Project 1 Eco-Art Aesthetics Experience by Catherine Berendsohn- Entertainment Sans Machines
For this project I considered a few things. I have done a transformative
experience with walking in the past to raise awareness to protect the
Everglades, and I considered doing my laundry without a machine and
hanging it up to dry with safety pins like my grandmother. I loved the idea
of that, but I actually did used to do that as a re-enactor for Mission San
Luis de Appalachee, a living history museum in Tallahassee, Florida. So
even though I was thinking I don’t watch TV like other people do, I try to
avoid the onslaught of too much depressing news every day, I realized I
am glued to it so easily. And I do turn to it for my entertainment. I also
thought about my iphone, computer, I am too attached to them. So
instead of screens, I decided to just entertain myself without machines. I
actually don’t do this, I realized. I take walks, but I have not really played
full out with simple toys for years of my life. Just to go throw things
outside, or even do something not for a performance for someone else,
but just for me.
So I dug out my old items that just sit forgotten in a corner of my closet. I
went out front and played with them. I felt strange at first, sad, aware of
loss and missing. I hung out with that the first day, then had my mother
help me document my play the next day. It made me laugh, and smile, my
feet got dirty, and even though I have done certain things like that, it was
different this time. I started to remember something, a truth that is valuable
on its own in being who I am. I petted my cat, and appreciated the
outdoors, getting back to nature in a different way that got me back to
myself. I kept thinking about ecocentric versus anthropocentric, and the
way I don’t label my cat in a way of being with her. I kept thinking about “She Unnames Them” by Ursula K. LeGuin, “The cats, of course, steadfastly denied ever having had any name other than those self-given, unspoken, ineffably personal names which, as the poet named Eliot said, they spend long hours daily contemplating- though none of the contemplators has ever admitted that what they contemplate is their names and some onlookers have wondered if the object of that meditative gaze might not in fact be the Perfect, or Platonic, Mouse.”
Even as I called out my cat’s given name, I felt in the way that I interact with her and leave her a space that is present with her being, that the unsaid one she carries I intuitively recognize. I started to become aware of this respectful space I have always held for animals that was different from the demeaning and painful conversation I had with an ex-boyfriend when I first went to college, about his own dog. And I also thought about his effect on me, and I thought of “unnoticing Adam,” and the effects of being labeled, so fresh to leave this joyful play behind, and walk into an arena unawares of what was being left. Memories rose and fell and a kind of recognizing things that had been once- simple, powerful, how sweet I was in confidence and command at play when I was little, director, offering greatness to friends, “here, you can be the Mage Wise Woman, she is a powerful sage, you can stand here, and we have to escape and use ourpowers”, “don’t step on the lava!”, “Bow to the Queen of the Fairies”, and I think as a child so open, the mind has access to an ancient kind of wisdom, also as fresh and innocent as the dawn. To see invisible creatures, “don’t step there! That is a fairy ring!” Why? Because I respect these unseen souls, we are each others’ keepers, true life bonded friends. Be it the sunlight, and the leaf fall. It is a kind of resurrection I was grateful for. I saw the little girl shinning in laughter in my mother, the child so bright and vibrant and alive that gives life to us. The true value of the world. I thought of Jesus’ quote about “it be harder for a rich man to pass through heaven, than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”, and like the echo of a soulful Southern spiritual, a wisdom revealed arises from someplace effemeral yet real inside, and I find a felt conclusion in it, here, now, this is what he means. Humans miss what is the treasure that is the gate to heaven, when they don’t know what to value, like me. I am there at the gate in the light today, with air and wind and cat, leaf and laugh and promise of rain.
Linda Weintraub says in her introduction that, “The urge to give visual form
to personal sentiments, communal purport, economic conditions, spiritual
beliefs, aesthetic values, and institutionalized agendas originated
approximately forty thousand years ago. Humans have been creating art
ever since, inventing countless devices to manifest their cultural identity.”
I find often art has been dismissed in my life, shocking how effecting it has
been as an excuse to dismiss me by a label before ever discovering what
is there in me, “artist”, used as though a handicap of no value by
assumptive opinion, and I attached the breakdown, this makes an “ass”
of “u” and “me”, to assume such things. But it is all a bias against what
is “soft” like a soft science versus the “hard” sciences, such as a life
example I experienced with someone telling me that psychology is not as
valuable as physics, because it isn’t straight, obvious, and ironed down
with easy definitions like a mathematics discipline. Well, it is about people.
And we are each a universe unto ourself to even begin to unravel. Isn’t this
why I want to be discovered beyond an easy equation? There is no
formula for the richness of things unsaid where life really blossoms. So my
urge to give rise to “personal sentiment” does have value. Just to discover
the sentiment again at all was unearthing, an exhuming from its death by
smothering in a world experience where “sentiment” is not valued because
it is hard, even though it is the ephemera from which heaven is found. I
found a bit of life, of heaven, and I say there is nothing more valuable than that. I know the cost of having it gone, I recognize the only value in its return.
Maybe art is like that, a barometer of a higher society, to appreciate things
as they exist for their own value. Like to meditate upon the meditations of another living being, to notice the deeper musings of a cat. I think it is tied to leaving nature alone for its own purposes because you love it as it lives and breathes, I think it is tied to women, to leave them alone to their own devices, it was a reintroduction to the idea and experience that what I do and feel in my life is of value for my own sake. That is sad to know why it is so gone, so
unrecognized in a world desperate for appreciation of real value, in nature
and in the feminine, in my child within whose value still stands even after I
leave childhood, though my world doesn’t notice, and is desperate for
what soul really emanates from, in a place where eco artists are a need like
white blood cells to cancer, as we choke our own lives by all we don’t
appreciate, respect, and value for its own deserving that is life itself. Like
the light in my eyes, grandeur of self directed natural environments, and
the child inside us all.
I was so glad to feel free with my mother, cat, wind, movement, toys, light, dirt, and air. It slowed me down and added bonding value to the things that really matter. It was fun! It was funny! And the video added a dimension because I was surprised by things I found, like mom swinging poi behind me when I wasn’t looking! It was directed, actually, and it made real play happen. I just noticed that, it was the opposite process of what I did when I was little, so full to imagine and direct stories, and now actually needing to have someone else film for this made real play be found again.