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.

Fish + Hope = the future

After a year of work, the Fish Story team, part of the Gulf to Gulf project, is launching a ground-breaking new website. It goes live today and is ground-breaking because it will become a platform to connect an educational forum, the webcasts that have been coming out of Gulf to Gulf since 2009, ecological art, hard restoration science and actual restoration projects. Check it out as an Earth Day present!

Our launch date is auspicious. The launch procedes the 44th Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22, 2014. The 44th Earth Day is bookended by two critically tragic anniversaries: the March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and the April 20, 2010 BP Macondo oil spill.  Both events have made it clear that significant progress towards protecting the earth from human opportunism must come from ordinary citizens, not institutions. The 44th Earth Day is going to be auspicious because it represents the persistence of hope. That persistence is a testament to the determination people have to protect the earth from untrammeled greed.

Another reason for auspiciousness is that last week, April 14, 2014, the IPCC press release announced it's new report on climate change. The IPCC report is auspicious because it is the loudest call for action we have heard so far. In a nutshell, the IPCC report says 2 simple things:

1. We must act radically NOW.
2. Rich countries must give poor countries money to rescue them from bearing the consequences of climate change caused by rich countries.

Personally, I would be pleasantly surprised if geopolitics will give way to intelligence on this crisis. There are too many governments too beholden to extractive fossil fuel industries and the short term profits of destroying water, habitat and species. However, I do believe ordinary citizens, especially those of us "enlightened" by education can effect dramatic change. This is a time for hope, not despair.

The 44th Earth Day is going to be a time to celebrate a realistic strategy to save the  planet from human behavior.

Almost one year ago, the Fish Story team was in Memphis, TN., as part of the Memphis Social city-wide exhibition curated by Tom McGlynn. Our mission for Fish Story was to draw attention to how fish habitat mirrors human environmental challenges. The inspiration to focus on Memphis came from Dr. Gene Turner, whom in response to my question about how to catalyze healing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, before the BP spill, had replied "Iowa," referring to the effluent from factory farms up river. Our premise was that Memphis is sited at a habitat and impact nexus critical to the Mississippi Water Basin. In 1982, it was estimated that water from the Basin serves at least 18 million people. Over thirty years later, presumably that number is higher. At the close of the Fish Story series of events, Dr. Jim White and I calculated what it might take to mitigate climate change (36 % re-greening of the earth).

The Fish Story plan is a bit more specific than planting a tree and much less abstract that a number. If you study any system of tributaries, rivers and watersheds, it is easy to see how systems link up and are interdependent with each other. Those systems can be conceived metaphorically, as all the elements that make a beautiful vocal sound from a human voice. Restoring habitat as a bioregional strategy for conserving habitat. It is about connecting dots between specific locations (trigger points) in a mapped system. Focusing on fish as the indicator taxa for that system ties our goals to specific externalized results.

The Mississippi Water Basin can be conceived of as a physiological system comparable to how the human voice produces beautiful sound.

Our new website, www.gulftogulf is just the new leg of a long journey but it will be a significant leg.

Hope 3 of 3 FIsh Story Afterlife!

Fish Story Afterlife! 

When the Gulf to Gulf team completed Fish Story Memphis last Spring, I knew we had to do more. The team had calculated that 36% re-greening the earth could mitigate global warming. How to do that? We decided to create a website that could link restoration work, education, the Gulf to Gulf work on line, ecological art and invite our friends to be part of that 36%! Please join us and consider giving feedback on this beta version of the site before it goes public:

dev.gulftogulf.org

Screen shot from the new website

Hope, 2 of 3

I am pleased to share a pre-Valentine's Day gift with you, a three minute excerpt from the time lapse film Earth Time, 118 days: March 15, 2011 to July 11, 2011 from the restored Ghost Nets (1990-2000) wetlands in the Gulf of Maine (https://vimeo.com/84840104). The full Earth Time film is seventeen minutes long, beginning seven days after the April 20, 2010 British Petroleum Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and ending December 3rd, 2013, representing three years, seven months and seven days of regeneration from the bioengineering portion of the Ghost Nets wetlands restoration project that was effected April 15, 1997.

I am also pleased to announce the following link to a recent ARTnews article (http://www.artnews.com/2014/02/06/art-and-feminism-wikipedia-editathon-creates-pages-for-women-artists/) that included a reference to my new Wikipedia page: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviva_Rahmani).

Hope, 1 of 3

I am pleased to announce the release of 4 new "Gulf to Gulf" webcast events. These are not intended as polished films but rather raw conversations about how we can deal with climate change.

"The Search for Anthropocene Solutions" (https://vimeo.com/84840975)

"Assessing Predictions from 2007" (https://vimeo.com/84718229)

"Leverage 36% Green from Memphis?" (https://vimeo.com/85037535)

"Women and Global Warming" (https://vimeo.com/85042661)

Gulf to Gulf "The Search for Anthropocene Solutions"

A "Gulf to Gulf" performance "The Search for Anthropocene Solutions" January 20th, 2014. Ecological artist Aviva Rahmani: ghostnets.com, with Dr. Eugene Turner,…

"I periodically find myself over-whelmed by how difficult the struggle is, how grief-stricken I am by collateral damage, as climate change takes human life around the globe. At those times, like today in a Noreaster, listening to deaths interspersed with accounts of dissolving starfish and slaughtered elephants in a world inured to loss, I take heart in knowing I am one of many in an army of determined Hope for the earth's future. I am therefore more than pleased when we can contribute sober considerations to that future.- Aviva Rahmani 2-13-14

The following is more information on each of these webcasts:

These conversations are deliberately raw, except for recording corrections. They are opportunities to reflect with the participants, on the implications of each research session. We are proud that since they were initiated in 2009, they have been accessed from over 75 countries. We consider them to be an on-going public think tank to come to terms with the impacts of climate change from Gulf to Gulf, across the planet. Additional information on each webcast and participants:  "The Search for Anthropocene Solutions" January 20th, 2014 with investigative reporter  Dahr, Jamail, artists Erika Blumenthal and Aviva Rahmani, Fisherman Addison Ames, and Dr. Eugene Turner, Distinguished Research Master and Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA:(http://www.oceanography.lsu.edu/index.php/people/faculty/eugene-turner/), Addison Ames a fisherman in the Gulf of Maine and joining from Qatar, ecological artist Erika Blumenfeld (erikablumenfeld.com), and her husband, investigative journalist Dahr Jamail, author of "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Will-Resist-Soldiers-Afghanistan/dp/1931859884/ref=pd_sim_b_1) and "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931859612/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20) (dahrjamail.net/). Participants talk about problems in the Gulf of Mexico due to the Macondo oil spill. "Assessing Predictions from 2007" January 8th, 2014 with Dr. Jim White, Professor of Geological Sciences, Fellow and Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: (instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/) and Addison Ames a fisherman in the Gulf of Maine. Aviva and Jim discuss their work together since 2007 and predictions they have made about the impacts of climate change. "Leverage 36% Green from Memphis?" November 12th, 2013 with Dr. James White, Professor of Geological Sciences and a Fellow and the Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: (instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/), Dr. Eugene Turner, Distinguished Research Master and Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA: (http://www.oceanography.lsu.edu/index.php/people/faculty/eugene-turner/) and Virginia McLean President of Friends for our Riverfront in Memphis TN: (friendsforourriverfront.org/). Participants discuss the places and ways in which re-greening the earth may be possible. "Women and Global Warming" October 2nd, 2013 with Dr. Jim White, Professor of Geological Sciences, Fellow and Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: (instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/) and Chris Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Georgia and Curator at eco*art*lab (ecoartlab.wordpress.com/). Participants discuss ways to talk about climate change and how, if possible, to reach the people who can actually make an impact regarding climate change.

Meditation on the Artists' Mark

I think I might keep revising this over a few days because the ideas aren't simple to me. "Tache," is the painterly term for the mark of the brush on a surface. The origins are modernist, dating from impressionism but it is also associated with abstract expressionist brushwork. For a long time, it was out of fashion to leave any trace of the artists' presence so there were no marks. Then we went into an era of deskilling, where the artists sloppy marks were everywhere to prove it wasn't a rote effort, something machine made and all gloss.

As an ecological artist, I am ambivalent about my mark on the outcome of my work. If the desired outcome is a restored or at least healthy ecosystem, does it need the human touch in any form? That can segue into long theoretical discussions about the nature of any restoration and the implications and extent of human presence but my concern in this post, is just to begin to clarify my own thoughts about the artists' mark.

The artist Lucy Meskill posted something on her FB page today in response to news that populations of Monarch butterflies are crashing due to lost habitat. Her post was a plea to buy and plant asclepius, commonly know as milkweed, the only food monarchs eat (rather than lawns). That is, to me an ideal tache on the landscape. It would be the mark of a healing effort, not to mention that the flowers are beautiful, as are the doomed butterflies.

But my mulling about marks goes a little further because recently, as I wrote on my own page, I have been feeling consumed by paint-envy, as I've been reading Martin Gayford's, "Man with a Blue Scarf," about posing for the painter Lucien Freud. On the ecodialog, I started writing about that longing as almost like wanting to have a baby used to be, when I was younger: I just want to be mixing & applying paint, like I once just wanted to bear a child. There was an avalanche of eloquent response from my colleagues. Everyone confessed their longings and fulfillments.

My own questions are about how could I make a painterly mark, a tache that is evoked by trigger point theory, that evokes a trigger point effect?

I supposed in one way, the desire to leave a mark couldn't be much different than a dog that has to pee on the lamp post. So to think out what I was thinking, I went to an art opening for Shirin Neshat's new work on the political tragedy in Egypt, "My house is burning," a reference to a poem by Mehdi Akhanan Slaes, whose first line is, "My house is on fire, soul burning." Over her large, monochromatic, powerful portraits, Neshat had superimposed fine Islamic calligraphy. This is a trope I'd seen before in her work. Sometimes it worked in this show to convey the pathos of the population and sometimes not. I haven't decided. What was her impulse in these marks and did it distract or add another layer of meaning? I'm not sure.

Shirin Neshat 2013

I thought she was more successful when the images were less explicit, the tasche more mysterious.

Shirin Neshat 2013

In my own work, when I paint, I am being reflective about my content, which is always some aspect of reality that eludes me or that I want to somehow contain and digest. I am also trying to capture some moment, some world view that might convey some deep emotion and share it, for example, as I am thinking about now, trigger point theory. For many years, I thought it was impossible for me to express myself in any more truthful form than those marks I could make on a surface.

"beautiful View," selection of small paintings each 10"x10" oil on linen 2010

Now suppose, everyone who could, bought a packet of asclepius and the result was a resurgence of monarchs, then whose tasche is it? Lucy's for making the suggestion? What is the goal of the tache besides a service to the universe? Is it still an artists' tache? Is the tache, the flight of the butterflies? In chaos theory, we reference the impact of the flap of a butterfly's wing to indicate the delicacy of sensitivity to initial conditions that can change the earth. Could all those Asclepius seeds change the future? If such an effort were successful, I would call it DIY restoration and would hope for much more.