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:

http://www.bytwerk.com/sierra/2013.htm

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 50^th 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

rangers ranging roads in the John Muir

By Duane McDiarmid

Is wilderness for wilderness or our entertainment?  — The wilderness act at inception seems to have placed wilderness itself as the 'boon winner' of the act—but times change and broader cultural values erode inceptions.

Wilderness Rangers—those who might rove in the wilderness observing, learning, assuring our compliance with 'our own' legislation are subject to quantitative evaluation of their working tours—how many fire ring cleanings and obliterations were accomplished? Quantitative accounting that shifts the drift toward measurable tasks and away from the range of possibility and roaming the range—lotta range going out of the rangering ‘business’.

My escorts and friends in casual conversation admit that as rangers they, like the wilderness visitor, rarely get more then 100 feet from a designated or a user created trail—(on their days off  these wilderness rangers do go ranging and hiking this is when they deeply penetrate the land, but they  must do this on their days-off. I, to use business terminology as we now do with every thing ;-(, as a ‘consumer’ of rangers found that what I valued most was their knowledge of far flung mountains, lakes, and passes--their first hand assessments of terrain and trail and even more their insights regarding the plausibility of off trail travel. The gaining of this knowledge they did largely on their own time and own dime, and that seems not just unfair but possibly misguided—for I would prefer rangers as guides to rangers as maids—If we as a community (those entering wilderness) need a maid in the wilderness maybe we should confront that rather then  have someone else sweep it under the pine needles—but back to my earlier discussion: “My escorts and friends in casual conversation admit that they as rangers, like the wilderness visitor, rarely get more then 100 feet from a designated or user created trail”

—these 200 foot wide swaths I came to call the corridors of sacrifice for a variety of reasons—1^st they are often ‘over exploited’ and show the wear and tear of  a low value motel where the incremental torments of too many overnight guests has matted the carpets, dented the lamp shades and left a plethora of hairs, toe-nail fragments and unidentifiable stains beneath your feet. Fire ring obliterations polka-dot portions of the corridor so densely that one confronts a field of ash and minute foil fragments occasionally sporting  larger trash gem-stones of magenta fruit bar wrapper—maybe just a little corner of it ....This micro trash and charred detritus lies like a veil and is in turn is veiled from our contemplation by rangers who relocate, gather up, and spread out the obvious signs of over use--sprinkling pine needles aesthetically over the compacted soil—a similacra to assure the next camper might receive that solitude in the wilderness feeling.

No road building is a hallmark of the wilderness act legislation, but I would contend that infact the JMT (John Muir Trail) and PCT  (Pacific Crest Trail) are road--or at least operate as roads within the wilderness areas. Thus as unpopular as it will be to say they are destructive to the ‘Wilderness Character’ the wilderness act seeks to assure. They are roads in my mind due to the following criteria—many to most traveling them are primarily concerned with getting from point A to point B unobstructed. Travel time and efficiency of movement are highly valued, and the natural light conversation of trekkers routinely lists entrance and exit points with little discussion or mention of  what transpired in between. These major artery “Trails” have a fixed location, to maintain this fixed-ness a rather extreme and artificial human labor is required--sure all done with hand powered tools, but there is a constant battle between the plasticity of the environments and the trail paths that cross them.

The ‘’Trail’ character remaining consistent as it crosses greatly varying political designations has somehow become valued above the local needs of the 'character' of these differing jurisdictions—the JMT and PCT are consistent as they cross from national park to wilderness area—just as highways are consistent as they cross from Nebraska to Iowa. You can not know you are in a wilderness area by the nature of the trail or conditions of its character. It occurred to me that there might be something un-wilderness about a path way that will not yield it’s course to a fallen tree—that aligns boulders in rows that resemble curbs—that is a foot or more deep trench from pounding traffic—that has standardized passage of 10 feet of overhead clearance and 8 feet of breadth to assure the passage of beasts of burden. Burdening beasts that deliver goods to wilderness trekkers and campers…Should the beasts of  a wilderness be toiling  to serve human needs is another good question to consider when assessing this notion of wilderness character—and now character slips across a boundary of usage and meaning as well….for we must question the dare i call it nobility or lack there of that we demonstrate as part of the wildernesses animal family.

Duane McDiarmid, who  blogs here as abracadabra:

On  abracadabra...

For centuries Art served people as a ‘medicinal vision’ used to examine and ‘salve’ the collective condition. My work seeks to function in a manner akin by fostering a complex matrix of responses regarding multi-faceted societal realities—or anxieties... I presume our collective condition is best described collaboratively using slippery poetics that allow us to laugh at ourselves and critique through celebration the contradiction-laden whole of being a human and human family. My work is then an abracadabra from which clarity might emerge from the absurd.

I once spoke to millions through television adds urging the buying of frozen pizzas…and would you please frequent a place called da*ry queen--where there is no milk. This practice became very distressing despite my then healthy fiscal bottom line-- I moved my ‘talents’ towards the service of smaller and less lucrative audiences and exploring tactics that value democracy and lead to creating work primarily for happenstance recipients in less traveled regions of geography and social classes.

Now it seems we in the ‘art vanguard’ have a purported interest in ‘community’ – but too often I’ve seen the use of this term community analogous to the way in my advertising days we used ‘dairy’ when promoting a franchise queen. Indicating something that should be present but is substituted with something artificial--a sanitized re-definition of community that covertly excludes anyone unsavory and thereby affirms the entitlement of a limited center. I raise my concern: Can art be made that serves whole communities inclusive of those we might be tempted or wish were not part of our community? How do we think of Family vs Sanitized Family—How do I as artist begin to serve the too creepy uncle, the derelict brother, the bi-polar holiday destroying mother? How might I reach these fellow humans, and do so with my own humanity intact? These paragraphs from my artists statement are extended when whom we serve transcends human interest altogether—can art do that?_

In wilderness I think we have to consider wildness as the ‘client’ wilderness is a community of geography, creepy cousins called mosquitoes, bears, clean water, balanced bacteria, delicate wildflowers and ancient rock slowly rising and crumbling—how does my artist mind eye and actions of body come into discourse with this community—how does wilderness receive the boon and kudos of my work????? It will take some abracadabra

zoom into this picture and enjoy the magic world of the mosquito netting--wherein members of the wilderness community are rendered unwelcome by me-- at evening in the tent  they were lovely fairies dancing all around the dome globe of my enclosure--my isolation from the wilderness I was here to experience-- out in the evening wrapped in garments for protection they were unwelcome relatives wrecking my perfect thanksgiving...In fact they are vital transient members of the community--and I learned their bites were far less annoying--no swelling, no itching then the mid-western and eastern mosiquitoes I know far better--in the sierrasmosquitoes were a pin prick and nothing more--still I slathered DEET more often then I ought have