On the performance of being cocooned on my bed for three months under the tray that supports my computer for 12 hrs at a stretch 7 days a week to complete my dissertation

My dissertation is a mediation event about relationships with the natural world. It is about a theoretical approach to environmental degradation and it is being written on a beautiful island in Maine from the Ghost Nets site.

Dawn July 6, 2013

The performance artist Marina Abramovic who sat across from strangers all day in 2010 has nothing on me. She sat. She just sat during museum hours @ MoMA. She had an audience, company across the table and lines of admirers. I am not sitting. I am doing my writing lying down. I have my cat, facebook, email, the phone and the TV with reruns of Law & Order & NCIS. When my cat's not by my side, she patrols the garden.

I am lying down on my bed to avert the low blood pressure that comes with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This is an endurance event. 6 weeks into this performance, my neck is a wreck. My hair is falling out. I have chronic, blinding eye strain and my hands, arms and shoulders are practically in spasm most of the day from the constant typing. I am mostly serene and stubborn about getting thru this.

Work station

I am on the 16th page of 50 of my third chapter of 5.

I am doing this to seriously ask if art can change the environmental world of the Anthropocene.

My routine is punctuated by meals and brief walks in my garden.

Each day when I walk in the garden, I watch the subtle changes as flowers bloom and then fade, shifting the palette, textures and trajectory of the eye.

I make an effort to interact with the world beyond my research strewn bed on the average of 2 hours a day. That means I get in my car and join friends to do something, like sing Sunday mornings in the local church with the choir. Yesterday, I accidentally killed my car battery, so today, I did not sing.

But in the early morning when I went downstairs, I startled a beautiful Doe having brekkers on my pansies.

The Doe is the beige smear in the middle as she ran away, but then pauaed to look back at me.

When I walked down to the garden, nothing seemed much the worse for wear.

Whatever pansies she'd eaten looked like they were only dead headed.

Walking back to my house, I stopped in my vegetable garden and I gathered some berries for my own breakfast and then went back to my cocoon.

Each day, I encounter a new group of ideas, the personalities behind them and the work that emerged. My task is to see past my opinions, to humbly & carefully examine the premises, context and results and connect links between the arguments I'm making, the research I've done and what remains to be presented. 

Then I consider how this relates to Ghost Nets and Fish Story. It makes my head hurt and my brow furrow. That is a performance.

I fully expect to spread my wings and fly like a butterfly when I'm done,