You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
Miami, Florida
It is the opposite to staring into the Sun–where an infinite amount of light obliterates; but similar in that the obliteration (flares, bleeds, and streaks through the image) reshapes how we see and how we relate to the finite, the material, and even incompleteness(?).
spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf.sky[shade, leaves] and branches.
Nature (the natural!) is the setting for our humanity. Being attentive to one’s presence near the natural generates joy.
Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity,”
There is something infinitely healing in these repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
Rachel Carson.
“The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal, […] The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live.” – Richard Jefferies
via Popova
The natural world can offer us more than the means to survive, on the one hand, or mortal risks to be avoided, on the other: it can offer us joy.
[…]There can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy.
[…]we need constantly reminding that we have been operators of computers for a single generation and workers in neon-lit offices for three or four, but we were farmers for five hundred generations, and before that hunter-gatherers for perhaps fifty thousand or more
[…]It is time for a different, formal defence of nature. We should offer up not just the notion of being sensible and responsible about it, which is sustainable development, nor the notion of its mammoth utilitarian and financial value, which is ecosystem services, but a third way, something different entirely: we should offer up what it means to our spirits; the love of it. We should offer up its joy.
The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy, Michael McCarthy
Untitled (The croton brightens and dignifies; here we will be)
back at it.
Un-related —
Dot-Band Class, Attic, active 520 – 500 BCE Black-Figure Vessel (Amphora) Depicting the Struggle between Apollo and Herakles for the Delphic Tripod and African Attendant with Horse, late 6th century BCE Archaic Period Greece, Attica region, possibly Athens Terracotta 8 3/8 × 6 × 5 3/8 in. (21.3 × 15.2 × 13.7 cm) 3-D Object/Sculpture 1983-035 DJ Photo: Paul Hester, via Menil.org
HOW TO: Oh, look at me is a film that captures the multi-layered, interdisciplinary performance conceived by GeoVanna Gonzalez as an activation of her sculptural installation of the same name on view at Locust Projects through May 22. Through the performance, which features an original musical score by Batry Powr and involves two dancers, Cheina Ramos and Alondra Balbuena, and poets, Zaina Alsous and Arsimmer McCoy, the installation is transformed from a static form to a space that encourages contemplation, meditation and connection.
Locust Project’s blog
The film, as a receptacle of different languages — spoken, gestural, musical — that come together in their singular agency to create a communal whole, functions as an added layer of meaning, a translation of a translation. Through the performance, Gonzalez examines how forms of communication and miscommunication, both in person and mediated, reflect our self-awareness and condition our perception of those around us.
Terremoto‘s blog–Amanda Linares presents Between Islands and Peninsulas at Bakehouse Art Complex.
[…] the viewer is taken on their own journey, mirroring the one Linares represents in Between Islands and Peninsulas, an immigrant’s story that transports you over time, space, and destinations.Linares’ varied use of materials allows her to create works that are simultaneously delicate yet durable. She seeks to capture the contradictions of the human condition through materiality. In the artist books Todo Sigue Igual, Agua Salada, and Alternative Realities, she uses seemingly disparate mediums to convey the coexistence of the contradictory emotions and ideas. The artist books, constructed geographies of text and images, evoke the feelings of nostalgia, displacement, and disorientation Linares experienced during her own diaspora.
Laura Novoa
