Book Launch: The Way of Coyote

Public welcome!

 

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Lucas Foglia: Human Nature. Jul 19 — Sep 30, 2018

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Reposted from Museum of Contemporary Photography

Lucas Foglia, Esme Swimming, Parkroyal on Pickering, Singapore

Human Nature examines our relationship to the natural world and the human desire for “wild” places—even when those places are human constructions. Lucas Foglia’s lyrical, formally considered photographs challenge the concept that humans and nature operate in opposition, while highlighting the relentlessly uneasy, sometimes absurdly comedic juxtapositions of human technologies and nature.

From literal urban jungles to so-called untarnished wilderness, from the scientific realities of climate change to the poetic human longing for time outdoors, Human Nature is a nuanced exploration of the forces—internal and external—that both pit us against and bring us closer to the natural world.

The MoCP is supported by Columbia College Chicago, the MoCP Advisory Board, the Museum Council, individuals, and private and corporate foundations. The 2017-2018 exhibition season is generously sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Efroymson Family Fund, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Lucas Foglia, Kenzie inside a Melting Glacier, Juneau Icefield Research Program, Alaska

Lucas Foglia, Kate in an EEG Study of Cognition in the Wild, Strayer Lab, University of Utah, Utah

Lucas Foglia, Troy Holding a Guinea Fowl Chick, GreenHouse Program, Rikers Island Jail Complex, New York

 

Lucas Foglia: Human Nature will be available as a traveling exhibition. Please direct exhibition booking inquiries to Karen Irvine kirvine@colum.edu.

Heneghan Book Launch Event and Reception: Wednesday May 2nd

RSVP for reception so we can order enough food.  However, everyone is welcome to attend the event, whether or not they RSVP.

Tomasz Rojek

O. L. A. F. T.: Openlands at DePaul

More information here.

Far from Paradise.

Photo post by @lemanshots.

Source: Far from Paradise.

Dark Mountain Gathering

Base Camp at Embercombe near Dartmoor, UK

by Doug Fogelson

CS: I’m thrilled to share this piece from Chicago artist, Doug Fogelson

 

When you believe in the dystopian future of climate change and ecocide, even if you support and appreciate the efforts of green movements, it can be hard to find places to discuss such a dark subject. This is when you need to discover Dark Mountain. Their work began almost a decade ago with one of the better manifestos written on the topic and a miscellany of efforts in literary and other creative modes. Now they are still a niche group but have become more widely appreciated with books, a blog, various events, and retreat style gatherings under their belts. And the co-creators Paul Kingsnorth and Dougie Strang have become celebrated authors and thought leaders along the way.

I came to know of Dark Mountain close to its inception, at a time when I was entranced by the written work of Derrick Jensen, particularly Endgame. Jensen is an American radical writer/thinker who brings a well-researched and (to my mind) balanced view on society in the midst of ecocide.When I first found the virtual mountain of darkness I just read online and kept tabs on their work. It was simply good to know they were there. Eventually, however, I subscribed. And when an e-mail popped up inviting subscribers to join a group of 150 Dark Mountaineers at the amazing permaculture site called Embercombe in the southwestern hills of England, I felt called to go find out more. At this point my own work had reached a deeply invested place with regard to sharing stories about the Anthropocene, climate change, and the Sixth Mass Extinction, so it made sense to seek out others with similar troubled, yet kindred souls. With plenty of carbon attached, I found my way to the Exeter St Davids train station and then into a cab that wound its way through the hills and narrow roads leading nicely away from Exeter. Those treacherous country roads, edged with tall hedges and steep banks, ribbon through a landscape like something out of a fairy tale. It wasn’t easy finding the place, which seemed part of the point.

Embercombe is an amazingly well-maintained permaculture farm and center, sited on a large parcel of rolling moorland that contains forest, lake, yurts, biodynamic farming, green woodworking/forge/art making space, meeting areas, fire gathering places, and so forth. It is managed with obvious love and an ethos focused on the generations which will follow “in our footprints,” whatever the global conditions may be. This makes it a perfect setting for a gaggle of calamity heads with hearts heavy from the discourse of a collapsing world. A place and time to process conditions we know to be real in the midst of false narratives that contemporary life and culture are jamming into our brains.

The gathering slowly built up Friday evening as people came rolling in, setting up tents and checking into yurts. We had a group orientation and dinner— everything was very prompt on the timing. There were two simultaneous program events kicking off that evening which made for a hard decision, but I opted to begin my scheduled experiences with a folk duo, Crow Puppets, and storytelling, Tatterdemalion, on a stage built into the side of a vintage 1966 caravan complete with art, puppetry, a gypsy vibe and fashion to match. This proved to be a good choice as the stars came out amid harmonies and tales of a rugged future that shared more with the medieval past than anything in our plastic present.

Saturday we had a large group exercise in listening and getting to know each other at the Centre Fire, an indoor meeting area, followed by a gripping story by Martin Shaw called The Crow King and the Red-Bead Woman. I later heard Paul Kingsnorth speak about his new novel Beast (which is situated in a moor landscape as well), and was captivated by the songs and writings of Catrina Davies, during her session titled Living with Less: Notes and Songs from the Shed. I began to notice something of a trend around regional myth and historical fact, at times focused on themes such as Normans vs. Anglo Saxons, the Green Man, fairies, and such.

After another farm-fueled vegan meal I joined the crowd for the Thylacine Tribute Cabaret from the silly Feral Theatre, followed by more folk music from a duo called Fly Yeti Fly, and finally the music of a bluegrass/country/Celtic variety from the good ole’ boys of the Kestor String Band (featuring a guy from Chicago originally). At this point all manner of dancing started—some with obvious connections to traditions like Irish and other folk dancing. However just as this was getting going properly, adherence to schedule dictated that it be cut short—too short! And the low point of the weekend followed with a heavy-handed performative push to the “procession.” This meant we were sternly herded out only to have to re-enter in strict silence and endure a long performance of chanting and more storytelling followed by the complicated dispersal of odd tasting mead (we were all tightly packed after a full, wet day of much storytelling/folk music/sitting). The party vibe continued to be held at bay at the fire circle afterward with the listening of, yes, another folkish guitar singer and a long story to follow. Many were delighted at the fire that night. However I enjoyed wandering off, looking at the Milky Way above, so clear and mixing with the clouds over the hills near the Atlantic, and even saw a few shooting stars later on.

Sunday’s activities included Walking the Territory featuring Monique Besten (my new buddy) and Nick Hunt, an artist and writer who walk great distances to experience time, history, culture, and the elements. After this session I chose to skip a “Re-wilding the Mind” workshop in favor of just taking my own long walk in the deeper woods on the grounds. I found quite a few more campsites in there, cozy fire circles, some primitive shelters, and a sweet caravan that was parked (perhaps forever) with a harmonious natural homestead built around it. I kept hearing children’s voices and thought it was the wind pushing their sound from the larger tent village, but I later discovered some kids had been exploring a long overgrown gully that ran the length of the woods. It was quite a sight to see these fresh-faced boys emerge from the thick growth, so confident and curious!

Many people were impressed with a session by David Abram in the main hall, but I was already beginning to detach from the program at that point, which raises the question, “if you are no longer interested in the stories Dark Mountain is telling us, and also the stories civilization tells us, then what ARE the stories that might bring meaning and joy to the future?” Of course this is meant rhetorically, as I did really enjoy my time there. It was just great to be present and have the chance to lie on a bed of moor grass, alive and in the moment. I met some very cool people, had more than casual conversations, shared my energy, and received their various gifts in return. I will cherish the memory of skipping an afternoon presentation in favor of chatting with some excellent souls while the rain sprayed just beyond our mugs of warm tea. I highly recommend a visit to www.dark-mountain.net, and perhaps one day I will be lucky to see some of my fellow dystopians in person again.

All Photos by Doug Fogelson.

 

 

 

Denali National Park: The Quiet World

by Brandon Hayes

Denali

“As our full day at Wonder Lake continued, we enjoyed sunny skies over the tundra/taiga transition in which the campground was situated. We had spent the morning and early afternoon on a solid four-and-a-half hour hike to the McKinley River, and now, as we rested, the Alaska Range flooded the southeastern horizon with the Alaska of one’s imagination.”

See more wonderful photos and inspiring journal entries at As They Are: Exploring the National Parks.

This particular photo and text here.

Inside Out Dorset Festival 2016

16 – 25 September 2016   

This autumn, expect an unusual celebration of the autumn equinox, a sleepover with the RSPB and dazzling pyrotechnics at nightfall, as Inside Out Dorset, the biennial festival of outdoor art and performance returns.

All events are FREE and suitable for all. We look forward to seeing you.

Read more here.

 

Inside Out Dorset 2016, produced by Activate. Photos Nick Read, images And Now:

Radical Empiricism: Speculative Field Notes (complete)

William James’s posthumously published Essays in Radical Empiricism is neither well known nor well understood for various reasons. The collection is not particularly coherent, the essays are uncharacteristically abstract, and the work is generally hard to understand outside of the context of James’s substantial corpus. However, a concept of radically inclusive, multi-dimensional fields, gleaned from James’s work in various disciplines, might be helpful in grasping, interpreting, and indeed applying James’s theoretical position in Essays. The ecological imagination can also help us envision such a field or fields. A three-dimensional, experiential field is categorically distinct from a two-dimensional “screen” field. One is akin to the experience of walking out of doors; the other is like watching television. Ecological imagination, in this sense, might be cultivated by spending more time in nature, moving through space, and without any particular goal or focus of attention.

A primary argument of James’s Essays is that the concept of pure experience ought to replace the given categories of subject and object. James asserts that these terms denote positions that are both relative and arbitrary. He also makes clear that any thing can be a subject—not only human beings or sentient creatures. And conversely anything can be an object[i]. This implies a kind of leveling of subjects/objects compatible with some trends in contemporary continental philosophy, at the same time that it anachronistically challenges both late twentieth-century critical theory and some millennial speculative realism and new materialisms.[ii] However I’d like to proceed, here, on a more common sense or pragmatic level.

An obvious challenge to including the subject in a field of experience, not related to contemporary philosophy, is the problem of the implied third person.   In conceiving a universe with neither subjects nor objects we may initially place ourselves in a new subject position regarding the “new world” as an object. How can we escape this dichotomy, given our inherited sense of biological coherence and ontological autonomy? How can we “back out” of the subject position, even if we realize that we are also objects?

There may be various approaches, but perhaps none is an absolute solution in the sense of evacuating our sense of self. This should not be a dead end however. James was not fond of absolutes; indeed, eschewing absolutes may be a necessary condition for moving beyond given subject/object dichotomies. As a critic of absolutes, both philosophical and scientific, James prompts us to explore gray areas and liminal spaces. The irreducibility of organism and environment, for example, is a strong challenge to the “black hole” of subjectivity. As surely as we can never escape our subject positions, we can never escape the influence of the environment. To argue that the result of such interactions (which result?) is ultimately all subject, all environment, all continuity, or all discontinuity, is merely to fall back into late Modern and early poststructuralist political camps. (Thus I continue on my politically naïve and institutionally undisciplined trajectory . . . )

Perception and judgment always occur in a complex field, or fields, characterized by interference patterns. Conventional ethics, critical literacy, and current-traditional “Eastern” philosophy, however, still focus on subject/object dichotomies. Ethical systems are generally based on perceiving the human other as an image of the self; race and gender equity and critiques of capitalism are still conceptually based on binary oppositions; and Western yogic, meditation, and mindfulness techniques seem to begin and end with objectifying subjective states. Though we move or oscillate along this line between the subject/object nodes, and often try to negotiate much more complex dynamics, this linear subject/object model, even when complicated, is an insufficient response to our most pressing contemporary problems.

Dualism, with which James struggled throughout his career, may be a result of this habitual oscillation. Perhaps when we truly attend to an object we cannot be fully aware of our selves, and when we are fully aware of ourselves we cannot be truly attentive to the object. (Certainly one or the other must be foregrounded.) This oscillation may create the impression that the object is both out there and in our heads. However, this may also be an effect of ignoring the space in between. I don’t mean to imply a monist “everything is connected” perspective, here, but rather a pluralist “everything (merely) is” perspective, including the unseen media through which we co-experience. Also, by “field” I don’t mean merely what appears in our field of vision, though visual context is certainly relevant, but a far more basic and far more complex ecological field.

James psychological works and his philosophical works both point to the idea of fields rather than linear trajectories of experience.[iii] Neurological pathways, for example, are parts of complex fields of mental associations and/as physical networks. Perception is a complex operation in which previous experience including unconscious memories modulate every moment. Social institutions and communal values, too, are complex structures or networks, situated within even broader and more complex structure and networks.

Within this context one cannot properly say that any autonomous subject perceives any autonomous object. There is no separate experience of a subject apprehending an object, but an inconceivably complex network of co-experiences. The very act of perception implies a plural, unstable field. Universes reflect on themselves, in a sense. Experiences experience themselves through each moment, and thus experience is radically plural.

This is not a mystical thesis, however. It doesn’t require mystical inspiration or insights. Because I would like this argument to be common sense and pragmatic, the category of the mystical is, in some sense, irrelevant. Practices defined as mystical, religious, philosophical, or contemplative might help us to cultivate our ability to experience “real” fields, but typically posit alternative/spiritual realities, and this “gesture” results in another unproductive dichotomy.  I don’t mean that we should exclude mystical experience (James would not approve). Rather, we should strive to frame our perceptions and judgments within broader contexts for “merely” ethical and pragmatic purposes.

Pushing beyond a subject position requires us virtually to shift our perspectives. We cannot simply stand back from ourselves, because standing back enlarges the frame without changing our role as spectators. Rather we could adopt multiple positions at once, in quick succession, or in our imaginations (virtually), to discover that neither subject, nor object (nor context) is stable.[iv] Perhaps thus we can become productively disoriented, and (on various levels) realize a three-dimensional moving field. James often refers to the chaos and flux of the universe, though chaos is not really a goal or threat of such experimentation, as sheer habit guarantees a degree of stability and discrimination.

Walking in nature, once a common practice, has long been identified with cultivating the imagination. Both scientists and artists immerse themselves in nature, in order to understand the world. Such understanding may be a kind of dynamic hypostatization of both subject and object, by which the distinction begins to break down. On the most obvious level, walking illustrates that our perspective is always changing. (As a subject we are always changing, moment-to-moment, whether or not we are in motion.) It reveals various aspects of various objects, and usually leads to some form of (dare I say) “altered” state, in which we enter a flow of experience. While we might have a sense of connection or well being, this should not lapse into an illusion of mastery. The wilder the context, the more aware we should be of “interference patterns”: obstacles, unexpected twists and turns, and the presence of various creatures walking their own, seen and unseen paths. Walking in nature also allows our attention to wander, undirected toward a particular goal. Such aimless attention is healthful and creative, and, I propose, a quality of “pure experience.”[v]

Perhaps such dynamic, pluralistic experiences must remain “alternative” for urban and suburban dwellers, and in this sense my desire to ground “pure experience” in the quotidian may be futile. However, I would like to suggest that such an experience is available to everyone through the simple practice (if not “practice”) of walking in a natural setting. I am not naïve in assuming this opportunity is available to everyone on a regular basis, though I suspect many of us willingly if not consciously trade this “luxury” for various commodities, every day.

Image Source: <http://www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/Grand%20Prismatic%20Spring.jpg&gt;

[i] See “A World of Pure Experience” and the summary of “The Notion of Consciousness” in the Essays.

[ii] Levi Bryant’s The Democracy of Objects describes such a level playing field, but academic philosophy, in general, may still be invested in assuming mastery. http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/the-democracy-of-objects/

[iii] I am moving between the singular “field” and the plural “fields” here partly because this is a sincere essay (exploration). I do want to assert the abstract concept of a “field” as opposed to a “line” of experience, at the same time that I would prefer to eschew the idea of a unified, transcendent field as a proxy for anything.

[iv] The idea of virtually occupying multiple positions at once may resonate with notions of probability waves and parallel universes, though I hesitate to invoke popular physics for obvious reasons.

[v] For a discussion of the “restorative” value of being in nature as a rest from directed attention See Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. In “The ‘Restorative Environment’” section of Chapter 8, “Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Restorative Environment,” Louv cites the work of Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, not coincidentally inspired by William James.