‘The Beings’ was a series of online workshops led by writer Rosemarie Geary and artist Lucy Grainge over June/July 2021 as part of an online residency with Rumpus Room.
Rosemarie Geary gearyro@tcd.ie
Lucy Grainge lucy.grainge@outlook.com
In Being Human we saw how the idea of what it means to be human, to be animal is profoundly more fluid and strange than we’ve been led to believe. Not only do we have more bacterial cells and DNA in our body than human DNA and cells, our existence is entirely contingent on the invisible world of microorganisms; we could not eat or breathe without them. All our lives are far more entangled with each other than we’ve been taught. The legacy of industrial western society has led to:
“the creation of distinct and alienated individuals, human and nonhuman. The landscape making practises that followed from these new figures imagined the world as a space filled with autonomous entities and separable kinds, ones that could be easily aligned with capitalist fantasies of endless growth from alienated labor” (The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, 6, 2017).
Individualism has suffused every aspect of our lives and culture, perpetuating a false certainty in our own exceptionalism, alienating us from each other and rendering us blind to the vast majority of life on earth. The belief that we are separate and above has allowed Western societies to do untold harm to other cultures, living things and the earth. But the borders of the self are vast and porous, and all harm done has been self-harm. Individualism as we have understood it; “is not good enough figurally or scientifically; it misleads us down deadly paths” (Haraway, D. 2016, 33).
As we saw last week a lot of those assumptions are not only harmful, they’re incorrect, so “what happens when human exceptionalism and bounded individualism, those old saws of Western philosophy and political economics, become unthinkable in the best sciences, whether natural or social, seriously unthinkable: not available to think with” (Haraway, D. 2016, 30).
How do we move beyond the harmful ideologies we’ve inherited and become capable of facing our time?
“These times called the Anthropocene, are times of multispecies, including human, urgency: of great mass death and extinction; of onrushing disasters, whose unpredictable specificities are foolishly taken as unknowability itself; of refusing to know and to cultivate the capacity of response-ability; of refusing to be present in and to onrushing catastrophe in time; of unprecedented looking away… how can we think in times of urgencies without the self-indulgent and self-fulfilling myths of apocalypse, when every fibre of our being is interlaced, even complicit, in the webs of processes that must somehow be engaged and repatterned?” (Haraway, D. 2016, 35).
Wildfires in Canada following an unprecedented heatwave leaving hundreds dead
The Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space (Image: Kirill Shipitsin/TASS)
Carrying on from last week, where the focus was on how most of life is invisible to us, and art/imagination can be a way to look closely, it’s also true to say that most environmental destruction is obscured from us, taking place in poorer and/or rural areas, art can be a way to make ecological devastation visible and public…
A motorist watches from a pullout on the Trans-Canada Highway as a wildfire burns on the side of a mountain in Lytton, British Columbia, on Thursday. Photograph: Darryl Dyck/APThe Finders are described in the book, Learning By Heart based on Corit’a Kents teachings:
[The finder] is a device, which does the same things as the camera lens or viewfinder. It helps us take things out of context, allows us to see for the sake of seeing, and enhances our quick-looking and decision-making skills.
you need: A4 pieces of paper Scissors -
Draw 9 rectangles on your a4 paper 9 x 20 secs drawing exercises (3 min total) Move your finder to a different part of the screen each time, can attach it with a small bit of tape, or hold with your hand while you draw
Images from the article: Industrial scars: The environmental cost of consumption –
Environmental artist J Henry Fair captures the beauty and destruction of industrial sites to illustrate the hidden impacts of the things we buy – the polluted air, destroyed habitats and the invisible carbon heating the planet
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2016/ oct/24/industrial-scars-the-environmental-cost-of-consumption-in-pictures
All of us live in disturbing times, “overflowing with both pain and joy.” The task Haraway tells us is;
1) to become capable
2) to make kin: “a practise of learning to live and die well with each other.” “Staying with the trouble requires making oddkin; that is we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations… alone in our separate kinds of expertise and experience, we both know too much and too little, and so we succumb to despair or to hope, and neither is a sensible attitude”… (Haraway, D. 4, 2016).
3) to make trouble: “to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places” (1, 2016).
Kin: your relatives or family.
Oddkin: a term coined by Donna Haraway to describe the new and strange relations and collaborations that we will need if we are to survive in times of ecological destruction and climate change. It means extending our ideas of who and what we care about beyond the boundaries of the nuclear or traditional family unit.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/723ZWVk6zBANswSzPlvxcT?si=c8874d098739476f
Activity: stream of consciousness writing/drawing to cosmo sheldrake song by Marsh WarblerCrucial to all three routes of staying with the trouble, according to Haraway, is a creative and rigorous practice of thinking.
“I turn to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s inability to think. In that surrender of thinking lay the “banality of evil” of the particular sort that could make the Anthropocene, with its ramped-up genocides and speciecides come true… think we must; we must think!
Arendt witnessed in Eichmann not an incomprehensible monster, but something much more terrifying - she saw commonplace thoughtlessness. That is, here was a human being unable to make present to himself what was absent, what was not himself… here was someone who could not be a wayfarer, could not entangle, could not track lines of living and dying, could not cultivate response-ability, could not make present to itself what it was doing, could not live in consequence or with consequence… Eichmann was astralised right out of the muddle of thinking into the practice of business as usual no matter what...The result was active participation in genocide” (Haraway, D. 2016, 36).
“Scientifically speaking, Brad Werner stated that ‘global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier free that earthhuman systems are becoming dangerously unstable in response’ Therefore he argued, the only scientific thing to do is revolt! … Revolt! Think we must; we must think. Actually think, not like Eichmann the Thoughtless. Of course the devil is in the details - how to revolt? How to matter and not just want to matter?” (Haraway, D. 2016, 47)
source: national forest foundation
For Haraway, art science activisms are a crucial part of being capable, they embody the kind of imaginative and flexible thinking she advocates for staying with the trouble. She gives a number of examples of this cross-community, multidisciplinary practice.
One is PigeonBlog; Haraway begins by giving a brief cultural history of the various ways pigeons have rendered humans capable over the years, including carrying messages, military surveillance, search and rescue operations and pigeon racing, often a sport of migrant and/or working class communities.
Photos: https://nideffer.net/shaniweb/pigeonblog.php
In PigeonBlog artist/researcher Beatriz De Costa worked with a team to create DIY electronics that monitor air pollution. Technology that’s small, light and comfortable enough to be worn by pigeons in flight, and not discomfort or burden them in any way. The process took almost a year of working closely with the pigeons, gaining both their trust and the trust of the pigeon racing community. After a long process of building trust across communities and species, sharing knowledge and expertise, rendering each other capable, the pigeons were ready for flight.
California is notorious for air pollution, but official air pollution monitors are located far away from pollution hotspots like motorways and at much higher altitudes than people, animals and plants breathe. Notably it is people of colour and/or people from working class backgrounds who suffer the most from air pollution; these are the sacrificial communities who are situated closest to pollution hotspots. Pigeons were able to collect data that the official monitors fail to.
PigeonBlog was a grassroots, citizen science project that made information publicly available to the people most affected, while building (multi-species) community.
The average (North American) person has 219 toxic pollutants in their body, including BPA, pesticides, preservatives and heavy metals, some of which can cause neurological and reproductive problems. Our bodies not only filter toxins, they store them; meaning that when we die they are re-released into the environment. Funeral practices like embalming and cremation only add to this toxicity.
Artist Jae Rhim Lee trains mushrooms to eat her body by feeding them her hair, fingernails and shed skin, so when she dies, the mushrooms will be able to decompose her body. Unlike other burial practices, the mushrooms also digest the toxins, permanently removing them from the earth. Lee has started a community of people called the decompinauts who, in training their own mushrooms, are hoping to lessen their ecological impact on the planet and also cultivate a more accepting attitude towards death. Given that we’re living during the 6th mass extinction, and a period of existential anxiety for a lot of us, changing our attitudes toward death is perhaps more profound and important than ever.
[Info from: Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit | TED Talk]
Art Science Activism Example 2: Artist Jae Rhim Lee’s Infinity Burial ProjectBreakout rooms: All around us politicians, institutions, economics are failing us.
Discussion prompts:
- What can you do, practically to become capable. What skills do you have or do you need/like to have?
- How do you think art can make us capable? (if at all)
- Any other examples of art-scienceactivisms?
The Infinity project is an interesting example because not only is it a community based, multispecies project that renders us capable of facing some of the ecological challenges of our times, it also sits with the pain of what it means to be human. Our society is pain averse in many ways, it denies and ignores difficult experiences and realities, all the while insisting that society is progressing, that everything is gradually getting better. Staying with the trouble necessarily means sitting with pain and difficulty.
Both PigeonBlog and the mycelial burial suit are examples of making kin, the burial suit in particular is an example of making oddkin, of learning “to live and die together.”
Open Water Swimming (also referred to as Wild Swimming or Cold Water swimming) is a different example of a way people are coming together to practice self care in natural environments and creating communities, with a huge amount of anecdotal evidence and a recent study supporting the benefits of it to our mental health and wellbeing.
The study was documented on the BBC One series, The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs, in 2016. It followed Sarah, a 24-year-old who had been taking antidepressants since the age of 17 for major depressive disorder and anxiety. Following the birth of her daughter, she wanted to be medication-free and symptom-free. A programme of weekly open (cold) water swimming was trialled. This led to an immediate improvement in mood following each swim and a sustained and gradual reduction in symptoms of depression, and consequently a reduction in, and then cessation of, medication. On follow-up a year later, she remains medication-free.
For many, its jubulation. The cold water shocks the body in a way all you can focus on is your immediate surroundings, controlling your breath and trying to stay warm. The combination of exercising, being outdoors and community is a winner combination, then the addition of the cold water adaptation and the physical effects on the mind and the body. Wild swimming also gives a sense of freedom and liberation, from city living. If it’s done in a space away from the busyness of everyday life, it is immersive, sensual and exhilarating.
These Wild Swimming groups also cross over into local activist groups, caring more for our immediate natural environment, the importance of water quality and also groups who are working to make swimming a more inclusive sport, accessible for all. For different reasons, including perhaps swimming pools being closed throughout the pandemic, Open Water Swimming is having a big moment. It’s interesting to think of the different ways this sport / hobbie - can help us become more Capable.
Open water swimming as a treatment for major depressive disorder study https://casereports.bmj.com/content/2018/bcr-2018-225007.
abstract
Loch Chon, Scotland
Haraway begins by acknowledging that categories of art science activism, as western terms, are not applicable to Navajo people and way of life, and framing them as such would be another act of colonising. She then turns to their practise of weaving, stating that it is “at the heart of thinking/making for more livable politics and ecologies in the times of burning and extraction called the Anthropocene and Capitalocene” (90, 2016).
“Navajo weaving, especially with the wool of Churro sheep, ties people to animals through patterns of care and response-ability in blasted places of excess death and threatened ongoingness” (89, 2016).
The Peabody mine on Black Mesa. The company is seeking a lifetime mining permit for the lands it leases from Native American tribes. Photograph: Sam A Minkler
“A refrain from Navajo prayers often accompanies a weaver’s work:
With me there is beauty (shil hózhó); in me there is beauty (shii’ hózhó); from me beauty radiates (shits’ áá d óó hózhó).
Hózhó is a central concept in Navajo cosmology and daily practice. Usual translations into english are beauty, harmony and order; but I think a better translation would emphasise right relations of the world, including human and nonhuman beings… Disorder, often figured in the doing of the Coyote, disrupts right relations, which must be restored in ceremony and daily life for proper living to be again possible, for the person to be restored in hózhó to the People. For the Diné (indigineous language name for Navajo) greed is the greatest source of disorder; it destroys right relations at their root...
Weaving is a useful practice to be sure, and an economic one; but, fundamentally, weaving is also cosmological performance, knotting proper relationality and connectedness into… [warped fabric]... The geometric patterns… are performances of Diné stories and knowledge; the patterns propose and embody world-making and world-sustaining relations. The dynamic patterning continues in contemporary weavings many of which explore new as well as inherited themes, colours, stories and fibers… [weaving] performs and manifests the meaningful lived connections for sustaining kinship, behavior, relational action - for hózhó - for humans and non-humans” (90- 91, 2016).
Source:https://www.heddels.com/2017/04/navajo-blankets-and-rugs/
The practice of weaving as an act of restoring harmony is especially profound given the historical and political context it is carried out in. Weaving using the wool of churro sheep is a tangible symbol of the reciprocal relationship between people and animal. The use of this wool incorporates strands of a troubled colonial history into the fabric of the myths and stories of Navajo people.
“Navajo weaving relied especially on the so-called rough sheep brought to the Americas by the Spanish in the 16th century and developed by Navajo herders over a long time as a distinct type of sheep, named T’aa Dibei or Navajo-Churro sheep, who are particularly well adapted to the lands of Diné bikéyah on the Colorado Plateau” (91, 2016).
Later, U.S government officials believed both Churro sheep and their herders needed to be civilised at best, exterminated at worst. In the 1860’s the US army tried to wipe out the churro sheep, at the same time they forcibly rounded up and displaced Navajo people. Following a forced march of hundreds of miles, the Diné were held in prison camps for four years before they were permitted to make the same long walk back to their land. Despite this, some people had managed to escape the soldiers and remain behind protecting the sheep deep in canyons and other remote areas.
nativemovement.org/bmwc
Due to enforced poverty, the population of Churro sheep expanded. People needed to have an ever greater supply of wool because they were severely underpaid for it. Overgrazing and drought stressed the land and in the 1930s officials from the Agriculture Department forcibly exterminated about one million sheep and goats, in front of, and without the consent or compensation of their distraught human care-takers. They also took the opportunity to impose oppressive ways of ordering land and societal relations, refusing to acknowledge collective ownership of land and married women as heads of households.
Today, thanks to cross-community collaboration, the navajochurro sheep population is recovering. It has taken years of work and devoted care by herders and scientists but weaving is now a central part of Navajo resurgence; “reconnecting generations broken by boarding schools and forced stock exterminations and encouraging Navajo language use among the young are also tied to these sheep” (95, 2016).
The weavers, herders and sheep of the region are entangled with and supported by the Black Mesa Water Coalition; “a group of young inter-tribal, inter-ethnic people… committed to addressing the water depletion, natural resource exploitation, and health in Navajo and Hopi communities… they were central to the actions that closed down the Black Mesa MIne and Mohave Generating Station in 2006...they have a comprehensive vision and practice for building on the strengths of local people culture and land, in alliance with many partners, to make resurgence on Black Mesa and beyond a reality” (96-7, 2016).
Navajo weaving is a dense and storied practice, a tangible and metaphorical process weaving together humans and non-humans, histories and cultures, incorporating devastating histories into the act and ongoing attempt of restoring harmony in a destructive present. It’s an example of making kin, of how to create space for the variety of approaches we need to stay with the multi-faceted trouble of our times.
Coincidently, in the book Learning by Heart by Corita Kent and Jan Steward, they also frequently refer to the Navajo people and their ways of living. They comment on the importance of Structure, Tradition and Craft in understanding both our ancestry and our future.
‘In our country it sometimes seems as if everyone was in such a rush for gold or land that the weight of tradition was too much to carry. Settlers were often in situations where improvisation was imperative and perhaps they couldn’t forsee a time when old ways would be useful. Unfortuntely, ‘‘Yankee ingenuity’’ is not the best answer to everything. Traditions arise from small bits of information that have accumulated slowly. They can’t be revived when dead and we can’t sit down and make up new ones. These small, obscure ideas or ways of working help us bridge the gaps where we lack sufficient knowledge or expertise, and are vital elements for tying the structure of our lives together.
A fine example of a flexible tradition comes from the Navajo people. Their art reflects their genius to absorb the ideas and skills of other cultures and make them their own. Ready-made yarns freed the weavers to spend their time on developing more intrictae designs. The advent of aniline dyes inspired the brilliant eye-dazzler patterns. When traders showed the weavers prayer rugs from Persia to copy, the Nevajo wove the unfamiliar into their own tradition and techniques.’’
Bambara
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible” - Toni CadePages from Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita
https://inews.co.uk/culture/arts/extinction-rebellion-artist-protest-banner-art-red-rebel-flag-logo-366404
Adapt https://www. adapt-climate.world/
Katie Muir https://katiemuir. myportfolio.com/
Demand Utopia started showing up to far-right rallies in the US dressed as giant sunflowers. One of their members reports that when they started coming in costume the media responded much better to them, which is complex in itself because needing to make anti-fascism palatable is problematic, but he did say that violence against them lessened and people were more open to hearing their arguments- all positives. They also do various work in solidarity with Rojava as well as guerilla gardening and seed planting.
“… the seductive simplifications of industrialism threaten to render us blind… they bury once-vibrant rivers under urban concrete and obscure increasing inequalities beneath discourses of freedom and personal responsibility. Somehow in the midst of ruins, we must maintain enough curiosity to notice the strange and wonderful as well as the terrible and terrifying” (The arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, 6-7, 2017).
Access to nature is restricted for many of us; nature is also bounded, put into the category of park or reserve that you can visit when you’re not working, contained and controlled. As we learned from Bernie Krause in Being Human the vast majority of our ancestors were constantly submerged in highly organised soundscapes of balanced ecosystems. We know that being in deciduous forests slows our heartbeat, and that the sound of birdsong calms us. We also know these harmonic sounds and experiences are replaced with noise pollution that’s linked to heightened stress, and even learning disabilities in younger people.
Our lands have been degraded, and sadly a lot of this damage is irreversible. One thing the arts are particularly suited to is creating havens and respites, a place to slow down, be submerged and fortified. Taking our cue from the Black Mesa Navajo Weavers, how can we restore beauty and harmony, how can we knit and weave rather than slash and burn.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/ dec/15/cosmo-sheldrake-the-power-of-birdsong-aoe
“When one leaves an exhibition like mine, I hope that it’s not as if you had stepped into some kind of dream machine and then you walk back out into reality, I really hope that you step closer to reality” - Olafur Eliasson from Tate Modern website
Definition of immersive
: providing, involving, or characterized by deep absorption or immersion in something (such as an activity or a real or artificial environment)
… when game designers began creating realistic, immersive game environments such as World of Warcraft.
https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/07/18/the-powerful-simplicity-of-olafur-eliassons-art
Pipilotti Rist’s work is known for its multi-sensory qualities, with overlapping projected imagery that is highly saturated with color, paired with sound components that are part of a larger environment with spaces for viewers to rest or lounge. Rist’s work often transforms the architecture or environment of a white cube gallery into a more tactile, auditory and visual experience. Highly immersive, her installations play on emotional and physical comfort in order to raise difficult questions of communication, truth and reality.
How can immersive art help us consider different or alternative futures?
Rumpus Room yard Photo credit - Rumpus Room
“It’s a collaboration...except without explicit consent from the birds.”
“Birds live on a different time axis,” says 30-year-old Sheldrake. “There’s a spectrum of relationships with time – we look at birds and think they’re very ‘other’, but when you slow their song down, you get an idea of the tapestry of what they’re saying and they sound strangely human. These are very subtle, integrated phrases that we miss when they’re singing at their normal speed.”
- Cosmo Sheldrake: ‘A conversation across time and space’: the power of birdsong
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/15/cosmo-sheldrakethe-power-of-birdsong-aoe
Cosmo Sheldrake is a musician who defies simple categorisation; his work spans soundscape recordings, electronics, indie and folk music. His album Wake Up Calls consists of recordings of birds that are on the red and amber endangered list. Initially some of the songs on the album were given by Sheldrake to friends and family as a gift; an alternative, less abrasive alarm clock. Friends reported back that the alarm had the unintended effect of cultivating far greater sensitivity to birdsong, so much so that hearing any birdsong in the early hours of the morning began to rouse them. The concept for the album was born.
Several of the songs were explicitly composed for protests.
Listening activity: The nightingale part 1 by Cosmo Sheldrake - The UK has lost 90% of its nightingales in the last 50 years https://open.spotify.com/ playlist/723ZWVk6zBANswSzPlvxcT?si=c8874d098739476f&nd=1