Ecopoetics: Literature and Ecology

A blog for Jennifer Scappettone's Arts Core course at the University of Chicago, Winter 2017

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Final Project

Ben Shafer

Here it is: A Brief History of American Materials. Although I hope to continue extending this work in the future, this is the final product for now. I hope you like it.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN MATERIALS

It has been such a pleasure to get to know all of you this quarter. I have enjoyed experiencing your styles and ideas, and I encourage everyone to keep writing, and to never stop thinking about our role on this planet.

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Final Project

I finished for real this time, guys!  I am thinking of adding parts after the class ends - I definitely resonate with this piece and am thinking of pursuing it further. It’s at the same link, but happy reading, whenever you get the chance!  - Jae Ahn

(here’s the link again, if you missed it the first time)  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VeL_S1h5Mio4QrX4L5pbfjmsVmRmOT6oetqkHu_LDVs/edit?usp=sharing

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Final Project - Sumer Vaid

I owe everyone deep gratitude for helping me with this project and giving me extremely constructive feedback. Here is the final project: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B29bWEyKUbUtd0o2WGZCczNnck0/view?usp=sharing. 

I will be completing this project as a novel before I graduate next year, so if anyone wants to either collaborate with me or receive a final copy of the work, feel free to email me at [email protected] 

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Week 10 Reading Response

Ben Shafer

Giuliana’s disorder is a state of divided duality. The film emphasizes her disconnect from something; the “something” is at the center of Red Desert, the core of its characterization and the source of its intrigue. I believe this disconnect Giuliana experiences is between the self and the environment—specifically “environment” defined as her surroundings and setting.

There are numerous scenes which contribute to this theme. When Giuliana is eating the sandwich near the beginning of the film, she freezes when she notices the piles of smoldering garbage surrounding her. She begins to recognize the nature of her surroundings. But then she just begins to eat more ravenously, finally throwing the wrapper on the ground. This highlights both her disconnect from the problems entwined through her setting, and her automatic tendency to avoid these problems, without realizing they are the missing side of her mentality. When Giuliana and Corrado visit the radio telescope array, the former is enraptured by the architecture, but fails to gain an understanding of this attempt to look deeper into nature.

           This duality is not associated only with Giuliana, but with humanity in general. Corrado represents the normalized habit of disregarding the dissociation. During his meeting with shipping employees in a warehouse of glass flasks, he becomes distracted, like the way Giuliana’s distraction is processed: his vision transfers to seemingly desultory shots of the boxes and the cornes of the room. However, unlike Giuliana, Corrado can walk it off without becoming worried over it.

           Giuliana’s soliloquy on the dock at night shows that she has gained some sort of grasp upon this problematic side of the internal duality. She recognizes the essential issue, that the “self” is dissociated from the environment; she poses the core question: what am I, that self or this problem (i.e. the environment)? The final scene depicts her newfound connection to both sides of this duality. She observes the yellow smoke churning from the towers, and acknowledges its poisonous nature and that it relates birds, who are supposedly adapting to it. Although her perception of the progress of the environmental problems is surely misguided, she has gained some mental stability now that she has realized the personal significance of the world around her.

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Sam Audette The Charles River, (a fragment)

https://docs.google.com/a/uchicago.edu/document/d/1T4BxJvENBVD5DTJ4SI-bwG3GMtjB7haGmSA5EUvBb2I/edit?usp=sharing

by Sam Audette

THE CHARLES RIVER AND ME (fragment)

a collection of poems and reflection passing through

the colonization and pollution of The Charles River

TITLE: "foul and noisome, polluted by offal and industrious wastes, scummy with oil, (scoff-  ff                   unlikely to be mistaken for water."[1] 1955

  HEAL.

 “He did not know how

to transform the seeds

of suffering in his

        store consciousness”[2]

                       Charles, did not know

Finding bars, brick and clicks on the bottom

he scoffed, like a big cough

           turns    crying                        the heat of shame with

 a fire bath prepared  dips in    like you forgot

           little smalls.  cracks in the rippes

She was cleaning herself slowly all the while

           you dirtied     in    your pile

   We have returned to hunter gatherers,

in the city

we have runagain, putrid smell

in to out, cornflakes.

  Lacking speed and force, the slow-moving Charles River will always be brownish in color, no matter how clean it becomes. River water steeps like tea through the abundant wetlands along its path. “[3]

      Bad Tea    

‘The major types of pollution have been excess bacteria caused by sewage contaminating the river water; and excessive amounts of nutrients entering the river. During the warm summer months, excess nutrients cause algal blooms that can be toxic to animals and people.

1625

John Blaxton becomes first settler in Boston-building his home near freshwater spring on western flank of Beacon Hill.

1634

Grist mill dam erected at Watertown-first of 43 industrial mills to be built on lower Charles. Dam changes flow of river, captures sediments, limits fish migration.

    1643

Dam and mill constructed on current Causeway St.  Mill ponds become repositories of industrial waste; 1656 ordinance allows dumping of ''beast entralls and garbidg'' at North St. without fine…

CYANOBACTERIA<GOD

 up there on the building

green algae building

rose and rise and rise

the colors in your history, your eyes

tell me precision

something long

                  that you have been cooking

I think I glimpse it quickly, the shift into oxygen

you wait for me,

but already faded

you smile knowing

you can’t know

knowing I only know Surfaces,

check the deep down cool blank waters

the depths of the ocean where river water see

   the lava spewing from the mantle,

Oceanic provinces of natural greed

something very different from you or me,

westwinds    in the boston diaspora

the oceanic loving greed, deep down there

that created some   thing Balance some    thing chasing itself

in circles

 this is the river mouth, the cry call song beak, herald,

crimson ocean waft, renegade, spirit from the old lands lipping

in and out onto your desolation

        in cool July

hunger after something you won’t give to grasp,

there this, is  down fall

350 meters, from the mountietes of Hopkinton

to its breath in the sea,

folding into wisdom and the deep ocean greed..

                                                                                   .

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Reading Response - Week 10

Jae Ahn

 I thought that Red Desert had a feeling of an existential crisis in it that I felt was more human than some of the other things we’ve read in the class. Watching Giuliana in the factory interact with machines and feel uneasy around them is something that definitely I included in some of my writing. How do people stay comfortable when they hear unnatural sounds? This poses an interesting question on what is the natural vs. the unnatural.

Giuliana’s connection with Valerio also interests me. Why is Giuliana so disassociated with Corrado, but not Valerio? Does Valerio represent the natural versus Corrado, who runs a factory and deals with primarily manufacturing ends? I’m interested to learn more about what sent Giuliana to the mental hospital, which is what keeps me in wonder.

I think what interests me the most about Giuliana is that she also seems to be out of place compared to everyone else. It seems that Corrado and Ugo are seen as “normal,” while Giuliana is seen as an oddity. The presence of boats is also something that interests me throughout the entire movie. Boats seem to be an escape, just like how Giuliana wants to escape, but is told by her therapist not to and to fall in love with something. I think that the camera focus also adds something that couldn’t be added in something such as a poem or a novel. It allows us to relate with a seemingly unrelatable character such as Giuliana that may be

In respect to the environment, I think that Red Desert does a good job in portraying how industrialization damages the environment around us. By using darker tones as well as unnatural cinematography making industrialization seem grotesque, I think Red Desert does an excellent job of disassociating the natural with the natural. This is especially poignant when Giuliana and Valerio are colored in bright colors (red and green?) while the environment is mostly a dull gray and yellow.

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Final Project - Jae Ahn

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VeL_S1h5Mio4QrX4L5pbfjmsVmRmOT6oetqkHu_LDVs/edit?usp=sharing Enjoy! It was too long to copy/paste into tumblr! 

Something to keep in mind - this is not the length I wanted. If I could, I probably would’ve added more exposition to each part, or added more parts as I visited more major cities. However, I think that this short story/snippet of prose is what I wanted to get across. Happy reading! 

EDIT: I realized this is due Monday next week, so please let me edit! 

- Jae Ahn

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Response to Red Desert

Red desert was an interesting study into the connection between industrialization and alienation. Giuliana is like the birds that she describes at the end of the story, forced to learn how to avoid the poison in the environment around her. 

The industrial environment consistently pulls those around her away and she is forced to look at her nature as a separate being, unable to form a real connection with any of the people around her. Even in the scene where they are all lying on the bed she laughs and smiles but is ultimately disconnected. She gets distracted, or will pull away and lean against the wall. 

The ultimate representation of the disconnect is when she tells her son the story of the little girl swimming at the beach. Clearly she is very worried about her son and, in telling him this story, is attempting to connect with him in a way she thinks he will understand. There is this bright and colorful imaginary world where the whole world sings to the girl, but ultimately Giuliana must return to the cold, foggy, and indistinct reality. In doing so she realizes that her son hasn’t been listening, and has actually been lying to her, destroying this one last possible connection. 

Even the bond between mother and child is not safe in this alienating environment, and Giuliana must retreat completely inside herself in order to avoid the poisonous smoke. 

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Creative Assignment - Week 10

Sumer S. Vaid, Week 10

Here are two more extracts/snippets from my novel. The feedback I was given last time chiefly concerned how best I could weave in the metaphor of light pollution and sustainable science. As a result, I have included a chapter here that discusses how radiation from space slowly blinds the travelers on their multi-century journey (a scientific fact). In other snippets, I further explore how the search for truth and knowledge literally and figuratively blinds the travelers. 

 In my story, the creation of the mission and the execution of the interstellar journey project has taken a significant toll on the Earth’s natural resources, which is why the protagonist is always talking about how home is distant and different from how it was when they left. Furthermore, the smoke trail left behind the ship in the universe is indicative of how humans have now begun to pollute the universe for their personal gain of “knowledge” about the universe. All in all, the story is finished and I am giving the final piece some stylistic touches (ergo my reluctancy to submit the whole project here now). 

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B29bWEyKUbUtM2Fsd3NSZ3VxejQ/view?usp=sharing

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Final Final

Hey folks -- here’s the end of it!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxczTYg4-dPMaDBuMTVUN0V6Tk0/view?usp=sharing

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

O beautiful for.docx

Hi all, 

Link to my project (uploaded to Drive for ease in access) above!

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Guillermo Zapata Final Project

Here is my final project on the midway, or at least all of the text from the project. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out how to transfer all of the images and formatting from the word document to my google document. I will be emailing a copy of the final with images to whoever requests for it as well as of course to professor Scappettone 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tUxXEIO7nGQMcBWa9IWpmqHZhl4pUhXDKOi824NKufY/edit?usp=sharing

Here is the word document (I just figured out how to upload this)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByaLQSNQuC0IbnpyTE1ReDdHUzg/view?usp=sharing

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Liam Maguire - Response to Red Desert

What I found most engaging about Red Desert, was Antonioni’s ability to render a multitude of shapes, colors, lighting, and sounds in such a way so as to grant his film a profound sense of texture. For example, when Giuliana becomes frantic about the purse that she lost in her cabin, she looks back on her Corrado, Ugo, and their friends. While they stand completely still, staring at her, the air thickens with fog, briefly obscuring their figures completely. This continues for maybe fifteen to thirty seconds, with the figures fading in and out of the fog. Not only does Antonioni imbue this scene with a wonderful sense of thickness, of visual texture, but he also uses this visual to reinforce his theme of Giuliana’s alienation.

Even the first quarter of the film, set in and around the factories of Ravenna, manages to be beautiful (if desolate), with a pallet of black, white, grey, and rusted red. As a whole, Antonioni composes this portion of the film so masterfully, that he subverts the notion of an industrial world as being ugly.

Finally, I enjoyed Antonioni’s exploration of alienation, and the spiritual struggle of adapting to a modern world. The tenuous logic between scenes, the long stretches of silence interspersed with moments punctuated by a low, metallic hum: all this serves to create an atmosphere of quiet tension—not necessarily between characters, but between Giuliana and reality itself. Someone once said that “Human beings cannot bear very much reality.” This is true, but I sense that Antonioni believes that, despite this verity, we somehow keep on going, keep on adapting. For Giuliana, it seems to be the bond with her son that allows her to do so.

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Week 10 Final Project

My final project is a real Facebook page called STOP Climate Change. Please view it there!

https://www.facebook.com/StopCC2k17/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

Additionally, if any of you are so inclined, I welcome comments on all of my posts. I will eventually create a fake Facebook page and troll my own posts, but Facebook is a social media platform, so I would love it if any of you decided to comment on my page (trolling and positive comments are both welcome :))

The page is not finished yet, but a couple more pieces I’m thinking about adding are a “recipe” piece about greenhouse gases and their atmospheric composition, a poem about mitigation vs. adaptation when it comes to overall environmental strategies, more graphics, and I may also edit the palm oil poem further. 

Lastly, printing this would be a lot of paper, and it wouldn't come across the same. So if you all could bring laptops to class (which everyone usually does anyway) that would be perfect!

Madeleine Hoke

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Week 10 Assignment - Final Project Presentation

Ben Shafer

My project so far. Since it is several pages, I ask that you only print it out if you really feel compelled to, in order to save paper.

A Brief History of American Materials

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Humans, Nature and Technology in The Red Desert

Sumer S. Vaid. Weekly Reading Response. Week 10.

Our encounters in this class with characters that live in a technologically-infused decaying society have chiefly relied on technology and industry to widen flaws that were innate in the characters themselves. For instance, in White Noise, we followed the story of a flawed protagonist, whose encounters with technology fueled his character flaws of deceit and lack of rationalism. The Red Desert takes this concept slightly further - our protagonist is flawed, to begin with (she is depressed and attracted to her husband’s co-worker) but the reason for these flaw(s) is purely biological: post-natal depression. This juxtaposition has an intriguing effect on the viewer - not only is the viewer made to have conflicting emotions towards the protagonist, but the only truly “natural” aspect of the film (the birth of the son) appears to be taking a negative toll on the protagonist. The protagonist’s encounter with industrial technology, captured in a surreal fashion by the other-worldly soundtrack of the film, appear to contribute to the festering of this character flaw that the typically sacred act of birth created in the first place.  Therefore, the director appears to be propagating one of two plausible views: (a) either that nature is not an all-pristine, benign element as it causes the protagonist’s flaw or (b) that at the current rate of technological expansion, even “natural” things like birth will have their negative consequences magnified to such an extent that the mother is crippled. 

Let us first analyze the first plausible intention of the director. This seems unlikely, given the recurring motif of nature in the movie.  The most prominent positive portrayal of nature is when Giuliana tells her supposedly paralyzed son about the story of the ship approaching the island. She mirrors herself as the girl on the island who is at home in nature until the mysterious ships arrive, and the rocks on the island begin to sing, which leads to a change in the status quo. Note how the arrival of the ship, a metaphor for technology, does not destroy nature, but rather causes it to separate from the girl on the island (as indicated by the rocks singing to the girl). Clearly, this story implies that somehow man was at one with nature on an isolated island until the ship - a figurative and literary metaphor for technology - arrived and began to cause chaos by causing man and nature to separate.

Indeed later in the story, our protagonist tries to converse with another sailor from a different ship who is unable to speak her language and therefore fails to understand her rants about her feelings. Consistently, therefore, the motif of the ship of technology informs the reader that technology is the main antagonist in the novel, not the natural act of childbirth that appears to be causing Giuliana’s clinical depression.  This theme is reinforced when Giuliana discovers that her son is lying about his paralysis - just as Giuliana begins to discuss the ship and its arrival in the fictional island, she finds out that her son is pretending to be paralyzed. This timing of events reinforces the viewer’s analysis that technology, not nature, is the chief antagonist in the movie. More importantly, technology is not just the antagonist because it “destroys” nature, but instead because it forces nature and mankind to separate by turning nature against mankind.

Unlike White Noise, where DeLillo’s evening sunsets become a recurring motif of calm and rationality through the book, nature does not seem to have a palliating effect on the human psyche in The Red Desert. This is evident not only because a natural act creates the character flaw, but also because the act of sexual discourse (“natural” as in devoid of technology by all means) fails to soothe the protagonist’s isolation. This positioning of nature has a unique effect on the viewer. This is because the platitude of global warming in the notion that one fine day, the world will suddenly end. The movie attacks this cliche by portraying the slow death of nature - nature is not made to vanish suddenly but instead it is shown to stop being effective against the psychic damage of technology first. It is made to separate away from humanity and then cause it damage. This causes the viewer to significantly rethink the relationship between technology, humans, and nature. Specifically, the movie forces the viewer to consider the possibility that technology is insinuating and separating the gap between man and nature, thereby causing a slow-death of both. 

[ecopoeticsuchicago]

Liam Maguire Ecopoetics Final Project

Project can be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jZ7h0PE9SHSzZeCpqPaevaL0Sxvtb4yMmjg4loQgTLw/edit