Day 320: Unstable element

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

"The discovery of water flowing across the floor of a building at the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant in Buchanan, N.Y., traced to a leak in a buried pipe, is stirring concern about the plant’s underground pipes and those of other aging reactors across the country." -read more

Day 319: The big 3

Three years ago today it was a Friday. It was my last day of full-time work. Walking out that door was one of the most joyous experiences I had had to date. The whole world felt incredibly wide open. Today, May 5th 2009 I celebrate three years of life: life-full, life-lived, life-alive, life-as-gift-each-day, life-as-change, life-as-texture, color, sensation, making, traveling, breathing- life as just as wide open and full of potential as it suddenly became three years ago. I am grateful and humbled by this anniversary, by all that has happened in the space between. By the city and all the people that make it possible each day. And I will continue to be in awe each day longer that it lasts.

Day 318: Magical thoughts

san andreas fault, photograph by Robert E. Wallace, USGS.

As a child I thought a great deal about meaninglessness, which seemed at the time the most prominent negative feature on the horizon. After a few years of failing to find meaning in the more commonly recommended venues I learned that I could find it in geology, so I did. This in turn enabled me to find meaning in the Episcopal litany, most acutely in the words as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, which I interpreted as a literal description of the constant changing of the earth, the unending erosion of the shores and mountains, the inexorable shifting of the geological structures that could throw up mountains and islands and could just as reliably take them away. I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the scheme could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No one was watching me. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. On the day it was announced that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima those were the words that came immediately to my ten-year old mind. When I heard a few years later about mushroom clouds over the Nevada test site those were again the words that came to mind. I began waking before dawn, imagining that the fireballs from the Nevada test shots would light up the sky in Sacramento.

Later, after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those souffles, all that creme caramel, all those daubes and albondigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough food and water to see us through whatever geological event came our way. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them. That I could find meaning in the intensely personal nature of my life as a wife and mother did not seem inconsistent with finding meaning in the vast indifference of geology and the test shots; the two systems existed for me on parallel tracks that occasionally converged, notably during earthquakes. -- from Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking

Day 317: Poetic intervention

Back on Day 264 I mentioned our inclusion in the Visionary Drawing Building project. The archive is now online. You can experience our "critical intervention" and the contributions of many other artists on the project site.

Day 316: To the dunes

Two weeks from today we'll be back in the dunes. A surprise opening has occurred and we have been granted one glorious week in a dune shack through Provincetown's Peaked Hill Trust. We couldn't be more blissed out in response.

Day 315: Meeting the energy

a clip from my letter

I've invited physicist and author Freeman Dyson into collaboration this summer. I am ecstatic to report that he has accepted. I'll be mailing him several postcards from my travels west this summer. It is an honor and creative inspiration to be putting my experiences in relation to his, 50 years after he stated the words,

"It is a soul-shattering silence. You hold your breath and hear absolutely nothing. No rustling of leaves in the wind, no rumbling of distant traffic, no chatter of birds or insects or children. You are alone with God in that silence. There in that white, flat silence I began to feel a slight sense of shame for what we were proposing to do. Did we really intend to invade this silence with our trucks and bulldozers and after a few years leave it a radioactive junkyard?"

Day 314: Mythical west

Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still #43, 1979. Gelatin silver print. 7 9/16 x 9 7/16” (19.2 x 24cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Sid R. Bass. © 2008 Cindy Sherman

On Monday we saw Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West at the MoMA. It was a fascinating show, yet oddly didn't offer much in response to contemporary land-use. This omission (including the nuclear) seems to perpetuate some of the very myths that the show was trying to visualize.

Day 313: All in relation

I just completed my Flash II class (yipee! one step closer to summer!) and the weeks of coding are starting to materialize. The first resulting project is a new gallery for Liz's photography. Check it out here.

Day 312: Mono no aware

"Mono no aware (物の哀れ ,mono no aware, lit. "the pathos of things"), also translated as "an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity of ephemera," is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of mujo or the transience of things and a bittersweet sadness at their passing. The term was coined in the eighteenth century by the Edo-period Japanese cultural scholar Motoori Norinaga, and was originally a concept used in his literary criticism of The Tale of Genji, and later applied to other seminal Japanese works including the Man'yōshū, becoming central to his philosophy of literature, and eventually to Japanese cultural tradition".
- read more

Day 311: The search is on

We'll be extending cards again on our upcoming atomic journey through the west/southwest - this time with a Proustian/geologic twist. A sample graphic is included above.

"The updated translation of Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past' was re-titled "In Search of Lost Time'. The new title is a more literal translation of 'a la recherche du temps perdu' - but it still doesn't quite capture the full resonance of 'perdu' - which means not just lost but ruined, undone, wasted, wrecked, and spoiled." - Alison Bechdel, FunHome

Day 310: Abundance

from the Garden of Union

Day 309: Equality

My friend Fred is not only a (most amazing) massage therapist, he's also an incredible activist. Spread the word!

Day 308: Immokalee

still from Immokalee, copyright Small Gauge Films 2009

Kevin, Jen and Kim have a new film in the works. Check out this most amazing work in progress.

Day 307: Superflat

the playa and Old Razorback Mountain in the Black Rock Desert

Here is a more populated desert scene, putting the flatness to the test.

Day 306: Winged words

image bbtb

My sister offered up this line of flight yesterday:

"H.D.’s mana words point to and put into play patterns of energy that move across contexts without significantly altering their form. For H.D., these processes are the engines of ongoingness: they link cultural fields, bind together social groups, tribes, or nations, and replicate across scales in material and social phenomena. Projection then, is a throwing forward of energy in the practice of poetics, psychoanalysis, cinema, mapping, and alchemy; the gift, a transfer of goods that create and maintains connections among groups, a relay, as H.D. thought of it, of power and peace; and science<, and unfolding sequence of principles by which we come to comprehend relations between processes, events, and beings in the world." -Adalaide Morris, How to Live/What do Do, 2003

Day 305: Open

click to enlarge

Day 304: Improbable cap

Credit: Defense Special Weapons Agency

"Beneath this concrete dome on Runit Island (part of Enewetak Atoll), built between 1977 and 1980 at a cost of about $239 million, lie 111,000 cubic yards (84,927 cubic meters) or radioactive soil and debris from Bikini and Rongelap atolls. The dome covers the 30-foot (9 meter) deep, 350-foot (107 meter) wide crated created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test. Note the people atop the dome."

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was completed in August 1998 and resulted in the book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 edited by Stephen I. Schwartz.

Read more at the Brookings Institute

Day 303: Earthly contact

Vicente Guallart

I love this image and have posted it for no reason other than to increase the possibility of encountering a "natural" object while participating in a virtual environment.

Day 302: Making change

Basin and Range extension from Jacques Angelier


Mick Meader offers a Basin and Range demonstration

Two attempts to visualize several years of geologic change. See yesterday's post for the word-based version.

Day 301: Vast Extension

page 46 of John McPhee's Annals of the Former World, from Basin and Range

I've been stuck on this page of McPhee's book for several months. It is truly incredible what this landscape is doing. In attempts to better grasp it, I've been trying to imagine and draw it for myself (it is harder than one might think). For now my drawings are inadequate for public consumption, but after some online searches last night I've found two pretty amazing visualizations that I'd like to share. I'll hold off on posting them to provide some time for your imagination to give it a try too.

Day 300! SHIFT of energies

5th avenue today

It is a landmark day, 300 continuous days of blogging and spring is finally materializing!! In celebration, I'm going to be shaking things up here in the last two months of the 365 project. Energy is shifting in more than seasonal ways. Smudge has embarked on a new blogging/media initiative which is going to be getting more of my time, focus and energy in the coming days, weeks, months - and possibly years. More info soon - the project is officially launching next week -but in the meantime 365 is going to become more of visual arty kinda space these last 65 days. It is almost like graduation for my blogging practice. From now on I'll be saving my more elaborate posts related to art + environment for the new space and making this into more of a digital studio for the remaining days.... Enjoy the slide into summer!!!

Day 299: Diego Garcia

This image is a work of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

This might look like another idyllic island from the air, but on the ground it is a different story. Diego Garcia is located in the Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles south of the southern coast of India.

"Diego Garcia is home to a military base jointly operated by the United States and the United Kingdom. Neither the U.S. nor the UK recognizes Diego Garcia as being subject to the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, though the rest of the Chagos Archipelago is included, suggesting they wish to maintain the freedom to base nuclear weapons there. The agreement between the UK and U.S. for the U.S. to use the island as a military base was made in 1966. It runs until 2036, but either government can opt out of the agreement in 2016. The base is part of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, with a three-telescope GEODSS station, and is a NASA Space Shuttle emergency landing site..." Read more from wikipedia concerning the vital role this island has played in the Cold War, after September 11th, during the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and the war in Afghanistan.

Day 298: Post-Terrestrial

roadcut in PA, 2009 (click to enlarge)

Tonight we'll be attending Designing the Post-Terrestrial, a lecture by Geoff Manaugh. He'll be discussing, "post-terrestriality, or the point at which the built environment supersedes the foundation it's based on to become planetary in both scale and implication. From genetically modified crops and artificial wetlands to wholesale plate-tectonic engineering – by way of on-demand weather, constructed reefs, and even ruined buildings mistaken for hills – there is a point at which design infiltrates so thoroughly into the workings of the planet that the Earth's unnaturality, so to speak, becomes impossible to detect."

If you are around, seats might still be available. Learn more on the SVA site.

Day 297: Inner city

below the f Train on 9th street, Brooklyn

We spotted this pattern cast on a building last week coming back from Red Hook. The magic happens around 7 p.m. this time of year.

Day 296: Third space

Tom Marioni, Running and Jumping with a Pencil Marking the Paper While Trying to Fly, 1972

Today we're going to see The Third Mind, "This exhibition traces how Asian art, literature, and philosophy were transmitted and transformed within American cultural and intellectual currents, influencing the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages. It explores how American art evolved through a process of appropriation and integration of Asian sources that developed from the 1860s through the 1980s, when globalization came to eclipse earlier, more deliberate modes of cultural transmission and reception. While Europe has long been recognized as the font of mainstream American art movements, the exhibition explores an alternative lineage of creative culture that is aligned with America's Pacific vista—Asia."

View the online exhibition on the Guggenheim website.

Day 295: Thinking Free

Eugene Richards for The New York Times

On March 25th, the New York Times Magazine ran an extended story about legendary physicist Freeman Dyson. With good reason, the 85 year old scientist is still making the news. I've referenced him multiple times on this blog in the past (see Day 230 and Day 50). This most recent article is an update on where the man and his mind and work are focused now- the topic of global warming. Seemingly always at the edge of controversy, Freeman still lives up to his legend with far-flung ideas and imaginations in response to topic that seems undeniable desperate and material at this point, "Dyson says he doesn’t want his legacy to be defined by climate change, but his dissension from the orthodoxy of global warming is significant because of his stature and his devotion to the integrity of science. Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won’t come to pass. In “Infinite in All Directions,” he writes that nature’s laws “make the universe as interesting as possible.” This also happens to be a fine description of Dyson’s own relationship to science. In the words of Avishai Margalit, a philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study, “He’s a consistent reminder of another possibility.” When Dyson joins the public conversation about climate change by expressing concern about the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories,” these reservations come from a place of experience. Whatever else he is, Dyson is the good scientist; he asks the hard questions. He could also be a lonely prophet. Or, as he acknowledges, he could be dead wrong."

Read more in the Times.

Day 294: Field encounters

Image: Oficina Salitreria Properidad, Chile, 12 Oct 2007 by Chris Taylor (Land Arts of the American West)

We met Chris Taylor for the first time (in person) last October at the Art + Environment conference in Reno, NV. But, we had also randomly called him almost two years prior from the side of a mesa (with a terrible cell connection) in Colorado, seeking advice about how to get access to James Turrell's Roden Crater. We had read online that he took groups of students there on something called Land Arts of the American West. He gave us his best advice for getting into the highly protected and unfinished art work (it didn't work out) but, without having ever met us, he also told us about his sustainable building project in Madrid, NM (aka the Red Dog Shed). Even though he wouldn't be there, he said we should stop by and check-it out. He gave us directions and info on the key. The house was amazing, you can check-it out on our blog from 28 days (see the May 5th entry). This is the kind of open and supportive energy that we have encountered over and over again when meeting, collaborating and exchanging with the artists involved with the emerging art + environment movement/field/work/context.

A lot had changed since May of 2007! We have collaborated with the New Mexican contingent of the Land Arts of the American West program this past fall, and will again this summer and next fall. We might even end up meeting up with them out in the field next October. We also are very much looking forward to seeing Chris again today, in New York for his talk at Parsons. He'll also be at Yale next Monday if you are in the area.

The low down on the conversation follows below, we couldn't be more intrigued and inspired by the content. Oh yeah, the Land Arts program also just published a book, check it out and place advanced orders!

RECLAMATION OF POST-INDUSTRIAL TERRITORIES:
LAND ARTS AND THE INCUBO ATACAMA LAB
Friday, 10 April 2009, 2:00-4:00pm
Parsons The New School for Design
Aronson Gallery, 2 West 13 Street, 1st floor, New York, NY 10011

This event will address the reclamation of post-industrial landscapes, environmental impact of the practices of reclamation, and roles that architecture, art and design play in such processes. The panel will further discuss the field methods of Land Arts of the American West, and the Incubo Atacama Lab in Chile, as a case study. Joel Towers, Dean of the School of Design Strategies, and an Assoc. Professor of Architecture and Urban Ecology at The New School, will frame the panel by discussing the epistemological significance of post-industrial landscapes within the framework of Urban Ecology, and also the environmental impact of reclamation.

Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, directed by Chris Taylor, is a field program that investigates the intersection of geomorphology and human construction beginning with the land and extending through the complex social and ecological processes that produce contemporary landscapes. The Incubo Atacama Lab project began when the curatorial exchange organization Incubo invited Chris Taylor to bring the working methods of Land Arts to Chile. The lab brought together a group of students and researchers from North and South America for a conference in Santiago and fieldwork in the Atacama Desert to examine earthworks and create contemporary responses to the industrial use of land over time. Panel respondent will be Carin Kuoni, Director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, who will also moderate the discussion.

Day 293: Blank Spots

I just finished reading Trevor Paglen's (see Day 252) Blank Spots On The Map. I highly recommend the book. You are guaranteed to be surprised and intrigued by its contents. Trevor is a hybrid artist, writer, geographer, teacher, traveler, spy, researcher, activist, and more. It is material creative inspiration for the contemporary moment.

Read some review of the book, from Mother Jones or TIME.

You can even buy a copy through the Military Book Club.

Day 292: A world without

the first generation of North Korea's ballistic missile, the second generation was tested this week. from mailonline.

The idea is spreading (at least in some parts of the globe), a world without nuclear weapons?!

From the Japan Times Online, "U.S. President Barack Obama has committed his administration to the long-cherished dream of a world without nuclear weapons. In a landmark speech in Prague last weekend, Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would demonstrate "moral responsibility" and lead international efforts toward that goal. It will be a long and difficult task, not least because many believe such ambitions are naive and dangerous. Mr. Obama must not bow to that sentiment. Overcoming such deeply ingrained beliefs will require efforts by all nations. The key to realizing a world without nuclear weapons is ensuring stability by other means."

Yet, what might come of the existing nuclear waste still seems completely up in the air...

Obama has reduced support for the Yucca Mountain Project, which would be the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository. Read about the controversy of defunding the project in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Day 291: A little bit greener

my dad, photo by Jan Kruse

Today is election day in Urbana, IL. Urbana isn't my hometown, but it is where my parents have lived for the last several years. It is also where my father Durl is running for mayor on the Green Party ticket. I couldn't be more proud! My parents have learned, far too well over the last several months, there is a long way to go before average citizens realize there is a third, quite viable, option available beyond the standard two parties. This reality hasn't seemed to damper Durl's energy or commitment to the ongoing project that is democracy. That said, it has been a long and intense process of campaiging - politics can be dirty!

I hope today's voter turn out rises up to meet the energy extended by him, and all the other Greens, that all the hard work, dedication, and energy expended to get to this day can be celebrated and recognized by many. I know I will be pausing to acknowledge his incredibly brave and creative actions from New York today and look forward to planning my parents month long summer retreat in the Park Slope tomorrow.

Happy Election Day to all!

Learn more about the national Greens here.

Day 290: Hooked

at the end of columbia street in red hook, looking towards the neighborhood (click to enlarge)

We've gone to the studio four days in a row now. It has been fantastic! Due to the amazing sun and spring temps, we branched out yesterday and ventured past the playing fields to find the actual "hook" of Red Hook. At the end of Columbia street amazing views of Industry City and bay can be experienced.

Good news! The open studios for Red Hook are scheduled for May 30-31st, so mark your calendar for stopping by and help celebrate and "warm up" our studio with us. More details in the coming weeks.

Day 289: Plume

Alaska Volcano Observatory, via U.S. Geological Survey

I wrote back on Day 224 that the eruption of Mount Redoubt was imminent. The volcano emitted a plume of ash on March 15th, 2009 and has been erupting intermittently since. The Times's coverage has been interesting, only coming in the form of flight cancellation updates, short reprints of AP stories, fear-inducing ash warnings, or when parallels can be made with "eruptions" within the political scene of Alaska. The newspaper still doesn't seem to have found reason to directly addresses the event as news in itself, as a source of wonder, and definitely nothing that gives the eruption a broader context within environmental understanding or planetary geologic history.

If you want to experience any of this for yourself, enjoy some amazing photos here.

Continuous updates and webcams can be found here.
Or, you can even follow along on Twitter.

Day 288: Support the arts

smudge studio on the LAND/ART website

We have incredibly exciting collaborations underway! smudge studio will be doing media work for LAND/ART this summer, supported by the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. In preparation for the project, we will be launching a new media initiative in the next week or two, so stay tuned for more info! The LAND/ART project runs from June until November and we'll be attending events in both June and October. For now, you can learn more about the project and our involvement on the blog page of their site.

Also, if you haven't sprung for your pack yet, now is the time to make a tax-deductible donation and receive a pack of 30 LIMIT CASE POSTCARDS. The cards are being used for mutually beneficial fundraising efforts.When you purchase a pack through this page the proceeds are split 50/50 between smudge studio and LAND/ART.

Day 287: Tapped to the source

Fly Geyser, from Wikipedia

We're putting together the maps for our travels this summer and came across this very odd geyser in the Black Rock Desert. It was too strange to not share, and though it looks like something straight out of a mirage at Burning Man, it is in fact real. It continuously sprays hot water and was accidentally formed by a water well drilling that hit a geothermal source.

Day 286: Postopolis

Postopolis is "a live 5-day blogathon of back-to-back discussions, interviews, panel talks, slideshows, films and parties with scheduled and unscheduled guests, themed around landscape and the built environment."

Check out and experience the amazing list of thinkers and doers speaking LIVE from L.A. for the next several days. Enjoy!

Day 285: Much to work with

images from our time at Penn State

Last week we engaged in an amazing collaborative process. A group of Penn State students, primarily art educators, participated in a smudge facilitated experience. For two intense days we explored ideas, mapped, drew, talked, brainstormed, played, and generated a dynamic exchange together. From here, we will take the experiences and the content of the Generative Conversations blog and create a web-exhibition of the material. Stay tuned in mid-May for updates. Many thanks to Karen Keifer-Boyd and all those who took the time to play with us!

Day 284: Riparian zone

from Clemens Park North Fork

"A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a stream. Plant communities along the river margins are called riparian vegetation, characterized by hydrophilic plants. Riparian zones are significant in ecology, environmental management, and civil engineering because of their role in soil conservation, their biodiversity, and the influence they have on aquatic ecosystems. Riparian zones occur in many forms including grassland, woodland, wetland or even non-vegetative. In some regions the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone, or riparian strip are used to characterize a riparian zone. The word "riparian" is derived from Latin ripa, meaning river bank." - from Wikipedia

Day 283: Ecotone

image: appalachian voice

An ecotone is a transition area between two adjacent ecological communities (ecosystems). It may appear on the ground as a gradual blending of the two communities across a broad area, or it may manifest itself as a sharp boundary line. Changes in the physical environment may produce a sharp boundary, as in the example of the interface between areas of forest and cleared land (Krummholz). Elsewhere, a more gradually blended interface area will be found, where species from each community will be found together as well as unique local species. Mountain ranges often create such ecotones, due to the wide variety of climatic conditions experienced on their slopes. They may also provide a boundary between species due to the obstructive nature of their terrain; Mont Ventoux in France is a good example, marking the boundary between the flora and fauna of northern and southern France. Most wetlands are ecotones. Ecotones are particularly significant for mobile animals, as they can exploit more than one set of habitats within a short distance. This can produce an edge effect along the boundary line, with the area displaying a greater than usual diversity of species. The phenomenon of increased variety of plants as well as animals at the community junction is called the Edge effect and is essentially due to a locally broader range of suitable environmental conditions or ecological niches. The word was coined from a combination of eco(logy) plus -tone, from the Greek tonos or tension – in other words, a place where ecologies are in tension. -From Wikipedia

Day 282: Obelisk

checking out the rocks at Penn State

During our time at Penn State we encountered the obelisk.

"Constructed in 1896, the obelisk, also called the polylith, stands 32.7 feet high and weighs 53.4 tons. This "pile of rocks" was created the same year the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (formerly the School of Mines) came into existence. The obelisk, built by State College stonemason Michael Womer, began as a kind of answer to all the requests the college had been receiving for information on stones...The obelisk consists of 281 blocks of building stone from 139 different localities, mostly in Pennsylvania, and its components are arranged to represent the geologic column of the rocks of Pennsylvania, with the oldest rocks at the bottom and the youngest at the top. These stones include pre-cambrian rocks, the oldest in the state, to the youngest triassic rocks which were formed during the age of the dinosaurs." Learn more here.

Day 281: City in Silhouette

entering NYC today

Day 280: Desert Islands Part V

Manahatta Island Manhattan Island (click to enlarge)

copyright Mark Boyer and Wildlife Conservation Society and the New York Times
The fifth and final excerpt posted from Gilles Deleuze's Desert Islands.

(Read Part I on Day 258 and Part II on Day 262, Part III on Day 263, Part IV on Day 277)

We have to get back to the movement of the imagination that makes the deserted island a model, a prototype of the collective soul. First, it is true that from the deserted island it is not creation but re-creation, not the beginning but a re-beginning that takes place. The deserted island is the origin, but a second origin. From it everything begins anew. The island is the necessary minimum for this re-beginning, the material that survives the first origin, the radiating seed or egg that must be sufficient to re-produce everything. Clearly, this presupposes that the formation of the world happens in two stages, in two periods of time, birth and re-birth, and that the second is just as necessary and essential as the first, and thus the first is necessarily compromised, born for renewal and already renounced in a catastrophe. It is not that there is a second birth because there has been a catastrophe, but the reverse, there is a catastrophe after the origin because there must be, from the beginning, a second birth. Within ourselves we can locate the source of such a theme: it is not the production of life that we look for when we judge it to be life, but its reproduction. The animal whose mode of reproduction remains unknown to us has not yet taken its place among living beings. It is not enough that everything begin, everything must begin again once the cycle of possible combinations has come to completion. The second moment does not succeed the first: it is the reappearance of the first when the cycle of the other moments has been completed. The second origin is thus more essential than the first, since it gives us the law of repetition, the law of the series, whose first origin gave us only moments. But this theme, even more than in our fantasies, finds expression in every mythology. It is well known as the myth of the flood. The ark sets down on the one place on earth that remains uncovered by water, a circular and sacred place, from which the world begins anew. It is an island or a mountain, or both at once: the island is a mountain under water, and the mountain, an island that is still dry. Here we see original creation caught in a re-creation, which is concentrated in a holy land in the middle of the ocean. This second origin of the world is more important than the first: it is a sacred island. Many myths recount that what we find there is an egg, a cosmic egg. Since the island is a second origin, it is entrusted to man and not to the gods. It is separate, separated by the massive expanse of the flood. Ocean and water embody a principle of segregation such that, on sacred islands, exclusively female communities can come to be, such as the island of Circe or Calypso. After all, the beginning started from God and from a couple, but not the new beginning, the beginning again, which starts from an egg: mythological maternity is often a parthenogenesis. The idea of a second origin gives the deserted island its whole meaning, the survival of a sacred place in a world that is slow to re-begin. In the ideal of beginning anew there is something that precedes the beginning itself, that takes it up to deepen it and delay it in the passage of time. The desert island is the material of this something immemorial, this something most profound.

Day 279: Spirit rock

obsidian for Robert

The volcanic glass called obsidian was highly prized in prehistory where ever it was found. The glassy material comes in a range of colors from black to green to bright orange, and it is found everywhere rhyolite-rich volcanic deposits are found.

It can absorb anger, fear, and stress. It can also be used for clear vision and to insight into the future.

It is associated with Pluto - Greek god of the underworld and keeper of hidden treasure. It is a grounding stone but also contains a fiery element. It is useful for developing the strength needed to stand on your own convictions against any enemy (hidden or otherwise). Obsidian helps to protect the very sensitive against depression. It is the stone of the soft hearted and gentle people of the world. Use obsidian to help block negativity of any kind. As a black gemstone, it symbolizes self control and resilience. Black stones have protective energies in the sense that black is the absence of light, and therefore, can be used to create invisibility.

Day 278: Generating

poster promoting Elizabeth's talk tomorrow afternoon (I take photo credit for the image)

Tonight we are heading to Pennsylvania to facilitate a two day workshop at Penn State's School of Visual Arts. Updates on this later this week/end! In the meantime, you can see the material that we are working with and learn more about the project on Generative Conversations.

Day 277: Desert Islands Part IV

Robinson Crusoe Island

The fourth of 5 excerpts to be posted over time from Gilles Deleuze's Desert Islands.

(Read Part I on Day 258 and Part II on Day 262, Part III on Day 263)

At the same time, its destiny is subject to those human conditions that make mythology possible. Mythology is not simply willed into existence, and the peoples of the earth quickly ensured they would no longer understand their own myths. It is at this very moment literature begins. Literature is the attempt to interpret, in an ingenious way, the myths we no longer understand, at the moment we no longer understand them, since we no longer know how to dream them or reproduce them. Literature is the competition of misinterpretations that consciousness naturally and necessarily produces on themes of the unconscious, and like every competition it has its prizes. One would have to show exactly how in this sense mythology fails and dies in two classic novels of the deserted island, Robinson and Suzanne. Suzanne and the Pacific emphasizes the separated aspect of islands, the separation of the young woman who finds herself there; Robinson Crusoe, the creative aspect, the beginning anew. It is true that the way mythology fails is different in each case. In the case of Giraudoux's Suzanne, mythology dies the prettiest, most graceful death. In Robinson's case, its death is heavy indeed. One can hardly imagine a more boring novel, and it is sad to see children still reading it today. Robinson's vision of the world resides exclusively in property; never have we seen an owner more ready to preach. The mythical recreation of the world from the deserted island gives way to the reconstitution of everyday bourgeois life from a reserve of capital. Everything is taken from the ship. Nothing is invented. It is all painstakingly applied on the island. Time is nothing but the time necessary for capital to produce a benefit as the outcome of work. And the providential function of God is to guarantee a return. God knows his people, the hardworking honest type, by their beautiful properties, and the evil doers, by their poorly maintained, shabby property. Robinson's companion is not Eve, but Friday, docile towards work, happy to be a slave, and too easily disgusted by cannibalism. Any healthy reader would dream of seeing him eat Robinson. Robinson Crusoe represents the best illustration of that thesis which affirms the close ties between capitalism and Protestantism. The novel develops the failure and the death of mythology in Puritanism. Things are quite different with Suzanne. In her case, the deserted island is a depository of ready-made, luxurious objects. The island bears immediately what it has taken civilization centuries to produce, perfect, and ripen. But mythology still dies, though in Suzanne's case it dies in a particularly Parisian way. Suzanne has nothing to create anew. The deserted island provides her with the double of every object from the city, in the windows of the shops; it is a double without consistency, separated from the real, since it does not receive the solidity that objects ordinarily take on in human relations, amidst buying and selling, exchanges and presents. She is an insipid young woman. Her companions are not Adam, but young cadavers, and when she reenters the world of living men, she will love them in a uniform way, like a priest, as though love were the minimum threshold of her perception. What must be recovered is the mythological life of the deserted island. However, in its very failure, Robinson gives us some indication: he first needed a reserve of capital. In Suzanne's case, she was first and foremost separate. And neither the one nor the other could be part of a couple. These three indications must be restored to their mythological purity.

Day 276: 1000 polaroids

image of installation from David Zwirner Gallery

Without planning on it, I stumbled upon Philip-Lorca diCorcia's show at David Zwirner last week. I was completely taken by the piece, the installation, and each each of these one thousand polaroids.

"One of the most influential photographers working today, diCorcia is known for creating images that balance precariously between documentary and staged photography, fact and fiction. Cumulatively, these 1,000 Polaroids, which are considered one complete work, offer a distinctive vantage point into the artist’s sensibility and visual preoccupations. At David Zwirner, the Polaroids are displayed at eye-level on a long thin aluminum railing attached to the gallery’s main walls, continuing into additional interior, spiral-like spaces built for this installation. The sequencing of the images reveals a deeply personal associative logic and artistic narrative that encapsulates the barrage of information and experiences encountered over the course of a lifetime.

Seen alongside Polaroids from some of diCorcia’s most recognized bodies of work and distinctive series – Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, Lucky Thirteen – are intimate scenes with friends, family members, and lovers; self portraits; double-exposures; test shots from commercial and fashion shoots; the ordinary places of everyday life, such as airport lounges, street corners, bedrooms; and still life portraits of common objects, including clocks and lamps."

from the press release of the show at David Zwirner

Day 275: Site-ing

Agnes Denes (b. 1938). 'Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space—Map Projections: The Snail', 1979. Whitney Museum of American Art.

"In the postwar period, the traditional notion of art as a discrete object has changed to include environments, places, and sites. The critic Harold Rosenberg famously described painting as "an arena in which to act," and since the 1950s artists have continuously expanded on that idea. In Earth art and performance-based works, the museum or gallery (and enclosed architecture in general) became a boundary to transgress or at least acknowledge as both a container and a barrier. In much contemporary practice, the process of making a work of art has become part of the content. Many artists treat their work as a continuous project in which the studio extends into the real world and/ or is brought into traditional spaces. The art itself may become a site or it may create one—a place and a space with its own rules and internal logic. This exhibition, drawn from the Whitney’s permanent collection, explores how the idea of sites allows for a more experiential role for the spectator as well the creation of new types of spaces, whose qualities might be unbound, drawn in, or otherwise made pliant by their creators".

- from Sites, Whitney.org