgia of his past, and free from the burden and worry of his future. The forest is therefore looked at as the world’s preexisting condition. Until one day, during a storm, the giants wander into a clearing, and witness what they had never encountered before: a world beyond the forest. What they saw was the enraged sky, growling with thunder and flashing the earth with raging lightning. They felt fear and admiration. What this represented for them, was not a natural phenomena, but a character they named ‘Jove’. Jove was the first god man created. For one, the giants used their imagination, to see a god that lived in the sky. A god the forest canopee hid from them. From that point, man feared the forest, hated it, and seperated from it. From that point, man decided to seperate from the forest, and to grow beyond it.
1
from ‘New Science’ - Vico
EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Gilgamesh, god king of Uruk,2 a city that lay next to the Euphrates, was and oppressive king. He exercised his ‘droit du seigneur’ on the new brides, the evening of their wedding days. He also enslaved the men and made them do hard labour. One day, upon looking over the city wall, he traumatised by the sight of dead bodies flowing down the Euphrates, as a post mortum ritual, like dead logs, vanishing in the horizon. He realised that he too, shall die and flow in the Euphrates, someday. He wished to become immortal. He trusted the people to keep his memory alive forever. He had to accomplish something extraordinary, and by doing so, become immortal. He decided to venture to the Forbidden Forest of Cedars, in the western mountains of Phoenicia, slay the demon guardian, and behead it. And so, in an epic battle, he does. He builds a raft made out of cedars, and travels back home to Uruk. In this story, we see how entering the forest is an extraordinary act; how the forest is a place of great danger, where demons and beasts wander. Here the forest is no place for mortals, they should keep out, as they don’t belong.
from ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ tablets unearthed in Mesopotamia - interesting to highlight that this is the oldest myth known to man, the foundation of what we call civilisation, and that from it we can see how man percieved the forest in this early stage of civilisation 2
DARK AGES
In the Middle Ages, the concept of ‘homme sauvage’ was very popular in literature.3 They would usually be insane men, outcasted by society, and went to the forest to make it their home. In many tales, brave knights would seek an adventure in the forest.4 The creatures they would encounter in the forest would result in them returning as more glorious and valourous than when they left for the forest. Forests were the dwellings of outlaws, outcasts, an fugitives. Anyone who didn’t belong. The forest is a place that exists according to a different set of rules. The forest law made it illegal to go to the forest. The forest and the city thus built an object / counter-object relationship. The concepts of wilderness
and
order
create
an
inter-dependance
between
each
other,
meaning one could not exist without the other. Ever since the giants’ break from the forest, human and the natural seperated and took different forms of existence, however, they have found unity in doing so. This special relationship is materialised by the wall that seperates both, but it is also the only entity that joins one to the other.
3
summarised from ‘Forests’ - Harrison
4
e.g. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
DESCARTES’ ENLIGHTENMENT
With the end of the Christian Era, or the Dark Ages, came the rise of knowledge. The age of Enlightment is for Descartes5 the beginning of the age of reason as opposed to the age of faiths. Descartes states that humans are superior to other species because they use reason, which enables them to evolve. He talks about the forest in terms of mastery and possession. According to him, humans are masters of the forest and the natural, because of their capacity to build an understanding of it. Descartes advancement.
He
sees sees
the in
forest the
as
forest
resource, its
to
utility
be
used
and
for
notes
human
that
by
understanding the forest, one understands its life and death, and so if one is to exploit the forest, one must replace it. He claims that by understanding the crafts of nature, humans become its possessors. From that emerges the concept of a new forest. Just as most our new cities are planned in grid form, we plant our forests in straight lines. It is the age
of
German
Foresting,
when
man
planted
forests
to
exploit
them.
Forests lost their qualities of being forbidden dark places, sacred lands that project a sort of aura, but became instead at man’s service. A woodland plot’s worth was no longer calculated by area of forests, but in volume of useful timber it would be able to offer.Humans become the modulators of forests, and so, civilisation and forest have a masterservant relationship.
René Descartes (1596 –1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. In his Discourse on the Method, he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt, also sometimes referred to as methodological scepticism: he rejects any ideas that can be doubted and then re-establishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge. 5
ROUSSEAU’S NOSTALGIA
As
a
response
to
the
utilitarian
understanding
of
the
forest
that
Descartes preached, and as a form of lamenting the lost qualities of the forest,
nostalgia
came
in
counter-current
to
enlightenment.
To
the
romantics, when enlightenment claimed humans superior and above nature, man completely detached himself from nature. We did not return to the forest as part of it, but as its masters. We returned with our tools and machines and tried to make sense out of it, confirming our obsession with order. What the naturalists from the XVIII c. suggest is that man has detached from the forest for too long to try and return to it. It is a tragedy in the sense that it is man’s impossible dream. Rousseau6 admired _ to say the least _ the natural man, roaming carefree and happy in the forest.
He
blames
man
for
creating
the
intitutions
that
make
him
miserable today, and what he preached was a connection with the forest through intuition, romanticism, emotion and spectacular phenomena.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. Rousseau asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called "savages" was the best or optimal in human development, between the less-than-optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other. 6
PRESENT DAY SCHIZOPHRENIA
With
the
opposition
now
present
between
using
the
forest
and
enjoying it, we feel there is a cultural schizophrenia regarding forests. While the controlled foresting, and deforestation are still taking place, the urban condition has disconnected us from those two processes. A white collar employee living in the city woud use the forest to go for a jog, or a picnic. We have s strong opinion on what a forest should look like. Utility and romanticism are the two main visions we have of the forest. How relevant our different perceptions and stories are is only put into question when we ask ourselves how, since our seperation from the forest, the disconnection from the forest, and our wandering from its truth, has become the connection we have with it. A connection only made strong by our stories, narratives, which bring it alive everytime we tell them.
As
intuition:
we
use
both
civilisations.
reason as
to
percieve
artificial
as
the
our
forest,
we
institutions,
use
emotion
and
languages,
and
I have entered a few books, and taken them as my forest, picked
a
few
quotations
from
them,
and
re
arranged
those
quotations to formulate my argument. As I walked in arranged a bouquet :
the
forest,
I
picked
a
few
flowers,
and
When the world was young, nothing seemed possible.7 Thereupon a few giants, who must have been the most robust,8 were dispersed through the9 forests.10 The forest has hills, creeks and plateaus.11 There was only the immediate exchange between need and needed, what was felt and hungered for, and what could be grasped close at hand.12 Possibility 13 to delay desire, to wait, to dream, and to plan 14 did not yet exist 15 And so, 16 on the mountain heights where the strongest beasts have their dens,17 a place where man’s ancestors,18 spinning out of control,19 but different at each turn,20 or without willing organisation,21 men all robust with bodily strength, expressed their very violent passions by shouting and grumbling.22 On the ground, the inhabitants rarely show themselves, 7
Woods, L. (2009, May 26). When the World Was Old. Retrieved from https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/when-the-world-was-old/.
8
Vico, G. (1999, April 29) New Science. Penguin Classics, §377.
9
Ibid,377.
10
Harrison, R.P. (1992). Forests : The Shadow of Civilization. The University of Chicago Press.
11
De Ostos, R, and Jackowski N. (2017). Scavengers & Other Creatures in Promised Lands. AA Publications.
12
Woods. When the World.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Harrison. Forests.
17
Vico. New Science, 377.
18
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
19
Woods. When the World.
20
Ibid.
21
Harrison. Forests.
22
Vico. New Science, 377.
having already everything they need up there,23 because in that state their nature was that of 24 merely beast.25 Only an abundance of the unnecessary exists here.26 Time remained infinite.27 Possibility came into being only when 28 one day 29 they 30 were frightened and astonished by31 the sky and its god.32 They raised their eyes 33 to the clearing 34 and became aware of the sky. The great effect whose cause they did not know35 they called Jove, the first god.36 And searched for either messages from spirits or the civility to tolerate one another, and also to bury the dead.37 From that moment on,38 all things became possible.39 The forest was darkness, the dark cave of mankind’s past:40 when people finally saw and understood their reflections in “the mirror”.41 The resulting wave of panic42 once marked the beginning of civilisation.43
23
Calvino, I. (1997). Invisible Cities. Vintage Classics.
24
Harrison. Forests.
25
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
26
Ibid.
27
Woods. When The World Was Old.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
31
Vico. New Science.
32
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
33
Vico. New Scence.
34
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
35
Harrison. Forests.
36
Vico. New Science.
37
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
38
Harrison. Forests.
39
Woods. When The World Was Old.
40
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
41
Woods. When The World Was Old.
42
Ibid.
43
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
Reason is the result of panic.44 Spit from 45 the forest,46 need could be delayed.47 Possibility is the acceptance of delay.48 Sameness was no longer the same. Opposites remained opposed,49 yet between the one and the other there is a connection 50 the grew tight,51 because in such a case, the nature of52 autonomy,53 was reconciliation without compromise or surrender.54 They hate the earth, that they respect.55 Why does the opposite seem true now ?56 When we look into the forests 57 and the connection with the human mind,58 each thing remained true to itself.59 Tall trees pierced with windows,60 they were fifty feet high.61 You can’t get in them62 from this63 external perspective,64
44
Woods. When The World Was Old.
45
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
46
Harrison. Forests.
47
Woods. When The World Was Old.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
50
Calvino. Invisible Cities.
51
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
52
Vico. New Science.
53
Woods. When The World Was Old.
54
Ibid.
55
Calvino. Invisible Cities.
56
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
57
Harrison. Forests.
58
Harrison. Forests.
59
Woods. When The World Was Old.
60
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
61
Blackwood. John Hejduk.
62
Blackwood. John Hejduk.
63
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
64
Harrison. Forests.
because, you can’t understand.65 In other words,66 we see a strange reflection of the67 order to which we remained external.68 The strangeness is its own nature.69 The inhabitants,70 contemplating with fascination their own absence.71 Could the whole world be an all-green sphere ?72 Man, the tallest, cannot stretch to heaven. 8 Man, the widest, cannot cover the earth. 8 Man perishes. “I would enter the ‘land’, and would slay, the73 sacred forest demon, of the cut-down cedar.” “ . . . verily thou art” “I would set up my name.” 74 cutting down trees aspiring to immortal life,75 haunting the forest plateaus,76 and that thus “memory”,77 might be 78 the limits of the possible.79 Conflict became a form of harmony.80 The forest is a city.81 What happens in them,82 how they get represented,83 65
Blackwood. John Hejduk.
66
Blackwood M. [director]. (1997). John Hejduk : Builder of Worlds. Michael Blackwood Publications.
67
Woods. When The World Was Old.
68
Harrison. Forests.
69
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
70
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
71
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
72
Greene D. A.A.L.A.W.U.N..
73
Woods. When The World Was Old.
74
Myth of Gilgamesh, who wanted to slay the demon of the forbidden cedar forest, an extraordinry act to be remembered forever.
75
Pindar. (1997) . Pythian Odes. vol.3. Harvard University Press. [translated by Race W.H.].
76
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
77
Greene D, Hardingham S. A.A.L.A.W.U.N. Projects. [19/20] . AA Publications.
78
Harrison. Forests.
79
Pindar. Pythian Odes.
80
Woods. When The World Was Old.
81
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
82
Harrison. Forests.
83
Harrison. Forests.
their 84 allegorical implications,85 reveals the absurdity, contradictions, or even virtues.86 Accordingly,87 the88 forest,89 must never be confused with the words that describe it.90 We cannot get in them.91 How could you ? You can only get INTO something if you understand.92 I would enter the land with solid process of destruction.93 They sought the linear from94 strategies of removal and erasure.95 No promises, no gods, no covenant, no apocalyptic revelation to end it all.96 Reason enables us to,97 believe it or not,98 return to the land.2 Yet,99 the institutional world remains invisible or inaccessible to the internal perspective, out of sight.100 Like seeds expelled into the air,101
84
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
85
Harrison. Forests.
86
Harrison. Forests.
87
Woods. When The World Was Old.
88
Greene D. A.A.L.A.W.U.N..
89
Harrison. Forests.
90
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
91
Blackwood. John Hejduk.
92
Blackwood. John Hejduk.
93
Greene D. A.A.L.A.W.U.N..
94
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
95
Greene D. A.A.L.A.W.U.N..
96
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
97
Woods. When The World Was Old.
98
Blackwood. John Hejduk.
99
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
100
Calvino. Ivisible Cities.
101
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
in the middle of the plateau,102 there is no city to return to, only the forest. They migrate away into dark forests,103 almost by accident.104 Human and the natural embraced one another.105 Wastelands of rusted computer terminals, white plastic bags,106 along the forest paths.107 Nothing grows more than it has to, including PVC.108 City is a Forest.109 There endures a constant reversal.110 Romulus and Remus returned to the she-wolf’s teat.111 When the world was old, all things became possible.112
102
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
103
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
104
Woods. When The World Was Old.
105
Woods. When The World Was Old.
106
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
107
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
108
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
109
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
110
Harrison. Forests.
111
De Ostos, Jackowski. Scavengers.
112
Woods. When The World Was Old.
With the ideas of freedom, liberty, and breakage from the past are now more virtuous than ever. When disregarding the past, or not caring; ignoring the future or not planning, we now are slowly returning to the immediate. Our technological advancements have made our satisfaction need no delay. Our growing economies result in resource scarcity. When need can no longer be delayed, and the immediate is no longer available. When the rules and codes become
irrelevant,
when
scavenging
and
hunting
is
all
remains, to survive, will we someday return to the forests? _________________________
that
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.
Blackwood, Michael, director. John Hejduk: Builder of Worlds. Michael Blackwood Publications, 1997.
2.
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Vintage Classics, 1997.
3.
De Ostos, Ricardo, and Jackowski Nannette. Scavengers & Other Creatures in Promised Lands. AA Publications, 2017.
4.
Greene David, and Hardingham Samantha. A.A.L.A.W.U.N. Project [19/20]. AA Publicaitons.
5.
Harrison, Robert P. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
6.
Jacobson, Clare. Slow Manifesto | Lebbeus Woods Blog. Princeton Architectural Press.
7.
Pindar. Pythian Odes. translated by Race, William H, vol.3, Harvard University Press, 1997.
8.
Vico, Giambattista. New Science. translated by Marsh, David. Penguin, 1999.
9.
Wikipedia