A Wilderness Science and Art Collaboration

Aldo & Leonardo, a partnership between Colorado Art Ranch and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, is a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The project is inspired by the scientific wisdom of Aldo Leopold and the artistic genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Our endeavor is an interdisciplinary collaboration of artists and scientists designed to celebrate the lands, resources and opportunities protected by the Wilderness Act. In 2013, we are hosting one-month residencies in six diverse wilderness areas. Artists will work alongside wildland research scientists and gain firsthand knowledge of the wonders, complexities and challenges of our nation's wildest places. The result will be a body of work that creatively illustrates the value of wild areas and honors the scientific efforts to preserve wilderness for the next fifty years.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Kotwa Project: Gni Gnah Loof: Additional heads so I can see more clearly

 
Kotwa Project: Gni Gnah Loof:  Additional heads so I can see more clearly

 
Up on the Piute, the rangers had there work and I as Gni Gnah Loof was free to explore—I began wandering up slope towards glacial lakes and Icy fragments drawn ever higher and further off trail by the lure of a lake more filled by sky, my ability reach fresher vistas, and the swing of my chime filled bear can—which mediated the spaces between steps and terrain, breath and motions bodily and geologic.


The rhythms of passing over stone, the swing of the can, and the arrival at overlooks built into a trance like progression upward deeper and less cluttered. High above the tree line in a world of only stone water ice sun and the stirring of grasshoppers—I found the elusive solitude and its affecting powers—marking my way with only gesture—leaving only the muted sound of the enclosed wind-chime that stroked distance and presence with color.

 As artist and as wilderness experience the revelation was that though I performed, performing was not central and largely vapid—that is to say that an audience that shifted my actions away from centered experience was superfluous—but not un welcomed for when these gestured merged with  genuine immersion they had  the most value for myself and any other –the wilderness itself consistently and correctly unaffected and beautifully indifferent.

Gni Gnah Loof, is the central quasi-fictional character within the Kotwa Project—This Kotwa teacher, detective and creator of rituals walked and climbed over a hundred miles on and off trail. His headdress of many velvet eyes over mosquito netting obscures his physical vision--but allows for the establishment of temporal cairns to acknowledge sites of significance or to serve as a surrogate central fire to gather round.

Kotwa Project: The sound is not the medicine, only its marker. As Gni Gnah Loof wanders the talus fields, scree slopes, summits, lakes, saddles and glacial remains above the tree line he swings his rattle--a bear can that contains a wind chime. The chime within resembling thought and mind within the skull, and contemporary human within the natural environ—able to sing either from conscious swaying if free or if muffled by containment

   


Wilderness statute insists that all monuments here be temporal, that no fires burn above 10,000 feet of elevation, that no structure are erected, that all signs of human activity (exempting those of ‘heritage’ be erased, and that nature’s placement of stone or pinecone is left undisturbed—Therefore costumed discourse regarding the introduction of the exotics resulting from our presence was my primary tactic-- for anything brought in or along beyond your naked body and desires for survival might be thought of as exotic-alien and therefore intrusive upon the wilderness character—not just what’s in your pack, but also what’s in your head seems non indigenous to these places, for my thoughts were from another world, another plane, one that shifts interests toward human desire and away from unfettered wilderness and its expansive solitude.

 


Wilderness statute insists that all monuments here be temporal, that no fires burn above 10,000 feet of elevation, that no structure are erected, that all signs of human activity (exempting those of ‘heritage’ be erased, and that nature’s placement of stone or pinecone is left undisturbed—Therefore costumed discourse regarding the introduction of the exotics resulting from our presence was my primary tactic-- for anything brought in or along beyond your naked body and desires for survival might be thought of as exotic-alien and therefore intrusive upon the wilderness character—not just what’s in your pack, but also what’s in your head seems non indigenous to these places, for my thoughts were from another world, another plane, one that shifts interests toward human desire and away from unfettered wilderness and its expansive solitude.


I encountered few humans here and when I did we paused together sharing Kotwa gestures (ways of being in the wilderness in keeping with wilderness character), information of terrain, and the events or observations of our stays –but mostly simply expressing the collective wonderment of place.

One of these meeting resulted in:


Duane McDiarmid (second from the left) among the Calvinists
He was wandering through the Sierra with a stupendous pack (about 80 pounds, he said), including three bear canisters. The one in the picture had chimes in it — to let the bears know one was coming, and since they didn’t want to be circus bears, his amusing theory was that they would go elsewhere. Another had, apparently, an accordion. The third had food. He was only carrying the one with the chimes when we met. He is a fan of using tree leaves as toilet paper (not a bad idea, although at 11,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada pine needles night be less effective). A previous enterprise involved a solar-powered ice cream maker in the midst of the Nevada desert. The idea was to cause some pleasure, but also to suggest that perhaps we take too much with us into the wilderness.
We wandered about barren Mesa Lake, then over to Tomahawk Lake, which is definitely worth a visit. After a pleasant day of wandering about this high, open country, we headed back to camp.


 
The Kotwa project 2013, is a series of remote performances supported by an Aldo and Leonardo Fellowship, Art Ranch and the Wilderness division of the U.S. Forest Service to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. My fellowship was situated in the John Muir Wilderness Area. The Wilderness Act includes both highly specific prohibitions and protections but also the esoteric ‘shape shifting’ language of “maintaining wilderness character”. But who or what represents wilderness character in our era? How will we be guided across this terrain? This is the purpose of the Kotwa (Keepers of the Wilderness Act), and Gni Gnah Loof, (Hanging Fool--a shamanesque instigator and player in the Wilderness Theater).
My project recorded and fictionalized actions that sit between the performed and the simple enactments that make up living on the trail. Like my happenstance audience of Rangers, Hikers and Mule-drivers, I negotiated the legal statutes, environmental extremes, and a nuanced role-playing that is a seamless part of ‘Contemporary Wilderness’. Motivated by a schism of roles, liaison between public and Rangers, interrogator and social critic of ‘wilderness as a concept’ and individual explorer authentically seeking the transcendental eureka. I investigated how conditioned preconceptions, fantasies, fears and the re enactments of prescribed roles transform the wilderness into a theater--


The documentation of the work (panoramics posted above) interrupt themselves by foregrounding blatantly incongruous visual elements to assert a fiction that better resembles the situated actions I ‘performed’, for it is not the prop, performance, documentation but the interaction between site (sometimes inclusive of ‘audience’) and self that is where this work resides.



snapshots:
bear can with wind chime
headdress atop bear can 
headdress carin in wind
bear can with wind chime's rope handle
bear can swinging chime
bear can swinging chime & shadow 
as Gni Gnah Loof, near glacial remains












1 comment:

  1. not just what’s in your pack, but also what’s in your head seems non indigenous to these places" love that.

    ReplyDelete