The following is a result of time spent by Adam Clarke at F. David Peat’s Pari Center for New Learning, from late 2006 until early 2007. Acting as an ambassador of University College Falmouth’s RANE Research cluster, Adam furthered his own visual arts research into the re-enchantment of nature as a contemporary ecological aesthetic, and opened a dialogue with the Pari Center with a view to potentially establishing an artists’ residency exchange with University College Falmouth at some point in the future.

Contents An Aesthetic Re-enchantment of Nature – a proposal

- Introduction 1 - The Revolution 6 - The Eco-aesthetic Context 14 - Dreaming with our eyes open 31 - Conclusion 46 - Bibliography 54

Pari Research This is not an empty bottle 58 Dew…or what the night air left behind 59 Ways to Know the air 61 Magnetic Poetry Series 63 The White River 68 Moving Ash Mountain 69 Eternities Great Forever 71 The Air Songs 72 Robin 73 Taking a Stone for a Walk 74 1 80 The Rock Tree Mobile 81 2 83 Air Drum 84 ‘The Wind Clocks’ Project 85 The Global Air Map Project 88 The Village of Pari 92 Podere Vignali 100 Acknowledgements 104

An Aesthetic Re-enchantment of Nature – a proposal

by Adam Clarke

An observation:

When writing the following I became aware that I was somewhat enacting its premise. I’d sit late into the evening,

my back turned to the open fire ablaze beneath the mantle; my feet awkwardly curled over and behind the truss of the chair

where I sat to warm the soles of my feet. I would pour over the tower of books at my side, before impulsively launching

myself into an extended tirade of clattering the keys of my buzzing laptop.

Often I would find myself instinctually turning to face the lashing flames as they coiled about the hissing bark of a new tinder, the vacuous howl of air and moisture at the virulent

mercy of the smoke charmer; black billows of smoke its magic ritual cast up amidst the black sky, dissolved within the stars,

above clouds that had fallen to haunt the village by night. It seemed somehow fitting that it was the fire I turned to when

my thoughts ground to a halt; a ritual of prehistory that the wealth of technology at my fingertips could not satisfy. It was

to the fires hypnotic rhythms that I’d be drawn to reawaken my passions. It became my muse, the source of magic that

would stir and ignite my literary impulses.

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Introduction

Wind, rain and thunder, remember earthly man is but a substance that must yield to you. 1

- William Shakespeare

My intention when exploring paradigms such as the following re-enchantment aesthetic, is to examine ecocentric methodologies that are significantly informed by current observations of the contemporary ecological art context; methods of practice concerned with responding to ecological issues as ecosophy. The following is posited as the beginnings of a provocative model of research. The re-enchantment aesthetic addresses a shift away from contemporary anthropogenic interventions and dualistic encounters with nature and the environment. Within the unfolding realm of eco-sensitive and eco-responsive art, the aesthetic paradigm promotes a responsible process led engagement with the natural world, alluding to a non-dualistic approach to art-making, encouraging the realisation of both a practical and philosophical interdependency and connectedness with nature.

‘"Disenchantment literally means, ‘taking the magic out’,… with a mechanical philosophy nature is stripped of experience, feeling, and subjectivity.’ 2 It is the aim of a re-enchantment aesthetic to

1 Page 98, Baker, Ernest A. & Ross, Francis E.; The Voice of the Mountains, George Routledge & Sons Ltd, London, 1913 2 Craig, Nancy Jo; The Re-enchantment of the World (1995 Version) http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/2737

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acknowledge that the ‘magic’ in nature can be communicated and collaborated with harmoniously as process; a contemporary visual dialogue through which the modern artist can promote an enchanted participatory relationship with it.

It is widely acknowledged that the proponents of the scientific revolution during the 17th century transformed our perceptions and interactions with nature through the founding of a ‘clockwork’ worldview; poignantly impacting upon how we consider and experience nature throughout the centuries thereafter. We cannot deny that human beings by our very nature are an inquisitive species. However, I believe we have reached as a consequence of our long established scientistic worldview, a critical turning point in how we regard the natural world, employ our scientism as informed by our cultures political and economic aspirations. In todays context, our understanding of crucial ecological issues requires that we re-evaluate our place in nature as responsible interdependents within it, not as self-serving masters and manipulators of its resources.

A crucial period in history is upon us, where we must choose between reforming our behaviour and interactions with the natural world, or continue to travel closer toward immanent environmental catastrophe. We should be encouraged to consider deeply how we have affected the natural world - our home; what we have lost along the way, both spiritually and ecologically, and how best to approach an uncertain future.

Endowed with a rapacious thirst to learn, debate and apply our gathered knowledge, I share in a philosophy with authors such as David Abram, Morris Berman, Suzi Gablik and S. J Goerner, that we must

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now encounter and progressively adapt our means of learning and creating in line with our contemporary knowledge of nature and its current struggle; begin to challenge and change our worldview across disciplines from the arts to the sciences, agriculture to economics. Encourage a revitalised cultural holism, an ‘integral society’ 3, that can be reactionary towards ecological issues. Within the ecological arts, examine aesthetic methodologies that too promote a responsible, ‘deep’ complementarity and interdependency with nature and the environment. The re-enchantment aesthetic I propose addresses the encountering of nature, its processes and the environment, through sensitive, responsible and ultimately collaborative and relational praxis; challenging anthropocentric methods of intervening within the natural world. The paradigm involves the embracing of a participatory synthesis with nature; the realisation and promotion of a creative unity and interdependence. Ultimately the paradigm seeks to (re)generate a sense of oneness with nature, (for both the viewer and creator of artwork) encouraging a revelatory, experiential dynamic that serves to highlight and draw attention to a remembering of both observable and unobservabe phenomena. Challenging installed, representational and expressive anthropo-aesthetic interventions within nature and the environment, the re-enchantment aesthetic asserts a non-dualistic, collaborative and participatory model 3 Term borrowed from S J. Goerner to describe a society in which one’s head, heart and soul are no longer at odds with one another. Goerner, S J.; After the Clockwork Universe – The emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society, Floris Books, GB, 1999

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of practice that is ecologically aware, sensitive and dynamic with/in nature itself. The audience should gain a new understanding and experience of nature, taking away a poetic that may transcend their common perceptions of its value, its processes and relationship to their everyday existence - stir wonder and a sense of intimacy through either a direct participatory engagement, or the encountering of creative sensibilities that employ nature as a co-authorial energy 4, asserting interdependence as a model of practice.

Fritjof Capra referring to how artists can impact upon society has stated that, ‘[w]hat you are changing is people’s perception. That is where you can help… We need to perceive the world differently to act differently. That is where art can make a tremendous difference.’ 5 It is my belief that the re-enchantment aesthetic, as an ecological paradigm, is capable of making just such a difference, influencing a shift in how nature is perceived and understood.

I open with a brief précis of the philosophical

shift incurred during the scientific revolution as a consequence of Cartesian dualism; providing a context for the development of our contemporary

4 I acknowledge that there are potentially endless models of practice through which the re-enchantment aesthetic could be addressed, however for the purpose of this thesis I focus primarily upon ‘relationality’ and ‘collaboration’. 5 Fritjof Capra speaking at the 1996 conference Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy. Page 211, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, Academy Editions, Great Britain, 1996

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scientism, and our consequent ‘seperateness’ from nature. Through challenging the subject / object distinction that exists between ourselves and nature as a whole, I feel we can attempt to invoke a deeper holistic relationship with our world; (re)awaken a sense of sanctity and oneness with nature, an eco-politic that can contribute towards a worldview that S J Goerner defines as a ‘web-world’ 6, in which humans and nature’s processes and systems are acknowledged as interconnected. Unlike mechanistic and dualist perceptions of the world, it promotes the concept that ‘…most things are better described as webs’. 7 I then discuss two primary works of contemporary art - and the artists method of practice - as a means to begin to identify the possible polemic differences that a re-enchantment aesthetic can possess. Drawing upon two divergent aesthetic methods - Land Art and Nature Collaborations - I discuss each works contextual ecological integrity in line with our paradigm. There then follows a dissemination of a Relational and Collaborative aesthetic, two initial, possible pathways toward a ‘Deep’ re-enchantment of nature. I conclude by means of appraisal; summarising the proposed model and positing issues that require further excavation and consideration. 6 Page 11-12, Goerner, S J.; After the Clockwork Universe – The emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society, Floris Books, GB, 1999 7 Page 12, Goerner, S J.; After the Clockwork Universe – The emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society, Floris Books, GB, 1999

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The Revolution ‘The world is no longer enchanted and it is no longer

loving.’ 8

The scientific revolution of the 17th century established the philosophies to which the re-enchantment aesthetic now responds. The two dominant figures that bore what would later be referred to as the ‘clockwork’ worldview, were Issac Newton and Rene Descartes. Newtonian physics and Cartesian subject / object dualism redefined our perceptions of nature, establishing a divisive ‘seperateness’, a hierarchical dominance, that saw humans capable of observing, manipulating and controlling nature through processes of mechanistic, reductionist science. 9

The Newtonian and Cartesian philosophies as they have traversed the centuries have so influenced the accumulation of scientific knowledge, affected our perceptual understanding, experience and indeed interaction with the natural world around us, that their resonance remains today culturally ingrained and influential. Their philosophical rhythms four hundred

8 Page 82, Goerner, S J.; After the Clockwork Universe – The emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society, Floris Books, GB, 1999 9 I may suggest referring to Morris Berman’s The Re-enchantment of the World, Nancy Jo Craig’s paper of the same name, and S J. Goerner’s After the Clockwork Universe – The emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society for further reading about this subject.

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years later still affecting almost every mechanism of today’s society. 10

Throughout prehistory nature was an enchanted wonderland, and indeed during the Hermetic alchemical traditions of the centuries prior to the scientific revolution, was recognised as ‘an assemblage of correspondences’. 11 Our ancient ancestors were at home in a world where cosmologies were born of a direct intimate commune with nature. The weather, the earth, trees and rocks possessed secret, and indeed sacred, voices and spirits that human beings both revered and feared. Belief was entwined with a sacred sense of place; nature was sacrosanct, and we found enlightenment through a dialogue with its presence, a oneness with our environment. This profound relationship bore such deep respect that nature’s presence permeated much of people’s everyday lives, their societal geography, perceptual place and understanding of how the world worked, prayer and ritual rites. They looked to nature as an intellectual entity with which they were themselves connected. Comparatively we now look to

10 The consequences of Newtonian physics and Cartesian dualism can be felt throughout disciplines as divergent as psychology, economics, education, business and trade. Pertinent examples are man’s conquest and consumption of fossil fuels, the economies of fair and sustainable trade between the West and Third world countries in regard to legitimising aid, the travel and import / export industry’s profit margins over environmental impact and business acumen. Though such issues are contemporaneously being debated they cannot plausibly be expanded upon within this thesis. 11 Page 60, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, USA, 1981

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the sciences as a means to comprehend our ‘place’, to use nature and better equip ourselves against it as a dangerous mechanism that must be understood, controlled and combatted for the sake of our material and existential preservation. 12

Human beings once participated in the sanctity of nature, did not view it solely as a commodity to be tamed, subdued and ultimately observed, studied and comprehended. Morris Berman identified this congenial, somewhat mystic relationship as a ‘participating consciousness’ an ‘identification with one’s surroundings…a psychic wholeness.’ 13 Over the centuries the Cartesian subject / object fracturing of the world saw a human seperateness accelerate towards an industrial full scale conquering of nature’s landscape. Through this process man would not only alienate human beings from nature and the environment, but ultimately alienate ‘his’ self. Human beings became an otherworldly object amidst a fog of mechanical presuppositions, denied the interconnectedness that had existed throughout much of his own history. He had embarked upon a path set towards attempting to manifest his own destiny; a destiny in which his ‘instinct for survival’ was surpassed by instinctual self-preservation fuelled by a material, dare I suggest egoistic, scientific economy. 12 For example, the recent responses to the 2004 South East Asia Tsunami, which produced increased investment in oceanic seismic detectors, and the 2005 floods of New Orleans where there was massive investment in rebuilding the same dams that burst along the Louisiana River. 13 Page 2, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, USA, 1981

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Francis Bacon, another scientific revolutionary of the 17th century, coined the phrase “Natura Vexata” or “Nature annoyed” as a means of placing nature under conditions through which it would yield its answers. Combined with Cartesian dualism and Newtonian physics such scientific methodologies encouraged the interrogation, quantification and exploitation of nature, founding our contemporary scientism.

Cartesian dualism, Baconian principles of experimentation, and the potency of Newtonian physics, forged an energetic course toward pure reason and rational man. Humankind entered a new age - the ascension of a scientistic worldview in which nature could be observed, controlled and utilised for human endeavour. Mechanical philosophies so starved us of an interconnectedness and experience of nature, our place in an enchanted world embued with purpose and meaning, that our spiritual sensibilities were worn down by a tumultuous tide of technological and scientific progress.

A monumental shift in consciousness had occurred that would ultimately spark the entropic charge toward a new science and chapter in the history of humankind. Perceiving reality became focused less upon questioning ‘why’ events occurred, and more about ‘how’ they took place. Reductionist, quantifiable investigation had emerged. Science became the court within which nature was cross-examined through rigorous scrutiny and analysis. An atomistic reign and perspective was instilled, a cold empirical rationalisation of nature born. Nature was marched towards its disenchantment to scientific aplomb, as man steered his course ever further

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towards the curious possibilities of a new age riddled with the discoveries that would culminate in the contemporary culture of today.

Reducing nature to mechanical parts served to gradually desensitise and distance ourselves from it. That which humankind had once endowed with sanctity and spirit, had shared in an interconnectivity with would increasingly become a commodity and realm to exploit. Overtime stepping outside and beyond nature as an observer, propelled by bold revolutionary scientific paradigms, bore the qualification that we were capable of controlling and manipulating it on new and unprecedented scales; purchase its secrets - albeit under duress - at the sake of a knowledge that would overtime fortify humankind’s separateness from the very world that maintains him; able to calculate, structure and invent creative new means by which nature could be submissive to a hungry thirst for technological advancement, knowledge and power; even influencing and facilitating the conquests of man over man.

David Bohm is quoted as saying that science ‘… is knowledge of what is necessary such as the laws of nature. Science is also an activity built up through time.’ 14

A similarity that both science and art share is that each discipline functions as a form of knowledge that equips us with the theoretical and visual tools 14 David Bohm during his opening Speech from the conference Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy. Page 25, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy, Academy Editions, London, 1996

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with which we can contextualise cultural epochs. It is worthwhile therefore discussing the nature of each disciplines sensibilities to gain some insight into how and why a re-enchantment aesthetic can impact upon dualist and mechanistic perceptions of nature.

Though contemporary science, on the whole, seeks to ascertain quantifiable reliable knowledge that is applicable to a societal ‘good’, and the furtherance of cultural endeavour itself, it has been the cause of our relinquishing and sacrificing of an important interconnectivity with nature as I have mentioned. It has compromised our intimacy with nature, our spiritual interdependence, contributing towards many searching for a place of true belonging in a world with a disdainful emphasis and reliance upon a plastic material economy with little or no intimacy with the world that sustains them. Yet we need only ponder the rhythms of a coastline or the majesty of a forest for an afternoon, experience for ourselves the wonder of the world up close, to attempt to reconcile this; realise that each of us remains part of a sensitive and awe-inspiring interdependent global ecology and process.

In contrast, art, in the words of artist Lawrence Weiner ‘… has nothing to do with convincing people.’ 15 In its every eclectic form art differs unapologetically from science; it does not seek to prove or disprove, quantify or calculate. Art serves to enlighten, express or reveal the world in diverse, challenging new ways, but in a language far removed 15 Lawrence Weiner speaking at the 1996 conference Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy. Page 169, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy, Academy Editions, London, 1996

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from that of science; ‘…basically all the knowledge that both groups handle is already there, but the way in which they describe it is different. Scientists want to take it into the language to make it handy, so you can talk about it. A good artist takes it out of that, beyond language…’ 16

Art is founded upon processes of perception, generating ways in which the world can be explored and experienced outside and beyond any dogmatic critique or inquiry. It can be relational or expressive, observational or functional, abstract or historical, and can conform as much as it can antagonise. There can be no systemic rigour with which to comply, no paradigms that are right or wrong. Contemporary art can enter into virtually any facet of society and engage and provoke public, societal and cross-disciplinary dialogues, challenging emotive and functional rhythms of cultural and historical contexts and beyond. Its boundless capabilities, now popularized standing, potential relationality encompassing its audiences participation, increasing dynamism as an inter-cross-disciplinary medium, posits art as a language persuasively capable to challenge, approach and openly debate ecological issues, and thus attempt a re-enchantment of nature.

Both art and science contribute to a cultures worldview – informing the way we interact, experience and communicate with one another, via the aesthetic information and form of the world around us. But most importantly both indicate and

16 Per Kirkeby, Page 74, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, Academy Editions, Great Britain, 1996

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influence the direction in which culture will travel; serve as indicators of social and technological ideals, aesthetic and philosophical.

However, a similarity that both disciplines share, fundamental to the re-enchantment aesthetic, is that they both adhere to an unfortunate subject / object dualism when encountering nature and the environment.

Science, as I have discussed, does so through its mechanistic, dualist processes of inquiry, but contemporary artists working in or with nature often find themselves practicing with a similar dualistic approach; representing nature, installing work within it, commandeering it in line with distinct anthropocentric creative intentions.

To further examine this dilemma we next turn to examine two primary works and artistic practice that deal with nature and the environment.

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The Eco-aesthetic Context ‘Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by

widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures, and the whole of nature in its

beauty.’ 17 The previous chapter discussed the demystification of nature - Die Entgotterung der Natur, 18 the ‘disgodding’ of nature, its succumbing to a dualist, mechanical disenchantment.

We now examine two contemporary models of practice with a view to examine divergent forms of a re-enchantment aesthetic; selected for their distinct method of encountering nature, and their impact and relationship with the environment.

*

It is my belief that if we are to address the

damage that human beings have inflicted upon the planet it is down to individuals to act as a collective social organism - through individual ecosophical means assume an integral responsibility that is ultimately motivated by a collective social consciousness that seeks to establish a wiser eco-

17 Sogyal Rinpoche, Page 157, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, Academy Editions, Great Britain, 1996 18 Friedrich Schiller, Page 57, Morris Berman’s The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, USA, 1981

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societal framework, that will in the long-view benefit nature through responsible interactions with it.

Viewing the world as process asserts that nature’s well-being is for the long-term benefit of all biodiversity, and has positive tangential implications greater than any individual ‘self’. To quote Gregory Bateson, ‘The unit of survival - either in ethics or evolution - is not the organism or the species but the largest system or ‘power’ within which the creature lives. If the creature destroys its environment, it destroys itself.’ 19

Global ecological concerns are today increasingly discussed in the public domain. Governments debate how we can lower carbon emissions, trade more efficiently and research alternative energy sources 20; the individual is encouraged to recycle household waste, offset carbon emmissions, lower their thermostat, eyeball electrical appliances on standby and adopt more energy efficient lives on the whole, from car-pooling to installing solar panels and wind turbines.

As early as the 1960’s artists began working with nature’s processes and engaging directly with the environment. Increasingly now contemporary artists excavate innovative ways to respond to ecological

19 Gregory Bateson as quoted in Morris Berman’s The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, USA, 1981 20 However, as George Monbiot discusses enthusiastically in his book ‘HEAT – How to Stop the Planet from Burning’, governments still invest vast sums of money in funding schemes that research the prevention of climate change and other environmental issues, yet invest disproportionately more in the expansion of motorways. Though they like to actively be seen to be green!

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issues, via forms of eco-activism, redefining historical paradigms, employing challenging new media to communicate an individual or societal eco-politic, and engaging with nature’s potential creative energy itself. The language of ecological art is bold and diverse, its complexity as rich as the movements value in providing its audience with provocative insightful new ways in which to consider, experience, perceive and understand the natural world.

The artworks I have selected from which to begin discussing a re-enchantment aesthetic, serve to illustrate how diverse our paradigm can be; chosen to guide and encourage the consideration of relevant important aesthetic principles and values. Our first model of practice is a Land Art intervention that seeks to engage the audience relationally with a natural process through a large-scale manipulation of the environment; the second, a direct creative collaboration between the artist and nature itself as a co-authorial process. 21

James Turrell – The Roden Crater ‘…to ‘know’ or ‘assess’ or ‘consider’ is not possible without participating in a relationship with what is

being known, assessed or considered.’ 22

21 It should be acknowledged that a re-enchantment aesthetic of any sort exists in line with the artists ecosophical sensibilities. Consequently there is a sliding scale of methods and degrees through which to examine an aesthetic re-enchantment of nature; models are infinite. 22 Page 139, Curry, Patrick; Ecological Ethics – An Introduction, Polity Press, GB, 2006

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Archaeologist Richard Bradley has stated that when people first began to alter natural features in the environment, making the transition from relatively passive embellishments toward the construction of monolithic structures, they were ‘…committing a major irreversible act … they were altering the Earth for the first time.’ 23 Humankind embraced installing such monuments in nature as an environmental yet functional, form of sacred aesthetic. The cycles of nature and the Earth itself were sacrosanct and humans participated with nature in a shared cosmology, employing such architecture to locate themselves spiritually within the cosmos.

Over millenia sacred places became increasingly elaborate; built to ever an industrious scale as humankinds cultural diversification evolved in line with its philosophical and theological developments - distancing the once intimate, participatory role of ‘place’ in nature, as allied with direct human experience, in exchange for more permanent, grand architectural houses of worship.

One need not struggle to identify initial similarities between ancient monoliths and monuments, and much of contemporary Land Art. However, the purpose of Land Art such as Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’, Michael Heizer’s ‘Double Negative’, or Alan Sonfist’s ‘Circles of Time’ is dramatically contrasted with ancient civilisations distinct want to invest creatively, yet spiritually with nature and the environment; a critical difference in context, employing artistic expression over a

23 Page 56, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000

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spiritually motivated engagement with nature. Contemporary Land Art reifies the land, commands it in line with an individuals conceptual identity; it does not aspire to sanctify the landscape, but is an installed anthropo-aesthetic existing as an artistic expression or public / social adornment. 24

The re-enchantment aesthetic seeks a practical and philosophical shift away from treating 24 It is pertinent to differentiate between the more invasive Land Art pioneers – most notably Smithson and Heizer - and contemporary artists whose practices may appear similar. The collaborative duo Gilles Bruni and Marc Barbarit, Chris Drury and Nils Udo, for example, have all created large-scale sited works within nature. Yet they tend to an installed aestheticism that functions within an ecological context; they promote an integral awareness of nature through their interventions; unlike the industrial excavations of Smithson and Heizer, who often referred to nature as a fiction that the artist could manipulate at will.

However, they do retain a dualist anthropocentric inhabiting of the land; their imposed constructions are referent expressive, representational interventions. Within the context of a re-enchantment aesthetic I would include also forms of eco-activism as being an anthropo-aesthetic due to its practitioners want to intervene and attempt to heal nature of damage caused by humans

Some may argue that in a culture so challenged to identify with a sacred sense of place in nature, such public art infers a ‘new’ sense of place through which our identity with nature can contemporaneously be made profound and cognitive in line with our modernist context; that some Land Art does seek to introduce a ‘sense’ of sanctity into the landscape by attempting to direct us toward natural phenomena and occurrences, for example Chris Drury’s Sky Chambers or Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field. It is this subject that I thus discuss further in relation to James Turrell’s The Roden Crater.

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nature as an object to be manipulated or represented through anthropocentric installed interventions. Manmade constructions typically distance the viewer from any true dialogue with nature as a dynamic process that is participatory and interconnected with ourselves. Through sited objects the dialogue is linear, the viewer presented with an individual’s response to a site or material; there is little relationality or direct experiential encounter of nature. The artwork enters the mind, but ones ‘mind’ does not enter back into the artwork. A deeper connection with nature cannot truly be evoked, for its anthropocentric design and dominance eclipses any sensation of interconnectivity.

James Turrells ‘The Roden Crater’ suffers from just such anthropocentrism, yet differs by incorporating an experiential relationality with a natural phenomena. Despite the works Land Art references this quality posits ‘Roden Crater’ at the fringe of our re-enchantment aesthetic. Roden Crater is a cinder cone located in a volcanic plateau east of San Francisco, and is currently still under completion. Turrell has shaped the architecture of the volcano’s inner caldera and tunnelled into its walls, seeking to create a space that draws the viewer toward a new vision, and relationship with natural light.

Altering a natural environment, introducing a dynamic functionality, shares a similarity with the methods employed by ancient civilisations to observe and revere natural phenomena via sited monolithic structures. Although the Roden Crater’s contemporary aestheticism is contextually allied with that of the Land Artists, it differs via its want to direct the viewer toward an experiential connectivity with a

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natural occurrence. The site has been transformed to evoke an intimate, heightened awareness of a natural phenomenon we seldom give much thought – natural light.

The Roden Crater is a unique project, yet somewhat paradoxical as an artwork conceived during the Land Art movement of the 1970’s. Unlike works by Turrell’s contemporaries it is not intended as a mere displacement of rock, earth and soil facilitating an artists conceptual aesthetic; competing with the land and viewing nature as a ‘…fiction onto which the artist left his or her imprint.’ 25 Roden Crater is proposed as a geological instrument wanting to direct, acquaint - even reacquaint - visitors with an intimate new vision and experience of natural light; a process of the Earth’s story that we today associate more with the rhythms of a working day, than with any sense of sanctity. The artist is quoted as saying, ‘We generate light at night in the cities to offset our fear of eachother, but lighting the night sky cuts off access to the universe…if you cut off access to the universe, you don’t live in it. It’s a psychological change to do that, to light the sky and cut yourself off from the stars.’ 26

Beyond its industrial construction lies a desire to influence people’s perception of lights changing cycles and process - draw attention to the presence of a greater poetry that belies its inherent everydayness. The work encourages the viewer to spend time within a natural, yet architecturally modified, environment. A contemporary sanctuary directed toward the 25 Page 114, Grande, John K; Art Nature Dialogues – Interviews with Environmental Artists, State University of New York Press, USA, 2004 26 http://www.conversations.org/issue.php?id=2&st=99-1-turrell

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heavens. Like ancient peoples monolithic, reverential interventions in nature Turrell guides our focus toward a natural event, revealing the light in the sky - not in line with any theological or cosmological philosophy – but by creating a provocative contemporary space, framing light as a phenomenon for us to experience. He plays with our sense of intimacy, challenging our dislocation from natural light by creating a sanctuary intended to re-enchant and somewhat recombine this distance; an attempt at revitalising our ancient remembrance of light when it had prominent cultural meaning, deeper spiritual significance, to ‘…put people in touch with a greater scale, one not often felt.’ 27

Turrell wishes to reach deep into our sacred consciousness and stir an ancient remembrance of light; to acknowledge that we are subservient to a much greater process of events beyond our control and manipulation. The viewer is placed within a very real, process driven vision of nature’s grand cyclic movements – an almost cinematic experience of the changing light of the sky.

Though the site is of no distinct sacred relevance – selected after extensive surveillance of the area 28 – Roden Crater shares in a relationship with ancient monuments intended as sacred cosmological devices. The projects purposive dynamic to influence

27 http://www.conversations.org/issue.php?id=2&st=99-1-turrell 28 The site for Roden Crater was not selected due to the observance of any simulacra, or that the site is of geographical significance, nor for any natural occurrences that take place there. The artist selected a convenient site to appropriate. Crater was born of an insistent survey to find a site that could be moulded to the artist’s vision.

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our experience of natural light may not be conducted in line with any specific reverential belief or behaviour, but the artists intention to create a space that draws a focus toward light, challenging our relationship with nature in a culture acclimatised to perceiving nature as ‘object’. It encourages us to feel a more interconnected unity by creating a relational experience for people to spend time with, drawing attention toward an ‘event space’; a frame through which we can ally our knowledge and existential selves with a planetary process far greater than our immediate material existence. He frames light for us to share in nature’s passing orbit, as to evoke a sense of wonder that lifts us from our everyday perception of the cycles of day and night, beyond and into what the ancient Greeks referred to as ‘chora’ 29. The artist is quoted as saying ‘…looking at light in a Skyspace is akin to a worldless thought – and such a thought has boundless potential.’ 30

Turrell’s contemporary megalith engages with what environmental psychologist James Gibson termed the audiences ‘haptic perception’ 31; a sensory process that describes how the body discerns the

29 ‘…mysterious, less passive property of space, a more subtle poetic quality…space becomes an agent that provokes our sensibilities, that can stir the seeds of spirituality within us.’ Page 20, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000 30 Page 137, Kemp, Martin; Visualisations –The Nature Book of art and Science, Oxford University Press, UK, 2000 31 Page 14, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000

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space around it as a means to reconnect with the environment, ‘…using the joints in its limbs as additional ‘sense receptors’. 32

Turrell tends to our usual perceptions of light and encourages us to consider our interconnectivity and place within such perpetual events spatially and experientially – witness the sublimity of nature’s cyclic luminosity, conjuring an almost primitive revelatory enchantment.

However, though Turrell relationally seeks to somewhat re-enchant our perception of light, he has done so nonetheless through the acquisition and manipulation of a natural geological monument; mechanically altering a vast portion of the environment. The work suffers distinctly from a dualist dilemma; man transforming the earth into whatever he desires. It is for this reason that although relationally the work aspires to influence a sacred connection with nature, it is compromised in line with the ‘deeper’ intentions of the re-enchantment aesthetics ecological philosophy. For any man-made disturbance in nature has a significant influence upon the paradigm, for at essence it aspires to be wholly sensitive toward existing natural environments and processes.

Ancient monuments within nature stand as testaments to our evolution, humankinds cultural understanding of place as it developed via a synchronic ecology with nature over time. Their interventions were conducted solely within a participatory, reverential anthropological context.

32 Page 14, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000

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Sanctity provided humankind with a means upon which to found society itself. Environmental and ecological concerns were not then debated, or indeed an urgent issue.

Today in light of philosophical and ecological shifts it is the philosophy of this paradigm to develop ways to coexist more harmonious with nature; such domineering interventions and manipulations of the natural environment appear insensitive, somewhat self indulgent, no matter their philosophical framework; though Turrells intention is no doubt allied, in part, to the re-enchantment aesthetics aspirations through its relationality.

Mario Reis – Nature Watercolours

Pantha Rhei - everything flows We have discussed a form of re-enchantment aesthetic through a relational experience of nature’s process.

We now examine a method of practice that is collaborative with nature’s events; the artist relinquishing sole creative control, engaging in a dialogue with its processes, thus manifesting an aesthetic that is decidedly unanthropocentric. This method draws us closer to a deeper form of re-enchantment aesthetic. Nature becoming co-author, revealing itself.

*

Alchemical consciousness saw the world as a series of corresponding relationships - a concept that we today can compare to process philosophy in which

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the world is regarded as being founded upon interdependent processes of change and flux.

Mario Reis embraces nature as such, working directly within the environment and its processes, his interaction so transitory, so subtle, that a poignant ecological ethic is adhered to, ‘an attitude of respect for nature.’ 33 Few artists work so sympathetically, yet directly, with natural processes and its unpredictable states of flux.

Placing framed cloth into rivers Reis collects the waters flow of mineral and vegetal sediment. Such mica reveals a colourful site specific ‘painting’ initiated by the artist, yet created by the patterns of the rivers flow, and the textures of the residue it leaves behind, giving ‘… a sense of the specific microecology of a place’. 34

Placing stones upon the frames, weighting them into the water, he admits that he influences the water as it interacts with the surface of the cloth. There is an element of control, influencing where sediment ‘may’ be concentrated. Yet his intervention acknowledges and embraces the inherent lack of control he has over the river he works with; the marks unpredictable and of the river itself. He leaves the river, once the cloth has been installed, for the river to leave its mark. Natural changes to the environment form part of the rivers voice - a change in water level, the weather, passing animals all inform the traces left behind, all are events recognised as part of the rivers 33 Paul Taylor, Page 60, Curry, Patrick; Ecological Ethics – An Introduction, Polity Press, GB, 2006 34 Page 105, Mario Reis in conversation with John K Grande. Grande, John K; Art Nature Dialogues – Interviews with Environmental Artists, State University of New York Press, USA, 2004

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expression of itself and history. The artist’s hand bears no visual mark.

In contrast to representing nature, installing any form of permanent or impermanent man-made aesthetic within the environment, he encourages nature to represent itself by deftly intervening in its processes, leaving no trace of the artist behind in nature or upon the works surface. ‘My role as an artist is neither as primogenitor nor postgenitor. In a way it is both. But the main thing, to be even more explicit, is the interaction with the river, the collaboration between us.’ 35

His role as the artist is submissive to an unpredictable creative energy that remains beyond his control, without which the work could not occur. ‘Having installed the piece I leave it on its own, and the river then works on it. It is thus influenced by any natural changes that might occur… Whatever happens, its an expression of nature in its own voice.’ 36

Reis reinvents the role of the artist as someone who sensitizes the viewer to nature; rather than leaving his mark or expression upon or within a location, possessed by an anthropo-aesthetic, nature is encouraged to leave its materials upon the artists temporary intervention.

35 Page 110, Mario Reis in conversation with John K Grande. Grande, John K; Art Nature Dialogues – Interviews with Environmental Artists, State University of New York Press, USA, 2004 36 Page 110, Mario Reis in conversation with John K Grande. Grande, John K; Art Nature Dialogues – Interviews with Environmental Artists, State University of New York Press, USA, 2004

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Artists who have intervened similarly with processes of natural time and flow in the environment are, for example Susan Derges 37 and Stephen Turner 38. Charlotte Cotton states that Derges’ work displays ‘…the ethereal forces that bind us to a universal system’ 39 and Turner speaks of how he regards himself as an amanuensis 40 for nature. Their work shares in a similar dialogue by placing the means by which natural processes can passively reveal their presence under their own accord; generating stimulating process led outcomes, whose aesthetics give a voice to nature, revealing it as a fluctuating presence that constantly informs the environment around us; events that belie our everyday experience, that we are interconnected with, drawing the viewers attention to their potentiality as energetic creative processes that ubiquitously penetrate and form our world. The viewer becomes aware of an aesthetic that natural events manifest independently of a constructed representation or expression of the natural world or environment.

37 Susan Derges ‘photograms’ are made without a camera, submerging large-scale sheets of photographic paper beneath the surface of water as it flows, and firing a flashlight. The rivers movements are captured upon the paper and revealed during the development process. 38 In his Tree Rings series Stephen Turner placed canvases around the base of trees. Left overtime the movements of animals, falling leaves and the weather thus left marks upon the canvas. 39 Page 9, Brandt, Frish & Danziger, James; Susan Derges – Woman Thinking River, Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services, USA, 1998 40 The roots of the word are Latin and describe a person, often a slave, who writes for someone who cannot.

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Reis’ art ‘object’ (the frames) could appear problematic, for they cannot escape associations with traditional painting methods, and cannot escape the associated subject / object relationship when installed before the viewer in a gallery. Yet despite this observation, they provide the viewer with the alternative means to consider and comprehend what a painting can be, the means by which a painting may be generated; indeed revealing the workings and capabilities that are inherent within nature, through a participatory dialogue with its processes. The work has not been created by the hand of man, rather the processes and flow of nature itself. Commenting upon the way the audience views the work the artist notes, ‘Most are fascinated with the concept behind the nature watercolours…find it almost unbelievable how different each piece is, and how many colors can be found in the rivers…The works change the spectators way of looking at nature and rivers. They become sensitized and begin to appreciate the diversity and beauty of rivers.’ 41 The audience is able to construct a new affinity with rivers they may know personally; when they next see a river, consider and perceive its movements, water and landscape in a different way. They take away from Reis’ work a new insight, a refreshed intimate knowledge of nature.

Beyond the collaboration between the artist and the rhythms of nature, communication of this dialogue influences the viewers perception of what a river is and can be. Reis’ collaboration reveals a rivers

41 Page 106, Mario Reis in conversation with John K Grande. Grande, John K; Art Nature Dialogues – Interviews with Environmental Artists, State University of New York Press, USA, 2004

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story, enabling the viewer to read it via a poetic language, a dialect that is unique to that particular site. The sensitive commune between river and artist promotes a responsible interface founded upon respect. Reis provides the river with the means to re-enchant preconceived notions of what a river is, by engaging in a dialogue with it, enabling it to tell its own story via its own movements and life. There exists an interconnectivity in Reis’ creative process, but also in the way in which he chooses the river to work with. He stresses that a site must speak to him, for him to engage with it collaboratively. Unlike Turrell surveying a site in which to posit his work, there exists a more intuitive, perhaps even sacred, emotive dialogue between a location and himself.

Reis’ relinquishing of sole creative control, and the embracing of nature’s energy to express its voice, under no human duress tell its own story, serves to provoke a shift in the way we think and consider the means by which contemporary artists can engage with nature and the environment; a shift in common anthropocentric practices of engaging with nature via representational, installed aesthetics, promoting ways in which we can consider nature in line with a contemporary ecological awareness; employing a philosophy encouraging re-evaluating our place and interactions with nature, particularly in light of shifts in praxis where artists now are developing alternative means to work within nature and the environment, referencing eco-activist methods of practice, more sensitive, sympathetic and relational events that leave little or no impact upon it.

By instigatng works that empower nature with a ‘visual’ voice, leaving nature pristine, interfacing

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temporarilly with its processes, adheres to an ecological ethic, instilling a philosophy that nature is indeed sacred, and that we are interdependent with it and therefore acknowledge that we are vitally reliant upon its well being.

*

Both aforementioned models of practice share in principles of realising an interconnectivity with nature and the environment; one, through the artists creation of a relational experience for his audience, and the second a practice led form of collaboration, revealing nature to the audience via marks made by it’s own creative energy, its ‘voice’. These models represent only two possible pathways toward a re-enchantment aesthetic, asserting polemic ecosophical interactions with nature – one highly manipulative toward nature, yet communicating a relationality integral to our paradigm, the other highly sensitive and attuned deeply to its principles of valuing nature both when creating work with/in the environment and influencing the audiences consideration of nature itself.

Not only do they physically engage with nature to varying degrees, but possess divergent means to communicate and reconnect an audience with it through process led encounters. In the following chapter I proceed to examine the aesthetic models in more detail, further unpacking their philosophical bearing upon an aesthetic re-enchantment of nature.

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’Dreaming with our eyes open’ 42

‘Our current ‘ego’- nomics can only lead to ecological suicide.’ 43

I have discussed the scientific revolution and its impact upon the disenchantment of nature; case studies and their methods toward encountering nature and the environment in regard to a re-enchantment aesthetic.

I now begin to unpack the two aforementioned methods of practice - relationality and collaboration. I view both methods as fundamental to a re-enchantment aesthetic. I excavate parameters for engaging with nature founded upon synthesis, the promoting of interdependency through an eco-relational aesthetic, perceiving nature as a vital, presence that should be responsibly encountered, and how the relational and collaborative models can influence, and revive the viewers consideration of nature.

* A re-enchantment aesthetic is epistemological. It provides a means for how the artist, and audience, can know and work with nature’s events - the very

42 Eugene Walter quoting Plato’s definition of how ‘chora’, or spirituality of place, could be grasped. Page 20, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000 43 Sogyal Rinpoche, Page 159, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, Academy Editions, GB, 1996

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energies that inform the environment, interfacing with nature as process; providing an audience with new means to encounter, experience and consider nature beyond solely anthropocentric installed interventions, its value, presence and sublimity – promoting a sense of sanctity and philosophical interconnectivity.

Humans have long since manipulated the environment through agriculture and the establishing of civilisations. Among our most poignant traits are the capacity to learn and adapt to our surroundings, retain knowledge, teach, and place an emotive value upon both the rational and irrational. Inherently we have evolved the astute ability to meticulously evaluate and shape form; create both functional and decorative objects, applying such creativity also to the environment. Our ingenuity and boundless imagination, in accordance with the development of the means by which we apply and express both, posit human beings as the species that most significantly shapes and disturbs our surroundings; who are cognitively aware of our impact and feel a responsibility for our actions.

In a contemporary ecological context our undeniable capacity to disturb the environment seems just cause for the provocation of new ways to engage with it; intellectually reconnect, through a revitalised ‘enchanted’ awareness of its value and presence.

Cybernetic theory asserts ‘we can know something only in context, in its relation with other things.’ 44 An aesthetic re-enchantment of nature addresses such processes of knowing. Through relationality and collaboration both the artist and

44 Page 248, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, United Kingdom, 1981

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audience can excavate perceptions and relationships with nature’s integral presence, value and (inter)connectivity with ourselves, beyond a contemporary consciousness ran through with a dualism and seperateness from it. Gregory Bateson equates actions, rather interactions, between ourselves and our environment as ‘Mind’; that is ‘…a relationship occurring, a systemic circuit, a Mind. The whole situation is alive, not just the man, and this life is immanent in the circuit, not transcendent… The circuit of information is the mind…’ 45 Promoting interdependence and an inseparability between mind and matter, through a process led engagement, posits the re-enchantment aesthetic as indeed a form of ‘Mind’; a responsible participatory encountering of nature.

We share in a direct relationship with intricate ecosystems and processes integral to our survival. We are connected to and interdependent with a vast and complex ‘web-world’; most of which we are seldom consciously aware of. The Earth possesses a well of hidden life and activity, is a hive of biodiversity, a blanket of integral, self-regulating ubiquitous energy. Everywhere there is life and process to be known, value to be found. Our paradigm seeks not only to engage with ‘immediate’ cognitive nature, those facets we are everyday familiar with, but reveal and make prominent those subtle domains and processes that underpin them; guide one towards those secret diminutive processes and entities whose proximity often penetrates our very existence - are

45 Citing Gregory Bateson’s concept of ‘Mind’. Page 244, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, United Kingdom, 1981

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interconnected with ourselves, those we are (inter)dependent upon.

Human beings will always impact upon the environment, nature and its processes. But to reiterate, this thesis proposes the practice of a ‘participating consciousness’; a shift away from solely anthropo-aesthetic representations or expressions of nature.

A conviction I share with Morris Berman is that of contemporary cultures loss of meaning, and that this loss is rooted in the scientific revolutions fragmentation of fact and value. As a result, modern science ‘can only tell us how to do something, not what to do or whether we should do it’. 46 Consequently our ethics are what ultimately inform the world around us, via the methods and technologies that science provides. Therefore a re-enchantment aesthetic within our contemporary ecological context must impact upon, and influence how we value, participate with, and experience nature. Accordingly, re-enchantment asserts an ecosophical framework; an ethic of care and responsibility. The artist attaches an intrinsic value to nature, endeavouring to support and nurture an aesthetic founded upon engaging with it as a vital ubiquitous ‘equal’, presence and process.

46 Page 39, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, United Kingdom, 1981

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Re-enchantment (1) – A Relational Aesthetic

‘place locates experience in people’ 47 A relational re-enchantment aesthetic may be generalised as that which directs and guides the audience toward a revitalised appreciation of nature through influencing ones experience of it physically and perceptually; is an artists method of pointing us toward knowing nature more intimately.

As a child my parents would take my brother and I to a nearby field to kick a ball. The field emerged from a scattering of trees and overlooked a steep drop that offered a panoramic view across green rolling countryside. My memories of this ‘place’ are formed not only from visual experience, but sensory recollections, most poignant of which in this instance, was that of the biting cold wind that turned my hands a rich crimson when I removed my sheepskin mittens.

I am able to better place the memory of this day due to a sensory experience of winter. In turn further latent revelations of this day emerge. Gloves off I remember picking up a leaf from the white frozen grass, marvelling over the glistening frost sparkling in the icy sunshine. I recall holding the body of the leaf between my thumb and forefinger, melting the frost to reveal the leaf’s sodden brown complexion. Fascinated by this transformation I rushed to show my Mother the miracle I’d discovered. Of course she humoured me and went on to explain that when my fingers touched the leaf my body

47 Eugene Walter, Page 16, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000

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temperature had melted the ice. Regardless of the explanation my intrigue and imagination were captivated and I rushed away once more to explore the wilds and wonders of a winter playground.

This short parable alludes to a poignant aspect of the re-enchantment aesthetic; that of a sensorial, direct experience of nature, a means of knowing its magic first hand through encounter and the formation of memory. These two key features ‘direct experience’ and ‘memory’ are both qualities that belie the fundamental forming of a relational re-enchantment aesthetic - how, and what the artist imparts to an audience. In light of the paradigms aspirations such features seek to impact upon ones connectedness with nature and the environment, sensitise the audience to a more intimate relationship, and influence how they may (re)consider their interactions with it in the future.

Paul Deveraux suggests there are four relational elements that contribute towards informing a sense of sacred place; ‘…the exchange between physical place, and the human mind and body… modelled by the cultural context in which it occurs.’ 48

As the re-enchantment paradigm is responsive to a contemporary ecological context, a relational artwork or event should influence contextual perceptions of nature, it’s place and processes, in relation to their everyday existence and activities; through creating experiential encounters attempt to

48 Page 15, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000

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inform contemporary perceptions of how we interact and know the natural world beyond mechanical orated facts, theories and values.

‘When we say that we feel emotionally distanced from something…we are not simply using a spatial metaphor in order to express more metaphysical relationships. On the contrary, our perception of space relies on a more fundamental human ability to experience relationality. This results in a spatial order which is centred on the human body… This spatial order, which we might call ‘experiential space’ has a certain priority, in that geometrical space can only be discovered through first existing in experiential space.... human beings are oriented in relation to the world as it is understood rather than as it is revealed by empirical science.’ 49

Re-enchantment as a relational aesthetic seeks to create methods of engaging the viewer with a deeper experience of nature; a reacquainting of place and/or process, with an experiential interconnectivity, providing influential ecological insight outside of the usual everydayness of its presence, when we seldom truly know or appreciate its value.

Nicolas Bourriaud defines relational art as ‘…an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space.’ 50 Within the remit of this thesis the human interactions occur not between one another – human 49 Julian Thomas, Page 37, Deveraux, Paul; The Sacred Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000 50 Page 14, Bourriaud, Nicolas; Relational Aesthetics, Les Presses du réel, France, 2002

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to human - but responsibly between ourselves and nature; the context is of a contemporary ecological space.

‘It is not only the artist who is creative, the public is creative in being able to receive what the artist is doing.’ 51 The artist sets an event or experience for the viewer, referencing nature’s ubiquity, place or processes, as a realm or companion to be ‘known’ and considered beyond everyday preconceptions and toward a more spiritual unity, an interdependency; as an integral reality with which they are connected, drawing out a revitalised awareness. Such encounters are to provoke a shift away from our dualistic perception of nature and the environment as ‘other’. A relational re-enchantment aesthetic seeks to readdress our contemporary identity and sense of oneness with nature; our ability to ‘…[learn] to inhabit the world in a better way, instead of trying to construct it based on a preconceived idea of historical evolution.’ Bourriaud continues’…the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real…’ 52

Relationality, due to its bearing upon ones direct experience and memory thus employs a form of

51 Marina Abramovic speaking at the 1996 conference Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, quoting Marcel Duchamp. Page 219, Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, Academy Editions, Great Britain, 1996 52 Page 13, Bourriaud, Nicolas; Relational Aesthetics, Les Presses du réel, France, 2002

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‘conversational drift’. 53 For it is experience that we are so often vocal to communicate to others. Passing on knowledge, or equipping someone else with a vision or sense of a moment, can often lead to them too perceiving and exploring the world / nature in a different manner from which they had done before. Summarising a relational aesthetic, nature ‘is revealed in our relations with it, and phenomena can be known only in context (participant observation).’ 54 The method is an adherent of Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, ‘…there is no clear boundary between subject and object.’ 55 Through participation and experience nature is revealed as part of our very being through our direct relations with it - subject and object aspects of the same process; the audience are sought to gain a sense of belonging and connectivity with nature as a sensuous vital presence, and inherit a revived consideration of its presence through experience and knowledge. 53 Newton Harrison, RANE lecture series, University College Falmouth lecture theatre. 03/04/06. 54 Page 237, (Batesonian Holistic Worldview) Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, United Kingdom, 1981 55 Page 137, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, United Kingdom, 1981

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Collaboration

‘[A] thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic

community.’ 56 Unlike the relational model, through which the artist imparts an experience to directly impact upon and influence the viewers perception and consideration of nature, collaboration is a method of practice that is more an ecosophy the artist employs to generate an aesthetic by interfacing directly with nature’s processes. However, it does similarly communicate to the audience an interconnectivity with nature by providing them with the knowledge of the creative process itself.

Collaboration as ecosophy, acknowledges an implicit responsibility for the artist to work with the existing environment and all that is dynamic within it; a surrendering to nature’s self-regulating ecology, with an awareness of its value as an interdependent and equal.

All of us are in constant collaboration with the natural world by virtue of our existence. For example, take a long deep breath. In that brief moment you participated - collaborated - with the air, indeed the very world itself, plants and other species, via a miniscule gaseous exchange. Such an exchange, forms a symbiotic process between the world’s ecosystems as a dialogue, a participatory synthesis; a process that connects us irrefutably to a broader earth story.

56 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949

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Rene Descartes once stated that, “Knowing the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, and all other bodies that surround it, men can be the masters and possessors of nature.” 57 In light of the significant scientific and philosophical evolution since Descartes, such a statement is deplorably dated. Yet philosophically we too often adhere to that which it advocates. Such a quote is wholly antithetical to the collaborative aesthetic.

Collaboration with nature’s events involves generating outcomes founded upon process led encounters. Interfacing with nature involves going beyond any stringent subject / object dualism; the creative act itself regarding nature as an active co-authour. The artist is dependent upon its energy to realise an aesthetic that he acknowledges nature will ultimately guide and work on beyond his control; process is a creative participant expressing and representing its capabilities, via a co-authorial synthesis.

Relinquishing a certain amount of creative currency, the artist embraces a harmonic ethic. The movements, cycles and events that occur within nature guiding the aesthetic outcome more than the mind or hand. A profound respect, and ecological awareness drives the co-authorial synthesis, that empowers nature with a visual ‘voice’ and language. The artist an ‘amanuensis’ and nature a narrator of its own discourse.

Collaboration is a dialogue with nature encouraging a shift away from anthropo-aesthetics

57 Page 56, Peat, David F.; Blackfoot Physics – A journey into the Native American Universe, Phanes Press Inc, USA, 2002

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that tend to the representation, interpretation or expression of nature through manipulative interventions. The method asserts a deep sensitivity in regard to encountering nature as co-creator, with respect and awareness. 58

By means of collaboration, harnessing nature’s energy, revealing its story through its visual language, draws us closer to a more sacred participatory awareness of nature, an almost ancient ecological ethic. A shift toward Berman’s ‘participating consciousness’ and the ‘need’, that deep ecologists Bill Devall and George Sessions asserts as ‘a reawakening of something very old’ 59, to draw us closer to notions of interdepency with the natural world.

Our anthropocentric worldview neglects our participatory role with nature as process. Collaboration is posited as an aesthetic means to provoke a resolution to this sense of seperateness.

Through the artists communication of a collaborative method the viewer is given a new way to consider and understand nature; able to witness the cumulative consequences of natures patterns and processes; see and appreciate a revitalised perspective from which nature is understood as both dynamically integral, and as a poetic source of creative ingenuity that can be communicated with. Revealing nature as such can sway contemporary understanding of nature away from a simply mechanistic comprehension of its presence, toward a knowledge of nature as process, of

58 Refer also to: Clarke, Adam; Passivity – An Ecocentric Paradigm for Collaborating with Nature’s Processes, 2006 59 Page 7, Curry, Patrick; Ecological Ethics – An Introduction, Polity Press, GB, 2006

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flux, and as a relation and participant in our existence and reality. A philosophy of interconnectedness alludes to the earth story of which we, the environment and nature are all an inseperable part of, ‘To be human is to be in a story.’ 60 For too long human culture has placed a great emphasis upon the human story, often to the detriment and neglect of larger ecologies. Brian Swimme suggests ‘…we will only have a common story for the human community when poets tell us the story. For until artists, poets, mystics and nature lovers tell the story – or until the poetic and mystical dimensions of humans are drawn forth in every person who sets out to tell us our story – we have only facts and theories.’ 61 Collaboration is a potentially powerful means to engage with an alternative means of storytelling. Engaging nature itself as a storyteller one encourages a sense of unity with a contiguous narrative that is part of our human selves, not lesser than or beyond. Participating with nature offers tremendous potential to find the means to communicate a common story that both human beings and the natural world shares; an interconnected process driven story of transformation, exchange and renewal. Gregory Bateson asserts that ‘…thinking in terms of stories does not isolate human beings as something separate from the starfish and the sea anemones, the coconut palms and the primroses. 60 Page 48, Brian Swimme – The Cosmic Creation Story. Griffin, David Ray; The Re-enchantment of Science, State University of New York Press, USA, 1988 61 Page 52, Brian Swimme – The Cosmic Creation Story. Griffin, David Ray; The Re-enchantment of Science, State University of New York Press, USA, 1988

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Rather, if the world be connected… then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds, whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemonies…’ he continues ‘Context and relevance must be characteristic not only of all so called behaviour (those stories which are projected out into “action”), but also of all those internal stories, the sequences of the building up of a sea anemone. Its embryology must somehow be made of the stuff of stories…behind that…the evolutionary process through millions of generations whereby the anemone, like you and me, came to be – the process, too, must be the stuff of stories.’ 62

Encounter and engagement with nature, revealing process, is a collaborative method that can draw us into such realisations. The methods of Reis, Derges and Turner are testament to how. The artist as amanuensis has an implicit ecosophical repertoire; dialogue, exchange, respect, responsibility, an ecological ethic that most pertinently is about the ability to encounter nature on its own terms; an aesthetic dialogue that can re-enchant nature as a potential co-author and partner in the creative process, rather than simply an object or site to be commandeered and/or crafted. The controlling or ‘possessing’ of nature is espoused for the collaborator is aware that such acts indict nature as separated from themselves, as a commodity. No longer is the artist, nature and the environment subject to a creative dualism; through an unfolding of the role of the artist, his offering up of his creative spirit to that of the

62 Page 14, Bateson, Gregory; Mind and Nature – A Necessary Unity, Bantam Books, USA, 1980

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world itself, subject and object become but part of an entwined reality.

Collaboration places nature under no duress, it is not changed, there is no lasting intervention. Ensuring no detrimental affects are incurred the artist takes away only the marks that nature itself wishes to impart; its story and dialect.

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Conclusion

‘The more we objectify the world, the more we are in danger of losing touch with that sense of immediacy

felt by active participants in nature.’ 63 The dis-enchantment of nature has been the commodifying and exploitation of it; this has occured largely because of dualistic perceptions of nature as culturally accumulated since the scientific revolution. As a consequence our once intimate connectedness with nature and the environment, including all of its inhabitants, ecosystems and processes, has been compromised. Nature is no longer perceived as sacred in cultural consciousness, no longer enchanted nor imbued with the spiritual signifcance it once possessed when our ancestors were active participants with it, intimately in tune with the earth, its cycles and processes.

Re-enchantment is fundamental to resolve the commodification of nature and the destruction we impose upon it, to tackle our dualistic perceptions of the natural world toward a more responsible, respectful awareness of its presence. It has been the aim of this paper to initiate the examination of an ecological aesthetic and field of research that takes as its motivation the re-evaluation of dualism and anthropocentric methods of practice; in the belief that the paradigm can broadly inform the underlying contexts of emerging methods that are reactionary to

63 Page 92, Peat, David F.; From Certainty to Uncertainty – The Story of Science & Ideas in the Twentieth Century, Joseph Henry Press, USA, 2002

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contemporary cultures dualistic perceptions and approaches toward nature and the environment, our understanding of a participatory ecology, and posit itself as a methodology sympathetic to Goerner’s proposed ‘integral’ society and consciousness.

I have attempted to begin to define an eco-ethical practice led philosophy that aspires to reassess installed, representational, interpretative anthropo-aesthetics; ways to both philosophically and practically allude to a non-dualistic separateness from nature, beyond commandeering, invasive and manipulative practices, toward process led aesthetics that are relational and collaborative with nature as a participator within the creative act itself. The paradigms principle aim is both to provoke the consideration of alternative means to engage with nature, and begin to map a philosophical context for the emerging contemporary ecological art that references more holistic means of working in/with the natural world.

I have asserted that to re-enchant nature is to revitalise our awareness that we are intimately part of it, interconnected and interdependent. Perceiving the natural world as ‘object’ only reinforces dualistic anthropocentrism, a dominance that leaves us radically distinct and separate from the very essence of the world – that is to say acknowledge that we are all participants within its processes and as such an attitude of respect and responsibility must be extended to the natural world as a whole. If contemporary culture continues to see nature as something to exploit, to quote Bateson our ‘…likelihood for

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survival will be that of a snowball in hell.’ 64 What is required now is a societal shift in how we interact and treat nature across disciplines; the consideration of ways to adapt and learn to live amiably and responsibly with that which maintains us, as opposed to the continuing rape and commandeering of its assets without the due care and forethought nature deserves for its long-term well being and future.

The paradigm is posited specifically as a broad field of aesthetic research and development, this paper intended very much as a beginning, a spark! Although I have centred upon two primary methods of practice – relationality and collaboration - there remains a multitude of others that contemporary artists employ that require consideration to truly unpack, map and build a comprehensive aesthetic philosophy. For example we can include and acknowledge methods that subvert the use of scientific media, somewhat paradoxically the use of objective audio / visual media and their capacity to evidence dimensions of the natural world we seldom are aware of, forms of ecological activism and more; each is capable of influencing existing perceptions of nature toward a positive end, stir a more intimate awareness of the world we inhabit. How each model sits in relation to the proposed paradigm however must be the subject of further excavation.

*

64 Page 462, Bateson, Gregory; Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Ballantine, New York, 1972

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‘A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary

that he should do something wrong.’ 65 The attributes an aesthetic re-enchantment of nature has can be surmised as relating to Aristotle’s eudaimonia - living well or doing well; thus the paradigm requires ethical definition and broadly has much in common with Patrick Curry’s summation of ecocentrism. He states that such an ethic ‘(1) locates value in the more-than-human world – the Earth, or nature as such, including but vastly exceeding humanity; (2) is holistic, thus extending to both species and places’. 66 Locating the value of nature as vastly exceeding humanity encourages the assertion and recognition of interdependency with nature and the environment, and in relation to this paradigm, a responsible, participatory role for the inclined artist to pursue and consider in line with that which is conveyed to an audience. Similarly we can also draw upon Batesonian Holism to set the paradigm ethically apart from Cartesian dualism; broadly summarised as, ‘fact and value are inseparable; nature is revealed through our relation with it; mind/body, subject/object are each sides of the same process, living systems or ‘minds’ are not reducible to their components; nature is alive.’ 67

65 Page 22, Volkman, Arthur G; Thoreau on Man & Nature, Peter Pauper Press INC, USA, 1960 66 Page 137, Curry, Patrick; Ecological Ethics – A Introduction, Polity Press, GB, 2006 67 For a more detailed, comparative over view of Cartesian dualism and Batesonian Holism refer to Page 237, Berman, Morris; The Re-enchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, United Kingdom, 1981

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Engaging aesthetically with nature in any form is intrinsically of ethical concern, for our actions innately spur a chain of causality that can undermine nature’s value as an interdependent. Re-enchantment seeks a shift away from perceiving nature as a commodity or realm within which anthropo-aesthetics can be realised, and more toward an ethical practice that views nature as sacred and integral, its worth surpassing our need to impose ourselves upon or within it. Therefore the model encourages temporary, sensitive methods of working with nature as process, ways of interfacing with nature’s self-regulating, ubiquitous phenomena, cycles and processes; though I acknowledge that there are of course ecosophical degrees by which this can potentially occur.

We are uniquely evolved in our capacity to set cultural precedents for shaping the environment and possess an elaborate, complex consciousness capable of many eclectic faculties. For this reason, though we are nature-made, humans are in a manner distinct from it. Therefore the issue of anthropocentrism itself requires further excavation. For there exists a paradox; in working to elevate or identify the potential ‘art’ of nature, even attempting to articulate these elements, does somehow separate ourselves from it. By seeking to encounter nature, to create with it and to call it art, is in a way representative of a split of consciousness.

Is not any intervention within nature tainted with an anthropo-aesthetic dilemma? Art, ecological or otherwise, is a very human context. Creating, in or with nature is consequently always going to be of anthropocentric motivation and possess dualistic qualities; therefore I cannot feasibly propose a paradigm that can eradicate human-centeredness or

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dualism entirely. Yet what I do propose is that in line with our cultures ingrained separateness from nature, there are aesthetic methods that go some way towards provoking the realisation that we are interconnected with it, possess the means to promote an ecocentric ethical stance that can affect dualistic perspectives of, and interactions with nature; influence a shift in consciousness away from anthropocentric philosophies toward embracing the consideration of nature more harmoniously and in line with a participatory, interdependent awareness.

It is sobering to think that nature can continue beyond us, but we cannot continue beyond nature. Therefore an interdependency and connectedness between the two is a necessity for our cultural ecological context, and to realise nature’s fundamental importance ethically.

*

‘If you are going to challenge the old Cartesian dualisms…with more participatory and engaged forms of consciousness, then you will also need a whole new language: one that expresses interdependency and reciprocity…it requires that we personally leave behind certain things that have been a central part of our individual and cultural self-definitions. This kind of art comes from a different vision, and is dedicated to a single perception: how to live appropriately in an interconnected universe.’ 68

The paradigm is as much about re-enchanting ourselves as it is nature; our perceptions of the world

68 Gablik, Suzi; Alternative Aesthetics. http://www.landviews.org/la2003/alternative-sg.html

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require a necessary shift in order to truly reawaken and retain a true connectedness with the natural world. We must learn to balance our ‘needs’ for survival and the evolution of culture with that of the world as a dynamic interdependent whole; a participating consciousness necessitates unity, a bonding, a revitalised knowing of natures inexplicable worth, and the realisation that humans are guests of a living, breathing world that can and will only keep us for as long as its well-being is sustained. As a continuation of this paper there remain many avenues of research to examine, in addition to the veritable multitude of potential methods of practice, the ethical concerns of re-enchanting nature, the issue of anthropocentrism and indeed the further unpacking of the methods discussed thus far. There are of course other questions that may potentially inform the paradigms future development; what are the limits of re-enchanting nature both as a contemporary aesthetic, and in a larger context within an industrialised culture? How does the re-enchantment aesthetic fit with Goerner’s theory of web dynamics? Can one still pursue a life of art in nature aware of the aforementioned anthropocentric paradox? What new insights can charting the disenchantment of nature in an art historical context provide the paradigm? What role has the disenchantment of time played in affecting our separateness from nature? As I have stated this proposed paradigm is far from concise, the paper intended as a beginning, a sketch from which a broad field of future research will continue to grow. It is my intention to continue to elaborate upon this study, refine and build a succinct contextual philosophy from which new paradigms and models of practice

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can continue the ecosophical debate for the contemporary artists encountering of nature and the environment.

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Bibliography Books 1) Abram, David; The Spell of the Sensous –

Perception and Language in a More- than-Human World, Pantheon Books, USA, 1996

2) Baker, Ernest A. & Ross, Francis E.; The Voice of the Mountains, George Routledge & Sons Ltd, USA, 1913

3) Bateson, Gregory; Mind and Nature – A Necessary Unity, Bantam Books, USA, 1980

4) Berman, Morris; The Reenchantment of World, Cornell University Press, USA, 1981

5) Bertrand, Yann Arthus; The Earth from Above, HNA Books, GB, 2005

6) Brand, Stewart; The Clock of the Long Now – Time & Responsibility, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, GB, 1999

7) Brandt, Frish & Danziger, James; Susan Derges – Woman Thinking River, Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services, USA, 1998

7) Bourriaud, Nicolas; Relational Aesthetics, Les Presses du réel, France, 2002

8) Butler, Cornelia & Helfand, Glen & Peat, David F.; Catherine Wagner – Cross Sections, Co published by Twin Palms Publishers, The San Jose Museum of Art & The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, China, 2001

9) Curry, Patrick; Ecological Ethics – An Introduction, Polity Press, GB, 2006

10) Deveraux, Paul; The Scared Place – The Ancient Origin Holy and Mystical Sites, Cassell & Co, UK, 2000

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11) Fletcher, Alan; The Art of Looking Sideways, Phaidon Press Ltd, 2001

12) Goerner, S. J.; After the Clockwork – The Emerging Science & Culture of Integral Society, Floris Books, GB, 1999

13) Grande, John K; Art Nature Dialogues – Interviews with Environmental Artists, State University of New York Press, USA, 2004

14) Griffin, David Ray; The Reenchantment of Science, State University of New York Press, USA, 1988

15) Haxton, Brooks; Fragments – The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, Viking Penguin, USA, 2001

16) Homburg, Catherine; Catherine Wagner – Art & Science - Investigating Matter, Nazraeli Press, Washington University Gallery of Art, USA, 1996

17) Kemp, Martin; Visualizations – The Nature Book of Art and Science, Oxford University Press, UK, 2000

18) Leopold, Aldo; A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949

19) Monbiot, George; HEAT – How to Stop the Planet Burning, Penguin Books, GB, 2006

20) Naess, Arne & Rothenberg, David; Ecology, Community & Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, GB, 2003

21) Peat, David F.; Blackfoot Physics – A Journey into the Native American Universe, Phanes Press, USA, 2002

22) Peat, David, F.; From Certainty to Uncertainty – The Story of Science & Ideas in the Twentieth Century, Joseph Henry Press, USA, 2002

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23) Volkman, Arthur G; Thoreau on Man & Nature, Peter Pauper Press INC, USA, 1960

24) Wijers, Louwrien; Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy – From Competition to Economy, Academy Editions, Great Britain, 1996

Internet sources 1) http://www.arlisna.org/artdoc/vol17/iss2/18

.pdf 2) http://www.artandculture.com/cgibin/Web

Objects/ACLivewoa/wa/ artist?id=314 3) http://www.diacenter.org 4) http://wwwconversations.org/issue.php?id=

2&st=99-1-turrell 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis 6) http://www.greenmuseum.org/C/aen/Earth/

Changing/index.php 7) http://www.landviews.org/la2003/alternative-

sg.html 8) http://www.lightningfield.org 9) http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/clip1

.html 10) http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/2737 Journals - National Geographic, November 2006 - Land and Eco Art in the USA http://www.landviews.org/la2003/alternative-sg.html - Landscape and Arts Network online Journal - No. 38 August 2006

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Pari Research

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This is not an empty bottle

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Dew…or what the night air left behind

As the night slipped to the early cusp of dawn, the air kissed the earth giving tears with no trace of

sadness to every blade of grass and secret thread of spiders silk.

Though later the sun made many vanish, in the

shadows hugging the cool seclusion of boulders and bark, this decoration remained for few to see and

even fewer to know.

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Ways to Know the Air Watch the liquid vapour spurting from an orange,

as it dances in daylight Watch the coiling spirals of steam from your cup of

tea as they vanish Study the morning mist; its coming and going Stand in a breeze and close your eyes Watch a bird at play Watch the licking flames of a fire Blow your nose Watch an aeroplane as it leaves its insidious trail Blow dust from a shelf long left untouched; chase to

watch it as it settles Sit at the waters edge and smile to the shimmering

ripples that the wind gives your eye Watch a flag sway (It doesn’t have to be your

country’s - they all sway alike!) Watch clothes drying in the midday sun. Breath onto a mirror Stand on a beach mid storm and feel the tail of the

sand lash your cheeks Smoke a cigarette and observe the cloud from your

lips Stand still in the winter and just face forward Watch treetops move in unison You might be fortunate to catch a glimpse of a

spiders web floating by, caught in the s unshine

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Watch the patterns of wind through falling rain or snow

Play with a kite Hold your breath Watch the dust through a shaft of piercing light Watch clouds in all their shapes, colours and sizes BREATHE! Watch litter tumbling Watch a street sign swing Taste the air When flying feel the turbulance Notice a cars exhaust Look inside an empty bottle Hold a leaf in the palm of your hand and let it leave

when it wishes Ponder how you caught your cold Remember what plants do for us all Watch smoke pour from a chimney Remember the departed and imagine or know how

close they may be

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Magnetic Poetry Earth; what lies upon you, within you, beneath our every footstep. What secrets do you keep that are your own? Which are those we’ve given to you through time? Discovering the presence of an Etruscan copper mine, a secret nestled within the Montecucco valley, I asked the wind to excavate the ground beyond the mines cavernous mouth. As the winds of winter increased I placed a magnet within a crack of the mines wall, low to the ground, where the dust may be disturbed and lifted.

Upon the magnet the wind left its gift. Fungus errupted, arching the earth as it

reached for the sun. Upon its infant sponge surface I placed a magnet and walked away. As the fungus found the air so the magnet moved with its growth, gathering metallic debris during its tumbling journey to more steady ground.

The magnets became a page upon which process became a poetic visual language, generated by nature’s events.

Though the earth too became my page as I wrote poetry back to the earth, across the site that had inspired it; my pen, the magnets, excavators used to trace the poetry above the earth’s surface. The magnets ritualised movements, letter through letter, attracting minute traces of metal. The language of the mind in response to a place, became the language of place in response to mind.

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There is magic here that history has made, moved and pressed neath volcano, water, earth, grass and footprint.

(Podere Vignali, Montecucco Valley)

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(Etruscan Copper Mine, Montecucco Valley)

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Rare traffic, one route around the Pari circle. What is here? What is of man, what is of earth?

(The Pari Road, Pari)

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(Podere Vignali, Montecucco Valley)

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The White River

The breathing earth appears quite hidden beyond the white rivers vacuous banks,

travelling deeper to a distance discovered only by itself; of sensuous mood concealing any history

that man may plough for the heavens to see. Knowledge and seed are but whisper beneath its

stealthy breeze above the land. Cautiously the river kneads the moist chill present

within the valley air. Through the sparse branches of the shedding Cerro, over boulders resolute yet tumbling through time,

the sweep of earth scented smoke vanishes to where ghosts keep the morning warm, waiting for

the sun to strike and lure them to the solitude of an open hillside.

The rivers draw is immanent, its mercy doubtless to the chord at which its tender presencee strikes to

ignite the coming twilight. How it hangs for darkness in the folds of lunar

light, where secret dreams beat rapture to sleeping hearts. And there it rests to haunt the coming tide of dawn,

receeding to become the grace of wind and the jewels of Tuscan soil.

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Moving Ash Mountain

Ash need not only be the ruins of dead wood, but can be a gift back to the soil where a tree may once have laid its roots, and found its life. Ash is a natural pesticide and so mixed back to the earth, fold over fold, it can help generate a healthy life once more.

Beneath Vignali’s forest shade, by the olive grove away from the dogs inquisitive nose, I poured a pile of blue grey ash. A mountain of memory above the roots, and beneath the branches of possible brothers and sisters, elders maybe.

Beyond the forests opening, the only pathway in, I left it there to find its way back into the earth; for the movements of the wind to escort and scatter the ashes of kin.

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We are all the poorer if we fail to know the details

in nature’s charms. Such rags adorn us if we miss the taste of morning, the silver tongue of winters

chill, or the soils unrelenting heart. There is no kiss as sweet, than that delivered by the amorous sway

of eternities great forever. Take a moment to know this spirit as it carries you.

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The Air Songs

Whirring the bottles I captured a song for the North and a Lavendar scented song for Mount

Amiata.

Song for North (Podere Vignali)

The Lavendar Air Song for Mount Amiata (Podere Vignali)

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I spoke to a robin this early morning. We neither of us understood a word

But we did speak!

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Taking a Stone for a Walk

This is your road This is where you sit

This is where you came Nature will probably take from. you down this road next.

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This is the crossroads you’ll face.

Here is Pari; where you came from?

This is the Maremma and Mount Amiata.

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Humans bury their dead here.

Here’s Pari’s main street This is my home during with the cars that pass my stay; the one with you daily. open shutters.

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Here is my living room.

This is the view from my bedroom.

Here is the main road through Pari.

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This is the local restaurant; its really good!

These are the bells that ring out each day.

An Olivegrove and in the distance Vignali.

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Here’s the chapel you Recognise this road; once passed. almost home

.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Here’s your home. the tour around Pari. Maybe I’ll see you again when I return.

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I catch myself poised and locked to the view from my window, my breath slow and steady, yet my heart racing; the air seems at the very cusp of a

miracle, crisp and enchanted with an intimacy and knowledge I’ve not tasted before. For the first time

I feel truly a part of this world, as the trees bow their tops to the calm sumptuous thrill of twilight

approaching. The air is at play.

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The Rock Tree Mobile

Olive trees are pruned to offer the optimum amount of air circulation within their branches.

This helps prevent the spread of disease and provides good access to the branches during the

olive harvest.

*

Stones of different size and shape, hung at varying heights,

positioned in the trees interior, hung about the trees protruding branches.

Some remain still,

others spin uncontrollably, the wind is at play,

as it floods the trees body.

All movement changes, slows and steadys,

repeats and gathers, stops and starts.

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(Podere Vignali Olivegrove)

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The clouds descended sometime during the night, the colour of midnight pierced through with a

distant light starved day bled blue. Fluid mist, the white trail wound and coiled the village to a still and silent solitude. Lost the air stole us from the earth,

lifting the moment to a galaxy beyond our knowing. Our gentle flight wound the world about,

back and forth, upward and inward. This was no natural movement. For as the birds slept and trees no doubt shivered and swayed beneath the veil that

took us, the world continued with a rush. Hours tumbled from the window, stars glimmered and shone as if grains of salt scattered upon a silent

baron moonlit shore. We and the world disappeared from one another. A night stolen from memory

and mind.

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Air Drum

The wind can make and conduct music. The place can influence its pace and rhythm;

altitude, exposure to the elements; the weather, its strength and direction guiding every

beat.

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‘The Wind Clocks’ Project

‘We go from anticipation to anticipation, not satisfaction to satisfaction.’ 69

When clocks first became common societal installations they signalled the coming of a new era. Peoples lifestyles gradually changed. People could organise themselves and their daily tasks by a ‘local’ time, so conduct business by a common hour. Time keeping transformed the deep inner workings of culture, much as Copernicus did when he reformed the Julian Calendar for the Pope during the 16th century, revising the eleven day anomaly of the Artistotlian calendar that had accumulated and caused the Catholic church and its followers such discontent; for ‘…important religious days often required calculating by the phase of the moon and their heavenly conjunctions.’ 70

The introduction of clocks in public places signalled the beginnings of the establishment of a mechanised order of society. No longer would

69 Samuel Johnson, Page 119, Brand, Stewart; The Clock of the Long Now – Time and Rsponsibility, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, GB, 1999 70 Page 47, Goerner, S J.; After the Clockwork Universe – The Emerging Science & Culture of Integral Society, Floris Books, GB, 1999

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people function according to more primitive, spiritual modes of time keeping. Days could become socially and economically ordered.

*

The Wind Clocks project is the subversion of our contemporary obsession with time keeping, the deep-rooted economic constancy of time so present in our daily lives and social fabric. So often does our frenetic lifestyle, motivated by a philosophy of making a means to an end, cause us to miss or take for granted the world that surrounds us - the natural world and indeed eachother. How often do we, or can we, truly pause to lose ourslves in the dextrous complexity of a spiders web on a winters morning as we pass hedgerows on our way to work? How often do we stop to consider and ‘offer’ a helping hand to another who may need it as we dash from here to there, consumed by a must to achieve our daily necessities?

Modern day time keeping affects how we responsibly interact with the world. Our time obsessed, time is money, culture has served to largely disenchant ourselves from nature and our fellow beings by encouraging an absorbtion in a self servient attitude towards what we must achieve. Perhaps time keeping is a primary cause for much of modernisms discontent, in a world where we desperately want everything NOW!?

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* The Wind Clocks project is a design led process of research. A prototype clock is currently being designed and constructed, based upon a simple pendulum mechanism, that will count the seconds, minutes, hours, days and months as they are generated by an interface with the movements of the wind. Thus the clock has no motor and no desire to tell a common, accurate time. Rather generate a poetic of time, an enchanted time as told by the wind; in which a second can become three, a day a year, as and when the wind moves the pendulums swing.

The aim of the project is to produce a number of clocks that will be sited within a variety of eclectic public and more secluded locations, facing a multitude of different directions. Some will be placed at altitude, others close to the earth; some will be sited in cities, others in the rural countryside. Each clock will have a date setting as to enable a reading of the days that eventually pass, thus accumulating a time based history of how much the wind has interacted with the site in which the clock was placed.

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The Global Air Map Project What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? For my panacea let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to the morning time in this world. 71

- Henry D. Thoreau Too often do we take nature for granted, our modern spirit consumed and preoccupied with a dualist subject / object perception of its presence, fortified with a materialist consume and control attitude towards its processes and environment. We would be but hungry ghosts thirsting for our memories to ignite and become real once more if we lost nature’s fervorous ability to continue regardless of the spoils we impose upon it. Nature maintains us. Yet since the scientific revolution we have increasingly become dislocated and seperated from nature, have misplaced an ancient interconnectivity that once encouraged a sense of sanctity with nature and the environment.

Nature possesses so many surreptitious spells, wonders and processes, yet there are few so

71 Page 37, Volkman, Arthur G.; Thoreau – On Man & Nature, Peter Pauper Press, New York, 1960

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immediately vital to sustaining life as the air. Imagine for a moment – just take the air away, remove it from the world we live in. Its an almost impossible image to comprehend. The air is a highly durational process; cyclic and ubiquitous, enveloping and connecting every living species inexplicably to eachother via the constant imperceptible exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen with the botanical world. The air is everyones companion, with us till the sweet or bitter end. It finds us with no great search when we are born, rushing to fill our infant lungs for us to announce to the world ‘I have arrived!’ Yet too when our bodys tire, sinking to the deepest sleep, it flows from our lips as nature’s kiss farewell, slipping back to an eternal beyond to roam and soon find another once more.

Borderless, the air cares not to discriminate over geography, species, colour or creed, and yet this patient, generous process is so rarely ackowledged for its gift to us, remembered as one of lifes vital elexirs.

Central to ancient cosmologies, the air was magic, spirit or God. Today it is often regarded as empty space through which we pass, oxygen, or a veil of pollution. Its resonance as a sacred interdependent has diminished and faded. We concern ourselves now with its quality, and the means by which this quality affects our contemporary well-being.

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‘..testing the air trapped in ancient ice, even by looking at air sealed in old telescopes, scientists have calculated the

atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution.’

- Bill McKibben 72 ‘The Global Air Map Project’ has a dual purpose in its mapping of this intangible landscape; as 1) a global relational artwork that will manifest itself as a book and sculptural work, and 2) as a contemporary record of the air and its contents; a form of global air time capsule that, as indicated by the above quote, can provide a comparative analysis of atmospheric content for those in the future to review. 73 As a relational artwork the project will promote and encourage the re-enchantment of the air through the participants active consideration, experience and participation with it through their chosen mode of collection. When all air samples have been retrieved they will be exhibited as a collective, a map, alongside accompanying documentation, location and collection details. I anticipate the production of an artists book to accompany the project, outlining the projects development and outcomes.

72 Page 12 ,McKibben, Bill; The End of Nature, First Anchor Books, USA, 1999 73 Insert Japan time capsule quote Brand, Stewart; The Clock of the Long Now – Time and Responsibility

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Method Send one clear glass bottle to every country’s capital city. (A possible furtherance of the project could be to map the inner city and rural air of each country, or to collect a breath from a native resident of each country also.)

The recipient will receive with their bottle with simple instructions relevant to how an air ‘sample’ is to be collected, and a brief explanation detailing the projects motives and philosophy; all instructions will be translated into the countries native language when required. Preliminary instructions are as follows:

• Do not open the bottle until you have reached the site from which you wish to collect the air.

• Air should be sampled at ground level; an altitude from which the bottle can be hand held. Your feet must remain on solid ground.

• You may collect the air in anyway you see fit. • Please record the name of the person collecting the

sample, the date and time of air collection, and location details. (Form provided)

• Please take a photograph of yourself / or friend collecting the air. You can either enclose the documentation when returning the air sample to the attached postal address, or email directly to me at adamdclarke@hotmail.com

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The Village of Pari

Pari is a medieval hilltop village overlooking the Montecucco valley in the Tuscan Maremma. Located between the cities of Grossetto and Siena, with Florence and Pisa no more than a couple of hours drive away. It has rich 2000 year history though, initially founded by the Etruscans. A nourishing tranquility eminates from the village, where time slows far from the pace of modern everyday life. The air is alive and fresh with the cool sumptuosity of a breeze that carries with it the sweet smell of wood burning as it snakes from every chimney, coiling above the rooftops to melt into the low lying cloud that accompanies the coming morning and its sleepy departure. Quiet immersion in this contemplative solitude inspires one to feel utter equanimity with the surrounding countryside; the gentler pace of life calms the soul quickly to a meditative calm, its slow time encouraging a crisp, astute way of seeing and noticing the changing patterns of nature. The distinct lack of light pollution at night is a testament to Pari’s idylic existence, seemingly balanced at the cusp of a very different age and history. The black sky dazzled with the scattered luminosity of white stars, not yet choked by the orange glow of urban streetlights.

Pari’s architecture resounds with its medieval heritage. Walking the short circuit around

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the village one is surrounded by tall stone buildings, each with matching shuttered windows, their height interrupted only by the occassional mysterious, crooked stone staircase, ascending to a secret dwelling tucked high, behind and above another. This labyrintine quality only adds to the charm of this magical Tuscan gem, perched and gazing out across the rich rolling countryside; an idyllic vista comfortably composed not only of the wealth born of its soil, but of the enchanted folding cloak of cloud that often hugs the village streets, elevating this quiet corner of the world to a realm of dreamy seclusion. There are little over 200 permanent human residents in the village, though the serene streets play home to a multitude of expressive feline characters that lounge, wail and jibe one another as a matter of habit as opposed to any real territorial demeanor.

From November through until late January the local hunt is a regular occurrence, when the harsh barking echoes of eager hunting dogs are accompanied by the boisterous enthusiasm of the hunters call, followed by spontaneous explosive gunshots.

Pari has gathered its life high upon a rocky outcrop with a magnificent view out toward the distant Mount Amiata. The Montecucco valley at the foot of the village is at an altitude of 286 meters above sea level. During the last Ice Age a glacier receeded up through the valley leaving

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behind in its wake a heavy layer of bedrock and clay. Though prior to this, when much of the Grossetto region remained obscured beneath the ocean, the area was volcanic. Today this tumultous geological activity has culminated in PH neutral soil, providing local agriculture with a rich and fertile region, ideally suited to the production of fine local olive oil and wine.

Another product of the regions mineral wealth lies close by, nestled within local woodland. The remains of an Etruscan Copper mine, reputedly still in use during the 1900’s. Local tales abound of its use also as a hideout from the allied forces during the second world war, and as an ideal secret location for the storage of arms. ‘Ambulo Ergo Sum’, ‘I walk therefore I am’.

To spend any time in Pari is to live close with nature and to spend time travelling through it, knowing its pulse, marvelling at the views that stretch to a perfect eternity as they merge to a green distance, kissed by the blue haze of the sky. Numerous tracks lead you across the countryside, past scattered olivegroves and vineyards, through the richly scented woodland and farmland. A short walk from Pari are the local Petrolio hot springs where one can indulge in the warm waters that filter up through natural geothermal vents. The springs themselves have a rich and intimate history with the village, for as David Peat mentions, ‘The stalks of the Ginestra, or Broom plant, were cut and placed under the hot sulfrous water of the Petrolio spring… After several days fibers could be extracted from the plant, spun

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and woven into towels, bed linen and sacks for olives.’ 74

Beyond the barking of hunting dogs and wailing cats that haunt the village air, lies a secret world of wild Deer and Boar as they forage beneath the secluded canopies of the surrounding forest. In season the Boar are fervorously hunted in the area; a Romanian breed that hunters have imported and crossed with the local population. Though there are wild rabbits also and an abundance of bird life, that shower the treetops with a veritable symphony as one passes the towering cypress trees and olivegroves. There are numerous birds of prey that can be spotted throughout the year; the Falco Perrigrino (Peregrin Falcon), Gazzie, and Bianco Falconi; the latter recognisable by its distinct white stripe that travels down across its breast. Smaller bird species include the Pettirosso (Robin), Pheasant, migrating Swallows and Airone (Heron)

The trees in the surrounding forest are predominantly the Leccio (an Evergreen), Cerro (Small oak) and Corbezzolo.

74 Page 186, Peat, F. David; Pathways of Chance, Pari Publishing, USA, 2005 A journey into The Pari Centre for New Learning’s foundations and F. David Peat’s life as a creative thinker and theoretical physicist.

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The Pari Centre for New Learning The Pari Center is situated on the palazzo, upon the very crest of the village, overlooking its rooftops and surrounding countryside.

Throughout the year F. David Peat organizes and runs an eclectic variety of conferences that encompass an array of subjects ranging through the sciences, economics, spirituality and the arts. 75

The centers library boasts an extraordinary array of books, from the sciences, arts, psychology, womens studies, ecology, philosophy, religion and Native American History; though for those working within the center during their stay in Pari, David generously and enthusiastically lends literature from his home library.

The entire upper floor of the building is yet to be renovated, and as yet has no specific use. This does however make the space available ideal for use as artists studios, with plenty of natural daylight, large windows and a considerable amount of space spread across three empty rooms.

Internet access is available via the centres office, where one can use either the PC provided, out of office hours, or link a laptop. However, as in the rest of the village, the internet is still accessed via a dial-up connection and can prove 75 Refer to www.paricenter.com for a more informative and detailed synopsis of the centers activities.

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temperamental. The computers can also be used for writing etc when not in use by the centres staff.

The centers activities bring a welcome boost to the eonomy of the village. Independent visitors and associates, and those attending David’s workshops and conferences, generate rent for many of the local family’s who own houses in the village handed down from generation to generation, that are so often empty for much of the year, aswell as money for the local shop, café and restaurant. Residency Possibilities David is very interested in setting up some form of artists residency, affiliated with University College Falmouth. (Though I would personally describe my time at the Pari Center more as a ‘research retreat’ than residency.) However, at this stage the Pari Center is unable to offer any funding to aid facilitating such an opportunity. It would very much be the responsibility of the artist, him or herself, to fund the residency, or for MA CVA’s budget to award such an opportunity annually through competitive application. An issue fundamental to establishing such a residency is that the Pari Center should see some form of return for facilitating the artist. The form of research I myself undertook, funded via RANE, provided the center with no additional income whatsoever. Money to cover rent for example, was paid directly to the landlord of the property where

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I stayed. It seems only reasonably that through negotiation, the center benefits from such a residency, as its facilities and resources are made fully accessible.

To truly benefit from such an opportunity and use of the resources available, I personally feel that the residency would ideally be suited to someone who has a clearly defined area of research relevant to the center’s dialogues, for example ecology, science and the sacred.

As the center is not a fully equipped arts studio, artists would have to provide desired materials and tools themselves; consider what may be needed prior to the residency commencing. The residency would suit someone who works with natural materials and processes, engages with the environment. Though I’m sure that with prior negotiation, should any tools or specific materials be required, David would more than likely endeavour to help source them.

A residency could occur at any time of the year, though the cost of renting properties does fluctuate and of course Pari center conferences may impact upon when a residency may be convenient. I suggest also that such a residency should last no less than two weeks and a maximum of one month. Additional Info Transport to and from Pari is quite infrequent, with a direct bus travelling to and from the vilage 3 - 4 times a day into Grossetto and Sienna. However, travelling with good planning is easily done, and there is always the option of renting a car, though this is a considerable extra expense.

The language barrier is an issue, as unlike many towns and cities where there is an established

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tourist industry, local residents know very little English, if any at all. It is highly recommended that one learn some Italian basics prior to arrival, though one can get by using a simple phrase book.

Within Pari itself is a local store that stocks fresh vegetables, local meat and other groceries. A tobacconist, post office, café, hotel and restaurant are the only other immediate ammenities. Food is relatively cheap, however gas and electiricity bills can be expensive.

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Podere Vignali Podere Vingnali is a ‘wholly’ organic holiday / community farm. The owner Carlo Barbieri has an astonishing knowledge of the local area and of how to live sustainably within nature, employing methods that are in no way to the detriment of the land. He asserts that if man is to farm then he should do so in line with nature’s existent processes, work responsibly and with respect for the biodiversity within the surroundings.

Vingnali is described as a ‘holiday farm’ and with a relaxing tranquil ambience emphasises a community dynamic. With a large communal kitchen as the farms central meeting point and 4 separate living quarters on site, Carlo encourages those interested in nature, agriculture and ecology to stay and work on the farm throughout the year, except through winter months. Anyone from holidat makers to writers and artists are welcomed to stay and work.

It is noteworthy to mention also that Carlo is receptive to artists visiting Pari, associated with David’s Pari center, to work and install small scale installations on his land as long as they are, of course, ecofriendly.

The Holiday farm is fuelled via a Biomass system and wood burning stoves, in keeping with the ecological ethic that Carlo vigorously employs.

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Upon the farm itself, situated locally to the

main building and living quarters are the olive grove, Lavander field, allotment, composting bins, and Bee hives. From these sources Carlo and his daughter Giovanna produce an array of organic produce: olive oil and various condomants (jams and marmalades), shower gels, soaps, balms and honey. All produce is sold via the internet. 76

The Vignali olive grove is harvested entirely by hand, the last olives collected usually in December. Each tree is well kept for optimum health and growth. The ground beneath them kept clean and airy and their branches well pruned to ensure the air can circulate within the tree – this helps prevent the spread of disease. They are grown and maintained at an optimum height so that the fruits are manageably harvested by rakes and ground netting. Natural compost and Favino (Legummone) are used as natural fertilisers for the soil. Favino is a member of the bean family and is used for fixing the nitrogen in the soil. Around May Favino is cut, dried and put back into the ground as it is around this time that flowers on the trees change to olives. Ash is scattered also within the soil as a natural pesticide.

Vignali’s farming methods contrast with that of many of the other surrounding farms. Many local farmers claim to grow organic produce, however they employ the use of certain chemical pesticides. These ensure that only a certain bacteria thrives in the soil. Overtime this means they must subscribe to using the same pesticide repetitively and in turn eventually alter the soil itself. Carlo employs a wholly natural organic system to the

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running of the farm, keeping with the natural balance of the existing environment. His philosophy very much ‘Natural healthy produce – natural healthy diet!’

The extensive Lavendar field is kept for making natural soaps, balms and shower gel and is a good antiseptic, for cirulation and muscle ache. There is a long history of Lavendars usage throughout the Greek and Roman period, though it was never farmed.

Its poignant to note here that Carlo has witnessed a distinct and ominous change in the flowering of the Lavendar. Usually it flowers only once a year, yet recently has flowered three times in 12 months. Global Warming? Another observation has been the citing of the Bianco Falconi, one of the larger birds of prey mentioned earlier. They are usually spotted circling in the air from May onwards, however myself and several others are certain that we have spotted a pair in Early January! Such changes occurring in nature, Carlo remarked, one can only truly grasp and notice when immersed and working in nature.

The Vignali allotment is seasonal and grows everything from zuccinni, carrots, watermelons, egg-plant tomatoes etc.

Vignali’s overwhelming commitment to functioning organically and sustainably is truly admirable, and promotes such a worthwhile interconnectedness with the land that many, including the local farmers, could stand to learn so much from. Eco-friendly and agriculturally attuned with the natural systems and processes, Carlo acknowledges that as agricuture is ultimately a form of manipulating nature, one should promote and employ the necessary means to fundamentally function responsibly; within what nature herself

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gives and offers – not polluting the land through chemical interventions or any other forms of pollution.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my thanks to my family, Dr Daro Montag and the RANE (Research Art, Nature and Environment) research cluster, F. David Peat,

Maureen Doolan and family, and Carlo Barbieri and Giovanna Marrazzo of Podere Vignali.