to see the sea... just

first breakfast after the drought

or should it be: draft?

in any case. the little sundew is recovering well after the enforced heat and no water it suffered while i was in iceland. it had died back completely but yesterday morning it was happily munching on a little fruitfly. can you spot it?

much of my attention has been revolving around the various 'growing' projects i got myself into this year: the plants inside the house were doing well; a honeysuckle got planted in the backyard along with two marrows. as the usual wet summer onfolded, the marrows got heavily munched on by slugs, so much so that no flowers other than two early ones, pre-slug fest, bore fruits; the honeysuckle got overgrown by the usual weeds in the border and almost fell victim to a sustained attack by our 'gardeners' who ignored long trails and stick and did their best to kill it off - luckily: unsuccessfully so. my avocado plant which in its 20 years has stayed with many friends and has been attended to throughout does not do much more than bristle its dry leaves after three weeks of drought and heat attack. there's no sign of life in it despite the best plant vibes and even more attention by all my visitors and myself since.

much of this, notably earlier, living incarnations of the avocado plant, had made it into print. and again, most of my current art projects involve the sounds, cycles and various states of these plants. along with some contemplations of the vagaries of weather, people and all else. none of them are for show just yet. but i can clearly see a picture of an old eccentric woman who talks to her many plants coming along as a possible future. hehehe... it may even be time to plant some fruit trees... in gardens that aren't mine but others. what strange notion property is.

and in the background

... there is still more: another view, the same sound

yet, the eyes don't blink, don't move, don't change focus. it's rather simple: her video editing skills are not up to such complexities - yet.

colour scheme i

all the while, i hear this in the background

the capture of spectularity

three days spent on grimsey afforded not only the crossing of the artic circle and a futile hunt of some puffins that didn't leave but also an exchange of the various books one transports in a backpack on iceland. we shared the little hostel with a german woman who packs even more excessively than i do: but her five books in iceland provided some good insights into hiking routes and various other bits.


the book that really got me was one with a chapter titled 'nature equals kitsch plus x', by wolfgang mueller. what a marvellous equation. it provided and still does provide plenty to mentally chew over. again and again when you just stare around you and there is just no way of doing anything else other than staring.

m, the woman with the five travel books sat downstairs in the kitchen and each morning declared: 'wow - i can't get over this change in the photo wallpaper over there' - pointing to the icelandic mainland in some 50 kms distance in ever changing light, cloud and snow formations. 'how come they put a new one up every couple of hours?'

the evening before we walked to the northern tip and while i happily snapped away with the camera, every click was futile. it froze in time and single viewpoint all that what could not be frozen.

it seemed ridiculous to try and capture in image something that once capture would be pure kitsch. photography and painting/drawing as completely futile. and then i read about above's equation. the equation, so mueller, renders visual arts in iceland virtually impossible, and land art doesn't even need a consideration to start with.

what a fabulous starting point of my little landart, nature, landscapism module: failure. utter failure to deal with where you're at and what you see. there are possibly some caveats to this:
- what is there to turn to if visual representation is utterly meaningless?
- the romantics tried to romanticise -- make abstract and thus more beautiful -- the landscape. what if it cannot be made any more beautiful?
- sightseeing spectacularity makes you numb and blind; but, relatedly: how do you ordinarily live with such spectacularity?

thus, while taking futile photos, trying to sketch some of the many horses, catalogueing the various colour changes in boiling mudpots, ignoring the clouds above as any sketch would be only considered not real enough and contemplating the folds that thick lave flow makes, i am working my way through the above.

maybe next: some colour schemes, of mudpots and arctic forests (i.e. blueberries, cranberries and crow berries) in autumn beauty. but first a bit more failure. fresh from grimsey:

it smells

unmistakenly in front of us, the municipal rubbish dump. we are walking towards west into the valley and the wind is just heading our way. raven and the usual mix of various gulls circle not above a fishing boat but the waste. right to the side is a smaller heap for green cuttings. they have so many trees here that they even cut them.

of course iceland smells. in 5 degrees c it doesn't approach anywhere near a good whiff of central berlin in high summer, but rubbish stinks here too.

we knew there as an 'unimpressing stretch of 1-2 hrs of road if you don't have a car to get straight to the car park'. so... if you don't travel by car you need to deal with the smell.

earlier in the morning i outlined the 5-10 options for the last stop before returning to reykjavik. and, while outlining realised that i'm not that far away from my friend who hates decisioning as there is invariably a worse option than the one she may chose. not long ago i declared: nope, don't have that problem. but: here i most definitely do. the choice (omitting various suboptions):

- a highly attractive eastfjord village with norwegian buildings; or:
- a functional service centre with a lack of cheap accommodation.

the decisionmaker: public transport, and due to the lack of it: too little time.

so, as we clambered up sulur, west of akureyri and its rubbish dump, the dilemma, once seen with a bit more colour scheme and view to the sea towards the arctic unmasked itself as yet another one of the:

how many sights can you cram into one week or a weekend even, with its appropriate sections in any english speaking travel guide. can it be shorter? more exciting? riveting even? another vulcano, another glacier, more hot springs, more exciting lava formations?

we decided rather clearly: this is a pseudo-dilemma. no point in chasing highlights. a walk is a walk and the light changes make any functional service town in grass, heather, moss settings rather spectacular.

more on the latter, next... if i get access to inet and computer again...

DCs in graphite

klee's watch plants resonated with these drawings of the wild carrots: the first one done on day 2; the last one done on day 7. so, any changes to be observed are clearly due to the plant growing, flowering and moving from bud to seed pot; and not with any inability on my part to observe or draw accurately, of course!

daucus carota, day 2 and day 7, graphite on paper (a2)

daucus carota

... is all i'm saying and seeing these days.

thoroughly back in the fields, there's no metropolitan video art to keep me distracted. instead, i'm with the weeds - one of the 'usefuls' [someone will giggle afar], as the pragmatic german language defines.

the wild carrot. daucus carota. or queen anne's lace.

someone has a better camera than i do. and while i'm patiently doing 50x70cm studies each day of my favourite bundle of wild carrots, i fear i'll be missing some of the details on this page. but, i may just as well have 1/3 sec [7 frames] of a daucus carota animation movie.

fields in detail. and in movement. phew. that seems to be going to somewhere new, doesn't it? maybe a little bit.

here's someone else's fascination with the wild carrots.

there is a forest. this is its sound

there is a rainforest. this is its sound.

Chris Watson - Whispering in the Leaves from Whispering in the Leaves on Vimeo.

one forest. many sounds. from dawn to dusk. in my explorations into soundscapes, i listened to chris watson's introduction of his sound installation, whispering in the leaves, at the palm house at kew gardens on saturday lunch time.

a mix of rainforest sounds are mixed to trace the time that passes between dawn and dusk.. transmitted via 80 speakers throughout the palm house that houses tropical plants from wherever tropical plants grow.

the sound piece came towards the end of three days spent in kew gardens and an investigation into botanical collections, drawings, the endeavours of dreams of imperial order and totality.

the sound piece: a lot of sound. a lot of humanising of a rainforest. and above all: the assumption that there is one forest that makes sounds.

i think installations work best if they don't try to be authentic.

can i consider this as a piece of popular education? as: other senses than the visual and oleofactoral engaged while in the hot palm house? not sure about that either.

something's cooking

well... there's usually some thing (or: more accurately: many things) bubbling away in the background.

but this one is taking a more shape (in the pot), bit by bit. it'll need some more time, but my recent obsession of watching wild life programmes (that previously just yielded an intent and intense yawn) is some indication of it.

it is also a direction onwards from my previous 3 observations on landscape. it'll be after the summer for it to be in full shape (leaving the pot on the boil metaphor).

tonight's fix was this one here (it's part 3 of 5 on youtube, so you can watch the whole episode).

it starts proper at 8:00mins

and don't miss 4:00mins onwards on part 4 ;)

i almost forgot some geographical details: it's here: the okavango delta in botswana.

3 observations on landscape (iii)

observation (iii) is putting into words the experience that was so eagerly anticipated:

3. bethan huws's il est comme un saint dans sa niche, il ne bouge pas, kestner gesellschaft.

the first piece of her i saw - or rather: read about - was the lake writing or lake piece (1991). [with a review and an installation shot here]

it was shown to me by someone who had fallen in love with text, words and the discursive possibilities of art. and it was shown to me at a time when i was glad to revel in the immediacy of artistic practice after turning away from word-laden or -leaden (?) academia.

and nonetheless: i think i pretty well caught the same falling movement (happiness drip, drapping downwards as rilke wondered and twombly installed here) and wanted to see, read, know and understand more.

singing to the sea was the first actual experience of huws's work.

and now a show that was enframed by huws statement that she 'does Duchamp like she does crosswords'; and the exhibition spaces itself announcing at its start: 'why do we keep creating more artworks if we don't understand the ones we've got'. the show gives insight (as well as positing so many more questions) into huws's approach towards duchamp's work, the search for meaning-making in art and language. the ambiguity of translation processes from her native welsh, english and french figure throughout - in various ready-mades, the films 'fountain' and 'the chocolate bar'.

the most expansive (if only in terms of physical space) of her works in the hanover show is the marriage (marier quc a quc: also, to unite two separate objects) of her installation space the forest (made up of many, many bottle driers, another ready-made of Duchamp) with the wedding video she screened originally inside a woodland (a marriage in the king's forrest).

much of her art seems pared down, stripped back to some key questions of meaning-making and the relation this quest establishes between subjects and objects (though agent and receptor isn't clear-cut here). there is something in her work that seems to me very dateable: it reflects a pre-occupation with text and discursiveness i know from my own academic work.  there is something in this that, in an academic context, i would refute: notably her attempt to make everything transparent by ever more circles of reflective practice. it's a practice which is necessary but remains, in my mind, futile: not everything of who i is can be rendered discursive and transparent.

there are many openings towards academic work practice and artistic possibilities in this. textual art works is something of an unknown to me. almost deliberately i stayed away from text because it was too closely tagged to academic work. i think that division can no longer be upheld.

but this is really about an observation on landscape. it's a tentative one and takes us back to nature and the opening of different media required. it is glimpsed at in the forest marriage of bottle driers and a rather ordinary wedding video: of how meaning-making takes mundane forms and combines diverse media. and the attentiveness and searching nature of huws artistic practice provides inspiration.

so, that's the observation (iii) on landscape.

her lake piece may prove a good walking companion for this.

3 observations in landscape (ii)

bums... i made the mistake of writing post iii before post ii and inbetween the two i fell into the night stars, morning mist and a chestnut bud and thus disappeared momentarily.

but stars, mist and buds were all on queue for short and sweet observation on landscape (ii).

it concerns james turrell's minimalism of light and perception (as discussed in more length in an earlier post). two quotes stick in my mind from my web trawl even if the source didn't (sorry!).

quote 1 paraphrases as james turrell is one of the great romantics in his search for light in the (american) landscape.

quote 2 paraphrases as james turrell with his skyscapes and installations does want to take us back to the stone age.

out of this my observation (ii) arises:

a minimalism of form is required. only with this, the limitations of landscape can be transcended. such minimalism - if it works with light (and shade) and our perception of this - will be contemporary, as in the here and now (as indeed Turrell's work is). nature and our experience of this is one of presence not tradition.

is this romantic? is working with light and perception romantic? i wonder....

3 observations on landscape (i)

with all the work on portfolios it seems ages that i spent some time in landscape. assembling the material for the portfolios, demonstrating and providing a statement around these was very useful in surveying my 'fieldwork' as i indeed called the statement [reminder to self: rewrite and post this].

it however also made obvious that i am moving along something less painterly and more conceptual and 'other materially' than paint. some of my reservation about the genre of landscapism remain, remain and remain and need addressing in other means.

the three exhibitions i saw over the past week will serve as initial markers.

1. the return of landscape. akademie der kuenste, hanseatenweg, berlin

it draws knowingly on the romantics' constructions of landscape and the rich and varied and problematic nature (!) of germany's cultural history and its basis for geopolitics (be it it with prussia's colonisation of the east; or ns blood and soil politics and economics).

however, the main part of the exhibition is a juxtaposition of two cities (venice and las vegas) and their dependence on nature - water. so: landscape becomes the domain of landscape planners to struggle with issues over sustainability amongst capitalist thirst for land and expansion. the imagery that dominates are those of aerial photography of landscape patterns - nature/cultivation/destruction, the main slide show made up of images by alex s maclean. a third part of the exhibition shows various landscape projects, their master plans and details to manage sustainability.

in this, the exhibition is limited: it's limited to the act of planning for sustainability and the belief that a plan will solve a problem. though my own professional background has always been situated in close proximity to the 'belief in a plan', i find this increasingly tiresome and mis-placed. mis-placed also if we consider the power of aerial photography without social practice, without people. to assume that patterns from high above reveal the groundwork. - the photography of bernd and hilla becher marks the precendent of a rich tradition of photography of human activity and the outcome of these with the agents being absent. rich by absence and stillness. photography always freezes activity in stillness. and nonetheless, it's probably one of its biggest problems.

the piece that really caught me, was - possibly unsurprisingly - a video by the canadian documentary film maker peter mettler. his documentary on the destruction by open pit oil production, petropolis (canada, 2009, 43min), visit the site for the film here.

again: it's aerial imagery. yet, this destruction through the tar sands is narrated by mettler. he tells the viewer how his requests to visit the fields was refused again and again so that flying over the fields was the only way of getting access and of being able to document; he talks about the first experiments of flying and much more. thus he makes an imagery thoroughly part of this world and the relations that make petropolis possible.

mettler's film is one of three shown on the side of a large field of illuminated boxes which show quotes concerned with landscape from throughout (German-speaking) history.

landscape text panels, illuminated, wiederkehr der landschaft, adk, berlin

two I noted down.

ich hatte einst ein schönes vaterland
so sang der flüchtling heine,
das seine stand am rheine,
das meine auf dem märkischen sand.
wir alle hatten einst ein (siehe oben).
das fraß die pest, das ist im sturz zerstoben.
o rößlein auf der heide
dich brach die kraftdurchfreude. (mascha kaleko, 1907-1975)

i once had a beautiful fatherland
so sung the refugee heine
his stood next to the rhine
mine on the markian sands.
we all once had one (see above).
it got devoured by pestulence, it broke apart in its fall.
oh little rose on the heath
you were broken by strengththroughjoy.

allmählich entdeckte sie neue linien im gesicht der landschaft. ackerflächen, deren grenzen in einem anderen winkel zum horizont verliefen als die uralten grabenrunzeln der erde früherer zeit. so schnell prägten die neuen züge sich nicht in die gesichter der erde. (christa wolf, *1929)

slowly she discovered new lines in the face of the landscape. fields whose boundaries were running in different angles to the horizon than the ancient furrow marks of the earth of previous times. it wouldn't be that quick for the new contours to settle in the faces of the earth.

thus, my first observation:
 
while nature is never outside from what people experience and engage with (i.e., nature cannot be external to people... unspoilt or otherwise), considering nature outside of landscape is a necessary opening to get beyond the landscape genre and its conventions.

this is likely to require radically different means to the framed picture plane and conventions of landscape compositions in painting.

it's probably not by chance that these reconsiderations of nature hit me as i'm about to engulf myself in a week of facilitation training inspired by deep ecology and sustainability. it's a reconsideration that i avoided for a decade or more. so, i think it's high time. hello dartmoor, hello permaculture.