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

Jumping ahead to the work made on trail John Muir Wilderness

ok so I thought when I wrote my first blog entry a week after leaving the Wilderness --for we were to deep in it to blog from there...I  thought I'd take everyone journal style through the whole experience from  arrivak & orientation on to discussions a day hikes, then heading out onto the trail-- touring 8 days  with the wilderness rangers--portraits of them....return to Jack Ass Base camp-- runs down mountain to town that took so long--5 minutes of phoning home could cost  5 hrs of the day...then art ideas and making  stuff  in a cabin where  the electric is from a generator--5 days of sleep deprivation to make costumes props form characters narratives link it all to something of importance...Then  back into the wilderness deeper this time and carrying  all your gear food and the art  stuff--those props and costumes, cameras to document, all the stuff your back and feet  wish you'd left behind-- s you could just walk and hike and scramble...then the project, only then with context--and I still hope too do all that-- but I have work to share and the tale I outlined  and my out line for the tale  goes on a while --and a while longer before we'd get to the work so I'm going to skip way ahead... and back fill later

I have invented this character-- a Kotwa, healer--a teacher,detective and initiator of rituals and as him I am wandering on and off trail in the Big John Muir Wilderness-- I'm thinking a bit glibly about wilderess as a Mall of sorts--the Pacific Crest Trail and John Muir Trails as Corridors of Sacrifice--where within wilderness, wilderness has been replaced by a theater of itself--a theater playing to itself but actually  to us--folks wanting entertainment and achievement badges for our  khaki uniforms. Wilderness area creeping away from the wilderness act and that slippery shape shifter 'the wilderness character' that fills in the gaps between statute--

I have become a character of that character  and my name as him is Gni Gnah Loof, I am  Kotwa, of the Kotwa People ...Now, Gni Gnah Loof is walking these broad trails and he is finding all the  fields of his vision be-specked with bright  little wildflower colors...but these are not twinkling blooms  but instead the fuschia corner of a granola bar with cranberries, or the dewy silver remains of a foil lined  pack meal burned and pulverized and set  into the breeze of flood drift-- now tiny as a microchip and as common on the trail as the smart chips are in our non-wilderness homes--there are many other little colors to, some slightly withered by fire but all gleaming micro remains of food packaging, lost buttons fishing lures.

You understand that seeing this a Kotwa must make a medicine--a potion or dance, oration or blow to the head-- and to do this he must also understand the ailment--for a medicine that doesn't know it's sickness will not be let over the ill-house threshold.

The documentation of the work interrupts itself 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 (inclusive of ‘audience’)

and self that is where this work resides. Further in the wilderness we ourselves are intrusions and

what we bring as contemporary people can be startlingly incongruous with the environment--I, 

we, us all our gear everything an exotic and a hybrid of questionable belonging...

Gni Gnah Loof’s sleeping pad has now been divided in two strips and cushioned in luxurious velvet, allowing him to walk the trail in comfort--but his sleeping is no longer so good.

Loof does not sleep during the day--you must not depend so much on what appears as to avoid the what is.

Above Loof's head, in the rosy glow that comes from sun passing through his tent's red walls, Gni Gnah Loof's Kotwa headress waits for his next excursion--but speaking of the Kotwa headdress now is to soon, so we return to the Corridor of Sacrifice and the thoughts and actions upon it.

When he is walking on the pad on the trail each time he reaches the end of one half of his pad he rolls out the other half ahead of himself—retrieving and rolling up the one he has just stepped from, now carrying  it with him so he can extend his cushioned trail forward. This allows him to continuously walk on a padded trail.

A Trail has its overlooks and vignettes..and there are windows in this trail, windows that look out of the wilderness and back to stores and kitchens. these are reveered windows filled with shiny colors. With each step Gni Gnah Loof bends to touch the ‘micro trash’ that be-jewels his path cushion amazed by the wonderment of variety. In truth  these are not real things they are props he has made--the rattle is not the medicine, nor the sound, nor the shaking--these things only mark  and make the healing  able to be seen, located, and with good fortune grasped--so Gni Gnah Loof has sewn these colors into the path with a love that is hungry for dried cherries or curried Shitake mushrooms wrapped in bright yellow crinkly cellophane. These are lovely delicious things adding colors and good substances to my food--and they are doing the same to my path filling it with little tastes of alien color and substances--be-speckled becomes the local environment. 

(Wilderness Rangers spend a large portion of their tours picking micro trash from trails campsites and fire pits this process yields mountains of trash over 40 lbs was collected on a single 8 day tour).

Out on the Trail Gni Gnah Loof hangs his Kotwa Banner and walks his padded trail, others move more swiftly on the trail and do not touch the little colors. Someone may stop and ask him what he is doing and he will try to tell them-- telling them in his way, hoping they will be made stronger less able to become ill -- this variety of illness leaves things covered in little colored spots--hives that require some more healing.