HUMAN AND NATURE

I have found that when we talk about human beings, it is inevitable to talk about nature and the relationship between nature and people. Because the environment is the most important factor in human existence. So I want to explore the relationship between humans and nature.

When we talk of nature, there is an important thing is what are we talking about we discuss nature? Nature is a concept which means that it has been developed over the years over the centuries, over the millennia. It has gotten a specific content there are many ideas which are attached to nature. Nowadays, a quite dominant narrative is that nature is somewhat a static equilibrium. Static equilibrium meaning as if nature is not so much supposed to change a second feature would be that we human being are considered to be outside of nature, so not taking part in it. We are changing it but that’s because of our actions and if our actions would stop then nature would again turn into some kind of static equilibrium and third thing that I notice here is the idea that although we are outside of nature and we have kind of changed it course there’s also this idea that we could change it back, we can fix the problems that we’ve caused ourselves. So these three fault narratives are at the end quite mechanistic in the idea that we’ve changed the machine as the outsider the machine of nature. And we find ways to fix it, again.

And at the same time, I want to introduce a term which is crucial here, it is dualist. Dualist means that we consider ourselves to be outsiders. Dualism is a way of thinking, in which there are always opposites. Culture is different from nature, man is different from an animal, technology is different from organic movement or whatever. So if are talking about these three features. One was that nature was a static equilibrium, if we think about how nature works, of course, there’s nothing static about it, nature is violent, nature is always in change, nature can be extremely unexpected. Also for biologists. So the first feature actually makes no sense which means also, there’s nothing to return back to, there’s nothing to restore, there’s nothing to protect maybe even. About the second feature, that as we consider ourselves to be outside of nature, it is not the case too. We are not outside of nature. We are in all possible ways we are a part of it. And the third aspect as if we can restore it, yes, we changed its course and of course, we can change it again. Whereas there’s no way that there will be some kind of restoration. So what we should focus on is not finding your quick solutions but rethinking nature from a very different perspective which is not mechanistic and which is not dualist. It has been for a long time already. We can see a monist’s idea at work in the works of Nietzsche, for instance. In the 70s, there was Gregory Bateson, he wrote a book “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”. He gives us all kind of examples of how our mind is part of everything that happens around us.

There is another book I have to mention here, which is a short text by French philosopher and psychoanalyst. His name is Félix Guattari.

He was writing a lot about ecology near the end of his life. The best one of the most influential one is a text which called “Les trois écologies” (The Three Ecologies)（1989）Which discuss ecology but in such a way that it actually touches upon many different problems that we are confronted with today or many of the crises that we see today.

By the tree ecologies, he wants to think about ecologies as the environment issue, a social issue and a metal issue.

Félix Guattari takes up the ideas of Gregory Bateson, he calls this ecosophy. Is a very important term, it’s a mix of ecology and philosophy. So it is thinking not so much about the ecology it is thinking ecologically which means to think according to everything that’ going on. But it has to do with a kind of search for a way of thinking which is not so humanist or anthropocentric which is not putting ourselves outside of nature. So this has a big consequence also for the concept of nature itself. It means that nature does not so much end with the physical environment. Nature is a monist term which means that it includes pretty much everything. Thinking ecosophically means that we have to take into account the environmental the social and the mental in every possible way. It means that where we are somehow detached from the earth that’s all around us is actually the same problem as the social detachments that we found in our society today so the fact that we do not know our neighbours anymore. We have no communities anymore. Is actually a similar consequence of modernism as the environmental detachment. And following Guattari, this also takes place in terms of mental detachment. He takes this ecosophy very seriously. He shows that, to put it very negatively that we’ve only understood a very little part of the problem that is dominating our society today.

Guattari in the end, is not so much interested in finding solutions, but he is a Marxist, he is coming from a generation of militants and this means that he is very keen on finding ways to make this a discussion that’s not so much limited to philosophy but should be a social discussion, it should be part of the society. We should think ecosophically with our scientists and with our neighbours in order to see how we can live this world differently.

What makes humans different from all animals? I am thinking about maybe the physiological structure, especially the part of the brain has a big improve to construct special emotions and consciousness. So that I have the research about the difference between human and animal in physiological structure.

Here is an article about "Memory for stimulus sequences distinguishes humans from other animals"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170620200012.htm

Summary: Humans possess many cognitive abilities not seen in other animals, such as a full-blown language capacity as well as reasoning and planning abilities. Despite these differences, however, it has been difficult to identify specific mental capacities that distinguish humans from other animals. Researchers have now discovered that humans have a much better memory to recognize and remember sequential information.

Reading "Regarding the Pain of Others" by Susan Sontag

This book really driving force my project.

"Reality has abdicated. There are only representations: media."

"Newspapers did not yet carry photographs when Baudelaire wrote. But this doesn’t make his accusatory description of the bourgeois sitting down with his morning newspaper to breakfast with an array of the world’s horrors any different from the contemporary critique of how much desensitizing horror we take in every day, via television as well as the morning paper. Newer technology provides a non-stop feed: as many images of disaster and atrocity as we can make time to look at."

"The problem is not that people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs. "

"Central to modern expectations, and modern ethical feeling, is the conviction that war is an aberration, if an unstoppable one. That peace is the norm, if an unattainable one. This, of course, is not the way war has been regarded throughout history. War has been the norm and peace the exception."

Maarten Brinkman

"In my art I explore the line between the mundane and art, between reality and perception."

The form of his work is very attractive and very powerful. There is a tension in his work, which is very realistic but at the same time is non-realistic. His woke inspired me that I should try to find a way to using the most simple and basic materials, but find a way to express their relationship in a very direct and powerful way.

ZHANG HUAN

“The body is the only direct way through which I can know society and society comes to know me. The body is the proof of identity. The body is language.”

This work really touches me. Not only his works but also his motivations.

Homeland (2001) is a series of photographs of a performance of the same title. Carefully composed for the camera, these images function as stills, documenting actions in which the artist pushes his body to extremes. Zhang has always used his body as a metaphor for the Chinese people and to comment on the rapid social and economic changes taking place in China. His performances and the resulting photographs are radical, politically provocative and, at times, masochistic. In his ongoing and explicit use of his body as a vehicle for self-expression, Zhang tests society's boundaries of acceptability in the artwork. For this series of photographs Zhang-who has worked extensively outside of China-returned to his native land, to the city of Qufu in the Shandong Province. This province has one of the largest populations in the country and some of the poorest living conditions. The quickly developing cities attract farmers and young labourers looking for work, who often abandon their land and villages, leaving behind the elderly, children and increasingly depleted farmland. Zhang has said that on returning to China, he looked at the sky and the earth and found them to be'indignant and soulful ', so he created the performance in an attempt to alter that state. He turned his body into something animal, disguising it entirely-apart from his face – with large slabs of raw meat that grotesquely exaggerate his shape. In the images of him burrowing into the ground like an animal, Zhang's meat' suit 'creates a protective sheath around him. but when he stands up, the blood-red casing makes it seem as if Zhang's skin has been flayed.

DANNY TREACY

"When locating the clothing, I take on the role of explorer. that is not to say I wear a pith helmet; more than when I am alone in an environment which I sense has a furtive history-- what I term a "fertile ground"- the clothing become totally coded in its context and ceases to be mere clothing. the human who once occupied it become alien and I am left to piece the clothing together based only a sense of its charged presence."

Nika Neelova

Nika Neelova makes sculptural installations out of reclaimed architectural features and burnt timber. Disassociated from their original use and re-composed in her new arrangements, these old beams, casts and worn ropes exude their own original energy as well as their heritage. They have become something other than what they were, while retaining a feeling of oneiric repetition – claiming a life of their own and a new purpose but still clawing onto a past one.

Her work made me think, maybe we can't see the trace of the process in the final work, but the process is important and it gives the work meaning.

Franz Erhardt Walther’s Körpergewichte (1966)

A long band of cloth, invites two gallery visitors to sling the object around themselves and lean back for counterbalance at about four meters apart.

Walther noted: “These objects are only instruments, they have little perceptual significance. The objects are important only through the possibilities originating from their use.”

Susan Sontag -- Styles of Radical Will

This book contains part of Sontag's collection of essays. It covers topics such as film, literature, politics, and art. One of them that was most useful to me was the "Aesthetics of silence". How art exists in silence, through self-cancellation. Her analysis of several major functions of silence is very interesting: Confirmation of the lack or abandonment of thoughts, the openness of time for the expansion of thoughts, the maintenance of the integrity and seriousness of language, and the artist's silence stems from "absolute" quality behaviour. And combined with the theory of relativity, he puts forward: "Without silence, the whole language system will collapse."

There is also an analysis of Bergman's "Persona", which analyzes the double meaning of the heroine's "silence": "As an absolute about her, refusing to speak is obviously a form of her seeking moral purification; but at the same time, In terms of behaviour, this is also a powerful and means she uses to manipulate and confuse her chattering nurse companions, an abuse, and a strong position that is virtually unchallengeable. "
There is also an article on "Dramas and Movies". I like it very much because I am very obsessed with movies and theatre. She analyzes the essential difference between drama and film, and whether movies can replace drama. And analyzes an important non-dramatic function of the film: making fantasy, virtual fantasy. There is also the issue of comparing places, that is, the difference between the audience's environment when watching a drama and watching a movie. In the theatre, "the space is static, and the space displayed on the stage is as unadjustable as the distance between eyes and glasses." "But in cinemas, the audience on the seats is physically fixed, but they serve as aesthetic The subject of the event is not fixed. "In the theatre, the audience cannot change the angle of their field of view; in the theatre," As the camera continuously switches between distance and direction, the aesthetic experience of the audience is also constantly changing. "
There is another article that I personally like very much, and Sontag talks about French director Godard. Godard is a film director I like very much. I have seen all his films. Compared with other directors, his films are very literary and poetic films. It is also mentioned here that Godal himself concisely defines the film as "the analysis of certain things through images and sounds". Godard used "thought" and "text" in his films, which is the point of view of the film gradually disappearing in the narrative process. Another feature is that Godard will arrange "sudden insertion" plots or voice-overs in the movie, directly explain to the audience what the character thinks, or comment on the story or remind the audience ironically: they are watch movie. And he sighed in his movie: "Movies are the most beautiful lie in the world." Godard has achieved a movie revolution in a certain sense, and he proved with his actual actions that "language can also be used as a movie Theme of."

Ben Tufnell -- Land Art

 This is a book about Land art. A book that can learn a lot. There are eight chapters about 1. Simple, Practical, Emotional, Quiet, Vigorous; 2. Entropy and the new monuments; 3. Construction and Experience;4. Body and Landscape; 5. Working with Nature; 6. Regeneration; 7. Cosmic Cycles, Private Rituals; 8. Another Place