#oliviaalcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Final Project

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18y0Xq06a22Oba01Quc7eZkygSFjKwhpf/view?usp=sharing

this is the first draft – to be edited

Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 10 Reading Response

I was really struck by the use of color in Red Desert. As Maya said before, it was really interesting to me that this was Antonioni’s first color film, as I felt at some points almost like it didn’t need to be, with the grey of industrialization so prevalent throughout. However, because it was in color, I think the film pointed towards specific things; for example, I noticed large contrast between the color of the main character’s skin and clothing and the grey background, speaking to how industrialization is in a way separated from humans. I also noticed that, even though the film has many grey backgrounds, the color red is incredibly jarring when it appears, particularly in the scene with the room of entirely red walls. The other most notable color to me was blue, in the shots of the beach and the ocean. The contrast of a red desert and a blue ocean gave color to the isolation Giuliana is feeling, and I would be interested to go back through the movie and see when blue and red appear – I wouldn’t be surprised to see red during Giuliana’s most intense feelings of isolation and blue when she is feeling less isolated.

-Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

When looking for a legal document to use for this week’s assignment, I decided that, rather than to do something specifically about the energy grid, I would find something more in relation to the sources of that grid, and the way regulations and laws about oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy have been changing under the new administration. Although I knew about Executive Order 13783’s existence, I hadn’t had the chance to read it over, I was absolutely shocked. I knew it was going to be bad, but frankly the order reads more like propaganda than anything else – when thinking about what I wanted to say, all I could think about was how the truth was almost exactly the opposite from what the order reads. My favorite sentence is the one that describes this most: “It is further in the national interest to ensure that the Nation’s electricity is affordable, reliable, safe, secure, and clean, and that it can be produced from coal, natural gas, nuclear material, flowing water, and other domestic sources, including renewable sources.” I am amazed that we live in a world where people can imply that energy such as coal and natural gas is safe and secure, and in the best interest for our nation, in important legal documents. I’m worried my poem may have ended up turning more into a political rant than anything else, but I felt like it was necessary to pull the truth from the words available to me as much as I could, and as I did so I couldn’t help but notice the stark contrast between what my poem says and the information the document spreads. As an end, or extension, of my poem, I have included section 3 of the document, which I didn’t even think was necessary to edit given the previous regulations that have been revoked, and I can see myself overlaying that section in my final project next to images.

-Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 9 Reading Response

One of my favorite parts of this week’s readings was Layli Long Soldier’s poems that started with “WHEREAS,” and the way she was able to incorporate news articles and writings from official documents into her poems while also interspersing them with her own personal events. Particularly in the case of laws passed about Native Americans, there is a way in which the actual words on the page seem to say something other than what they initially seem to  – although it may seem like the nation is apologizing to them, they continue to take their land, cut funding, and consistently look over the exploitation of native peoples by various companies and programs. By taking the language of the documents out of their intended context, mixing them around or isolating certain phrases such as “this land” in the poem on page 90, Soldier makes it blatantly obvious how little meaning these words contain and how fake they are. By placing these pieces next to stories about the way those documents affect real lives, she makes both of the pieces more powerful, creating a convincing work that is both informative and touching at the same time.

-Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 8 Writing Assignment

Urbanization and commercial development have taken their toll on the plant and animal resources of Illinois

fuel and lumber

the leafy prairie clover

small-whorled pogonia

lakeside daisy

eastern prairie fringed orchid.

me and lakeside daisy

sitting in the crazy

park lazy in the dazy

dark picnic on the sun.

lakeside daisy’s love

her and her yellow

fingers

ate the sun until it didn’t taste good anymore

lakeside daisy

in the hazy

fog

lakeside daisy and the smog

of the city

lakeside daisy

laid down.

bison

elk

bear

wolves

white tailed deer

went missing for a while

bluebird

horned lark

blue jay

waxwing

prickly pear cacti

black-capped chickadee

tufted titmouse

great crested flycatcher

yellow-shafted flicker

46 snakes

and 21 frog and toad

pigeon

pigeon

pigeon

pigeon

cardinal.

Working Notes

For this assignment, as I was walking around Hyde Park, I was thinking a lot about what it would have looked like to walk in this same area hundreds of years ago, before the city was here. Even though the flora and fauna here feel so mundane, it’s hard to realize that most of the trees and plants we see aren’t necessarily native to the area, and that the plants and animals that always used to be on this land aren’t here anymore. Again, I was thinking about the effect of human life on the environment, and how we create certain conditions that make it easy for some species to survive, and much more difficult for others. In the research I was doing, I found it interesting that quite a lot of the flora and fauna native to this part of Illinois actually isn’t really here at all anymore, and some of the plants are endangered, whereas the white tailed deer, the state animal, actually disappeared for a period of time before humans brought it back. I had some trouble putting all of this information in a poem, as I wanted to create lists of the affected species, but I also wanted to play with the sounds of the language and relate them to myself. I enjoyed the first part, but I feel a little bit like I may have written two or three different poems and shoved them all into one – I may end up wanting to edit this into three or more shorter poems to form a poem series rather than just one large one.

-Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 8 Reading Response

This week, I enjoyed reading The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century by John Ruskin. I found it really interesting how he made a point to keep a journal of the natural phenomena occurring around him, especially because I don’t think many people would be as aware of their surroundings to notice something like a slightly different cloud or a slightly different wind. Furthermore, I was really interested in his use of the word natural. For example, when describing the frequency of the plague-wind in comparison to other weather, he writes, “I must correct an impression which has got abroad through the papers, that I speak as if the plague-wind blew now always, and there were no more any natural weather” (5). By considering the plague-wind unnatural, possibly because what he is describing could have been created by humans from industrialization, and other weather natural, he is creating a clear distinction between human and nature, which I’m not sure makes sense – it is not as if the industrialization would only affect one certain wind at one certain time, and not all of nature continuously, even if it isn’t as obvious in other places. He made me think about what I consider to be natural and what I don’t, and whether or not anything around us anymore can be considered truly natural, as it is all so affected by things like radiation, pollution, and chemical levels that humans have added to the environment. I particularly found this line of thinking important when doing the Arcadia readings, as they also work to blur the lines between what is natural and what is human created.

- Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 7 Reading Response

I really enjoyed the readings this week. In particular, the article about Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha inspired me in the ways they combine science, design, and art to create exhibitions that change the way people think about certain problems and natural disasters. By presenting their work through an exhibition rather than to a small group of people, they are able to expand the accessibility of what they’re doing, which is most likely to create change when it comes to environmental problems. Putting Denis Wood’s pieces in conversation with Mathur and Cunha showed me the ways in which visuals and maps don’t necessarily have to be used for reference, but instead can encourage people to look at places or things in new lights, and therefore in some ways, change the way people think about what they’re looking at. For example, in SOAK, although not implemented , Mathur and Cunha were able to present alternative solutions to the flooding in Mumbai, and even if their actual ideas aren’t the ones that are used, by changing the mindset from trying to fight against the flood to trying to work with the flood, they are able to influence the ways people think about the environment and their relationship to it. Similarly, in Wood’s piece Squirrel Highways, telephone wires are changed from being simply ways to transfer power and signals to roads for squirrels to run along, again representing how man-made objects can work with nature, not against it.

-Olivia Alcabes

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 7 Assignment: Maps

For this week’s assignment, I knew that I wanted to do something involving the grid system in Chicago to go along with my final project. I have a few different things I want to highlight about the grid system in the project. First, I want to show the sources that the grid has, i.e. natural gas, nuclear energy, etc. and the effects they have on the environment, particularly in their carbon dioxide output. Second, I wanted to incorporate in aspects of scale. When listening to people talk about the grid system, it’s easy to get caught up in numbers, and I want to make sure that my final project is as personal as possible – I want to show what one person’s impact is on the environment, not everyone together. I thought the maps would be a good way for me to communicate the second part of my grid system idea. I decided to create a map for my room and all of the outlets, wires, and plugs in it, without any of the furniture, so I would be able to create a clear understanding of just how much I have plugged into the grid on a daily basis. Over the weekend, I had a chance to go to Promontory Point, and while I was there I was able to take some pictures of the skyline of Chicago. When creating my map of outlets, I liked the idea of using long, squiggly lines to represent wires, and by extension, the way the energy from the grid of Chicago travels, so in order to scale up from the singular room, I decided to add the same lines into the skyline of Chicago. Although of course not realistic, I think the squiggles in the skyline allow the maps in conversation with each other, and enables them to represent both the small-scale and large-scale ways that the grid works, and how every individual is literally connected by this energy and these wires. I think I would definitely like to incorporate these maps into my final project, perhaps after describing the sources of the Chicago energy grid, and I would be interested in adding color and perhaps one or two more scales for the maps, such as a map of the power lines of Hyde Park, or of all the outlets in the dorm building I’m living in. I may also be interested in adding text to the maps, such as news articles, data and statistics, or poetry.

-Olivia Alcabes