Rooting ourselves / Rotting ourselves
Looking for solid ground and turning into one
Getting nourished by the earth
In times of volatility, one longs for a firm, stable soil to ground in — a place to stretch our roots and absorb rich earthly nutrients. Although materialism can have a pejorative connotation, I believe that a re-connection with the corporeal and the tangible (the matter) is what we need in these liquid times, particularly concerning our online affairs.
Recently there seems to be a general disenchantment with social media, especially for creatives, as time reveals how fragile, oversaturated, unreliable, and money-driven they are. Although I am not one who has ever been too enthusiastic about social media (maybe I prefer to see it as a place for archival), I have tried to post regularly on Instagram in the past, making it part of my art practice. And, even if it has some benefits, it has never surpassed the joy of sharing art with other people (my own artwork or others’) in real life, via art fairs, exhibitions, or workshops. My interest in becoming an art therapist also stems from the idea of offering alternatives to a world surrounded by screens (vs. tangible materials), consumption (vs. creation), and data (vs. narrative).
We all know the feeling of getting sucked into a digital time vacuum and coming out on the other end feeling a mix of alienation, uproot, and tiredness. It makes me wonder if I truly want to participate and share my art practice in this vortex — in the end, the medium is still the message. To me, art is the bridge between the material, the spiritual, the emotional, and the world outside ourselves, so it deserves a special place to reside in. A solid, rich, corporeal one. This might also be why I prefer working with traditional media: textiles, print-making… (Of course, by this, I do not intend to negate the possibilities and advantages of technology, but rather, how we use it)
Julia Cameron talks about “filling the well” [1], the process in which we replenish our creative sources (ie. resting, having fun, taking inspiration, seeking magic) to prevent or cure burnout. I like to think about it as bending down, touching the soil, getting our hands dirty, wiggling our roots under the earth, saying hello to the rhizomatic network, absorbing water and minerals, and letting go of withered leaves. Nature and life are the biggest sources of inspiration.
We are bodies, corpus, matter, after all. We are nature, not a separate entity. Connecting to the world is connecting to live narratives.
Nourishing the earth
The heritage of Cartesian dualism further feeds into the separation between what we deem to be the subject (us) and the object (nature), denying the natural processes and cycles of life and death by separating ourselves from what we are and belong to. The slowing down that comes with closure (the death part of the cycle) comes at odds with the nature of capitalism. There are no closures when constant production and FOMO are the norms. Humans, as natural storytellers, need the beginnings and ends that all narratives present; not an infinite scroll or a constant update. We need winter, dead leaves, hibernation, naps after big meals, decomposition, crying, compost, accepting our ephemerality, rest, rust, and rot.
In rejecting our corporeal nature, we hold onto narratives of addition without decomposition. We are constantly increasing productivity, seeking to improve ourselves, and adding data and information to every bit of life — constant sedimentation without letting the sediments set in.
With perpetual production, a different kind of by-product also comes with it, one pertaining to what we consider “waste”. This is another example of how we separate ourselves from “otherness”, from what we refuse to associate with us, from our shadows and the consequences of our activities. Waste is often synonymous with “not useful” and quickly discarded. Of course, even if we ignore it, hide it, or off-load it to the margins, it still is part of life. The post-consumer world is still part of the world (I often think about this when I flush, drain, and dispose of garbage in general… where does waste really go once it is out of our eyesight?). The things that we reject are always present in some way or another. Mary Watkins, speaking about how James Hillman directs us to turn our attention towards what the marginal and symptomatic (what we discard) have to say to us, says: “We are not to move quickly to an eradication of symptom, but to listen carefully to its messages. To do so requires us to participate alongside that which suffers, to apprentice ourselves to that which we might otherwise try to dominate, to hear its critique and discern its implicit vision.” [2]
Composting is processing what we accumulate, letting rot make space for new things. Waste can be reused and recycled. Manure has the potential to become a rich, nourishing soil. Seen in this way, death is just a step before life begins again. Sophie Strand says: “Decay is always a day, a microbe, a rootlet away from sprouting” [3]. A heap of plant and food waste soon turns into soil filled with rich nutrients and organisms. One where we can stretch our roots. Some seeds need darkness, moisture, and silence to sprout. Earthworms digest decomposing plant matter, some fungi thrive by eating dead trees.
As we let things die instead of holding onto them, we close chapters to clear up space — stepping into the unknown, fermenting our fears and doomerisms into something new. Is closure an end when genesis is on the other side? How can composting be integrated into our art practice? What role can technology play when creating new stories with beginnings and endings?
References + Further reading
— Liquid times: Living in an age of uncertainty by Zygmunt Bauman
— The medium is the massage by Marshall McLuhan
— [1] Filling the well by Julia Cameron (from The Artist’s Way)
— The disappearance of rituals by Byung-Chul Han
— [2] Breaking the vessels by Mary Watkins
— Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas series (These came to mind while writing this newsletter, especially her ritualistic relationship with the land and the cycles of life and death)
— [3] Confessions of a compost heap by Sophie Strand
— From death comes life by Cyrus Martin
Creative prompts
✸ Have a look at your stuff (both material and non-material) and evaluate what needs to decay. Create a ritual of closure to let it go. Once it is gone, listen to the empty space.
✸ Go touch grass (figuratively or literally)
✸ Write a story where life and death co-exist harmoniously (See Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch)