<div dir="ltr">Thanks for all the great questions Johannes! And response Ellie!<div><br></div><div>I'm not sure we can ever "know" fully what a plant feels -- but I think perhaps we can gain glimpses from encounters that point us toward something new or different if we listen deeply - through the body, the mind, the unseen.</div><div><br></div><div>So for me scores are a loose container, a mode of perhaps structuring or unstructuring an experience with a place, a landscape, a set of living systems. They don't have to be a text or straight forward set of directions -- but a score can be many things beyond language; a collection of rocks, marks on a page, one gesture or feeling.</div><div><br></div><div>I really learned about score-production from my time working with folks at <a href="http://www.ilandart.org/about/">iLAND - the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance</a>. They just released a great field guide that provides a collection of scores with a nice description that might be helpful:<br><div><br></div><div><img src="cid:ii_15f31c2d1f0cb0e1" alt="Inline image 1" width="562" height="453"><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://christopherleekennedy.com/" target="_blank">Christopher Lee Kennedy</a></font><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">(201) 981-1576</font></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></span></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 1:23 PM, Ellie Irons <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ellieirons@gmail.com" target="_blank">ellieirons@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Thanks Chris, for the dispatches from on the ground at the EPA headquarters. I can’ t wait for more. And Johannes, thank you for your questions! <div><br></div><div>I’ll sidestep the question of exactly how scores are derived for the moment, and address how they function, at least for me. For me, the scores (when executed out in the world in the presence of weedy plant life- they have to be enacted not imagined) are actually<i> </i>productive in revealing my inability to understand and communicate with vegetal life. A useful part of the experience for me is in that tension- right there in that moment where we run up against our human limitations. this can be humbling and revealing. In trying and failing to move/think like heath aster or horseweed, I realize things about the way I as a human perceive, categorize, and filter the world, and do so in a way no amount of sitting in front of my computer pondering could provide. And yes, it's about <i>me</i> learning from the plant, so one might ask: “where is the exchange?”, but to me that exchange is already embedded in the situation, given that we’re engaging with wild growing urban plants, shaped by centuries of co-evolution with humans under industrial and post-industrial capitalism. The exchange is baked into each of us, plant and human alike, right down to the herbicide remnants that are woven into our shared habitat and flesh. Going about day-to-day life in Brooklyn calls (generally) for overlooking the companion plants that have woven themselves into the city habitat. A periodic attempt to engage in collaborative practice with weeds, however limited by my all-too-human faculties, provides me with new tools & renewed fortitude for seeing and resisting the damaging human-centered narratives that play out all around me, all the time. <div><br></div><div>I’ll toss out one more term that came to mind as I was writing: "biocultural restoration or revitalization" as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer in <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i>. </div><div><br></div><div><i>“Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefor, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants” (Kimmerer, 228)</i></div><div><br></div><div>Although I’ve certainly spent time attempting to access the critique weeds might provide, I’m interested in applying this to what we’re building together moving forward as more and more people live together in cities. Can we escape the taming cycle that poisons us and creates ever stronger “kick back” from the beings we try to control? I just learned that on my college campus they are still “spot-treating” with Roundup to kill the broad-leafed plants that “invade” the lawn. I stood in the autumn sun and chatted with the perfectly pleasant purveyor of poisons just a few weeks ago. Of course the plants don’t disappear, they shrivel, then bounce back. This stuff is abstract, but also so real. </div><div><br></div><div>Thanks for making me think!</div><div><br></div><div>xx</div><div><br></div><div>Ellie</div><div><br></div><div>Attached: dandelion & red clover two days after being spot-treated with roundup</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><img id="m_14494698176101967848EC761C4-A99B-43DA-8C20-EE2C4360B97F" src="cid:9D0B7947-4F0C-4E4E-B7B5-3AEDAB2DAA1E@www.amtrakconnect.com"><img id="m_1449469817610196784F4044433-34DC-4212-941A-7EA6C00E6905" src="cid:B08FF400-DA80-49EF-8AB4-FBADDA772A39@www.amtrakconnect.com"></div><div><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Oct 18, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Johannes Birringer <<a href="mailto:Johannes.Birringer@brunel.ac.uk" target="_blank">Johannes.Birringer@brunel.ac.<wbr>uk</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_1449469817610196784Apple-interchange-newline"><div><div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>It occured to me, after reading Adam's last posting on his labs about animal enrichment arts, enrichment devices and enrichment provisions, as brilliantly as its strategies are formulated,<br>and as captivating as I also found Christopher's proposition that we could all be weeds or feel like weeds or work with "scores on behalf of weeds", that it is not so easy for me to imagine<br>starting at the edge of the water and dancing with fish, crows, stones, cats, algae and trees, since I would not really know how stones or plants would want to collaborate with me, and are<br>your propositions not generally formulated in one particular language (linguistic and conceptual), even the somatic one, and so how do you translate or come up with the devices for the scores?<br>And why would stones want to collaborate with us or recover kinship, in the first place? How do you know?<br><br>I remember some years back, in a performance lab, the musicians (Liquid Penguin) sat a plant on the eating table, with electrodes attached to it, and we listened to its sound and how it taught us<br>its alphabet, yet I figured the amplified sonics were deviced in the Max patch, and wondered afterwards how perverse it may have sounded to the plant to hear this translation collaboration; so my question is<br>how you want to persist in your language (including the harawayan etc reference systems brought to the table)? And I'd agree with Adam that plants, fish, and other not human species may assess things<br>showing signs of alienation.<br><br>yes how do I access their art critique?<br><br>respectfully<br>Johannes Birringer<br><br><br>______________________________<wbr>__________<br>[Christopher Kennedy schreibt]<br><br>"resistance" is happening all around us. And sometimes its merely a matter of honing what John Cage describes as our "powers of observation" so that we can see all the mushrooms in our lives -.....<br><br>This is all to say -- I would like to offer a score on behalf of the weeds -- a voice for them, an invitation for movement and reflection. They have so much to say... and at the EPA were developing all kinds of ways to translate between the human and non-human entanglements all around us.<br><br>Feel free to adapt and translate, to try out and share with the list or a friend....<br><br><br>[Adam schreibt]<br><br>. To gain access to some non-humans and to inquire through trans-species<br>communication as to their aesthetic preferences and methods of expressing<br>of art critique<br><br>7. To wonder at human culture and personality through the lens of assessing<br>human needs as if we were just another non-human in captivity, showing<br>signs of alienation.<br><span id="m_1449469817610196784cid:CFE1432C-C710-404F-9C55-87439E3B40A0@www.amtrakconnect.com"><Liquid Penguin-GRAS_SOMU_1.jpeg></span>_____<wbr>______________________________<wbr>____________<br>empyre forum<br><a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.<wbr>edu.au</a><br><a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.<wbr>edu</a></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></div><br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
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