Some further ponderings from the Here Commons Everybody creative programme - soon to enter a second phase - What Commons Next?
In relation to two connected artist residencies in Côa Valley, Portugal and Elan Valley, Wales) my strands of creative exploration seem to be circling around a vortex;
Globally, fear and precarity are features of the old - leading to violence, conflict, injustice, repression and atomisation (of individuals). Despite clear shoots of re-covery (nature regeneration/wilding, indigenous strengthening, increased awareness of biophilia & Gaia; plus more understanding of mental health in relation to ecosystem health etc.); despite the positivity of emergent ideas and practices, there is a mood that - socially and environmentally - 'things will get worse before they get better'. Major societal turning points can be hard to identify precisely e.g. the end of the Roman Empire, the English land-enclosure period, the subjugation/destruction of the New World civilizations in the Americas etc. The temporal - and spatial - zones of (axial) turning can be extended - and very fuzzy.
Moving from such detached pondering to 'Actions By Creatives' (it's maybe as simple as 'ABC'..?), I come down to earth - and water, and fire! I have a booklet to hand - Vale do Côa, a landscape of freedom, produced by the Archaeological Park of the Côa (Portugal). Its scope is a sweep from prehistory to medieval heritage in the region - a journey through time as well as space.
"By following along the roads, one is able to understand the geomorphological structure of the Park, divided between the granitic formations of the southern limits and the schist barriers that make way for the River Côa's passage towards the Douro. To go from one village to another is also a unique form of comprehending the balance between the land and its inhabitants, of reading the landscape..."
In a related way, we - the Wild Côa Symphony artists-in-residence team, have set out through space and time, to add a fresh layer of (geo)poetic insights, generated from a confluence of 'stranger' perspectives and much more intimate dwelling. We are three pilgrims in this land, and as with any pilgrimage, in any time, there is personal reflection and transformation alongside any outward objective or destination-seeking. There is an inner journey and the outer journey. I will return to this topic - pilgrimage - later, especially in relation to the enquiries of social anthropologists, Victor and Edith Turner:
"For them, pilgrimage had certain similarities with such rites [of passage] in the way it encouraged people to move (literally and metaphorically) from their normal, everyday lives and enter, however temporarily, different social and spiritual worlds. They coined a term for the experience of 'losing' one's old identity and freely and spontaneously encountering others on pilgrimage: communitas. After such an experience, as in a rite of passage, there was a chance that the person would return renewed, even transformed." Reference
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| Jesse D. Vernon and the shadows |
SHADOWS: First, it is useful to revisit a few of the essential themes, or lenses, we are adopting to help us keep some, albeit loose, structure to our wanderings and makings. I will begin with the darkness, the shadows, the night; and the 'claude glass' (or black mirror). Through this lens, the stories, voices and sounds are not just metaphorically from the shadows, but in a real sense, are to be found in the hours of darkness, and in the dark and damp places. Partly, this is reflecting a sense of yin/yang coexistence; a dynamic harmony, enduring across ages, and across life-worlds. The binary of shadow and light is also at the heart of our chosen media of film/video and photography, which are central for us in our creative makings (along with soundscapes and music). And as we delve deeper into this, we may distill something else, some method that is very simplified - with light, shadow, fire, silhouettes; the negative after-images that linger in our eyes. In ancient Greece, it was thought that beams of light emanate from our eyes and illuminate the objects we look at. Plato's Cave is an allegory that has some relevance here. In one way it is about the limitations of perception and empirical knowledge, but also the 'shadow-scene' is about the imagination; about the human imagination that can be activated by shadows, and by the reflections of the real. All our visual perception is anyway intrinsically a modified reflection of the real. The light from the outside world is inverted on our retinas; some information is transferred along the optic nerve, and the whole scene is reconstructed by our brain, which also has to fill-in the blind spot, where there are no visual receptor cells, and colour information where it is lacking ('unconscious inference'). What then is real? Shadow-puppets may be a possible onward creative step.
"The art of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to life. It illuminates us. It sheds light on out lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says “See?” Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way
And this all enfolds back to the realm of ancient cave-art. However, to avoid confusion, I will leave this topic aside for now. There is no cave-art, as such, in the Côa Valley. There is a wealth of engraved open air rock-art (dating from as far back as the Palaeolithic; made by percussion, abrasion and scratching), and painted rock-art is found in overhanging shelters. There will be more on this later, especially as Bárbara Carvalho, a core member of the creative team, is involved in new archaeological and ethnographical explorations of these remains from older times and peoples. This work contributes to the data-sphere, or info-sphere, of the valley. The physical reality of the terrain also has super-imposed on it the invisible (shadow) communication flows of signals - mobile phones, satellites, TV, radio, drone coverage as well as the ultra-sonic bat signals in the night. These too will become part of our bricolage assembly. For instance, we have been to the high point of Marofa (below) to record hums, vibrations and hauntings in, and around, the cluster of telecommunications structures that now tower above the religious statue that was once the dominant feature on this peak.
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| Marofa (from Cidadelhe), Côa Valley. video still A. Lyons |
ANASTOMOSIS: Using the cave concept as a segue, I am introducing a term that encapsulates our collaborative approaches. This is 'anastomosis'. It is also the title of a short film produced for my Long Exposure residency in the Elan Valley in Wales (video still frame above). In one definition, the word refers to a linkage between separate branching cave systems. It is also used in biology, in blood circulation and digestion, where cross-over channels or passages can open up. Anastomoses are connections between two things that are normally diverging. It can refer to stream/watershed systems too - so has a direct geographical application to our exploration region. It refers to the way in which fungal colonies can fuse - providing again, the creative duality of something both metaphorical and grounded. In a more straightforward way, anastomosis describes how we three practitioners, each in our separate disciplines and activities, can form productive fusions, based on collaboration and consilience. From this comes the woven strength of a multi-stranded braiding.
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Artwork: Rewilding Europe/Jeroen Helmer (by permission) | |
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Found object - embroidered & woven. Côa Valley. photo A Lyons |
BRAIDING: And so we can move to a third concept; a third eco-symbolic theme - that of weaving, braiding, meshing, twine-ing. This has been present from the first steps of our journey - sketched out on the ground, in the dirt, as we walked and talked. Braiding and basketry is ubiquitous in this rural agricultural setting, appearing as many forms of utilitarian vernacular objects and textiles. But also, we are latching on to this metaphorical idea to help us in our considerations of the meshing of human/non-human (more-than-human) lifeworlds, and their interdependencies. The idea of achieving strength and resilience through meshing is a valid one, and relatable. Essentially, it is about human entanglement with nature.
As Weber (Enlivenment, 2019) puts it: " The commons of reality is a meshwork of affiliations through which aliveness unfolds in ecosystems and history...the term 'commons' characterises a form of socioeconomy that integrates material and emotional relationships". Also, his words about "understanding the identity of humans and nature through a commons of creative transformation" could also be a description of our Wild Côa Symphony project. I have also explored these ideas of commons and entanglement in relation to my recent creative research in the Elan Valley (Wales), and I'll return to this topic in a follow-on blog, where I'll stretch the idea of 'commoning' to the counter concept of 'uncommoning, encompassing the outsider/stranger perspective; the weaving of insider and outsider views and insights.
Pathways too are important, and these form a mesh, or felt-work (...of real feeling) that binds a place into being...a place. In this way, maps are a meshwork; a base for a tapestry - the emergent tapestry that is becoming the Wild Côa Symphony. Our project has structure and form, but is also a bundle of threads being actively woven, embroidered, by us and others, and by the place. A woven fabric is also a gauze or linen dressing, a healing bandage for a wounded body (or place?). A tapestry, in a way, 'fluidises' the base grid of warp&weft, (or the rigid grid of a map?), adding flowing lines, paths, watercourses, memories...and the whole collection of maker crafts - knitting, crochet, plaiting, splicing, twisting, weaving, basketry, embroidery, tapestry is also a meshing (back) into the land from where the raw materials arose. In the context of local crafts and practices, there is a timeless quality to this, even though many of the craft-skills are fading away and being substituted. Interestingly, the woven rattan wine baskets are being replaced by plastic material (photo below) that mimics the original woven-reed texture - which perhaps reveals our attachments to older ways, older tactilities. [Note - biomimicry-design also has many more imaginative and positive connotations than this example]. Perhaps too, this keeps the door open for a return to the real, a return to valuing the local material culture and skills. Because they are derived from the locality, they also link/mesh the maker with the place, with the plant species, the biology, the ecology. Via grasses, trees, animals too (especially sheep, whose wool enables knitting, felting, crochet, clothing), there is a bridge between the domestic craft skills and the multi-species ecologies.
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Old and new. photo A. Lyons |
This concept of weaving also crosses over to the natural world in the forms of spider-webs and bird/insect nests. My pondering on the plastic 'rattan' wine baskets has recalled for me some creative delvings on the 'mysterious' Orford Ness (artist residency in 2017-9 with the National Trust) where one focus - of many - was on the presence, ephemerality and endurance of spiders webs and decaying wire-mesh fencing, a remnant from the prior era of military control. Paradoxically, the metal objects could be seen as more ephemeral than the delicate spiders web. The lifespan of the former is likely to be less than 100 years, yet the organic web-form has been made by successive generations of spiders for at least 300 million years. So yes, the individual web is fragile and not long-lasting, but such web-making will most likely outlast all human efforts, artefacts and desires to endure. A film I made for a site-inspired installation on Orford Ness - Blue Danube Redux - explores this subject. In human culture, the activities of basketry and weaving are ancient - probably 100,000 years or more. So there is some endurance, and restoration, and re-emergence. Nests too have been made, spanning the generations, for 100s of millions of years. What are the enduring threads? What is ephemeral? And how can we humans retain links with this 'bio-endurance' and not totally associate ourselves with the fleeting cleverness of invention, which we tend, in a misguided way, to associate with endurance, or at least, survival. By this, I'm referring to electronic devices/networks, road systems, vehicles, buildings, materials such as plastics. None of these are enduring. This is not to say that they don't have utility. We are a clever species and can endlessly devise utilitarian solutions, but it's a different thing to understand endurance - and patience - in a cyclical and ecological sense - which is about 'ebbs and flows'; the pulsing temporal patterns of forests, ice-sheets, mycelial masses. These are enduring.
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| Gravado no Tempo/Etched in Time (Vermelhosa, Côa) LINK |
Following on from this thinking about meshing, weaving, netting, I am reflecting on the appearance of some of the Côa Valley rock-art engravings. In some examples (especially at the Vermelhosa site), there are very delicate scratched patterns of line. Also, the archaeological assessment technique can involve stretching a grid-net over the rock surface. [photo above] These meshes, in a poetic sense, serve to 'trap' the flow of time; of species, and the movement of species. The engraved patterns are a form of net, and somehow, captured in these lines is part of the quality of 'being-ness' of the animal. Reflecting too on music, mesh and flow: with music, which is a core part of our creative approach, there is the beat, the rhythm, the rigidity of a structural grid. The voices and melodies flow alongside, and through. Lyricism. They come together in this way - grid and flow. Both are derived from the landscape, from sensing the flows, the meshes, the grids. As I write this I am listening/watching an orchestral performance of Ravel's Bolero, which is such a clear exposition of this 'acting in concert', the repetitive beat slowly building up, but unwavering; pierced by the fluid melody, itself repetitive but utterly sinuous. The conductor (Sergiu Celibidache, 1971) managing to hold and guide both the staccato and the fluidity of harmonies.
"The
water in your body is just visiting. It was a thunderstorm a week ago.
It will be the ocean soon enough. Most of your cells come and go like
morning dew. We are more weather pattern than stone monument. Sunlight
on mist. Summer lightning. Your choices outweigh your substance." The Cryptonaturalist
And so we come to FLOW. On Orford Ness (2017-19), I dedicated a lot of thought, attention and recordings to the theme of 'flow', anchoring the creative process in the illustrative book Sensitive Chaos (by Theodor Schwenk, 1962). Here I also want to mention the writings of environmental ethicist Ginny Battson, who has a primary focus on what she terms 'fluminism' - "an ecophilosophy of love and ecology". During the Sensitive Chaos project, I met and recorded Ginny, and she generously contributed to a vocal-mix work which I installed on site as a creative audio trail. Ginny also participated in a mini-symposium at the beginning of my artist residency in the Elan Valley at the end of 2019. 'Flow' - and especially the damming of the flowing waters - is the dominant influence on the landscape character of the Elan Valley.
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| Still from video-poem Reservoir Birds, 2020 [Elan Valley artist residency] |
This topic of flow is related to growing and organically transforming. A tree flows as it grows. The grid, lattice or crystalline structures are in conversation with this. The mineral, rock, stone is rigid. Yes, there is flow in stone too, even in granite, and in the slow folding of sedimentary strata and metamorphic rocks. But when you drill down to the scale of the crystal, inside this, in the microscopic mineralogical level, we see the basic planar and grid structure (which is often echoed in the outer form of the crystal, as clearly seen in salt, in quartz, in natural diamonds etc).
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| Crystals - and lichen, Côa Valley. photo A. Lyons |
"Growing in size and complexity ... living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein ... dancing a pattern ever more intricate.... With more knowledge comes deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, but with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries -- certainly a grand adventure!" Richard Feynman The Value of Science, 1988
"And if I think of my own body as an assemblage of recycled minerals and molecules, what reunions is my shape facilitating that I do not even note? My body is an unknowing ship carrying carbon to the valleys and mountains it loved millions of years before." Sophie Strand, Landscape as Lover, 2022.
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| Lichen, Elan Valley, Wales |
Lichen (as evident in many examples I photographed in the Elan Valley; see above) often appear to be living outgrowths from solid rock. The organic world derives from the crystalline world. Soil, plants, trees, animals; we are all flowing crystals in motion; from inorganic to organic...and back again, in different ways. (e.g the philosopher Manuel DeLanda, called cities the “mineralization of humanity"). This is about the enlivenment of materials. Vivificar. Fluxus. As the river flows, there is apparently nothing between the materiality of water and stone. But the Wild Côa Symphony and the Long Exposure project at Elan are attempting also to inhabit that imaginary place between stone and water; between the experience of water and the experience of stone. In that place, all life-forms exist somewhere, between the inorganic and fluid; between the crystalline and the flow. All fungi, lichen, plants, animals are absorbing minerals but embodying fluidity to some extent. Nutrient flow is a vital consideration to living entities. The huge numbers of distinctive pigeon houses (pombais) of the Côa region were an attempt to reverse the flow of declining nutrient levels. Human extraction had exceeded the inherent ability of rock, mineral, regolith to build fertility, and therefore 'aliveness'. Paradoxically, this decline of fertility (and subsequent land-abandonment) has given rise to new prospects for ecological richness (a trajectory which is echoed in many 'waste land/ terrain vague' settings). Like the phoenix from the ashes, the cyclical collapse is needed for renewal and regrowth. In the fullness of deep-time, it is also possible that 'collapse' (or removal) of the massive dam barriers on these watercourses (Elan, Côa, Douro) will one day lead to the restorative flow of migratory fish (eels, sturgeon, salmon etc.). Evidence from Pacific USA and Canada points to unexpected knock-on effects on forest regeneration linked to removing dams and enabling migratory salmon to once again reach the highest headwaters - to spawn, die and release their nutrient load. Other dams hold a creative interest for me too - e.g. on the Shannon (Ireland), Colorado (USA) and on the Guadiana, in the south of Portugal. These situations are woven into some of my artist films - No Concept (2013/20) and Sargasso Sisters (2020).
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| Still frame from Sargasso Sisters, 2020 (Lyons & Malay) |
Through all of these projects - current and past; and likely future - and in this blog, patterns of flow and patterns of grid/weave overlap, like Indra's Net. They inter-relate, hyper-relate, and fold and morph into each other in some cases. This kind of conception, or perception, of the world is not just abstract. It is real, and all around us. What does this mean for wildness, re-naturing, and the Côa and Elan Valleys? (and indeed the multitude of other eco-regeneration/recovery landscape zones). Answers need to come out of conversations, involvements, creative experiments (some described in a previous blog). At present, the wildness, the sustainability of this, as far as we can see, is reliant on fences, boundaries or intensive land management. And maps, and spreadsheets!...which introduce the mesh, gridwork patterns of control - very different from older patterns of agricultural field enclosure and hereditary knowledge. A useful framing for ecological art-making is 'counter-mapping'. This term has its origin in anti-colonial, anti-hegemonic studies and practices, and is therefore politically-inflected. This is not inappropriate for the field of creativity and landscape. Politics is everywhere, and pervades all these current 'sites' (Côa, Elan, Orford Ness, Cornwall Claylands...even Silbury/Avebury, which is a current exploration site). The idea of 'counter-mapping' is to facilitate other narratives, repressed narratives - not by imposing other 'outside' framings, but instead those that are emergent from the place, from listening, and (of course) filtering.
"Archetypally, to untangle something requires a descent, the following of a labyrinth down into the underworld or to the place where matters are revealed in entirely new ways." Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women who Run with the Wolves
Returning to the question - How do these ponderings, or indeed the practices of artistic residency, relate to, or augment, programmes of ecological recovery and restoration ('re-storying', 're-naturing')? Staying with the ideas of a 'tangle' (entanglement) and 'flow' - to unravel (and Ravel!) and untangle, one needs to pull along the lines of flow. (A tangle has lost the ability to be a pattern, as in a weave). ENTANGLEMENT is now a topical term in relation to human/non-human connections - especially since Merlin Sheldrake's book, Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures (2020), delving into the subterranean fungal realm, where we encounter the non-woven meshes of mycelia and rhizomes (as in nests and felt as well). In these dark underground places, we witness another coming together of structure and fluidity - like the music, like Bolero - a composition that prominently has both. Mycelia and music are then important loci of flow and meshing, of freedom and constraint. Ecologies exist, or survive, between the mesh-web and flow. In the scientific field of ecology, there are webs - food webs, networks etc. But ecologies also mutate, change, transform and therefore 'flow'. So we have a net that flows and morphs. And this is important to (re)wilding and eco-recovery, in a practical project sense, but also at a conceptual, ideas level. A morphing entanglement; a flowing entanglement. Supporting that, enabling that, respecting that, allowing and providing space for that means holding off on over-intervention, whether that is over-management or extractivism/destruction/control. Because this stops the morphing, the adaptation.
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| Macrame celebration, Cidadelhe, Côa Valley |
Daoism, which Alan Watts (1975) defined as ‘the way of man's co-operation with the course or trend of the natural world’, focused on intuitive cooperation and understanding the natural evolution of things. Thus the sage would practice wu wei, ‘non-action’, allowing the Dao – the organic order and internal rhythm by which all things in life evolve – to express itself without undue interference.
Daniel Wahl (in Designing Regenerative Cultures, 2016) writes about moving from control & prediction to conscious participation, foresight & anticipation: "Foresight is different from prediction! Foresight scans and anticipates possible futures in recognition of the fundamentally unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of the complex dynamic systems we participate in. Through practicing foresight and anticipation we develop ‘future consciousness’ and can more effectively work with the future potential of the present moment — aiming to participate wisely in full recognition of the limits of our knowing." He also talks about “'living the questions’ as embodied participants”. This could be seen as a concise encapsulation of the practice of ecological art.
Narratives: stories, re-storying and music-making. In a way, paradigms are also a mesh. They can be social narratives, cultural norms, habits. They are all patterns and mesh, and periodically, they get challenged - pushed to disintegrate, to shift, to morph, and this change is fluid. Then there is maybe a recrystallisation. New crystals form at seed-points, or nucleation sites. Without a seed, crystals form slowly from random inter-molecular interactions. When a crystal 'seed' is placed in a saturated or super-saturated solution, it acts as a nucleation site. For me, this perhaps a good analogy to describe the creation and 'role' of ecological art, and in particular the recent (Côa, Elan, Orford Ness) adventures in music, geopoetic film and 'new story' making. The effect is still unpredictable; still experimental. As stated earlier, the journey is inwards as well as outwards. Arguably, it is enough to reach some personal appreciation - of place, of situation, of past, present, future. This needs to come first, and be at the center of a creative process. And this applies to all ecological art (explored in a follow-up blog). This grappling with self and situation/context is essential, and existential.
In a wider, deeper sense, this is Jung-ian archetype-based exploration; it is psycho-magico (Jodorowsky); eco-psychology; this is the Arthurian quest mythology (beginning in the 12C, and deeply dissected by Joseph Campbell). In Creative Mythology (1968), Campbell also leverages the works of James Joyce (especially Finnegans Wake) and TS Eliot (The Waste Land). Campbell writes:
"And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still … put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster...the most critical function of a mythology, then is to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity in accord with (d) himself (the microcosm), (c) his culture (the mesocosm), (b) the universe (the macrocosm) and (a) that awesome ultimate mystery which is both beyond and within himself and all things."
So it's fair to position Wild Côa Symphony - and other geopoetic ecological art - as a journey in(to) creative mythology. Yes, there are also other attributes, such as creative research, experiment, participatory processes, questioning, connecting/bridging, provoking. At its core, our symphonic journey is intuitive, dream-like, multi-sensorial, having a sense of wonder and fascination. It aims, of course, to be relatable and celebratory. It is ecological in its morphing adaptive, integrated form. It is healing - of self and others (potentially?).
Here I will quote a Portuguese 'follower' of the Wild Côa Symphony project, as she describes the objectives of her 'Symbolic Place Therapy'. Sophia Batalha is "in between inner and outer landscapes, remembering ancient earth practices, radical presence, active listening, ecopsychology, art and writing." (The following is auto-translated)
- Change of perspective and perception of identity from individual to eco-systemic.
- Deep knowledge of your own eco-spiritual self, the various always mutating inner landscapes and how to share that deeply real part of yourself with others.
- Recovery of ancestral and unique tools of bonding, self-regulation and connection.
- Opening ourselves to thinking, deciding and acting, (re)finding the Soul, beyond the cultural assumptions in which we find ourselves in dynamic unison with Life, Earth and Cosmos.
- Creation of greater capacity for resilience and vulnerability.
- Activation of the various types of intelligence: instinct, intuition and reason. As well as activation of the various sensory layers.
- Imaginative co-creation of the Web of Life.
- Activating creativity beyond perfection.
- Art as activism of presence and deep eco-responsibility. Rescuing art as a therapeutic process of deep connection.
- Radical listening and presence - listening without trying to respond, being without rushing or expectation.
- Making room for intuition, creativity and soul expression.
- Embracing personal seasonality. Understanding how to live through your own wild and organic rhythms, creating your work of connection to places from this fluid alignment.
- Embracing the hybridization of every thought, sensation, emotion or creation as a reciprocal dialogue with the more-than-human.
Much of which I believe applies to the Wild Côa Symphony and ecological art practice...which is why, in this place, our process needs to (and will) extend beyond the commissioned 1-year timeframe. We've only just begun...to look through our particular lenses, some of which have been revealed here (Anastomosis, Flow, Entanglement, Braiding, Shadow...). As yet, I haven't discussed another factor, another lens; that of 'power' and powerlessness, and agency, in landscapes of transformation. This topic refers to the socio-economics of land ownership and stewardship, but also to aspects of co-existence with non-humans (or more-than-humans). Who is in control? Who decides the degree of freedom (to act, move, reproduce, eat)? - of humans and non-humans. This is not just about fences, boundaries and rules/restrictions (though these are significant aspects). It is also about social structures (spoken and unspoken), gender equality, deeply buried dynamics, grudges, traumas too. In this arena, a relatively short-term creative project has very little purchase or possibility to effect change.
Although it will be the topic of a follow-on blog post, I will briefly touch on the situation (or perceived roles) of ecological landscape-based creative practice. A common framing is that artists (in the context of working with ecologists and land stewards) can serve a defined purpose e.g. to engage with the community or be an activist-communicator for an ecological strategy. Whilst this is an understandable aim, it can be somewhat problematic, and can limit the creative impulse, or field-of-view, to a prescribed purpose. Also potentially limiting can be an expectation of being an 'artivist', to be an uncritical agent of a cause, or ecological campaign. I suppose a key word - for both 'wilding' and art - is 'freedom'. In any field, there are big differences between the roles of communicator, campaigner and researcher. An ecological artist is much more aligned with the last (researcher), and the enquiry is interior-directed and archetypal as well in the external landscape, or place. A delicate balance of introspection and outrospection.
Campbell, who I've previously quoted, writes "The focus of creative thought is always on [the archetypal], which is then rendered, necessarily, in the language of the time. The priestly, orthodox mind, on the other hand, is always and everywhere focused on the local, culturally conditioned rendition." The artistic process is able to bring fresh attention, and insight, to the dynamic interaction of the character of a place (sensory, rational) and the poetic (undercurrents, imagination, dreams, emotional connections). It can activate ostranenie - 'defamiliarisation; seeing the familiar in a new light; to see common things as strange or wild'. A useful framing may be to position ecological artistic activity as complementary to mainstream eco-socio-political intervention - as the practices of say acupuncture/acupressure are to conventional allopathic medicine. Having studied shiatsu for a number of years, I find this comparison very relatable personally.
I come back to the list above from Sophie Batalha. Any of these are valid reasons for anyone (and "everyone is an artist", as Beuys famously and rightly stated) to activate their creativity, to self-heal, and to heal this ruptured world; to heal Gaia. The professional ecological artist is a nebulous entity; the skills, interests and approaches will vary enormously. One common factor however, is, in my view, an underlying belief - a belief that the Cartesian, rational worldview, whilst not to be dismissed, is limited; dangerously limited. But it remains all-pervasive and is still very powerful - although waning.
The challenge is for the ecological artist to carve out a 'free', 'feral' or open poetic space of generation. The Western European/US world is long gone from a culture of shamanism and animism. Many of course rejoice that the old times of 'superstitions' are past, and that humanity will happily march into a rationalist, technological future, unencumbered by 'magical thinking'! The ecological artist is engaged in complexifying such arguments and contradictions; braiding different world views; juxtaposing; deep mapping. But this is done through instinct and impulse, and is not a utilitarian task. The process, like the pilgrim, is one of questing, questioning, delving, fossicking. Then finding an optimum way to share.
The braidings can be binary pairs, but this is not essential. But some examples of these paired relationships could include: rationality and poetic imagination; natural and cultural; conscious and unconscious; logic and intuition; growth (life) and decay (death, compost); separation and connectivity; reality and fantasy (magic realism); freedom and control; protection and transformation; narratives and counter-narratives; hardness and softness; individual and community; human and non-human; handcraft and machine; religion and nature spirituality; subjectivity and objectivity; order and chaos; mythology and history; 'invasive' and 'native'; masculine and feminine; yin and yang.
And on mentioning this last binary (yin/yang), I want to emphasise that it is a dynamic balance, and if we look at the yin-yang symbol as two fish in circular - or spiral - motion, we come closer to the ever-changing 'sensitive chaos'. Also all binary pairs on this list are 'co-existences'. At the very start of Wild Côa Symphony, I drew this sketch diagram:
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sketch of flows, braidings, co-existences; music, imagery, hauntings |
And at the central overlap, there emerged 'music', 'imagery' and 'hauntings'. Even now, in the late stages of the project, it's hard to argue with this formulation, or extraction. 'Music' is indeed the one ring to bind them all, and includes the 'inspiration' of breath and singing. 'Imagery' can be viewed as the photo-videographs of the project(s), but maybe more so the poetic imagery that is emerging - the metaphors (visual, sonic). Then the 'hauntings'! Revisiting the diagram, I am surprised by this inclusion. But on reflection I feel it is appropriate - especially so when interpreted in a sonic sense. The hauntings are the echoes of the past (and perhaps the future?). The sounds are real, imagined, composed, heard, misheard. They come from within and without. Perhaps this cuts to the core of the 'wild symphony' - more so than anything else? What is the sound of freedom?; the sound of entrapment?; the sound of aliveness?
Our Spring 2022 creative expedition in the Côa Valley coincided with the annual celebration of the 'carnation' revolution day (25th April) and a particular iconic song that represents the revolution is Grândola, Vila Morena, having being used as a radio-broadcast signal to kick off the coup in 1974. During our travels, this was heard and sung in many locations. Jesse (the musician in our creative team) learnt the melody and enabled us to be part of this common feeling; a feeling that is not without nuance however, as ever in politics! The Côa region was far from the epicentre - and impulses - of the revolution, which were founded in agrarian peasant agitation in the huge estates of Alentejo, and within the army, frustrated by the ongoing repressive colonial wars. But this song is a real haunting. There is no escape from this. Perhaps this is something about hauntings - that there is no escape? Perhaps this is what scares or disturbs people? Maybe what frightens animals too? (for there are many stories of e.g. of dogs seemingly being haunted by sounds or unseen presences).
The echoes and hauntings are also in the toponymy, especially the micro-toponymy (as explored in great depth by team member Bárbara Carvalho). The names of rocks, features, places, even trees, are echoes of the past, with their haunting narratives, or simply mysteries. The night soundscape too is a haunting, a term easily applied to wolf soundscapes (such as assembled by Melissa Pons from recordings in an area close to the Côa). But the birds of the night (owls, night-jars), frogs and other nocturnal sounds can be disturbing to some. In this unsettling disturbance, we 'civilized' humans can be carried back to more primeval experience - at once exciting, but also anxiety-inducing. We live in an era of risk elimination (sometimes violently eliminated) and minimisation. Fear of the night; fear of the dark; fear of the unknown; these are certainly common. But in the 'wilds' (as opposed to a Western city) these fears are largely unfounded. But the unconscious currents and emotions are there.
"The landscape as I directly experience it is hardly a determinate
object; it is an ambiguous realm that responds to my emotions and calls
forth feelings from me in turn...Our spontaneous experience of the world, charged with subjective,
emotional, and intuitive content, remains the vital and dark ground of
all our objectivity." David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous p33
"Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host
of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is
all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human
matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed
themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds,
and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle
interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their
very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To
shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our
lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of
extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our
minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and
conviviality, with what is not human." David Abram Spell of the Sensuous p22
I return now to The Waste Lands (The Terrains Vagues). Partly this reference derives from Eliot's poem, partly from Campbell, as mentioned previously, but also from conversations and dialogues as part of the Here Commons Everybody/What Commons Next? programme. In the Côa, because these abandoned lands are not being farmed, there is the sense that these are now 'Waste Lands', and not 'cleaned'. Campbell (p 373) asks "What, then, is the Waste Land? It is the land where the myth is patterned by authority, not emergent from life; where there is no poet's eye to see, no adventure to be lived, where all is set for all and forever: Utopia! Again, it is a land where poets languish and priestly spirits thrive, whose task it is only to repeat, enforce, and elucidate clichés."
These once forested and formerly farmed and domesticated areas were borrowed (or appropriated) from the wilder ecological mesh for narrow human purposes of extractive production. There is now a retreat from this colonial imposition. Limits were reached (soil fertility, inputs vs. outputs, endurance), and to differing extents this applies throughout the collective West/Waste. There is a growing realisation of the limits of extraction from the land, under the land; extraction of labour too, and cultural 'resources'. Rewilding/eco-restoring - especially in the Côa Valley - is happening because certain limits were reached - of viable farming in marginal zones, and the unwillingness of the inhabitants to put in the endless toil (a kind of slavery to the land) to survive, to subsist. So, there is a retreat; a drawing back from land areas and indeed a reduction in population in the region. This is not echoed in northern Europe, but is experienced across southern Europe and large parts of the Global South. The move to the cities has, in the case of the Côa, given rise to a vacuum that is being back-filled by the regional rewilding project in the Greater Côa Valley, which is managing, or stewarding, a transition to new forms of relationship.
While contemplating this subject of 'waste lands', I've come across the book (from 1885) After London: or, Wild England, by Richard Jefferies. The book relates how nature retakes England after an unspecified disaster caused by industrialization several generations ago, and it prompted William Morris to write “I have no more faith than a grain of mustard seed in the future history of civilisations: which I know now is doomed to destruction, probably before very long – what a joy it is to think of! And how it consoles me to think of barbarism once more flooding the world and real feelings and passions taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies”. Artists, writers are drawn to this topic, the 'fall of civilization', but what interests me are not the post-apocalyptic flavours, but the works that dwell on the cycles of growth, expansion, decay and (potential) renewal. The Course of Empire (1833-36) is a series of five paintings by American artist, Thomas Cole illustrating a 'fall'. At the end, in Cole's words: "Violence and time have crumbled the works of man, and art is again resolving into elemental nature" and "the steep promontory, with its insulated rock, still rears against the sky unmoved, unchanged." Here I find an echo of a geopoetic slow film piece I recorded in the Côa Valley some years ago, and a more recent work from the Elan Valley (Between Two Waters), both infused with my ever-present 'deep-time' perspective (the legacy perhaps of geological studies). The poet Shelley lived for a while in the Elan Valley. Today, one of his best known works is Ozymandias (1818), a bleak contemplation of the destiny of all power to decay, to re-integrate with timeless elemental processes.
"...My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
A more positive view is to focus on the idea of composting - and the decomposers that are vital to all renewal. Walt Whitman was well aware of this:
[excerpt from This Compost, 1867]
"Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last."
One doesn't readily see decomposition in a landscape; we see growth - of forests, of animals, all feeding, absorbing and growing. One doesn't readily see the reciprocal activity of breakdown, composting, decomposition. This relates also to the artistic mode - which includes 'fossicking' - rummaging in the wastes - the mining wastes or the spoil-heaps - for gemstones, ores that have been overlooked, passed over, ignored, buried, discarded as not viable. Fossicking is engaging with that which has been cast aside. The creative poetic reflective mode is the yin to the yang of more powerful societal forces. And as in yin/yang, one mode cannot exist without another. Growth cannot exist without decay. Life cannot exist without death. As described earlier, light/shadow is a useful metaphor. What approach is to be used to delve into the shadows? This is something that cannot be planned; cannot have a formula; trust is required. All entries into a darkened place - a cave - require trust; to feel one's way in the absence or restriction of sight, of light. Our normal modes of perception are closed down, are limited. Maybe our hearing is thus expanded? And this is maybe why, increasingly, the auditory is being emphasised alongside the visual (in the arts). My own recent videosonic works can easily be presented as standalone sonic pieces. This vulnerability and uncertainty of the entry into a darkened space, can also be partly replicated by closed-eyes listening. Some experiments of this nature are described in the previous blog. These approaches can especially be a challenge for professionals - who don't like to be involved with vulnerability, because it undermines status (or so they think). But artists too - avoid vulnerability. The ego desires the crutch of the formulaic.
But the waste-lands are also refuges and sanctuaries. Protected areas (including rewilding/ eco-restoration zones) have the ability to act as seed-zones for wider regions, when the opportunities arise. This is linked to the emphasis on spatial connectivity, stepping-stones and corridors. It feels important too that both the Côa and Elan Valleys are formally bounded by real water catchment/watershed limits. This can serve to deepen identity and attachment - genuinely rooted in a geographical biophysical, bioregional reality. However, the topics of identity/attachment are complex and there is a need for critical reflection. In relation to 'sanctuary', this necessarily involves hosting the 'foreign' - whether this is in the social or ecological realm. This then is a challenge to the oft repeated 'rule' of "native species only" and the multitude of attempts to root out 'invasive species'. Many of these efforts have a valid rational basis, but it's also possible to step back and observe how the interconnected world of vegetative nature acts to heal the damaged, scarified surfaces of the planet - following human action, but also following the actions of ice-sheets, volcanoes, landslides etc. The recovery - the healing scab-formation - utilises all available resources. As Ken Thompson relates in Where Do Camels Belong? - the story and science of invasive species (2014):
"Present-day ...[Columbian] vegetation reflect a ‘frozen moment’ in a long and dynamic process of almost continuous reorganization of floristic elements. It indicates that on a Pleistocene timescale present-day plant associations are ephemeral. Most of the [two million year] record reflects no-analogue vegetation associations."
From my creative explorations in the abandoned China-clay quarries of Cornwall (UK), I've observed the unstop-able(?) spread of Rhododendron across these vast surfaces scraped bare by machines. This plant is regarded as non-native, as unsupportive of, and outcompeting, native biodiversity, and is therefore 'an uncontrollable enemy' in need of total eradication. Yet it continues to thrive and spread in these waste-lands. And, as Thompson writes: "If we go back far enough, Rhododendron ponticum was formerly much more widely distributed, as was certainly present in the British Isles in the interglacial before the present one...the plant that is causing so much trouble in Britain and Ireland is a hybrid R. x superponticum...It has a good claim to be a British native, since it evolved in Britain and is found nowhere else, even though all its parents are aliens. Or is it that rare thing, a stateless plant?"
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| Rhododendron invading former clay mining lands, Cornwall, UK. photo A. Lyons |
What if 'invasiveness' is applied to human land-use practices - especially intensive agriculture? The destruction (and extinction) of diverse species is clearly demonstrable. Viewed through a deep-time lens, the time-lapse moving image is clearly that of an invasion, an ecocide of indigenous ecology. Yet the results are treasured, not just economically but aesthetically - as e.g. the picture postcard beautiful pastoral English landscape (as seen around Avebury, site of a newly launched creative investigation). Meanwhile the 'invasive' plant species that are colonising two other sites that interest me (Orford Ness and Cornwall claylands) are targeted for eradication. None of this is straightforward (as Thompson outlines) and creative counter narratives (re-storying) can result in a richer debate.
"The modern world is essentially a mosaic of new 'anthropogenic biomes' (croplands, plantations, settlements, cities, rangelands), with here and there natural ecosystems embedded within them...If, as in the UK, we profoundly transform the landscape in a way that suits a small suite of fast-growing, effectively dispersed plants, then that's what we get, with the aliens that fit this description expanding along with the natives...In the UK, as elsewhere, successful species, alien or native, are symptoms of change rather than drivers of that change..." Ken Thompson, 2014
In a related argument, biologist Erick Lundgren also challenges the dogma re. alien species:
"...'Native species are just sacred' or 'Introduced species just don’t belong'. Which are not scientific claims. Those are just value statements.
It
just became increasingly clear to me that conservation was spending all
of its resources in these landscapes, and many of these projects were
just killing things—and we didn’t monitor to see if those killings led
to any benefits...There does seem to be this idea of redemptive violence in
conservation. The idea that you can kind of kill your way to a better
world."
"They removed the cats from Macquarie Island in the Indian Ocean — it’s an Australian managed island — and it led to rabbit populations exploding and completely denuding the place. They finally removed the rabbits, but then the jaegers, a native seabird, began predating on the chicks of other seabirds, leading to like a similar mortality rate as with the cats, and the rats, and rabbits. So what’s the appreciable benefit? You’ve just created a bunch of piles of dead bodies. Meanwhile, we know that overfishing is another major stressor on seabird populations, and also a stressor on coral reefs, on fish themselves, on sharks. So maybe we could take responsibility for our own actions and focus on overfishing as opposed to just killing things on islands."
Moving on...
Trees, Flowers, Grasses. In all of this, symbolically and ecologically, trees are significant. The forests are cleared (by humans or ice-sheets) and they return. Geopoetically, I would refer to this as a form of 'patience', the patience to bide their time; to wait. The Welsh phrase 'dod yn ôl at fy nghoed', meaning 'to return to a balanced state of mind', literally translates as 'to return to my trees'. This topic is pertinent to the interesting confluence of rewilding/eco-restoration and the human mental health crisis in contemporary society. In Portugal, forest fires are a huge concern. Once again, I quote Sofia Batala:
"...in the news the reference is always to fuel - that everything around the houses is "only” taken as fuel. Simply an inert scenario of raw material waiting for the first spark. Firewood ready to become charcoal. With the flames at the door and without water to quench them, the populations despair as they lose years of life. They talk about cleaning, cleaning the fuel so it doesn't burn them all. Just fuel.
There are millennia of a language that dissociates us from the complex ecosystemic reality of Life. There are hundreds of years of tragic management of the territory, based on policies of quick gains and investment in monoculture, with total disrespect for wildlife and even human life. There are decades of control and reductionism that tend to ignore the deep interrelationships between things. Millennia of prohibition of praying to trees and stones.
Instead of being sovereign beings that give us Life, trees became just fuel. Inert matter of gains and losses. Just fuel. Here, we have long ceased to be guardians of Life. We no longer revere, consecrate, see or hear the complex ecosystem that welcomes and nourishes us at every moment. These days of fire have brought me concern. Hearing about the multiple fires, acres and acres burned. Life reduced to ashes. Silence."
Flower-power: Along with forests, I am including flowers in this discussion. Many humans, bees and butterflies adore flowers. People stop and look at flowers; many people notice, appreciate, are fascinated. People take photos, make paintings, offer them as presents; and they are central to both weddings and funerals. The relationship between humans and flowers is something very special, and unique in ecological interactions. Is it ecological? purely aesthetic? or..? These questions have been the subject of some detailed academic enquiry:
"The relationship between humans and flowers is special. Humans have
always been strangely attracted to flowers even when they provide no
physical sustenance and when resources are low. Humans have also put
embodied and physical effort into growing flowers for their aesthetic
qualities. Stone drawings of flowers were found in ancient Egyptian
graves 120,000 years ago, were celebrated in festivals in Roman times,
and, in China, were created in silk 2000 years ago...Flowers are an apt example of being aware of the environment around us
and of how we engage with the world through skilled interaction through
our bodies—by using all of our senses. This happens through moving our
bodies within space rather than only by contemplating the environment.
Flowers...demand us to get close to smell them, to
move towards them to find them in nature, to water them, to pick them,
and to carry them in our hands. All of this embodied interaction makes
them excellent examples and receptors for the experience of embodied
aesthetics. Tending to and enjoying flowers thus enables us to interact
in a skilled fashion with the environment and to engage with the world. This behavior clearly creates positive emotions, as there is no survival-level incentive to engage with flowers."
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| Flowers collected on our participatory creative deep-time walk, Côa Valley, March 2022. photos A. Lyons |
Furthermore, from that paper:
"This visual stimulation, together with the ease of recognition and the familiarity engendered by symmetry in flower shapes, may stimulate the brain and be associated with improved mood due to a feeling of being able to make sense of the world. This combined element of familiarity and surprise is a basic component of aesthetic experience that is able to move us emotionally, activating both sadness and happiness...these sensory stimuli also stimulate autobiographical memory, creating a web of positive associations around flowers through former experiences with them or components of them. For example, color, smell, and shape connect to autobiographic memories and stimulate the recall and accessibility of long term memory...We tend flowers as we tend loved ones. The aesthetic experience becomes socially embedded and relational. People become happier when given a large bunch of flowers by a loved one as opposed to when given money. The embodied sensory level of flowers seems to be connected to the positive element of relationship, from romantic and sexual, as well as to general positive, social interactions."
I've quoted this study at length, partly because the theme of flowers and place/memory connotations was one we included in our experimental art-walks in Spring 2022, in the Côa Valley (photos above). But also, in a wider context, we are interested in a multitude of connections to ecological webs, and in the subjects of 'healing', 'flow' and stimulating creativity. Once again, from that 2018 paper:
"We saw that aesthetic experiences enable the regulation of physiological and emotional over- and under-excitation of the organism. This is expressed in theories of creative processes such as art-making or observing, enabling a mind-set of ‘flow’ and deep concentration, as well as regulated communication with others. Art-making and observing has been defined as an integrative activity that integrates left and right brain functions, and, as such, creates new neurological pathways between emotional and cognitive areas of the brain, enabling flexibility of thought, as opposed to the rigid, repetitive, or fragmented thinking when under stress or after trauma."
At some point our ancestors developed trichromatic colour vision enabling them to better recognise the hues of orange and red in edible fruits, and flower recognition was potentially helpful with this. A question for humans today - and future humans? - is: do we want to spend our time looking at screens...or flowers? What's also perhaps missed out in that academic analysis is the attraction of flowers' impermanence and fragility; and the very strong link between flowers and eroticism. As discussed here, Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of flowers recall female sex organs but also transform the petals and leaves into abstract, formal experiments.
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| Georgia O'Keefe, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV credit: Smithsonian National Gallery of Art |
"Flowers tell me that nature is never too old to learn new tricks. They remind me that life is a verb, a process, an unfolding story of awakenings. What new wonders are on the way to this world? What strange blossoms are now budding down in the rich soil of fallen years?" The Cryptonaturalist, 2022
Once again, the attraction of this topic is the hybrid quality - the immediate and intimate real, sensory sensuousness on the one hand, and on the other the symbolic associations (to home, homelands, family history, life experience etc.). This comes through all the chosen themes outlined in this blog. This quality of hybridity may, or may not, also apply to grasses. But the subject is in need of elaboration, and this will be done in a follow-up post. One of the key reasons to include grasses/grasslands in this form of 'deep-mapping' exploration is because of a book, Wolf Totem (2004), which was recommended to me by Pedro Prata (now director of the Rewilding Portugal organisation) when I visited the Côa Valley for creative research in 2017. There is more to be written about this, but - suffice to say - the centrality of the 'grassland' (of Inner Mongolia) in supporting all life and ecologies is the key message of this impressive book. And grasses are maybe overlooked as being important in the past, present and future of the Côa and Elan Valleys. The Whitman poem above is from the collection Leaves of Grass - a title chosen because 'grass' was the term used by publishers for minor, unimportant books.
To be continued...
"Saboreio este dia,
Fruto roubado no pomar do tempo.
Sabe-me a novidade,
Deixa-me os lábios doces.
Tem a polpa de sol, e dentro dele
Calmas sementes de outro sol futuro.
Cheira a terra lavrada e a maresia.
E tão livre e maduro,
Que quando o apanhei já ele caía."
Miguel Torga
"I savour this day,
Fruit stolen from the orchard of time.
Tell me what's new,
Make my lips sweet.
It has the pulp of the sun, and within it
Calm seeds of another future sun.
It smells of tilled earth and the sea air.
And so free and mature,
That when I caught it, it was already falling."
Miguel Torga
"O fim duma viagem é apenas o comenco doutra. É preciso recomencar a viagem. Sempre"
"The end of a journey is just the beginning of another. It's necessary to restart the journey. Always"
Jose Saramago, Journey to Portugal
