Interviews

Lizzie Goodrich & Judith Redmond

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:17:13 +0000

Lizzie Goodrich & Judith Redmond Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/27/2021 - 14:17

Lizzie Goodrich: Okay, so I’m curious to know a little bit more about how Full Belly Farm got started, I guess, in terms of what inspired you and how the owners got together and everything.

Judith Redmond: Well, I think in terms of the theme of Environmental Futures–looking back at what it was like, you know–gosh, 35 years ago, in terms of the organic agriculture movement that context is really relevant because it's changed a lot. And I think a lot of the changes are positive – organic agriculture has had a positive impact, so that's good. In some ways, when you see where we are at this moment in time culturally and you know, sort of environmentally, you can feel pretty desolate about it. But it is good to know that thirty years ago when we started the farm, organic was considered very, very fringe and there were very active efforts by traditional agriculture and the research institutions, land grant universities like UC Davis, which is where I went to school and at UC Berkeley, also a land grant, to undermine organic agriculture and to call it a fraud. And that's just changed a lot. I mean there's now sort of an effort to, in some ways, do the opposite, which is to have things claimed as organic which really shouldn't be.

In other words, everyone is trying to jump on that bandwagon. So yeah, I mean I think when we started, we were very idealistic. And I often encourage, when I'm speaking to younger people, I often encourage them to try and keep a little bit of idealism in their plans for the future. Because it's, you know, I mean gosh, especially now, where I think the pandemic has been harder in some ways on people like, your age, or younger people, than it has been on people like me, because it's sort of hard to figure out what the future needs. But I do know that before the pandemic, there was a huge pressure on young people to sort of make plans, to be realistic, to make lists, and have goals. And you know, if you're going to start a farm there was a sentiment of “get an accountant, and get a lawyer, and you know have a business plan; know what your structure is.”

We had camps here of high school kids and so forth that I would get a chance to talk to. And I just loved seeing the high school kids ask questions that showed that they were thinking about all the ways that agriculture can be a positive influence on the world, and you know showed us that they really cared about that.

So that idealism, I think was something that guided the people that started Full Belly Farm. We weren't doing it for money; we weren't doing it for fame; we did it because we felt like it was the only way to farm and that farming organically could contribute to environmental health and to human health. And we really wanted to be in a place that we could live and be outside, and farm together, unrelated individuals with common values. That's where we were, yeah, when we got started.

Lizzie Goodrich: Coming off of that: so, you mentioned the importance of maintaining some of that idealism and everything, like that obviously there are practical sides (and I mean idealism can lead to you know practical moves and everything) but I’m curious what you sort of view, for you personally or for the farm as a whole, what do you view as some of your like most important projects?

Judith Redmond: Well, when I first thought about that question, I thought about some of the big projects that I've worked on here that have been important for the success of the farm. And so that would be one way to answer it. I mean, for example, I have worked a lot on our Community Supported Agriculture program which has certainly been really important to me and really important to a lot of our members. To people who, you know, feel like it's contributed to their health because it's changed their diet; it's made them better cooks; they spend more time with their family; you know, things like that. So, I think that would be one way of answering that question.

Another way to think about that question in terms of me personally, is just that the farm has a kind of unusual structure. I mean, we are a corporation, but right now we have seven adult owners, two of whom are people who grew up on the farm and then one other who is a spouse, who are sort of a second generation, and all have an equal voice in the business. And I think with that structure, it's just really important to have, well for us, the people that we are, to have some way of coming together, regularly to make good decisions and think about constantly improving how the farm is working, and how we work together. And you know, I think those are in some ways the challenging things in life–making good decisions with groups. And the fact that we’ve been able to hold on to our values through all these years, and changes, and challenges, I think the group decision-making has been really important in terms of the success of the farm. And I think that the fact that we make decisions together is kind of an unusual legacy that I hope, you know, continues. I hope that is lasting.

But then I can also answer in a third way. There's the Full Belly project way; there's kind of this contextual way of how we make the business work; but I think another way that is really relevant to the Environmental Futures seminar is that 20 years ago, when people started talking about climate change, they would never talk about agriculture–not a word about agriculture. It was, you know, about cars, and oil. It never had anything to do with agriculture and it was actually people connected to agriculture that worked on the legislation that created California's Cap-and-Trade program. I know the people who wrote that bill, ר 32, and the woman who wrote that bill worked at the Community Alliance with Family Farmers with me, before she went to the California legislature. So, she knew about agriculture and cared about agriculture.

And at that time, there was no–not even the foggiest idea–that agriculture was really a central player in terms of climate change. And the fact that now, people have realized that they really can't mitigate climate change without the participation of land-based industries like agriculture, and forestry, and ranching–that’s a huge change. And the reason that that happened, was because of, you know, farms like Full Belly Farm and nonprofit organizations like CAFF and CalCAN, that were at the table when ר 32 was written and passed. You know, Farm Bureau, every single other agricultural organization in the state of California, opposed that bill. And now they're sitting at the table trying to influence where the money goes, right. In other words, now, they're all talking about climate change.

I mean, I think it's really great that we have Farm Bureau and everyone talking about climate change and showing that they understand that agriculture is key. Agriculture is key, in terms of mitigating climate change. That's great. And that's just another thing, when you ask, what are my important projects, I would say that that's something that I've worked hard on. And so, it's also really relevant to your project and the theme of environmental futures–it's only grassroots organizations that have the big picture and aren't in it for themselves. They're in it for change. That's, you know, that's where it's at. I mean, no one may know how important it was that CAFF was at the table 15 years ago, when we're talking about climate change, and we don't really care that no one knows that. I think if you're studying environmental futures, it's really good to know that grassroots organizations matter.

Lizzie Goodrich: Right. Yeah, that's a great point. And I wanted to ask another thing: I think you said that you felt like it was an accomplishment that grassroots organizations made a difference. In addition to, you know, legislation being passed, do you mean also it becoming more known that these land-based industries and land-based projects are now being talked about in terms of the climate change conversation?

Judith Redmond: Yeah, talked about and involved. I mean, there are now programs at California Department of Food and Agriculture–there are now programs coming out of that agency that provide money to farmers to adopt practices that have been proven to sequester greenhouse gases. So, it's not just that we're talking about it; it's that California has a stronger program for agricultural involvement in mitigating climate change than pretty much anywhere else in the world.. California has given out millions and millions of dollars-worth of grants for improving the efficiency of water use, reducing greenhouse gases–three really major important programs that we're now trying to fund through a Bond Act, so that they’ll have money in the future. But it's, it's a lot more now than people just recognizing that agriculture matters to mitigating climate change. It's like okay, well, we better get busy because we're not gonna have a planet soon if we don't do something about all this.

Lizzie Goodrich: Yeah, that's certainly a huge project. And I think Full Belly has really been a touchstone, at least for a lot of people in the central and northern part of California. But in terms of dovetailing into our next question: I'm curious how off of that, right, in terms of thinking about the future, and thinking about how far we've come; you know, we have sort of the legislation side and everything like that. I'm curious how sustainability and expectations for the future have changed over the years. And in particular, maybe this hasn't affected or changed the farm's mission, but as somebody who's been talking about this since people weren't really talking about it as much–the climate and better practices for maintaining the land and everything like that–I'm curious what your perspective is, in terms of how that's changed, or affected the farm's mission. Or just for you as somebody who, who has been involved in this discussion for so long. Does that make sense?

Judith Redmond: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean I think it's changed. In part, the farm’s sense of our own ability to continue has changed a lot over the years. Because when we started farming, I think we felt like financially, we were on extremely tenuous ground. We felt every year we just weren't going to be able to pay ourselves; we weren't going to be able to invest in the farm; we weren't going to really be able to continue, just financially. It was a big struggle.

And even as that started to become less true and we started to make money, we never really felt confident about it. And we really established a practice of constant investment in the farm and investment in the infrastructure and a sense that we had to be constantly improving and doing better year after year. And I think we're still cautious. But I think, now we realize that the farm does have a sustainable model, in terms of finances. And the farm does make contributions as much as we can environmentally. So that's all a really big change.

I think now, there's a little more introspection about the sustainability for the farmers themselves, because it's–the second generation of farmers isn't really expecting to, you know, devote every single second of every single day and night to their jobs. [Judith laughs] I mean, they just don't have that mindset. So, it's not that they don't value the farm. It's just that they don't want to, you know, farm the way the founding farmers do. So those are all kind of conversations and expectations that, you know, we're going to just continue to navigate as we absorb this second generation of farmers.

I think the other answer to your question, though, is that, well, another way that the farm has changed, I think pretty significantly, is that we're more and more aware that there are educational and research activities that we do here that are valued, especially by the founding farmers. You know, the effort to talk to our CSA members about policy issues or about what it means to, you know–what sustainability or what organic should mean. All of those things. I think we're more and more committed to the farm as an institution that tries to put out those values publicly and, you know, examine them and analyze what they mean to us. And it's really great to have a practical side to that discussion because we're farming and farming successfully, at this point we can we have some credibility in that discussion.

Lizzie Goodrich: Yeah, that's awesome. Thinking about the next generation of farmers and everything like that, and thinking about wanting to have a future, and, you know, everything like that; I think, maybe that goes into my next couple of questions, which the first one is: if you could say, what are some of the main lessons from living in a sustainable rural setting that you might want to share with those in less rural communities? Or maybe those who are hoping themselves–you brought up at the beginning of our conversation that the situation with the pandemic has, as much as it's been a devastating time in many ways, it's also maybe opened up some younger people like myself, and people even younger than me’s minds that maybe you should just go for it and think about being a little bit more idealistic or making some more change and everything. So just, I guess, what are some lessons or some interesting points that you would want to share with people who are interested in learning more about sort of this sustainable, rural lifestyle that you have on the farm?

Judith Redmond: I don't know. I mean, I think that what characterizes it for us is really taking care of land–unless you, you know, are able to just hire lots of people to help you, taking care of land is really a lot of work. And so, it doesn't make sense to be too idealistic about it. Unless you have money! I mean, there's definitely people that live on pieces of land and just have money and hire people to take care of it for them. But that's not the situation that we're in. I mean, we obviously do hire a lot of people, and a lot of people help us a whole lot. But we're basically working here every single day. And I think, yeah, it's just I would never choose any other lifestyle, actually. But the part about the work that we do, you know, with farmers markets and with CSA is that it's just so helpful to describe to people who live in an urban setting where their food comes from. And that it sort of takes a lot of water, and work, and land to create food. And I think that's something that not everyone really understands. In California, as such an urban state, land and water are getting scarce. And I think agriculture is going to probably be the first to lose out.

Lizzie Goodrich: Right. And sort of thinking towards that: I know that Full Belly is really known for your soil practices. I don't know if you would want to maybe share a little about that? I think people might be curious to know something of what goes into developing things like that. I know that you've studied agriculture and everything like that, but that's something that I think of when I think of Full Belly–a lot of actual, you know, farming practices that you all do are something that people could potentially learn from. So, I don't know if you want to say a little something.

Judith Redmond: We use a lot of compost–we put a lot of compost onto our soil as sort of a standard operating procedure to put compost on every field before we plant and then even more if we can as a side dressing, but the other thing that we really believe in are cover crops. We grow, on each piece of our land at some point during the year, a cover crop and that, again, adds organic material but also can help in bringing up nutrients from deeper in the soil profile to places where crops can use them.

These practices add to the nutrition that's available in the topsoil for plants, that are, you know, crops that we’re growing to feed people. And so, those are sort of building blocks of our soil fertility program. And then the third cornerstone of that program is that we have a herd of sheep that move through the farm in small pastures; perhaps eating those cover crops–rather than using a tractor–we’ll have the sheep move through a pasture and eat down cover crops and turn them, essentially, into super food for the microbes in the soil. So, I think those are the three parts of our soil fertility program that essentially feed our soil and our plants. We’re building healthy soil.

And we're also part of an ongoing research effort to help organic farmers try and figure out how they can reduce their tillage. Organic farmers, because they're not using herbicides, they have to deal with weeds. And there's also tillage involved in planting seeds and preparing beds for planting and so forth. And so, there's a research effort that we're part of that aims to reduce tillage because people believe that it would be really beneficial for organic soil not to till it. And also, it's beneficial in terms of climate change, because when you till soil, you tend to see organic material breaking down because it's exposed to air and water. Yeah, so those are some of the some of the things that we're working on.

Lizzie Goodrich: Yeah, that's super cool. Also, I just wanted to make sure to get a little question in here as well, my school is University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, so some people might not yet be familiar with Full Belly. I guess I would ask, what are some of your favorite things that you grow on the farm or cultivate?

Judith Redmond: Yeah, well, we grow you know, a lot of crops. The farm is very, very diverse. We have not just vegetables; it’s fruit, and nuts, and herbs, and flowers. And then we have chickens that we’re producing eggs. And then also the sheep produce lambs, which are turned into meat. So it's a really diverse farm. And it's sort of hard–it's really hard to pick a favorite actually, but you know, I eat–I'd say 90% of my diet is probably from the farm. We have milk that we don't sell, but that we have for ourselves. There's flour, so there's a woman that bakes bread here. There's yogurt–you know, I mean, I go to the farmers market to do sales for Full Belly and so the farmers market and the farm are basically where my diet comes from. So, I can't say that there's something that I choose right now as a favorite as much as just, you know, my diet changes with the seasons. I kind of eat whatever the farm is producing.

Lizzie Goodrich: Yeah, I think that's probably one of the coolest things about you know, living on a farm setting and everything like that. I feel like, you know, Full Belly is very important project to learn from. You all have had a sustainable organic farm for a long time here, relative to when, as we were talking about earlier, that became a more mainstream idea that now people are promoting. What are some of your hopes for the future? And I guess what would you as a farmer hope to see in the future in terms of ecology, land stewardship, sustainability, topics like that? I know, that's a really broad question. So just I guess, whatever you'd like to add.

Judith Redmond: I think it's pretty obvious right now: there's a really serious environmental crisis that we're facing. And in some ways, I feel like people that live in the United States are consuming the entire planet's resources really fast with their cell phones, and just their consumption. So this is hard to change. But I think there's ways that we can change our lives individually. So that that environmental footprint isn't so large. But I also think that we need to go beyond that individual response and change policies at the government level. So, I always really advocate, people changing not just their actions, but also the policies and getting involved in political action. I think that's really important in terms of turning things around.

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Marcella Marsella & Megan De Brito

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:04:50 +0000

Marcella Marsella & Megan De Brito Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/23/2021 - 15:04

Marcella Marsella: Greensgrow Farms seems to have a wide-ranging mission with human connection and education at the forefront. How is that mission concerned with local ecology? And does it go beyond that local focus into the territory of “big picture” ecology?

Megan De Brito: Greensgrow is an urban farm in an urban environment. One of its superpowers is that it's connecting, it's a physical manifestation of new possibility, right? And so you're walking down the street, and there's all these dense buildings and then it's like, whoa, these greenhouses, and it's a whole city block. So, there's this place of novelty already– you walk into the site and you're ready to connect in a novel way. That's why the intersection between ecology, education, and connection can lift people up into a new perspective. On a macro-ecological scale, it's really easy to lose a sense of your own impact. But when you spend some time with soil, with a plant and with produce that came from the plant and from that soil, you cannot only see the relationship between yourself and your food, but also your relationship between the food and the land, and then even the relationship between the land and the micro critters, the insects and the soil ecology. There's this fractalization that happens. There are so many layers to the claiming and acceptance of sustainable lifestyle that are hard to unpack. This is an especially difficult issue in our urban environment. Greensgrow is looking to impact people locally, but those people move, and they take those ideas with them, right? We sell plants and produce to people and we educate people. They can come and be accepted here, to learn, to make food choices and environmental choices all in one place. And so I think that the impact of that can be: I eat differently, my brain works differently. I can see new things; I can think differently about the fractalization of my impact. If everybody's using their roof space, their sidewalk space, and their patios to plant native varieties of holly that feed a particular type of bird, for example, we're creating a swath of land that can now be a stop on that migration pattern for this type of bird. And what if the whole city actually offered more capacity to support these migrating species, and to support some of the pollinating species and some of the soil enriching species. And the more that we build that, we start to “re-culturize” the physical landscape in the urban environment.

MM: What I think I hear you saying is we start with everything that's right in front of us, in our hands, in our vision, and then through our own creativity, our own actions, coupled with other people's actions, it creates a ripple effect. From the local as in me, my body, my person to my block to my city, and beyond.

MDB: Exactly.

MM: I’m glad that you brought up the different kinds of events that you hold at Greensgrow. Do you feel that your events, whether they're educational, recreational, or simply just designed to gather people together, do you feel like that they're more impactful when they have an aspect of creativity tied to them? That could be an activity where people work with their hands, or prepare food together, or make music, or they just sit down and put their heads together to brainstorm ideas. Is creativity something you think about when you organize those events and workshops and classes?

MDB: Yeah, actually I've been trying to shift our funding model, even for some of the education programs like for the seed keeping program–I funded that as a residency. I made the argument that there's an intersection between craft, artfulness and science that happens in agriculture and that's actually the forefront of agriculture. We are the oldest operating urban farm in the country now, and I've been thinking about how to turn this into the urban farming museum. I’m asking myself how do I shift towards storytelling because I think that there's just so much space for investigating our environment and our food through creativity. We’re running a seed keeping program this year. We have ten fellows who will be growing out seeds from their diaspora and learning about that process. And then writing and talking about the food ways, and the personal exploration, and having a creative writing process alongside the ag process. That loops more people into the creative response and into who each of us is as a person. For example, if I'm from Haitian descent, and I'm watching someone grow out Haitian peppers, that's one relationship. Okay, I see that pepper, but how can I, the person, identify with it and be accepted with it? That’s through creativity.

MM: I’m glad you brought up storytelling because it's something that's been on my mind in my own artistic practice. I’m really grappling with how I can connect with people through my artwork. One way I’ve figured out is through storytelling. I wonder what role does the creative practice of storytelling play in your work at Greensgrow and in your personal life? Stories about origin, stories about identity or future horizons, stories about why we care, not just as individuals, but as communities and cultures.

MDB: Yes, I’ve identified so deeply as a storyteller ever since I was really young; it's so integral in my person. In my personal storytelling, I find that telling stories is a way of reframing and remapping. It allows for a playfulness of truth. It allows us to come up against, “what is true?” And when we connect that to our physical environment and our natural world, we can think about “what is the truth there?” There are some things that I think we tell through story that sound like magic that may be an unexplored place in the physical environment that is real, that is truly manifested in a concrete and scientific way that no one has taken a microscope to, and the reason we ever took a microscope to something is because someone told the story about it and it impacted us.

We tell stories about the things that land in our heart, and I'm finding this to be very relevant in the type of role that I have right now as director of Greensgrow. My interest in storytelling, but also my craft and ability and skill, is what supports other people to join, is what helps draw money. Storytelling is the basis of Greensgrow. Mary Seton Corboy (the founder) was a storyteller. That's how she funded Greensgrow. That's why people still revere her. I also revere her in those ways and think she's amazing. She knew about growing food enough to tell stories about it, which is the same for me. I do want to take this a little bit further into storytelling and the environment and just thinking about what you were talking about with your own artwork and your own storytelling in relationship to that work.

How do we get more people of different strata to tell a similar story for cultural change? Because actually changing the amount of waste we produce is deciding, for example, that we're only going to buy one pair of pants for the next six years and we're just going to invest in paying people better which means we're going to charge more for our products which means we're going to throw our products out less which means we're going to sell less products which means we slow our world down, right? All of that is the story. It's an environmental story really, but it is starting in industry. And it has to attach to someone's heart, and industry usually doesn’t. Maybe art is what opens the corridor to someone's heart and makes them feel something, and they can tell you the story about it. And then I can tell you the story about how that impacted me and my decisions and my change.

MM: So, once I figured out storytelling is a good path, it’s gone a little bit further where I am realizing the storytelling has to involve my personal story. One way that you can really connect with people through your work is to just make it as personal as you can. I'm a big believer in “the personal is political” and also “all art is propaganda.” I put those two things together. But there’s this voice in my head which keeps telling me that the story I'm telling is not my story. This story of what's happening to the ocean, for example, it's not my story. But it actually is my story because it's the ocean on my planet, you know? The air I'm breathing right now is there because of the ocean, right? So that is my story. Also, my relationship to the ocean started when I was very young, when I learned how to scuba dive and I really started forming a relationship with this massive living thing and all the living things in it and making these very vivid memories of diving when I was a kid. Also, my story is one of violence because there's been a lot of violence in my life. So, my personal story of violence and trauma intersects with the ocean’s story of violence and trauma. Reminding myself that those things are not separate helps me tell these stories together, which I think is very powerful.

MDB: It is. I think we see that in social media all the time. I saw the difference in Greensgrow’s social media when I started putting myself on there more. There’s faster change that happens around people feeling involved and connected. You’re right, there is something really interesting about being able to claim our stories, and I wonder where that really comes from, saying, “this isn't my story.” It's been really hard for me to come to a place of being able to tell my story at Greensgrow. I thought that there's probably people who are going to judge me and maybe that's where it comes from. But the reality is that people connect more than the people who judge or the people who are putting up a barrier. Most people are actually finding a connective forest in hearing someone else share and hearing a certain vulnerability that you're already putting out there when you make art or when you take on a crazy project or when you devote yourself to anything. Encapsulating it in a story gives it a place. When you connect art to your story, then I can jump into Marcella's heart and know her as a young child and see her through the lens of her own eyes. And that makes me absorb the artwork in a different way. Then we feel connected to you. And now I'm looking at your art and understanding who you were, you know, all of this triangulation which is all just relational in the end, which goes back to the original thing I was saying about the fractalization of relationships in both directions. Stories are the current of that fractalization.

MM: I love that. I want to make sure I get a chance to ask you this next question before we move away from narratives. The story that's being told and has been told for a long time about the environment on our planet, the story of the way things are going and that they're not going well–that’s a narrative I struggle with a lot. I recently read the introduction to this book Imagining Extinction by Ursula Heise. She writes,

“Whatever the concrete ecological crises at hand, modern environmentalists, like their nineteenth-century forebears have tended to rely on a similar story template: the idea that modern society has degraded a natural world that used to be beautiful, harmonious, and self-sustaining and that might disappear completely if modern humans do not change their way of life. In postcolonial societies, this story often contrasts an indigenous, ecologically grounded past with the degradation of nature European imperialism has brought about. Environmentalism inside and outside of recognizable social movements and organizations has relied on such ‘declensionist’ narratives, as historians and literary critics call them. In these stories, the awareness of nature's beauty and value is intimately linked to a foreboding sense of its looming destruction. Environmentalist writers and thinkers have skillfully mobilized literary and aesthetic concepts and genres such as the sublime, the picturesque, pastoral, apocalyptic narrative, and what one critic has called ‘toxic discourse’ about polluted landscapes and deformed bodies so as to convey a sense of a precious, beautiful, and fragile natural world at risk.”

It often feels like there's no room for any other stories because we just have this one big story that's been handed down to us. And there isn't another one being told. And so the thing that I'm struggling with is what is an alternative narrative that I can turn to that doesn't participate in the doom and gloom of this “toxic discourse"? Do you ever think about alternatives to what I'm describing, either in your personal life or in your work at Greensgrow?

MDB: I completely agree with the author's perspective. And think about this often, that there's sort of a purist approach to nature outside of humans. The story that nature would just be so pure, but we destroyed it. Even the way that we want to engage nature is through this very purist approach. It's like “this nature over here is clean and perfect. That over there is not clean and perfect,” right? And the truth is that everything hangs in a balance. And I think the story that is potentially healing, in my mind and for me and for my soul, is that the extremes set us off. It’s really about being able to find the acceptance of multiplicities, like whole systems of interactions of community instead of individualism. That brings us back into a scope of balance. And that scope of balance is actually environment. There's a whole segment of ecology, human ecology, which is all about how we, as humans, balance ourselves and balance our interaction. And if we were just to leave nature to itself it would go out of balance.

If the world was giving us more opportunity to make multiple choices of community and for us to see more connective opportunity, and for us to not just see the message of “every time I do this, I destroy everything,” I think the balancer is being able to continually have a reciprocated relationship with choice. It’s all about the slower, smaller scale reciprocation in the storytelling and the choice making that goes back and forth. The biggest problem with capitalism and globalization in our markets is that we can make a choice and it has no impact on us personally; we never see it. There's no reciprocation. And so I think that change in story is about balance, reciprocation and choice.

MM: Something I think about often, which others bring up in conversations with me is, what role do you think artists or creatives play in having a positive impact specifically on the climate crisis? And is it the creative community's responsibility to save the planet? Do we have some kind of obligation or responsibility to step up?

MDB: This is a good question. One of the professional roles I played in my life was working as a designer for public interest movements. That's using art to connect with people to try to change policy. Artists are held as people who are willing to put themselves out there to change culture, and so our culture changes. And I think that's true. But I also don't think that the onus can be or has to be or should be on the art artists to make any change really, because the true beauty of art is to not know or try for the end result, right? The exploration of the conception and then the manifestation of that produces new understanding and new perception. As soon as you try to link “you make this and it changes that” it can get really wonky. Design is really much more couched in the end goal result-based production of art. And yet when you try to force it too deeply into a hole, you miss the explorative manifestation which actually connects deeper to the heart and produces new ideas. I would always have to put blinders on and shut down to make the most compelling things that would go into campaigns because if I was trying to hit the target it's almost impossible. I think that message put out there to artists is actually a degradation.

MM: I totally agree. I can relate in my own artistic practice, when art is presented to me as problem solving, it feels so stifling. Where do I go from there? I'm not a problem solver. As you said, I'm an explorer, right? But I know because I've done it time and again that if I just trust in my own creativity and femininity and artistic process, I will reach a target. I don't know what target it is, but it's out there. And hopefully at least one person will be touched by it.

My last question comes up frequently in conversation, in interviews and essays and talks: “what can I do as one person to create positive change?” I'm wondering, do you ever get this question in your work at Greensgrow? If so, what do you say?

MDB: Yes, I do get that question. I often say, “donate to Greensgrow”. I think that this goes right back to the beginning of our conversation. I can do things in my small environment that help to create impact on a larger scale. And I can also accept myself in the sense that I can't change it all, and I'm not going to change it all. I think that we get so upset about what’s happening to out planet that sometimes the question “what can I do?” comes from guilt and not from action or alignment. People must decide to be more aligned in themselves to go inside and slow down. Some of it is just being really connected to your day-to-day in your world and your life and not obsessing about buying the environmentally sustainable blahdy blah spray, because that is not going to solve it. You deciding to go at your own pace, seeing other people and accepting them holistically and what they're doing, even when it's not aligned with you. And knowing where you're aligned. Those are the things that actually impact our environment. When we put ourselves in bubbles and we're focused on sustainable consumer choices, we’re not actually getting to a more sustainable place in itself.

MM: So in the future when people ask me that question I'm going to tell them “step one, go to therapy”. [laughs]

MDB: [Laughs] It’s true! I think that is the biggest truth. It's like, where is trauma starting? In our interpersonal relationships, and then we do it in the land, and then we do it in everything.

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Eileen Roscina & Regan Rosburg

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:50:21 +0000

Eileen Roscina & Regan Rosburg Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/23/2021 - 14:50

Eileen Roscina: You completed an Arctic Circle Residency expedition aboard the Tallship Antigua, what did that experience reveal to you about sustainable climate futures and about your art practice?

Regan Rosburg: What was weird about that experience was being in a place that most people don't get a chance to go to. It is a place that most people don't see for themselves. Prior to my trip I heard this abstraction about how it's heating up faster than any other place in the world, and how the glaciers are melting and that there is plastic traveling all the way up to the north in the water. But being there and seeing the real-time melt was eye opening because you have all this information in your head about the context of what's happening. You're aware that it's this geopolitical center of the world where people want to get a handle on the resources that are there and the shipping lanes that are opening up. When you see an actual glacier calve, when I first did we — myself and a few other people were in a little zodiac moving towards this glacier — I had tears running down my face. I had a visceral, physical response just to the sublime aspect of it, this unbelievable thing that represents this huge amount of time because it's not just a glacier — it's compressed snowflakes from thousands of years ago that have marched from miles and miles to the edge and then collapse. It was really a shift in perspective for me from reading about the changes that are happening up there to actually seeing it and to know that the decisions being made at the equator, in the United States, or in any different country, affect the whole globe and are melting things in the Arctic. One of the things that was really effective for us on the ship was this map on the wall that would show the retreat of the glacier from the past hundred years and we would reference it when we went into different inlets or fjords where the glaciers used to come together. How that affects climate futures is that it puts it in the perspective of immediacy. It's sad, the contrast of something taking so long to form, to have this very slow natural progression and the glaciers calving so quickly. They are supposed to calve, but I knew that even my choice to fly there was also contributing to the collapses. It kind of turned everything upside down because you want to help, and you want to see, and you want to bring that information back as an artist, but at the same time you're part of this whole machine that's causing the problem. I have that information in my head of what I was witnessing, while I was there, like the migrations underneath the ice that are happening and the Arctic terns’ species migration that was happening at the time. I'm still reflecting on what I saw there.

ER: In what ways can art contribute to the framing, reframing and understanding of the threats of climate change?

RR: I think one of the most important aspects of the reframing is combining science, with emotion and empathy. The science aspect of it is an abstract notion. We hear these numbers and we hear about temperatures, through photographs or videos like James Balog’s documentation of melting ice. I examined the ice retreat through a work I did, where I bought plastic back from the glaciers, which is part of not just consumption but an examination of the way in which the glaciers are melting with the heavier plastics freezing into the ice on the bottom with heavier plastics. The emotional aspect of it is important. Part of what I try to convey in my work is the aspect of biophilia and this idea that we are all connected, because I feel that the pompous arrogance ideology that keeps us consuming and causing climate change is this idea of separation from nature and the environment, which is simply not true. Part of what art does is it recontextualizes this idea that the choices we make, and the things that we do, and the human organism that we are is absolutely not separate from the planet. And also, we are not separate from what's causing climate change.

ER: What does science help you achieve in your art practice?

RR: Art and science work really well together to draw on each other. Science draws on art for the emotional reframing and recontextualizing of these abstract ideas and then art can rely on these abstract ideas to provide substance and a strong foundation from which to pull to convey emotion. Those two things work very well in tandem together. I think that when people have these abstract numbers and statistics — there's so many and they're so fast changing — that when you have an emotional interruption from an art piece, it can slow a person down and put them right in the moment to have to deal with the reality in a different way.

ER: What does a sustainable future mean to you?

RR: Sustainability needs to be immediate. Things need to be implemented very quickly and that requires a mindset shift of seeing ourselves as connected to the environment, which is where art has a role. Localization. We naturally rely on things to come from far away, but I feel like the pandemic disruption put more of a focus on how things need to be, with more balanced local resources. It puts the power back into the local communities and keeps money circulating within those communities. That in and of itself is more sustainable financially, socially, and socio-economically. There needs to be better ideas for packaging. This ubiquitous plastic packaging and the amount of packaging we have are completely unsustainable. I found yogurt containers in the Arctic from who knows how long ago but that's true anywhere. A move to green energy and green energy storage — giving people incentives to switch towards those options, less meat consumption, crop rotation. All of this fits into sustainable agriculture, which is a huge producer of greenhouse gases. A national recycling plan, which I'm surprised at this point in 2021 we don't have a national cycling plan. Recycling at this point is so confusing for most people and so many companies have lost funding that they just don't do it. Ever since the green fence went up and the national sword policy dropped in China our recycling structure completely fell apart. A lot of it's going straight into the landfill or being burned. I think the most important thing for sustainability is a reframing and this question, we need to ask ourselves, which is: why do we need to keep growing our economies? The idea of “enough” needs to be addressed more. How much more stress can we put on people and the environment to keep growing instead of doing what nature does, which is to have enough and recycle their gifts of their life back into the system. I think sustainability actually starts with the idea of what is enough rather than the idea of growth. With our capitalistic model it's hard for many to understand why we would do that but there again is the ego involved. Our separation from nature and this pompous arrogance of humans being better than nature, that it must bend to our will, is asinine. The thing about Covid is that it forced us to realize that some of the systems that we have in place don't need to be that way. We don't have to travel for business meetings all the time. We can work from home, we can have a better work life balance, if the system supports us to do so. And people, given that balance, are happier and more productive anyway because they're able to do things more on their own terms. Sustainability is also about mental health.

ER: Can you speak to the concepts of environmental melancholia, collective social mania and biophilia in your research, and how these manifest in your art practice?

RR: When one is investigating nature or studying nature or climate change this sadness inherently sets in because it's not just about the beauty and the evolution — it's about the fact that everything is in a drained state and collapsing. My work in part investigates loss head on and faces the idea that when we don't mourn something that we're losing we enter a state of unresolved sadness when we're not processing the loss, which is very unhealthy. My practice also talks about how when that isn't addressed eventually that mental strain and uncomfortability becomes so much that we turn to something else to distract ourselves: cigarettes, drinking, sex, overworking, technology, Instagram all giving us a quick fix. All of that is really part of this bigger idea of consumption— that we have to have something to fill that void. I see it as a spiritual void because I see our connection to the planet as a spiritual connection. The consumption inherently drives the collapse that we are witnessing and not mourning so there's this circular aspect to it. The way that I see us breaking that cycle is the biophilic connection. What is enough to take? What is enough to keep and what can we give back? This reciprocal relationship with the environment and the larger systems on the planet is a reverent one. In my work, I look at it from all different perspectives. I can only look so long at the melancholia and the collective social mania because it's kind of always running in the background. Lately I've been really trying to shift my focus to the healing aspects of it, like the beauty, the evolutionary processes, the science. I’m looking at things that connect people to the spiritual aspect, and what follows is the call to action to help and do the right thing.

ER: How have you been connecting with nature lately?

RR: Sad to say, but I really haven't been as much as I have wanted to, as much as I used to in the past. So my connection in nature has kind of been in my studio. I'm still going for walks and I'm very excited for the gardening season. So there's that and then I go home to visit my mom and my childhood forest, where I grew up. I've also been producing the smell of rain in my studio, so I’ve been tinkering with the different smells to create this memory that we all share. Did you know the smell of rain is 450 million years old? It comes from a little bacteria called Streptomyces — the same bacteria that's responsible for antibiotics all over the world, but it also produces Geosmin, which is the chemical signature of rain to attract these little tiny arthropods. Amazing.

ER: Where are you finding hope?

RR: I'm finding hope in the youth and it seems to me in the past few years we're hitting a tipping point where people are unable to deny these super storms, the droughts, the freezes. Every month in some part of the world a place is being hit by some manifestation of climate change and the youth is leading the charge. I think the adults are being supportive in science and thank God Biden is in office. I'm finding hope in other countries like I'm an art advisor to the Center for Local Prosperity in Nova Scotia. They're developing and small but they're analyzing and working with the community and trying to figure out a map forward that's focused on localized governments making changes. They are this great role model — there's all of these little tiny pockets around the globe that are trying to find solutions and share information. I feel like the tide is shifting. Even Amazon, DHL and UPS are investing in electric vehicles for local deliveries. There's a shift in technology, where companies are looking more towards bio design for answers.

ER: What is next for you and your art?

RR: My next project is recreating rain smell. So I'm trying to figure out what proportions to mix, so it doesn't overpower the Geosmin. We can pick up on one molecule per trillion (one part per trillion) with this smell. Then I'm going to vaporize it into a gallery room. Alongside an older resin work, Omega, I’m working with moss. I tried to grow my own moss but it's really hard in this ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ climate. It just takes too much moisture and it would take too much energy and too much water so I'm working with preserved moss instead. I'm going to find ways to attach it to different parts of the sculpture and then I'm going to source a bunch of orchids and have them growing all over the sculpture with my film playing on one of the gallery walls. On the other side I'm going to have my letter project, where people can take in the installation and then write down their feelings about where they're at with the environment in a written format. My original sculpture Omega was so apocalyptic and dark but I needed to make it. Now I look at things differently. I don't know how to say this, but I hope we (humans) make it. We're in the anthropocene which means it's a new era, and with every new era, some species are eliminated. Orchids are leftover from the dinosaurs, they survived so any species of orchid that you see, is one descendant of the survivors of 65 million years ago. In a way, I’m posing the question of: Are we going to make it? I don't have that team fighting spirit in me. It's more of a curiosity. I see the enormity of the problem, and I see solutions, and I see idiots and I'm like… okay. I don't want to sound like I'm coming from, not a place of hope, but I don't think it's good to be ideological because I feel like that kind of denies reality. But I don't think it's helpful to be stuck in this mental space of feeling like we're completely doomed. That keeps people from taking any action, so I guess, where I try to position myself now is having a sense of curiosity. Ultimately species like Streptomyces are going to make it. They're very smart, very humble and resourceful so are we going to learn from this kind of thing or are we going to continue to be this arrogant pompous species that thinks that we're better than this moss, you know. If Streptomyces can make it 450 million years on a planet that's 4.7 billion years old — life has been around for 3.8 billion years — so a quarter of the time that life's been around this bacteria has been around. This should be our teacher.

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Teri Rueb & Kimberley Bianca

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:25:49 +0000

Teri Rueb & Kimberley Bianca Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/23/2021 - 14:25

Of Land and Dreams (2017) is a collaborative mapping project engaging land and community-based artistic practices, with a focus on the land, water, and people of the Dakotas - Teri Rueb and Alan Price with the Of Land and Dreams collective.

Cropped still from 24' x 10' projection in gallery ((http://terirueb.net/of-land-and-dreams-2017)

The text below is based on a phone conversation I had with Teri Rueb on March 1, 2021. I sought to capture in a narrative form how Rueb’s work on Of Land and Dreams flows into a dialog, akin to talking informally with the artist in-person.

Teri Rueb is a professor at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder in the Department of Critical Media Practices and a distinguished media artist. Her current work-in-progress is a sonification of the Scaled Solar System commissioned by the Fiske Planetarium at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. Rueb describes the piece as one in which people will move across campus, listening to a mobile device that generates sound in response to their movement and location. The sounds are derived from the data of orbital positions, as well as the relative size and distance of each planet from the Sun. This project is a new direction in Rueb’s work, and she exudes excitement in expanding her work from the land to the celeste.

In contrast to Rueb’s involvement in the Department of Critical Media Practices, her artistic projects have usually been outside of the institution, and she tells me she has a vested interest in this. For example, another current project is a collaboration with electrical engineer David Anderson. The project centers around acoustics and loudspeaker technology, or what can be thought of as a form of “acoustic holography.” Together, they create a landscape of sounds through puretones that reveals the uneven distribution of sounds in acoustic phenomena, as well as our human cognition and perception. Rueb describes this as an intimate encounter with the listening body and its tiny movements.

With Rueb’s repertoire in land art and locative media (sometimes referred to as GPS art), she tells me she is often commissioned for specific projects, and this was the case for Of Land and Dreams. In 2016, she was called out-of-the-blue by the gallery director at Northern State University (NSU) in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and invited to develop a site-specific, community-based art project supported by “the new works fund.” Based on our shared interest in working outside of the institutional context, I asked what kind of influence the university had on this work. She explains how the fund precisely seeks to bring NSU beyond the academic bounds, bridging the university and local community. She partnered with Alan Price, a media artist and Associate Professor who is now Director of the Center for Immersive Media at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Their intent was to approach the context of Aberdeen and the Dakota’s more broadly with a “critical mapping” project.

”The Dakotas have become the focus of contemporary debate about land, water and natural resources. Can this conversation move from the head to the heart?”

Rueb tells me that on commencing their work in Aberdeen, the local Native American community was prioritizing “cultural revitalization efforts,” but that also at this time in 2017, the protest at Standing Rock was starting to get media attention. Standing Rock was a movement and series of protests concerning The Dakota Access Pipeline affecting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe/ Lakota. Rueb mentions she spent some time at Standing Rock and describes this period as the catalyst for the final work. Early in the project she had learned about the the Lakota story of a “Black Snake” which symbolizes the prophecy of a threat to the land and people and how this compounds with the pipeline.

Cropped still from 24' x 10' projection in gallery

Since networked and participatory projects take a lot of time to form trusting relationships, I became interested in how Rueb mediated collaboration and participation in this project as it also relates to my research. She responds that she has worked with Native Americans in Western New York, Navajo artists in northern New Mexico and with students at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, and discusses how forming relationships is very slow, yet should always be an organic building of trust. While Rueb notes Of Land and Dreams was not specifically focused on working with Native Americans, there was a complex of cultural concerns in Aberdeen that intersected around native and indigenous communities, early Settlers, as well as more recent immigrants. With Aberdeen’s economic revitalization efforts, there has been significant contemporary immigration to the town. As the workforce changes, so has the cultural landscape of Aberdeen. Rueb says she began to see the tension between local people and their relationship to land, and the immigrant community who came for job prospects and low cost of living. Mediation means respecting that locals and immigrants have their own and collective relations and bonding to place, and through building trust, she explains this could become a conversation through a media art collaboration. Furthermore, Rueb brings attention to the moments of tension with indigneous and Settler communities, revealing the historical relationship of the pioneer Settler, the more recent oil industry and Standing Rock.

Cropped still from 24' x 10' projection in gallery

Although a networked community art project, Rueb and the team were committed to face-to-face interaction. The local coffee shop, Red Rooster, functioned as an informal community center and a window on local concerns and different perspectives on land. Regarding my own research, I find this pivotal to engagement, because despite works being funded by institutions with facilities provided, communities gravitate to their own safe spaces and any artist in a community-engaged role should consider this in planning. Beyond face-to-face conversation, Rueb notes that over time, it became clear that it was difficult to get people engaged in the making and production. People preferred social media and networks mediated by social media, and opening this format prompted people to contribute media and stories more readily. We discuss how Rueb is not a social media user herself, but I am and I find myself trying to direct people away from the leading social media platforms. Yet I realize my ideals are not in-line with what the communities I work with are comfortable and familiar with. So we agree the unfolding of the works and participant voices are what needs to drive the modes of communications and tools we use.

Opening, Image by Alan Price

While documentation of the work can be viewed online, Rueb recaps that once you walk into the gallery, there is a large tiled projection that is body and motion responsive. As you brush your body across the surface, images would follow you and be revealed and concealed in response to your movement. Participants could contribute media through a mobile app or laptop in the gallery. I grew curious as to why the presentation of this work was fixed to the gallery, and not distributed like the media contributions were. She responds that while participants could view the work via the mobile app, or on the social media site of the project, having the work situated in the gallery was also important as a means of engaging in-person social dimensions.

Regarding data collection, Rueb recorded conversations and interviews and did critical mapping. She notes there was an equal level of engagement in the process of media collection and the unfolding creation of the work. In the unfolding of the work, people shared reflections of contemporary interactions and transitions in their lives and of place. Additionally, Rueb emphasizes that in the interviews, there were moments of friction revealed through the Trump election and local tensions associated with immigration, and she listened to many stories of how people and communities became increasingly divided—making the process of opening large group conversations especially challenging and emotionally demanding.

I have noticed that it is difficult to keep community arts’ projects, specifically with platforms, operational beyond their funded timelines. We hope that these projects can have a lasting impact on communities, but that’s really out of our control. Instead, we might modify our expectations around our own lives as arts’ practitioners. On this note, Rueb closes by saying that she finds herself wanting to revisit this material to rethink her own place and reflect on these experiences— what happens five years out after these dialogues and beyond?

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Anna Kaye & Emilie Luckett

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 16:40:13 +0000

Anna Kaye & Emilie Luckett Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/10/2021 - 09:40

Luckett: I would love to start with you telling me a bit about yourself and your practice.

Kaye: I’m a local artist represented by Sandra Phillips Gallery in Denver. I organize and curate large-scale exhibitions that inspire connectivity and social action. I also teach Drop-In Drawing, a free program offered at the Denver Art Museum on every second Tuesday of the month from 1-3 PM. Right now it's a virtual program, but we do a lot of fun things, and I prepare demos that introduce participants to a variety of techniques and methods. It’s important for me to share the amazing things that the local communities create, so I try as much as I can to invite artists to participate too, in the drop-in session. And it's open to all mediums

As well as this, I’ve been working with ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ in western landscape for over a decade. I grew up near Detroit, Michigan where vast urban decay was rampant from de-industrialization, crime, and other factors. This enhanced my sense of empathy, compassion, love for diversity and justice, and reverence for the natural world.

Anna Kaye, Mourning Dove, 25.5 x 37.75 inches, watercolor on paper. Image provided by Anna Kaye.

L: I personally research community engagement, collaborative arts, things like that. So I'm really drawn to the social engagement that you're talking about and community building. Could you expand a little bit more on the focus of community in your practice?

K: I think it's really important. It's one thing to work in your studio. I also think when you're making art, it's collaboration with the contemporary times, what's happening in the art scene, and in a historical context. As artists we are always in collaboration with something and in my practice, especially in the beginning, it started out more as a collaboration with science and it continues to be a collaboration with science. So I'm using my work as a tool to explore the quality of nature. I also find it extremely rewarding to create true collaborations with artists in my practice. So I’m starting to make artwork with other artists and then also working with communities to create art exhibitions.

In 2018, I organized an exhibition that was inspired by the women's march. And pink was such a controversial color that came out of the march. It was like seas of pink formed by all of the thousands of marchers. And this protest was significant because it was also worldwide. I wanted to see that momentum continue in our community. So I organized an exhibition that invited artists to use the color pink or reject the color pink as a way to keep the momentum up, but also to promote social issues and promote people whose voices weren't being heard but needed to be heard. And we see during the pandemic that that's even more necessary.

Now I'm organizing an exhibition with a friend of mine, [Kalliopi Monoyios]. It was her idea. She's a scientific illustrator writer and artist, and we both have a degree in geology. We both love rocks. So she came to me with an idea that came out of the pandemic and the isolation: why don't we create an exhibition where people are discovering artworks in their neighborhoods, kind of like a display, something to lift spirits during these challenging times and to create a moment of connection and inspiration in nature.

Pink Progression Exhibition View, Center for Visual Art, 2018. Image provided by Anna Kaye.

L: In your biography, you state that you got your B.S. in Fine Art and Geology. Could you explain a bit what this program was like and what pushed you to explore both the arts and sciences?

K: Ever since I was a little girl, I loved rocks. I would spend my allowance money on adding to my rock collections. So, when I went to Skidmore College in New York I naturally fell in love with the incredible landscape, from the rock cuts revealing amazing layers of rock along the roads to hiking in the Adirondack Mountains to finding Herkimer diamonds (which are double terminated clear quartz crystals) in the North Woods behind campus. I have always been drawn to art as well, over the years it has given me so much inspiration, purpose, healing, and wisdom. In College I was able to nurture these interests equally since I double majored in Geology and Fine Art. These departments at Skidmore College were also equally supportive providing me with exciting opportunities, field trips exploring rocks around the region as well as an opportunity to study at Yale university in printmaking, painting, drawing, and photography.

L: Your practice has a focus on the destruction of fire as well as the rebirth of life after disaster strikes. What drew you to this subject matter?

K: In answering this question, I’m going to take us back to the early 1950’s when Detroit’s auto industry moved out of the city and caused adverse economic ripple effects. At one point abandoned lots made up more than half of total residential lots in large portions of the city.To me, the city looked like a tornado went through it. And on Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, people would set buildings and dumpsters on fire. I experienced this in the 80’s and 90’s. The worst year was 1984, when firefighters responded to more than 800 blazes that covered the entire city in an eerie, smoky haze on Halloween morning. I’m happy to say that things have changed since then, and they are experiencing a revitalization and economic resurgence. These blazes made an impression on me. I also lived by a zoo. We could hear the peacocks and seals from my house. I would often take a walk along the zoo and my neighborhood’s fence and see a deer in its cage rubbing its antler against an empty dish. I made a pledge back then to help nature.

Anna Kaye, Heatwave, 52.5 x 49 inches, charcoal on paper. Image provided by Anna Kaye.

I was also influenced by a few travels, one with my father after I graduated from high school to Mt. St Helens. In 1980, the year I was born, a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows began at Mount St. Helens in Washington.It has often been considered the most disastrous volcanic eruption in U.S. history. When I went to Mt. St. Helen's I experienced the eerie gray landscape while witnessing a herd of deer and fireweed— a beautiful pink wildflower. It’s called fireweed because it is often first to grow in areas burned by fire. It was one of the first plants to appear after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. You can make tea from the leaves and it makes delicious honey, jelly, and syrup. Fireweed shoots are high in vitamins A and C, making for a tasty spring vegetable.

I also spent a summer working in Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon and witnessed a controlled burning of a sequoia tree. They produce small green cones near the crown of the trees. Without fire our insects the seeds remain trapped in the cones. Green cones can live with viable seeds up to 20 years. Fire dries out the seeds allowing them to crack open on the forest floor.

L: Could you describe what your process for creating a new work looks like?

K: I usually have a whole list of ideas already piled up in my mind since it takes so long to create one piece. The idea that I’m most excited about then generates a composition in my mind. I go out into the field, frequently the Hayman fire zone, and take a lot of photographs and use them to assemble a sketch of my composition. I’ll decide on a medium—watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, charcoal, and/or video—and dimensions that best represent my subjects. Then I’ll work on that piece for varying lengths of time. I generally work top to bottom, left to right to prevent smudging my charcoal and graphite. I freehand my subjects onto the paper and as soon as my line drawing is complete, I will dive in with all of the values or colors that I see, finishing the artwork as I go. This process allows me to see how each line informs the next like an intricate web.

L: I’m interested in the materiality of your work. From graphite drawings, watercolor, projections, etc., you use a wide range of materials to create. How do you decide what materials to work with, and what is their relationship to your practice?

K: Certain compositions work better with certain tools. If I decide on a colored design, then I will use colored pencil or watercolor and if the composition is achromatic, then I work with charcoal or graphite. I generate separate ideas to create projection work. I need to make sure that I select a subject that can be activated/animated with the movement of the fire projection.

Anna Kaye, Equipoise I, 25 x 34 inches, watercolor on paper. Image provided by Anna Kaye.

L: I keep reflecting on the historic ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ we've had in 2020 in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, specifically. A question that comes up for me is how that has maybe inspired your work, and how your work speaks to these natural disasters. So when something like this happens, how do you respond and how does that become a part of your process of creation?

K: 2020 was the worst year on record for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ's ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. It was really scary. And my plan is to go and visit these sites in the spring and summer, when vegetation starts to come back, and flowers start to grow. My interest and plans are to document that regeneration.

Again, it's a devastating process. I have friends who had to evacuate. I had a friend who lost her childhood home. And we all experienced it also in the Metro area and in Denver and suburbs because of the air quality. It was dangerous at times to be outside breathing during a pandemic, which makes it doubly challenging. So that's why it's important for me to create pieces that raise awareness and then also to use the artwork too, to be able to donate. Fire is a reality that's a part of our life here in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. It's not going away. It's here every year, some years it's not as bad, some years it's horrible. And we all have to find ways of coping with that loss that we have to experience on an annual basis. But out of that last, we can use survival as a way to propel us forward. And with that hope of regeneration as the forest starts to come back.

L: Could you speak a bit more in depth about your thoughts on the intertwining of the arts and sciences? Do you think it is important for these two disciplines to work together to further conversations around climate change?

K: I think it’s important for all disciplines to work together on climate change. The health of our planet’s species affects every single one of us and requires all types of expertise. The more we can come together on this matter, the better.

Each of us expresses ourselves in a unique way, mine is often thorough art. Art has the ability to inspire within seconds. Artists have been giving form to scientific theories, ideas, and discoveries for centuries. Both disciplines share a passion to discover, experiment, and explore abstract ideas.

L: In your artist statement, you write that your work offers “a visual language to assist in coping” with the ecological and social impact of a changing planet. Could you expand upon this idea?

In my studies of geology, we learned that the only constant in life is change, which is easy to understand when you research the geologic changes that have occurred over billions of years, and we also learned about cyanobacteria (bacteria that uses photosynthesis) producing so much oxygen that they created the first mass extinction event on Earth. With this knowledge I recognize that the change that we are creating in the sixth mass extinction event might not be stopped. And through the Holocene extinction, we have and will continue to experience loss. Wildfires are increasing in intensity; in fact, most ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ are human caused. In this loss, we must find ways to cope in our transforming world. Seeing new life begin after a devastating event, reminds us that there is hope. We have the ability to heal, improve, nurture others, and adapt.

Anna Kaye, Apparition, 54 x 54 inches, graphite and charcoal on paper. Image provided by Anna Kaye.

K: What projects are you currently working on (that you’re able to share), and what is currently inspiring your work?

I’m in an exhibit titled ”Space(s) Between” on view through July 24th at Galleries of Contemporary Art: Ent Center of the Arts at UCCS curated by DU Vicki Myhren Gallery Director Geoggrey Shamos, Independent Curator Don Fodness in collaboration with GOCA Director Daisy McGowan. This is a Multi-site and multi-project exhibition featuring contemporary artists exploring various understandings of how we experience the vastness of place and the iconic nature of the American West. Notions of the horizon as a convention through which we orient ourselves in relation to the landscape are central to the concept. I created a charcoal projection drawing for the exhibit. The drawing is titled “Glass Garden” and features a terrarium filled with a miniature landscape, water, with a fire projection. This animated drawing examines how we cultivate the land and our lives as we move forward in a rapidly changing world influenced by climate change.

I am also organizing an outdoor art exhibit titled LandMark with scientific writer, illustrator, and artist Kalliopi Monoyois. This exhibit features outdoor artwork in various city of Lakewood and Arvada parks. I’m creating hollowed out tree trunks with realistic miniature ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ ecosystems inside. Translucent birds perch nearby on trees and shrubs. This installation explores the impact of wildfire on the environment, the desire to preserve a planet that is in constant flux, the ways in which we cultivate the land, and the cyclical nature of ends and beginnings.

Anna Kaye, Glass Garden, 39 x 39 inches, charcoal and projection. Image provided by Anna Kaye.

Luckett: I would love to start with you telling me a bit about yourself and your practice.

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Dr. Danielle Zoe Rivera & Jocelyn West

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 22:19:31 +0000

Dr. Danielle Zoe Rivera & Jocelyn West Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/09/2020 - 15:19

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp7D07xLKXw&feature=youtu.be]

Related Article: Disaster Colonialism: A Commentary on Disasters Beyond Singular Events to Structural Violence (Rivera, 2020)
ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ: Dr. Danielle Rivera’s biography & the Just Environments Lab website
Twitter: @danielle_zoe

Interview Highlights

1:11 - Introduction and overview by Dr. Rivera
4:45 - Environmental colonialism and the history of environmental justice movements in Puerto Rico as written about by Carmen Concepción.
9:22 - Family knowledge and memory of repeated disasters in Puerto Rico: Dr. Rivera shares a story about her grandfather’s experience with multiple hurricanes in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and the way it prompted migration and the expansion of the Puerto Rican diaspora.
11:25 - JW asks question about disaster colonialism, and the way that ongoing colonialism operates through disasters in Puerto Rico.
11:45 - DR explains disaster colonialism as a concept, along with a critique of Klein’s “disaster capitalism,” which has often been used at the expense of understanding the history of colonization and coloniality in the archipelago.
15:52 - DR discusses procedural vulnerability to disaster and the need to understand it and the entrenchment of inequality from repeated poor responses to disasters.
19:08 - JW asks about attempts to measure vulnerability to disasters, and the application of such measures in the context of Puerto Rico.
19:55 - DR responds about vulnerability indices in Puerto Rico, and the indicators that do not make sense in the Puerto Rican context.
21:44 - JW asks about how existing policies and institutions for disaster response can reinforce the idea of who is a “worthy recipient of aid” after a disaster.
22:55 - DR discusses indigeneity in Puerto Rico, and the history of discrimination and erasure of Taino peoples, explaining how that shows up in expressions and understandings of race and ethnicity in Puerto Rico today.
25:10 - JW asks about the history of suppression of Indigenous knowledge about weather tracking in Puerto Rico under Spanish colonization.
26:15 - DR discusses the Spanish criminalization of Taino peoples’ abilities to anticipate and forecast hurricanes.
30:30 - DR closes on a hopeful note about the role of artists and designers in imagining alternative environmental futures.

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Palle B. Petterson & Laurids Andersen Sonne

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 21:58:39 +0000

Palle B. Petterson & Laurids Andersen Sonne Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/09/2020 - 14:58

Palle B. Petterson & Laurids Andersen Sonne
(Translated from Danish)

Laurids: Hi Palle, thank you for taking time to talk to me.

I have been a big fan of your book Cameras into the Wild [1], since I was working on a wave film of sorts myself from the idea that a wave crashing on a coast could provide more than enough “action” in a film, and was doing research on the history of wave films. So, it really resonated with me when you in Cameras in to the Wild described how films such as Rough sea at Dover and A Sea Cave Near Lisbon, made cinema goers go wild when seeing the images of these waves crashing in on the screen.

Could you start by telling me a bit about what you are working on these days?

Palle: Currently, I am working in a position, which I have been working in for the past 7 years, where I am in charge of the digital archiving of the Danish Defense Ministry’s media archive, which is approximately 110 years old, consisting of about one hundred thousand units which has never been digitized before. This is a big task. We have to go through it all, create metadata as to inventory the material properly, make selections of what is important to digitize, and some of it we put on the web.

Going way back I have always been interested in archives, and all the possible things that are hidden and can be found in them, so that was probably why I was excited about taking this on.

Laurids: Could you tell a bit about your research and how you got into the research that became Cameras into the Wild and how that fed into your subsequent book Dokumentarfilm og danskernes natursyn – perioden 1929-1973 (2016) [2]

Palle: Yes, it really goes all the way back to my childhood, and my interest for our nature. The film part entered when I was around 10 or 11 where in the village I grew up in, was a course in still photography where you had to shoot and process your own photos. The teacher had a special interest in feature film and especially silent films and showed us Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and such. It was really there that I started making the connection between these two interests of film and nature, which sent me on the track of what I really wanted to study during university. So, when I get in to Film and Media studies in Copenhagen, I am already aware of what I wanted to work with, in the combination of nature and film. When I was preparing one of my major assignments, I decided to look at the TV medium and the development of the TV documentary in the 1970´s, primarily in Denmark but also abroad, looking at such figures as David Attenborough and others. When I had written that, I felt there was something in there, and went to the library, and asked one of the librarians if he had any material on the history of the nature documentary. He thought it was an exciting topic. After about a week of looking for materials for me, he told me that he had not been able to find much, only a few fragments and scattered articles here and there, but no major cohesive work focusing specifically on the early days of nature cinema. There are few books that came out since, but the lack of literature on the subject at the time was what gave me the impulse to start working on Cameras into the Wild, which took me almost ten years to research and write. During the time other books appeared, Greg Mittman’s book Reel Nature: America’s Romance With Wildlife on Film, was published, and others, and I of course took this into account. But at the same time, I had my specific focus, which was to dig in to the earliest of the earliest, and to really dig into how nature documentary had emerged. I really wanted to get all the way back to the root of the genre. I actually started out building up a catalog of early nature films, before I started working in the manuscript. The manuscript becomes my MA thesis, which in turn becomes the basis for the English version of Cameras into the Wild. So it’s a major research project that I worked on for quite some time. I had been working on the catalog of early nature films, in my first year of Film and Media, so it had already been in progress for five years, before graduating and before thinking about the book project, and approaching the tedious process of translating it from Danish to English.

Laurids: In Cameras in to the Wild, you write about the connection between the development of early cinema and shifting perceptions in the understanding of nature, could you talk about how to see this coming about?

Palle: That whole topic is actually something that I focus quite a bit on in the subsequent book, (Dokumentarfilm og danskernes natursyn – perioden 1929-1973), where I talk about the connection between the creative development and its dependence on the technological development. Like the development of lighter tripods, where before the heavy setup prevented the cinematographers from really going out in the field. And where the film essentially was artificial wildlife like shooting in a zoo or some other form of limited area, it enables these to get closer to a real wildlife. The development away from hand cranked cameras to battery powered ones, is also crucial, as you no longer need to be on a tripod to run the camera and keep it steady. And with the perception and skill we have today in looking at moving images we are clearly able to see the difference when even looking at the old nature films that succeeded at documenting something that was not constructed. My subsequent book spent a great deal of time on the phenomenon of the “blue chip” nature documentary, which is a term that you use when making a large scale produced nature documentary, in per example, in a national park, where you are intentionally leaving out that you might be shooting from a road, and you are leaving out all the human structures that are around. Where you are essentially constructing an image of nature, as some form of pure and undisturbed, without human intervention in the scenery. There have been many of these kinds of films made, but it is only something that evolved late in the development of nature films, something that really starts developing after 1929, prompted by technological development.

If we then have to look at your question in relation to the changes in perception of nature, you can see that when we come to the late 20´s, 30´s and 40´s, then there is clearly a certain way one is treating nature through film. You can see that in the work of Martin and Osa Johnson and how they aesthetically come to define a whole period with their perception of nature, which is a bit complicated to decipher today. When you look at their work and legacy today it seems like they were maybe not environmentalist, but in their time they were maybe some of the people who were, along with Carl Akeley and others, were part of creating an attention to the natural environment and through that also part of development of more national parks, and more preservation which led to space where animals could live without our intervention.

Laurids: How do historical nature documents represent and construct a specific way of looking at the natural world, how do you see this manifested?

Palle: It is very clear that even in many of the early films that there is an awareness of the need for drama, and if the film footage does not have that they will create some form of tension to help it along. You see that in constructions where you set up a scenario where a lion would fight a tiger, where it would be much more natural to see a lion fighting one of its pray. These construction of narrative and drama happened quite early in the history of nature films, even in some of the early Danish films, like Lion hunting (1908), which is a total construction on a tiny Danish island, which is made to create some excitement. But there is at the time also a difference between the poetic and the dramatic nature films. And you also see that some nature films of 1910 that have a scientific angle, so early on there are different approaches to how to depict nature, and what angle is being used and there are even films that are presenting an environmental agenda.

The need for creating tension and drama, which we still see in plenty of nature films today, is something that can be traced to the very beginning of the medium, and here we are talking 1906- and the idea of nature as something wild, dangerous and uncontrollable is being perpetuated on a parallel track in nature film. In the 1970´s it was completely out of control, many of the films in that period portray animals as some form of killer machines, and to this day there are many production companies that only focus on the highly dramatized, to create excitement in something that in reality is totally peaceful. One of the key examples is the portrayal of the mountain gorilla, which in reality is a very peaceful animal, being depicted as a constantly war faring animal, even if only a miniscule part of its life that it has confrontations with other tribes of gorillas. There were films in the 1980´s, where it was said explicitly that the mountain gorilla was known to kill human beings, and another where it was stated that they were known to rape women, which is completely out there and untrue. There are some outrageous examples on how we have portrayed the big predators. It is only within the last thirty to twenty-five years, we the regular people have been starting to get a more realistic understanding of how it really is with these big predators. That typically has been helped by the fact that either Biologist or Zoologist have been involved in the making of the films, which really makes the difference, as opposed to the lone cinematographer who was looking for drama.

There are of course many different approaches, but I see the whole idea of nature as something to be conquered and controlled being represented though the history of nature films, which is part of the tensions and divisions between different ideas of making nature films, which becomes more and more obvious as we advance in the history of nature films. Like when making nature film no longer is only a thing for filmmakers but also something that environmentalists are doing.

Laurids: Is there a way to see these representations manifested in contemporary nature film and media, and in the broader perception of nature today?

Palle: Aside from the construction of drama, I don’t think the early nature films has an effect on how we look at nature today, but back then when these early nature films were presented in the theaters, there is no question that they have an immense importance in what it was that people saw of nature, and how it was perceived. And some of the things I think that is very explanatory in this, is that when in the films of the Lumiere brothers, Kolb brothers and others, was that when there was a natural scenery, it had a very strong effect on the audience, and they got to see places they had never experienced before and they started having a relationship to these places that were entirely unfamiliar to them, places they would never have a chance to go to themselves, like Alaska or Africa.

So, I am certain that the films played a role, and made people start thinking in a much broader scale, which had an impact on the way people started thinking about the need for nature preservation. There were very few preservation areas and the one´s that existed before these films and films in general, were very small. So, I think that these preservation initiatives were something that really only picked up when people could see with their own eyes that there was an amount of natural habitat that needed to be preserved, so that it could also be experienced by future generations.

Laurids: In talking about the connection between early nature films and conservation and nature protection effort, I wonder if these were used as political tools?

Palle: Yes, the early nature films were definitely used as political tools, but it’s hard to say how much sway they had. But as the field developed, after 1928, it is possible to prove that there are situations where it’s the images that have done the work and made the difference. In those situations it has primarily been work that deals with environmental pollution, when it becomes concrete, like seeing fish dying, and I recall there was a case of an early film about the American Elk that made a difference in relation to preservation, but I can presently not recall the title.

Laurids: Traveling and making recordings of nature was clearly a costly endeavor and appears to be for the most part and at least in the early 20^th century, a thing for the elite.

Do you, in the history of nature documentaries, see a relation to western expansion / extraction / colonialism and the idea of nature as a commodity both as a natural resource and as an experiential resource?

Palle: If we are talking broadly about film, then I think it is very clear that film had been a contributing factor to globalization, as we saw more and more of the world, the smaller it became. The more you saw an Australian aborigine or an animal from far away, the more it become something that was part of the collective consciousness and got an understanding for them, so on some level nature film has probably played a role in colonialism, but I can’t definitively claim that it has, as I would not be able to substantiate that.

Even if Dokumentarfilm og danskernes natursyn – perioden 1929-1973, is focused on Denmark, I also argue that the Danish perception of nature cannot be seen in a vacuum, where the Danes are equally shaped by Europe and the rest of the world and the ideas and films that come from there. Denmark was really just the scope I had to limit myself to, even if the tendencies and perceptions were very much the same in the rest of the world. The publisher, McFarland, was also interested in publishing a translated version of this book, but I did not have the time or bandwidth to work on it at the time.

Laurids: I am thinking of the dichotomy between nature – culture in relation to preservation…

Palle: Yes, even if Denmark was on the forefront of many environmental aspects, and heavily inspired by Germany, there was a clear division between those associations that wanted to preserve wildlife for the sake of wildlife and those who wanted to preserve it for the sake of humans, and that is of course a concern that continues today. There are not that many environmental laws in Denmark that have been drafted for the sole purpose of the wildlife outside the human. This has changed in the last ten to fifteen years, but anything before then was really drafted for us, like the idea of a preservations area, not as preservation for the wildlife but rather to ensure good hunting grounds. You can argue that historically it has been more about creating regulations around giving humans access to natural areas, as opposed to giving wildlife space and peace without our intervention.

Laurids: This seminar is titled Environmental Futures, so with that in mind, do you think that there, in early nature cinema, is anything that can tell us about how we got to where we are today and how we are going into an uncertain future?

Palle: I think you can derive a lot of conclusions from the history of nature documentaries, but I think the most crucial thing to focus on is looking at them historically and seeing what it was we were paying attention to at the time, even if they surely also had an effect on perceptions of the natural world. This just becomes harder to decipher, then showing through what has been recorded, what it was we were interested in at a given moment. Even if you can trace the environmental concern all the way back to the beginning, and scattered throughout the history, I find it hard to see how nature film has been part of creating change in the public discourse that can be attributed to film alone. Rather, it’s a question of creating different catalysts for social movement, where a film can lead to someone writing a book, and that book maybe makes a politician react to the specific issue and so forth, but it’s hard tracing these interconnected factors. Whether the film, the book, the politician and so on is the most important part is difficult to say. They are all intermingled but spread views as rings in the water.

[1] Petterson, Palle B. 2011. Cameras into the Wild: A History of Early Wildlife and Expedition Filmmaking, 1895-1928. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland.

[2] The book, Dokumentarfilm og danskernes natursyn – perioden 1929-1973, has yet to be translated into English, the title roughly translates to “Documentary film and the Danes nature perception, – the period 1929-1973.

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Kripa Dongol & Lavkant Chaudhary

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 21:03:53 +0000

Kripa Dongol & Lavkant Chaudhary Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/09/2020 - 14:03

Conversation with Lavkant Chaudhary on Indigenous resistance and art

Dastoor Series, 2019
Stippling drawing on archival paper digital print
38 x 52 cm
Source: Tej Narayan Panjiyar Archives
In the drawing I have used official documents from different time periods in Nepali history as a backdrop for portraits of day to day Tharu activities. The documents have been issued by the Sen, Shah and Rana rulers of Nepal and themselves show the fluctuation of power over the years. More importantly, they record the way different rulers issued dastoors (legal orders) to control native people in their own land by enforcing taxes. Heavy taxes were imposed upon the Tharus in the 18th and 19th centuries forcing them to migrate from one place to another within the Terai. Taxes were imposed on nearly everything, from land to water, forest to agriculture, and crops to animals.

kripa: Hi, I am a Master’s student at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s Geography Department. I am interested in learning about the rural perspectives of the Melamchi Drinking Water Supply Project in Kathmandu - a project that has been ongoing for over two decades. As an urban native of Kathmandu, I felt that we have always looked at Melamchi as a water source, we have been waiting for their water to flow to our pipes, but we have never really known Melamchi as anything other than a resource. I am interested in knowing about the people, the river, the fields and the environment there. Of course due to the pandemic I haven’t been able to actually visit Nepal or Melamchi so now I am shifting to do phone and Skype interviews. For our Deep Horizons seminar, we have been thinking through the role of art in environmental issues either through advocacy, activism or education and knowledge-making. We’ve had some fantastic speakers and I’ve been keen to learn more from Nepali artists as well. I had wanted to visit your exhibition - Masinya Dastoor - when I was home as well, and I’ve missed out on that. My sister and friends found it deeply invigorating, thought-provoking and educational. I am familiar with you and your work, but I would love it if you could introduce yourself and talk a bit about how you arrived at your work - specifically the Masinya Dastoor exhibition but also Tharu issues in general.

The Diary: Barefaced Truth of the Suppressed, 2019
Carving on wood with image transfer
30 x 23 cm each
In Collaboration with Indu Tharu, author and activist
I have recreated the diary of Jokhan Ratgainya who was a Tharu journalist, writer and revolutionary. He was murdered on June 11, 2001 by the then Royal Nepal Army at the time of the Civil War. This series depicts the situation of that period. It is rooted in the instability and killings faced by the Tharus of Far-Western Nepal at the hands of the Government of Nepal. People were arrested, murdered, and forcefully disappeared by the government in what came to be known as the “KILOSHERA 2 Operation.”

Lavkant: I am from Sarlahi in Terai and in fact I came to Kathmandu to study science. I knew what art was, but didn’t know it was something you could study. Since I was a Biology student I was used to sketching. A friend then recommended that I enroll in an Art class and that’s how I joined Lalit Kala Campus. After my Bachelors, I joined the TU campus in Kirtipur for my Masters. Most of our Art classes there were related to Western art, this to me was quite a political and cultural issue. Where is our art, culture and history? I hadn’t learnt any of that. I am from the Tharu indiegnous community and yet I didn’t learn about the Tharu culture or the Newar culture^{^[1]}.

Tharus are indigenous to Nepal’s Souther Belt - the Terai and Newars are indigenous to Kathmandu Valley which is currently the capital of Nepal.

I am a member of an artists collective called Art Tree and after the 2015 earthquake we started a six month long community art project in Bhaktapur’s Thulo Besi in Kathmandu Valley. This was still during my Bachelors, and at that point in working with the community I started learning about our own art, skills, techniques. During this community art project I learnt about Bhaktapur’s very interesting mask making technique. This sadly is a dying art. Other than two mask makers, who are very old, there is no one in this next generation of mask-making^{^[2]}. So, I was even more curious about why we weren’t learning about our own art skills and techniques.

Citizen From the Land of Inequality Series, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
I: 122 x 153 cm
This work is a commentary on the state of violence perpetrated on the Tharus when they rejected the New Constitution of Nepal in 2015, which the they claimed was discriminatory. During the Tikapur incident of 24 August, 2015 and its aftermath seven police officers, a young child, and more than fifty people from the area were killed. The State played a big part in terrorizing the Tharu community by performing targeted arrests, killings and the burning of houses. The Tharu community was portrayed as being “violent” by the Nepali media, while the violence the community faced at the hands of State forces was ignored.

Simultaneously, in 2015 we had also been having indigenous, marginalized community, dalit and women’s struggle and resistance with regards to our interim constitution. After the earthquake, the government passed the new constitution which largely failed to address many of the issues that these various resistances had been struggling for. Then a couple of months later, we had the Tikapur incident.^{^[3]} In the aftermath of that incident, Tharu people were heavily dehumanized, demonized and discriminated against. Tharu people were portrayed as demons and beasts who would murder people. At that point I wondered - was I not self-aware? Are we really demons? That’s when I started researching the Tharu identity and the classics came up in mainstream history: Tharu are tribal people who live in the jungles, they eat snails, they are alcoholics. That was all. There is nothing more in our syllabuses or mainstream history. However, as I started researching more I found that for over 200 years, since the conquest of [the Nepali] nation, since the concept of state-making and nationhood has been in practice Tharus have been practicing farming and providing grains to sustain the state. During Jung Bahadur Rana’s rule (in 1854), the Muluki Ain was used to codify the caste system and that’s how the Tharu were classified as “Masinya Matwali” (Enslavable Alcohol Drinkers). That has led to the historical and current marginalization of Tharus, yet is not discussed in mainstream history.

Citizen From the Land of Inequality Series, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
III: 153 x 122 cm
This work is a commentary on the state of violence perpetrated on the Tharus when they rejected the New Constitution of Nepal in 2015, which the they claimed was discriminatory. During the Tikapur incident of 24 August, 2015 and its aftermath seven police officers, a young child, and more than fifty people from the area were killed. The State played a big part in terrorizing the Tharu community by performing targeted arrests, killings and the burning of houses. The Tharu community was portrayed as being “violent” by the Nepali media, while the violence the community faced at the hands of State forces was ignored.

Going back to the Tikapur case, there were a lot of innocent people in the incident. Anyone connected to the perpetrators, the whole village in fact were held in the jail and the next night, they selectively burned Tharu homes in the village. Due to that fear and trauma, the Tharu youth there either left for India or Kathmandu in search of safety. That incident changed the social structure of that area.

Citizen From the Land of Inequality Series, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
II: 244 x 122 cm
This work is a commentary on the state of violence perpetrated on the Tharus when they rejected the New Constitution of Nepal in 2015, which the they claimed was discriminatory. During the Tikapur incident of 24 August, 2015 and its aftermath seven police officers, a young child, and more than fifty people from the area were killed. The State played a big part in terrorizing the Tharu community by performing targeted arrests, killings and the burning of houses. The Tharu community was portrayed as being “violent” by the Nepali media, while the violence the community faced at the hands of State forces was ignored.

Going back to the People’s War^{^[4]}, Tharus were one of the most involved and killed communities during the war. Tharu enslavement^{^[5]} was only outlawed in 2000, and yet there seemed to be little compensation for this. The push to create a new constitution and nation in which Dalits and Marginalized communities all would have equal rights and land was the main driver for the participation of Tharus in the People’s War. Yet, after the people’s war there was more marginalization and dehumanization of Tharus as we saw with the Tikapur incident. These things are still not discussed in the mainstream media.

And so there I was a Masters student, learning about world history but unaware of my own. So my exhibition Masinya Dastoor is an effort to reclaim our history and our space to try and uncover the layers of our history and the layers of our marginalization from our contribution to centuries of state-making as well as the recent People’s War, from our dehumanization to our demonization.

kripa: Could you talk about the name of your exhibition a bit more, specifically about Dastoor and wider social structures?

The Diary: Barefaced Truth of the Suppressed, 2019
Carving on wood with image transfer
30 x 23 cm each
In Collaboration with Indu Tharu, author and activist I have recreated the diary of Jokhan Ratgainya who was a Tharu journalist, writer and revolutionary. He was murdered on June 11, 2001 by the then Royal Nepal Army at the time of the Civil War. This series depicts the situation of that period. It is rooted in the instability and killings faced by the Tharus of Far-Western Nepal at the hands of the Government of Nepal. People were arrested, murdered, and forcefully disappeared by the government in what came to be known as the “KILOSHERA 2 Operation.”

Lavkant: Masinya of course is the term ‘enslavable’ as enacted by Jung Bahadur’s Muluki Ain. Dastoor is the codification of social customs into law (such as the Muluki Ain). My wider Dastoor series explores how various types of Dastoors enacted by different generations of rulers from the Sens to the Shahs and Ranas in Nepal have changed the various modes of taxation, village structures and land uses resulting in varied internal migration patterns and social structures in Tharu communities. During the earlier Sen dynasty’s rule there was a more autonomous approach to land use where people used land in their own ways, and later with the Rana and Shah periods the system of taxation was introduced in which people had to pay tax for their own native land. This had widespread effects on the internal migration of Tharus. For example, the ecosystem and socio-economic system of Tharus was destabilized during the Rana period. The Ranas, being closely aligned with the British Raj in India, used to conduct large hunting parties in Terai’s forests to appease the ruling class. This led to a wide scale destruction of elephants and other animals, and the sal tree forests were also logged and exported to India for the construction of the railroads. So the Tharu forests were destroyed to keep others in power. This has continued into the present day as well, in Chitwan we saw the death of RajKumar^{^[6]}. We have become refugees on our own land. So, I am doing the Masinya Dastoor exhibition as a Tharu. However when we got visitors at the exhibition, it was clear that there were parallels to many other indigenous and community struggles. This helped us connect with each other.

kripa: I was in Nepal in the summer of 2015 as well, and I think it was the day after I returned from Nepal to the States that I saw the news about Tikapur. I remember at least the Kathmandu community being very divided because there was a lot of speculation about the nature of the protests and the political motivations behind the actions that led to the violence, and like you mentioned the whole of Terai was demonized. I do remember thinking that I had always accepted by identity as a Nepali and the state had validated that identity too. I feel that as a Newar we also have indigenous struggles, but it’s not like in Terai where your citizenship is constantly called into question. I am wondering, whether during the course of your research and exhibition you have noticed a shift in the relationship between the state and the Tharu community?

Lavkant: Like you mentioned, when issues are raised regarding Madhes or Tharuhat, people speculate if they are Indian agents. I do wonder - why would India support Madhes? India has a stronger relationship with the state in Kathmandu, so I don’t see how they would support Madhes, Tharu or Dalits. As for the shift in relationships, I think that with the exhibition I am trying to represent my journey as an individual and an artist. I speculate about why I didn’t know this history, why this history was not included in the mainstream syllabus. Those who have visited the exhibition have also wondered about where and how their identities, skills and techniques are represented. The state talks about equal representation but does not implement it, and this exhibition raises questions regarding that. Even the Tikapur incident wasn’t well known if you weren’t involved on social media. So I think that on a smaller scale it is about a shift in our personal identities and representation.

kripa: I’d also like to ask you a few questions about the environmental issues in the South as well. Like you mentioned, most of the environmental destruction in the South was at the hands of the government, yet when it came to protecting these forests and animals it was again the Indigenous people who were dispossessed of their land to create National Parks because they were framed as the destroyers of flora and fauna. Some of this is covered in Dr. Chandra Gurung’s Autobiography The Boy from Siklis, I wonder if you’ve read it.

Lavkant: I haven’t read the book yet, I don’t get to reading that much, I find the visual things more my speed [laughs]

kripa: Certainly, we all have our interests in how we create and consume knowledge. You’ve spoken a lot about the indigenous struggle for land and autonomy, I’m wondering if you can speak a bit more to how they might be connected to environmental struggles.

Lavkant: If you look at how the state’s development is taking place now - it is based on dozers excavating roads. It is based on the belief of more construction and protection, and that has created some struggles. We all have our own practices, since generations we have a practice of worshipping the land. We worship the land before we cultivate the land, before planting the rice by doing bhumi pooja (ground worship). Only then do we plough the fields and sow the seeds. After the harvest, we worship the grains as well and gather together as a community to feast. We create dhutti (hanging grains) by creating little installations of the rice and leave them outside. Since we have taken all the grains from the fields, we try to leave some for the birds by leaving these dhuttis on our roofs. We worship nature, we sing songs about it and we have a strong relation to land. We worship bandevi (goddess of the forest) before we enter the forest if we need to collect grass to make barni (brooms). These happen during certain seasons, with certain rituals. This creates a sense of reverence and stewardship of the land because we know that we will rely on this land to sustain our future generations as well. Now, with the Chitwan National Park and Bardia National Park we have created homestays to recreate these practices. Yet these are just methods of state control. The monarchs hunted and destroyed our forests for generations. And now in the name of development and conservation, ministers and army personnel rule these forests. Now we are criminalized and killed for collecting snails or fishing, something that has been part of our livelihood for generations.

Dastoor Series, 2019
Elephant tusk and Rhino horn
Stippling drawing on archival paper digital print
38 x 52 cm
Source: Tej Narayan Panjiyar Archives
In the drawing I have used official documents from different time periods in Nepali history as a backdrop for portraits of day to day Tharu activities. The documents have been issued by the Sen, Shah and Rana rulers of Nepal and themselves show the fluctuation of power over the years. More importantly, they record the way different rulers issued dastoors (legal orders) to control native people in their own land by enforcing taxes. Heavy taxes were imposed upon the Tharus in the 18th and 19th centuries forcing them to migrate from one place to another within the Terai. Taxes were imposed on nearly everything, from land to water, forest to agriculture, and crops to animals.

So the environmental struggles are also linked with our indigenous struggles. Even development directed for us has created our marginalization. In the 1950s, they started the DDT spraying in the name of Malaria eradication with the help of Rapti Valley Conservation Trust and technical and financial assistance from the US. This caused a huge internal migration of hill communities to the Terai which created massive deforestation and conversion of land as part of the settlement process[7]. Along with the massive destruction of the forest, the Tharu ecosystem in which livelihoods were directly engaged with the forest were also destroyed. So, these environmental struggles cannot be separated from the indigenous struggles because the destruction of the environment is closely tied with the destruction of indigenous livelihoods. That’s another thing that my exhibition Masinya Dastoor has tried to portray.

DDT, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
Triptych, 63 x 63 cm each
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) also popularly known as “Danger Dose to Tharu” is based on one of the silenced histories of the Tharu community. During the 50s and 60s with support from the United States of America and the WHO the Nepali Government led a campaign to eradicate malaria in the Terai region. The control of malaria in the Terai belt made a dramatic change during the rule of King Mahendra. There was a mass migration of hill people to Terai, which exacerbated large scale of deforestation. In this painting I have used a Tharu wall relief technique to paint various objects including images of humans. Each image is approximately the same size as a mosquito. Thus it was not only mosquitoes who were subjugated to eradication, but also Tharus and the ecosystem they inhabited.

Close up of DDT

kripa: I haven’t spent a lot of time in the Terai except once to organize a cycle race and once for some fieldwork. As you said, a lot of the history of the Terai, and in fact of the country is not well known to us. We often hear of the people only as resistors to development or conservation projects. So the dispossession that you are talking about is hidden in public discourse about Tharu indigenous struggles. I wonder if you could speak a bit more about the advocacy, especially regarding land reparations.

Lavkant: In a way there are ongoing campaigns with regards to land rights. The Kamaiya system of enslavement for example has been legally abolished, but the shift in practice has been slow. Kamaiyas were provided some land and funds to be able to set up free households, but the land that they were given were in flood prone areas of the rivers. So even with the formal abolishment of the Kamaiya enslavement system, there is an ongoing struggle for land rights, for recognition, and to create awareness by indigenous as well as political activists in person as well as in social media as well.

kripa: Thank you Lavkant ji, I appreciate your time today and I certainly believe that indigenous art and activism is crucial to supporting these fights for indigenous recognition and rights.

This interview was conducted over Skype in Nepali and has been translated and edited for clarity and brevity. Details regarding historical dates and practices have been added to better contextualize the conversation. Photos courtesy of the artist.

^{^[1]} Tharus are indigenous to Nepal’s Souther Belt - the Terai and Newars are indigenous to Kathmandu Valley which is currently the capital of Nepal.

^{^[2]} Many occupations and skills in Nepal were passed down through generations and the shift to wage-labor has resulted in the loss of many of these specific skills

^{^[3]}The Tikapur incident was a heavily politicized case in which violence during a protest against the federal structure promulgated by Nepal’s 2015 constitution led to the death of eight security personnel and a minor. Read more about it here: https://www.recordnepal.com/wire/after-years-of-media-trial-a-stunning-verdict-in-the-tikapur-case/

^{^[4]}Nepal People’s War, or Maoist Civil War, lasted for a decade from 1996 to 2006. For more, see: https://www.versobooks.com/books/1722-the-bullet-and-the-ballot-box

^{^[5]} The Kamaiyaa and Kamlari system enabled farming landlords to enslave primarily Tharus as bonded labourers for generations under a debt system. It was outlawed in 2000. Read more here: https://www.hurights.or.jp/archives/focus/section2/2000/09/a-fight-against-kamaiya-system-an-experience-review.html

^{^[6]} There have been many contentions between indigenous people and the state, largely in disputes of territory and the use of resources. https://kathmandupost.com/province-no-3/2020/07/24/kin-of-chepang-youth-who-died-after-being-thrashed-by-nepal-army-personnel-seek-impartial-investigation-into-the-incident

[7] Read more here: https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-mosquito-that-changed-nepals-history/

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Chilton Tippin & Laura Paskus

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 19:49:00 +0000

Chilton Tippin & Laura Paskus Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/30/2020 - 13:49

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lRhd0iWYiI&feature=youtu.be]

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Avery Glassman & Dr. Karen Bailey

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 17:28:29 +0000

Avery Glassman & Dr. Karen Bailey Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/12/2020 - 11:28

In this interview, Dr. Karen Bailey discusses the field of environmental studies, including institutional biases when it comes to funding, research gaps, and interaction between climate scientists and activists. She also shares some of her research on adaptive human responses to climate change and how its relationship to debates regarding climate justice. Lastly, Dr. Bailey describes her working methods and provides insight on the role of art in addressing climate change.

[video:https://vimeo.com/466613825]

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