"I'm happiest when I'm alone and engaged in looking at something" 

William Delafield Cook

Water and Irigary's 'knowable and unknowable'

" ... when we are immersed in a new landscape, in an extraordinary cosmic manifestation, when we bathe in an environment that is simultaneously perceptible and imperceptible, knowable and unknowable, visible and invisible to us. we are then situated in a milieu, in an event that escapes our control, our know-how, our inventiveness, our imagination. And our response to this 'mystery' is or could be astonishment, wonder, praise, sometimes questioning, but not reproduction, repetition, control, appropriation.

"We want to have the entire world in our head, sometimes the entire world in our heart. We do not see that this gesture transforms the life of the world into something finished, dead, because the world thus loses its own life. A life always foreign to us, exterior to us, other than us. ...

"If we could analyze each element of energy that reaches us in the explosion of spring, we would lose the global state that we experience by bathing in it through all our senses, our whole body, our whole soul. ...

Luce Irigary, 2002 Between East and West

Babblings: Dipping into - or plunging through the water's surface with the camera allows an (albeit delayed) embodied experience of seeing the layers of conscious/subconscious/unconscious in the later viewing of the images trawled from below. The act of capturing this is more than recording a physical state - it is a trawling of the layered quality of consciousness. I pull up from below, treasures, the unknown, creatures/forms, alike the minotaur of ancient mythology. Shadow and light exist together (down there). 

From my (I)island [ I= Self / boat () ], through my eye [lens

] 'I' descend through a portal () and I 'see' through an inner eye what lives below the i(I)sland

(Watson's Heron Island Water Lens is perhaps another instance of this physical apprehending - revealing more than  phenomena)

islands ~ remembered, embodied + manifested

I am island / only - Islands have drawn and gathered souls for millenia. Crossing water, a mirror world rises in front of the boat - transporter of souls between worlds - circle,  cir-cum-navigate, cir-come, i-mmerse. I (i -land): King, Tasmania, then reluctantly stranded on a larger One where I found many.

Now islands, small /uninhabited/wild, console the island self; I-self
Viola plunged into water and claims domain over an Other world now reachable through technology alone, I claim two ancient vessels, body and boat to navigate my own psyche.

Somehow, a 'pre-literate' knowing returns on these journeys. Back to water, wilderness, watery forest, the forest of fairytales - unknown and known, hidden and revealed.

Then images trawl back the relics for remembering and forgetting

The myth and symbolism of the boat in Early Europe ...

Boat as a metaphor for transcendental energy and eternal life

Celestial vehicles of the divinities

Soul boat, traditional means of transport for the souls of the deceased over water

... boat a a symbol of the goddess, the Great Mother

Medvedev-Mead, I “Soul Boats,” The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2005, 24:3, 10-28 (see abstract: http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1525/jung.1.2005.24.3.10)

 

Thought Experiments : navigations in time, light + space

Re-presentations are always more than mimetic; they embody personal psychologies (aesthetics/archetypes and perhaps, remnants of the collective unconscious) Are these the  ‘places’ where the liminal nature of self is held and caught – embodied in communicable form, uttering directly to the viewer. These dredgings from underwater / on the flux line / reflected on the moving surface of water, are both metaphoric and real, straight but made strange by perspective.

The liminal is a mysterious space much like the body, with similar associated fascinations and fears. On a metaphoric level Fear of the Deep and Fear of the Body trigger the same visceral reactions, they are places where psychological shadows lurk, an opportunities exist to engage the Other.

Navigating time, light and space, using still and video cameras and HD sound recording equipment, often at night, the images employ a poetic visual language with the intention of moving between the real and sur-real. The movement of the carrying vessel is both linear directed by intent through space, and unpredictable; caught in the natural flux of tide and swell. While the photograph records light and captures time, here the quality is timeless, catching only the natural world in image, but the sound is a layering of organic with mechanical thereby reconciling "maternal" time with linear time (Kristeva). In this sense also, the kayak/boat/vessel becomes an elliptical portal between there realities – both an ancient vessel and transportation vehicle for exploration, and an embodied symbol (archetype: portal/doorway/birth canal) (Medvedev-Mead). Peering below the waterline is akin to entering an Other space, an unremembered realm - familiar and potent.

It was a childhood ritual to go flounder hunting with my father on Saturday nights in Tasmania. Using underwater spotlights, the world opened up as we explored the waterways – clear water, clean white sands, fish, crustaceans, octopus, squid even sea dragons at times … then there were the long returns through the country by car headlight after a long Sunday drive – glimpses of trees, country, frogs in the rain, possums in verge hedges, Next, then photograph of a pink tee shirt in a rock pool at sunset at Angourie  in 1980 and the late night wanderings with camera flash and slide film in Low Head over the following years. I’ve had an ongoing fascination with the creation of what I call ‘atmospheric fallacies’ –  bringing back (imaginary) immersive spaces to share with others.

The work of Bill Viola was a powerful influence, conjuring the magic of water-filtered light and slowed sound, engaging the senses while exploring metaphysics and symbol. The haunting work Swell, by Patricia Piccinini also had a sharp impact on my thinking about art making, suggesting possible ways to explore notions of the real and the non-real in video works. Paralleling my photographic practice, I have also worked with drawing; internal landscapes of the body. The symbols of bones have appeared through my work over decades and the work of Linde Ivemey contains resounding elements of my personal aesthetic in relation to the body.

Using digital video, still images, sound and layered imagery, I intend to create a body of photographic and time-based pieces. The works will investigate notions of reality in flux. Like our bodies and  our imagination, our grasp of certainty is represented in layers formed from fragments of information. Individual images and video will be taken apart from their original context, reconstructed in order to probe other possibilities, and situated to provide catalysts for conjecture – a new immersive reality of the ‘in between’ 

 

circle + arc

One is the half of the other, yet one is contained within the others reality - shadow and ego. Invisible and visible - Hidden / Known

Unconscious and conscious ....


Alterity ~ where other and self make something else


Thomas Berry - circle and arc from Plotkin's Nature and the Human Soul

 

nature and the human soul

Abram - about the talking stone

Atavism

 1
 Sometimes in the open you look up
 where birds go by, or just nothing,
 and wait.  A dim feeling comes
 you were like this once, there was air,
 and quiet; it was by a lake, or
 maybe a river  you were alert
 as an otter and were suddenly born
 like the evening star into wide
 still worlds like this one you have found
 again, for a moment, in the open.

 2
 Something is being told in the woods:  aisles of
 shadow lead away; a branch waves;
 a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its
 path.  A withheld presence almost
 speaks, but then retreats, rustles
 a patch of brush.  You can feel
 the centuries ripple  generations
 of wandering, discovering, being lost
 and found, eating, dying, being born.
 A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
 the fur you no longer have.  And your gaze
 down a forest aisle is a strange, long
 plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
 For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
 wider than your mind, away out over everything.

-- William StaffordNature and the Human Soul


Interview between David Abram + Bill Plotkin

David Whyte

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
  -- David Whyte
      from Songs for Coming Home
      ©1984 Many Rivers Press

http://www.davidwhyte.com/english_opening.html

Leonard Shlain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izuHSfOaUnA
/ Tiffany Shlain about Leonard Shlain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESVfGVQmk6Y 
  
Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain L/R hemispheres - http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-10-25&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email  

David Bohm - Perception
Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm

learning is actually remembering

“There is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things.” ~ Carl Jung - "unforgotten wisdom"

For Jung, the psyche is not in each of us, but we are in the psyche. And since psyche and image, for Jung are inseparably connected (“image is psyche, then imagination becomes the clearest, primary expression of psyche. 

Carl G. Jung, 1929, Commentary on the Golden Flower, CW13, §75.

"we speak of 'the environment,' which makes it sound as though this is something that's far away from us. But if we hold our breath for a few minutes while we consider the matter, we quickly realize that 'the environment' is constantly cycling through us through the air we breathe, through the water we drink, through the food we eat."
John Seed ~ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/newdimensions/stories/2006/1791140.htm

"There's only one thing that's going to be of any use, and that's a huge transformation in consciousness. Then we won't need to dig everything up and cut everything down in order to be satisfied, because we'll have found true satisfaction for that sense of emptiness inside of ourselves." http://www.abc.net.au/rn/newdimensions/stories/1999/45860.htm

Others:
David Abram ~ The Alliance of Wild Ethics ~ http://www.wildethics.org/ 
http://www.wildethics.org/essays/waking_our_animal_senses.html
http://www.wildethics.org/essays/reciprocity_and_the_salmon.html
http://www.wildethics.org/essays/eairths-imagination.html

Francis Weller ~  http://www.wisdombridge1.net/ 
http://www.wisdombridge1.net/?page_id=196
Joanna Macy ~ http://www.joannamacy.net/  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/newdimensions/stories/2010/2963821.htm
Paul Rademacher ~ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/newdimensions/stories/2010/3003245.htm
Catriona MacGregor ~ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/newdimensions/stories/2010/2977198.htm

Homo sapiens - time for a new name?  Facts about the planet and its destruction at our hands: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3294576.htm

Julian Cribb: It is high time the human race had a new name. The old one, Homo sapiens - wise or thinking man - has been around since 1758, and is no longer a fitting description for the creature we have become. When the Swedish father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, first bestowed itⁱ, humans no doubt seemed wise when compared with what scientists of the day knew about both people and other animals. We have since learned our behaviour is not quite as intelligent as we like to imagine, while some other animals are rather smart. In short, ours is a name which is both inaccurate and which promotes a dangerous self-delusion.

In a letter to Nature I am proposing there should be a worldwide discussion about the formal reclassification of humanity, involving both scientists and the public. The new name should reflect more truthfully the attributes and characteristics of the modern 21st century human, which are markedly different from those of 18th century 'man'.

Consider the following: Humans are presently engaged in the greatest act of extermination of other species by a single species, probably since life on Earth began. We are destroying an estimated 30,000 species a year, a scale comparable to the greatest extinction catastrophes of the geological past.ⁱⁱ We currently contaminate the atmosphere with 30 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent every year.ⁱⁱⁱ This risks an episode of accelerated planetary warming reaching 4-5 degrees by the end of this century and 8 degrees thereafter, a level which would severely disrupt food production.^iv Estimates for the ultimate losses from 8of warming range from 50 to 90% of humanity.^v
We have manufactured around 83,000 synthetic chemicals^vi, many of them toxic at some level, and some of which we inhale, ingest in food or water or absorb through the skin every day of our lives. A US study found newborn babies in that country are typically contaminated by around 200 industrial chemicals, including pesticides, dioxins and flame retardants.^vii These chemicals are now found all over the planet, and we are adding hundreds of new ones, of unknown risk, every year. Yet we wonder why more people now die of cancer.

Every year we also release around 121 million tonnes of nitrogen, 10 million tonnes of phosphorus and 10 billion tonnes of CO2 into our rivers, lakes and oceans, many times the amounts recirculated by the Earth naturally. This is causing the collapse of marine and aquatic ecosystems, disrupting food chains and causing 'dead zones'. More than 400 of these lifeless areas have been discovered in recent times.^viii
 
We are presently losing about 1% of the world's farming and grazing land every year. This has worsened steadily in the last 30 years, confronting us with the challenge of doubling food production in coming decades off a small fraction of today's area. At the same time we waste a third of the world's food.^ix
 
Current freshwater demand from agriculture, cities and energy use will more than double by mid century, while resources in most countries - especially of groundwater - are drying up or becoming so polluted they are unusable.^x
 
We passed peak fish in 2004^xi, peak oil in 2006^xii, and will encounter growing scarcities of other primary resources, including mineral nutrients, in coming decades. Yet demand for all resources, including food, minerals, energy and water, will more than double, especially in Asia.

Humanity spends $1.6 trillion a year on new weapons^xiii, but only $50 billion a year on better ways to produce food. Despite progress in arms reduction, the world still has around 20,000 nuclear warheads and at least 19 countries now have access to them or to the technology to make them.^xiv
 
Finally, we are in the process of destroying a great many things which are real - soil, water, energy, resources, other species, our health - for the sake of a commodity that mostly exists in our imagination: money. While money has its uses as a medium for exchange, humanity is increasingly engaged in mass self-delusion as to what constitutes real wealth, as is quite clear from the current financial crisis.

All of these things carry the risk of catastrophic change to the Earth's systems, making it difficult to justify our official sub-species name of Homo sapiens sapiens, or wise wise man. This not only looks like conceit, but sends a dangerous signal about our ability to manage what we have unleashed. A creature unable to control its own demands cannot be said to merit the descriptor 'wise'. A creature which takes little account of the growing risks it runs through its behaviour can hardly be rated 'thoughtful'.

The provisions of the International Code on Zoological Nomenclature provide for the re-naming of species in cases where scientific understanding of the species changes, or where it is necessary to correct an earlier error. I argue that both those situations now apply.

This is not just an issue for science; it concerns everybody. There needs to be worldwide public discussion about what is an appropriate name for our species, in the light of our present behaviour and attributes. Here are some names suggested by eminent Australian scientists. Marine scientist and author, Charlie Veron, suggests Homo finalis. Desert ecologist, Mark Stafford-Smith, proposes Homo quondam et futures - the once and future human. Spatial ecologist, Hugh Possingham, likes Homo nesciens - ignorant man. And atmospheric scientist, Barrie Pittock, suggests Homo sui deludens - self-deluding man.

Down the track we should not rule out an eventual return to the name Homo sapiens, provided we can demonstrate that we have earned it - and it is not mere flatulence, conceit or self-delusion. The wisdom to understand our real impact on the Earth and all life is the one we most need at this point in our history, in order to limit it. Now is the time humans get to earn, or lose forever, the title sapiens.

ⁱ Homo sapiens Linnaeus 1758. http://www.eol.org/pages/327955
ⁱⁱ See, for example, Eldredge N., The Sixth Extinction, http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html
ⁱⁱⁱHarvey F. Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink. The Guardian, 29 May 2011.
^ivSee Schnellnhuber HJ, Climate Change - the Critical Decade. (video)http://www.aclimateforchange.org/profiles/blogs/climate-change-the-critical
^vSee for example: Martin J. Commonwealth lecture 2010 or Schnellnhuber HJ in http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion/
^viUS EPA Chemical Substances Inventory (2011)
^viiEnvironmental Working Group, 2005. http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php
^viiiDiaz RJ and Rosenberg R, Spreading Dead Zones. Science, June 2008.
^ixGlobal food losses and food waste, FAO, 2011
^xChartres C and Varma S, Out of Water, FT Press 2010
^xiFAO State of World Fisheries 2010
^xiiBirol F, IEA 2010.
^xiiiSIPRI 2011,http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/resultoutput/trends


 

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen

king island ~ residency

http://kingislandculturalcentre.blogspot.com/

Wade Davis again

ABC Big Ideas

H4N

Zoom H4N
Tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHBAAcaPjaM

jung, Nature + consciousness

"We are beset by an all-too-human fear that consciousness - our Promethean conquest - may in the end not be able to serve us as well as nature." (Collected Works,8, par 750)In 1952, Jung was interviewed by Ira Progoff, who asked if individuation didn’t always involve consciousness. Jung replied, “Oh, that is an overvaluation of consciousness” and explained that individuation is the natural process by which a tree becomes a tree and a human a human; he said that consciousness can just as well interfere with the natural growth process as aid it. Jung felt that Western consciousness was seriously one-sided in that it has expanded in the spatial dimension but not in the temporal, for we do not have a sense of living history.

Consciousness is a very recent acquisition, still quite fragile and easily disrupted. Jung pointed out that, in the West, consciousness has been developed mainly through science and technology—not through art, social interaction, cultural development, or spirituality. The unconscious has been left behind, and is thus in a defensive position.(Letters II, p81)
“We in the West have come to be highly disciplined, organized, and rational. On the other hand, having allowed our unconscious personality to be suppressed, we are excluded from understanding primitive man’s civilization… The more successful we become in science and technology, the more diabolical are the uses to which we put our inventions and discoveries.”  (C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews & Encounters, p397)
Consciousness is a gift and could be used to go along with Nature, were we to align it in that direction. Jung’s concern was that, as a very young species, we have an inflated idea of our own importance... His conclusion was that we have reached the limit of our evolution and can go no further until we attend not to the development of more consciousness, but to an unbiased understanding of all that we are:
“Discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization.”  (Letters, I, p537)The above was excerpted by permission of North Atlantic Books (Berkeley, CA) from Dr Meredith Sabini's Introduction to her book, The Earth Has a Soul: C. G. Jung on Nature, Technology & Modern Life  (2002). She suggests purchase through local independent booksellers in the first instance. 

http://www.ecobuddhism.org/wisdom/psyche_and_spirit/sabini_jung/

entering the healing grounds

Working with the soul, you work at geologic speed, learn its rhythm because this is how the soul moves ~ Clark Barry                                                            Part of this has to be a discussion about wisdom

We must reintegrate perspective deformations, and possiblities, back into being which means we must stop definining being as pure plenitude (or extension) and reconceive the world as abyss.

Merleau-Ponty  The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existental Philosophy)

 

NOTE: Go back to Hylo as a concept of matter: hylo - series of 5 red images from 2001