Preparing for Ruthlessness in "Blued Trees"

I will add to this post over the next few days. It is November 25, the day before Thanksgiving, and I have much to be grateful for in the progress of Blued Trees, starting with how many people have "gotten it," that art and law can contest the mindless proliferation of toxic fossil fuel and natural gas infrastructures. Yesterday, I was enormously heartened when the Blued Trees crowdfunding site received a donation of $100., a day after I had visited the site of the overture, in Peekskill, New York, where I witnessed how Algonquin-Spectra had wreaked utter, devastating destruction. They ignored the danger of creating a high velocity (42") pipeline, cheek by jowl with the local nuclear plant, 30 miles from NYC. They ignored thousands of local citizens petitioning for protection from the dangers. They dismissed the cease and desist notification I had filed.

This is a detail of the overture that was destroyed by Algonquin- Spectra, shot my Erik McGregor days before.

I now know far more about Blued Trees than when I began. I know, for example, that the ruthlessness that fossil fuel companies have employed in South America, has reached North America, They act with impunity because many officials are on their team, not the team of local citizens or the welfare of the planet. It took me a while to grasp how utterly indifferent they are to consequences, such as climate change, wrapped in oodles of money as they are. I will add to this blog post this weekend, with urls for new articles, pictures and information about a manual we are completing for painters.  

I was unprepared  for ruthlessness." I didn't have the war chest, the right lawyers, or the emotional fortitude to accept the intense grief and rage when that some battles are lost so we can win the war. I am, however, learning, and intend to pass along all I learn. We now have a manual designed by Coni Porter, and other participants, for all new participants.

This is the new film from Erik McGregor about resistance that includes a collage of images from Blued Trees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTDlGjWVeg8&feature=youtu.be

This is the url to donate to developing the legal theory to umbrella every Blued Trees site internationally:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blued-trees-defense-2/x/12001983#/

Considering paradoxes

There is a new debate about having children, questioning the motives of those who choose not to have children and judging them as selfish. However, when we consider the scale of the human population explosion against the dwindling lives of other species and the impacts on weather and climate for all living beings, I have to question the logic of those judgements.

It is a paradox, however, that humans experience their own personal drive to have a child as somehow exempt from the planetary consequences of billions of humans with similar drives.

Recently, my attention has been focused on another paradox, that many who staunchly oppose fracking, are cheerleaders for natural gas. It is a similar disconnect between wishful thinking and logical consequences.

In the sketch below from my journals, I have contemplated the paradox of how North America plans to deliver energy to a burgeoning and demanding population, while, incidentally crisscrossing the continent with fracking wells, pipelines that could explode, right thru the third largest watershed in the world. Earth Day, Tuesday afternoon, April 22nd, in discussion with Jim White and Gene Turner, we will discuss those disconnects in a Gulf to Gulf webcast.

The yellow horizontal she across the United States indicates the swath of fracking and natural gas destroying watersheds and habitats in its wake.

The violence of climate change feeds potential for human violence

Ferguson is no different than Gaza or Syria: it is a Mecca for disaffection. And like those other sites, the inherent injustices are circumstantially fueled.

I find it both heart-breaking and mentally exhausting to try to understand the conflicts we see around the world now. I am not alone. It seems difficult for even the most sophisticated people to layer the complex sources and consequences of the imbalances that lead to chaos. The geopolitics, biogeography and local demographics need to be separately teased apart and viewed dispassionately, at a time when few of us have the skills or even the incentive to take that on. That, however, is the task ahead for us all. It is a good one for ecological art. 

My previous research on correlating climate change and conflict zones gives me a modest head start. In terms of correlating observations between Ferguson, Gaza and Syria, besides being on similar meridians, they share what Dr. Jim White & I analyzed in "Trigger Points/ Tipping Points," for "Weather Report," for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007: that conflict zones will follow climate change hot spots. Geopolitically, as biogeographically, the chaos of disruption will eliminate the previously balanced competitive system and the role/ functions of many species/ human groups in that previous system. Other species/ groups will be reduced because the interactions shift dramatically. If we consider the principles of island biogeography that contend a steady intake outtake flow will sustain a measure of equilibrium, then we can observe how the equilibrium of previous ecosystems will end. The result on the biological level is the collapse of ecosystem biodiversity. In human terms, this means war.

What I am curious about in Ferguson, is whether the best minds can help another self-organization emerge rather than the descent into increasing anguish we are witnessing? As in the Middle East, these conflagrations are irresistible opportunities for invasive elements, whether you call them instigators, ISIS or European green crabs. 

The tragic mistake I fear, is the probability that the imminent socio-political goal is order for it's own sake rather than combining due process with the needed global macro approach I foresee as necessary. Without the macro view, I believe we will continue to see these kinds of disruptions escalate, proliferate and destroy civilization as we know it.

Apocalypse Now

In 2007, in conversations recorded with Dr. James White as part of our project, "Trigger Points/ Tipping Points," he said we were entering the fast-phase of global warming, which would accelerate in about three years: 2010. It is now 2014.

Tonight, NYC expects flash floods and my mind is still full of burning California hills. As San Diego cools down, I am considering ... we have entered the fast phase of global warming, in which climate change impacts will geometrically accelerate with all the attendant globalized socio-poitical-economic disruptions we are already observing and consequent loss of life. Geometric means each year, the impacts double. Or triple. They don't go to a steady state where people and other animals can adjust. So, if I apply trigger point theory, the answer is to go into the chaos, dive into the fire and flood for answers, not fight or try to control it but learn it's logic. I don't even know what that means, except that physics and complexity theory tells me it must be true.

My worries are based on films and photos of fires in San Marcos above San Marcos University. I once watched a cougar visit me there. The cougar sat at the top of my driveway. I sat in my car at the bottom and we just watched each other for the longest time.

I know exactly where the photos were taken from on Barham Road. It looks like the flames overcame a house I built there in 1979 on Walnut Hills Drive, as my first strategic design of a trigger point. The beautiful house I built with a wildlife refuge, gardens, orchards and a medicine wheel meditation area surrounded by Torrey Pines trees grown from seeds might very well be ashes now. 

Still from news video.

It looks very likely my former home is gone. The cougar is long gone. In a sense, it doesn't matter- it could be anyone's home, anyone's dream, anyone's life. I find these fires a terrifying harbinger of the consequences of global warming. I don't know how I could have screamed louder over the dangers we've been hurtling towards as either an artist or a person. I tossed & turned over this till 4:AM last night. This AM, I am more in grief than anger. In my mind's eye, there is the fire and the cougar.

I will paint it in encaustics this week, with wax and flame. To the left, fire. To the right, flood.

Sketch for Apocalypse Now.

I'm Aviva. And I'm a recovering human.

The Obama administration has released their report on climate change and it is grim but nothing new. George Bush once said that we are addicted to oil. Evidently, we are also addicted to denial. Obama and the Pope recently met and perhaps planned the timing of this report with the Vatican pronouncement as reported in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

But human nature is a recalcitrant beast.

In 12 Step relationship programs, what is repeated in those rooms is that we must accept the alcoholic/ insane/ addicted person with love and detachment while working on our own welfare. What eventually changes the dynamic is not trying to change anyone else but focusing on changing ourselves. The critique of that approach, which evolved from Bill Wilson's wife's response to her husband's initiation of AA, is that it's essentially sexist. That is, put up & shut up while her husband cheated on her, underearned and filled their house with drunks.

On the other hand, there's a lot of wisdom in working on the solution, As far as the Dark Mountain project, recently described in the NY Times magazine section, I'm not sure. It certainly represents working on oneself. But on the other hand, the Jewish mandate to step forward when a crime is committed or you are equally guilty, is worth considering. Even in Al-Anon, passivity isn't recommended. People routinely organize "interventions" to confront a person with their effects on others. The trick, is to do that with true love and compassion, not rage, fear, self-righteousness, judgement, pity or contempt. A bit of a task that, sometimes.

As far as working on oneself, the "solution" is to be so deeply grounded in the spirituality, personal responsibility and spirit of being of service to those still suffering & fellowship with those in recovery, that it overwhelms awareness of horrors. A bit of a task that too. 

Which is why I'm sharing these thoughts with you, dear readers, rather than crying in my white wine. And, considering that we have the President of the United States and the Pope on our side, there may really BE some cause for hope.

I've always let my dreams determine my life

I woke, as from a nightmare. I dreamt I ran into another artist in the supermarket, sobbing because her state had repealed gay marriage. I told her that since Jim White & I had been doing our "Gulf to Gulf" webcasts on global warming, I'd sobbed many times over seeing our projected unpredictable, awful consequences of global warming come true in the world and over the missed moments caused by the interactions of complex agents; that my jaw has dropped and continues to drop over how these independent agents can trigger unpredictable change: how climate change causes migrations, causes the rise of hate groups; how it causes poverty, drought and independent crazies responding to heat and despair who become semi-successful pirates and hackers who ruin other people's lives. And then I woke up, thinking and that's why I'm completing my dissertation on "trigger point theory as aesthetic activism."

Later, I added:

I started intentional dreaming as a very young child, when I had nightmares of pursuit and death. Over several years, I trained myself to dream that I confronted the pursuers and fought back successfully. Eventually, I got to the point where I not only survived but rescued others. Later, in my twenties, when I heard of how the Senoi people used their dreams, I went further, to "bring something back for the tribe." I have made an effort to do that ever since. What I do is slightly diff than intentional dreaming because I allow for the mystical aspect.

Now my task, defined by the University of Plymouth, from whom I would receive my PhD, is to translate and parse a practice based on dreams, crossing each T and dotting each i in terms any academic might clearly understand. They detail that task as follows:

"Central to the success of a practice-informed research are the categories of "reflection" and "contextualization." A rigorous analysis of one's own work is a very demanding endeavor, both personally and from an academic point of view. However, subjectivity (one's own art work) can form an excellent basis for questions that have directly arisen from one's own work processes. It is therefore important to look at one's own artistic process as a type of theoretical research.

"Reflection" as in "looking back" also includes a degree of "post-rationalization that should be explicit in one's writing. It is useful to keep a working diary to record artistic research methods and findings as one progresses with the practical work during the Phd. This record should also include the theoretical readings and influences from other artists in one's field and/or related fields.

"Contextualization" of one's own artistic work into a "school," a "trend," a "movement," is a hard one- it is however, absolutely essential in an academic work of PhD-standard. To achieve contextualization, one must be familiar with one's artistic or design community. What is the historical background to the community? Rigorous research is necessary here. "State of the Art" groundbreaking experiments, borrowed methodologies and aesthetic trends must be written about seriously. The reaction of the audience and the critical reception of ones own and of related works in the field must be formalized."

A little bit of reality leavened dreaming.

Fish Story numbers on the eve of Earth Day

Earth Day http://www.earthday.org/2013/ is April 22. We have a ways to go to make Earth Day an event that reflects a realistic response to the anthropocene. There's hope but it will be a challenge for us all.

This past week, I attended an event at the Temple of Understanding at the United Nations, on the crisis- emergency of global sustainability. My take away, was that the scale and imminence of our environmental crisis is even more hazardous than I'd previously thought: that without emergency intervention over the next few years, by 2050, most of the human population (up to 8.5 billion people) would likely perish from inter-related exigencies.

Those figures are based on 2009 and 2011 calculations respectively from Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 2009 and Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Two of the presenters Thursday, were Ian Dunlop and Tapio Kanninen, both members of the Club of Rome. Both are optimistic about the human prognosis- if we act in emergency mode.

Slide from Ian Dunlop's presentation at the UN Temple of Understanding.

I discussed with them how ecological art, as Fish Story could contribute to the solution. My thinking behind Fish Story has been that if people are stuck on these massive problems, to just focus on fish. People care about fish on their dinner plate and at the end of a hook. Fish bring us to water quality which depends on habitat and that comes to restoration. Fish Story is a restoration plan based on working backwards from global warming to the individual. That is where the promise of empowerment lies: in individuals, working as part of larger communities, who can re-green our planet.

April 8, 2013 I had asked our Fish Story team member James White the following question:

if we had a time frame for when we might totally turn over to alternatives and the carbon "cost" of that time lag, how much might that "cost" be "off set"  by how much potential restoration to mitigate the impacts until we're totally off fossil fuels? For example, if the total turn over is 2030, how many millions of acres of increased green (forests, wetlands, prairies, etc- even increased tundra as the ice melts, despite the loss of albido?) would be required to offset the carbon impact of using that much fossil fuel (I know it would probably be astronomical but I'm curious whether there could be even a ball park assessment.)?

These were his numbers:

On Apr 8, 2013, at 12:13 PM, James White wrote:

There are no simple answers to this, but here's the best I can do:

We emit globally about 10 BMT/yr of  carbon (billion metric tons per year) in FF burning and deforestation. In 20 years, that would mean about 200 BMTs.

There are about 550 BMT of carbon in all plants above ground, and 1,500 BMT below ground (in soil carbon), so you need to add about 2% to the living global biosphere every year to offset the above. In 20 years that would mean you need to add 36% to the living biosphere to offset FF's and deforestation, or you'd need 1/3rd more biosphere in 2030 to do the offset. Its less if you can figure out a way to speed up the transfer of carbon form the living bits to the soil carbon pool.

The obvious problem is where do you find 1/3rd more land, nutrients, water, etc. to make this work? Neither easy nor clear…

Jim

Finding that 1/3 is what Fish Story will start doing, in Memphis, in just two weeks.

Dunlop is the former senior executive of Royal Dutch Shell, past Chair of the Australian Coal Association and Australian Greenhouse Office Experts group on Emissions Trading 1998-2000, current chair of the Australian National wildlife Collection Foundation and Deputy Convener of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil, advising on governance and sustainability.

Kanninen is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Project on Sustainable Global Governance at the Ralphe Bunche Institute for International Studies at the graduate Center of the City University of New York and past Chief of the Policy Planning Unit of the UN Department of Political Affairs (1998- 2005) and Head of the Secretariat of Kofi Annan's five Summits with regional Organizations. He recently authored the Crisis of Global Sustainability http://crisisofglobalsustainability.com/about-the-author/.

Fish Story live campaign of Rockethub!

Fish Story is now a tax deductible campaign on Rockethub and the first funding is coming in!!

This culminates years of thinking and planning on the Gulf to Gulf webcasts to get us to the point where we can invite the public into a process of doing something about climate change. Now, as the donations pile up to take the ideas into the next phase of concrete reality, it all feels magical and full of the air of promise.

Change can start now and will gather momentum in Memphis next month. Dear Readers, please tell your friends and colleagues about this project. You can make an immense difference. Speaking for my team, I am very, very humbly and profoundly grateful.

Training to prepare for performing Fish Story in Memphis

Most of my blog posts here have been about the ideas behind what Fish Story means to me. But I have many  categories of work to complete before I return to Memphis in May. Some I haven't written much about include, the fund raising, the marketing, the thinking, the networking. These are all time-consuming tasks. The "work" of the art work, however, will be a series of performance events, some private and some public. Training to perform that "work" will make the art happen and requires some daunting preparation to be "ready."

What I mean by ready, is ready to sing, row, draw and talk in four discreet events. Each event will be progressively more public. The first of those events will be rowing to the Mississippi via the tributaries while I document fish habitat. The second will combine performing a game with an audience, leading participatory mapping and singing as part of the workshop at Crosstown Arts.  The third will be several days of semi-publically creating an installation of drawings, photographs and other material at the Memphis College of Art. The fourth and final will be a live interactive live webcast with audience.

I take the singing part very seriously and it's often the most difficult part of my training because it requires the most disciplined focus. So no matter how tired or distracted I am, I begin my work day with 15 min of vocalization and then another 15-30 min of work on particular art songs that work the part of my voice I need to concentrate on, for example middle voice transitions this week. Most recently some new Gabriel Faure repertoire. I need to build that up with long sustained melodic passages.

Rowing the Wolf River to document fish habitat is the most intimidating to me. I'm out of shape and need to build my stamina and strength and requires the most willpower to be consistent in my work. I'm preparing for the canoe work by training at a local gym at least 3X per week. So, again, no matter how tired I am, I haul myself North to the Paris Gym above 96th St and lift weights for at least 30 min. Wednesday, I increased my reps and totaled 40 min.

The show goes on no matter how tired I am. This shot after a gym work out, training to row the Wolf River in Memphis

Developing my drawing ideas for the installation is the most fun to prepare for and takes the least effort. But requires me carve time out of my day when it seems like a million other tasks are demanding my attention. I have started by assembling the raw material- translucent Japanese papers, maps, images of fish & fish habitat. Since my tiny apartment in NYC is already cluttered with research to complete my PhD, it is no small feat to perform orderly work and store the results. Readiness for drawing on site means fixing in my mind where the factory farms are, what the habitat looks like, the demographics of the city, the topography .... Today, I started fitting some of the google earth images together and studying paper samples from NY Central Art.

Finally, there is preparing for the webcasts. In some ways, that is both the easiest of all and the hardest because so much can go "wrong" and be out of my control for me to worry about. Besides the tech and people's availability & interest to participate on line, there's whether I can be on top of data, somewhat funny, a little glamourous, responsive and ready to swing with the tides when there are glitches. There will surely be glitches. I prepare by trying to be a rested version of myself, which is sort of like saying I prepare by making my brown eyes blue. I prepare by reading voraciously- not just for my dissertation, tho that will be relevant when the time comes but all sorts of things that help me put conceptual flesh on an exoskeleton of my thinking about why I'm doing all this. I prepare by digesting sorrow and hope about environmental events from the news. I prepare by trying to be warm and friendly and patient with people no matter how stressed I feel so that my empathy and acceptance muscles are exercised.

My basic motivation for these efforts, is to make those four performances a living paradigm, ten-days of enacting responses to the environment in Memphis, in the world, in the age of climate change, in the anthropocene. The paradigm/ parallel is how we must collectively exert ourselves in ridiculously demanding ways to make things happen differently.

Collapsing time for fish ... and others

Today's post is a sketch for what I'm thinking about presenting PM 7: Monday evening at Gasser Grunert Gallery http://gassergrunert.net/test/. The event, "Trigger Points after the storm," is "contained" by another artist, Alyce Santoro http://www.alycesantoro.com/, who has an installation in the gallery and invited me to present as part of a series of talks and events intended to generate productive discussion. The invitation happened to have come in the midst of a series of other events claiming my attention.

When I was young and first lived full-time in NYC, it was the sixties. I went to the Art Students League and NYU during the day, Cooper Union night school in the evening, topped off the night at the jazz spot, Slug's or dancing at the Electric Circus, went to shows, worked with Joseph Pilates, performed with the Bread and Puppet Theatre, participated in demonstrations, joined E.A.T. and felt like being in that whirl at that time opened me to the whole universe, was good for my work and would lead me to "answers" to the burning questions of that time. And I suppose somewhat it was and did but it was also a very hectic way to live and I think there were invisible casualties.

Since 2007, James White and I have spoken about a different kind of whirl, what I call a collapse of time, the effects on the world of a confluence of climate change, species loss, over-human populations and so on. Biogeographical events are unfolding at a dizzying speed with both invisible and visible casualties. It's easy for most people, however, to ignore those collapses and casualties and simply stay focused on the known. Of course, for many, it is not possible to take that option. It is not possible for coastal communities, farmers in drought stricken or fire-prone areas, island nations, urban areas, such as Delhi, India, whose aquifer is dwindling... or fish.  Fish are particularly helpless to adapt to these rapidly changing conditions. They can't travel to safety where the water stops, when it stops. They are among the invisible and visible casualties of collapse. And that is why they are the focus of Fish Story.

My life still seems replete with multi-tasking on too many days, and that seems to be increasing, to my discomfort. Certainly, this week that is true. It doesn't seem as much fun as it was in the sixties. The stakes seem higher. I have less stamina to weather the shifts. I am getting a dose of time collapse. I wonder even for those of us privileged to live in prosperous areas, such as NYC, whether one unknown is how to cope with a world where many things are happening at the same time, all of which seem to be demanding our attention with equal urgency, a world where our time is collapsing with few obvious answers to the problems we glimpse in passing? Monday evening in the gallery, I intend to try to set up a situation which simulates some aspects of that time collapse simultaneity in rapid succession and see what insights might emerge from the discussion afterwards.


On FB last night I wrote:

Preparing for my Trigger Point event Monday, I've been thinking about how to define the "collapse of time," of the anthropocene, the phenomena of too many changes happening faster than any species can assimilate. I feel like I've been experiencing it all day. Today I did singing practice, wrote fundraising cover letters for Fish Story in Memphis, worked on GIS, my dissertation, an article, co-ordinated art pick up, organized my bills, did some filing, vacuumed, responded to a family issue, contacted or switched appointments with about 20 people and trimmed my eyebrows.