<html><head></head><body><div class="ydp3d56851yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div>I am grateful to Tim and Renate for the invitation to participate in this discussion.</div><div>Thanks so much Tim for the introduction and posting my statement. I will be the last one from week 3. I absolutely loved all the enriching contributions on Duration: passage persistence and survival.</div><div><br></div><div>As Hans mentioned his storytelling projects <span>with members of the Navajo community </span>where he quoted <span>a man named Ron Maldonado - explained it:<br><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">“As people lose their stories, they lose a sense of their own being.<br></div><div dir="ltr">You can’t tie yourself back to the landscape anymore … In order to<br></div><div dir="ltr">know who you are, you have to know where you came from … It's a<br></div><div dir="ltr">different way of seeing the world … and it’s a history that goes back<br></div><div dir="ltr">to the beginning of time”<br></div></span></div><div><br></div><div><span><div><div><span>Duration in Annie's sound installation "Cetus:Life after Life</span>, <span><span><span>duration locked </span></span></span>in the garments in Denise's upcoming <span>"WOMEN EMPOWERED" Fashions from the frontline, and I see <span>in my own works created over the course of past two
decades, are like the transcripts of memories. <br></span></span></div><div><span><span><br></span></span></div><div><span><span>Whether it was to make
sense of my life and the world in which I have lived it has compelled me to
express the poignant narratives through the ephemeral materials like
fallen twigs that mimic the ephemeral nature of memory<span> or by incorporating thousands of layers of unknown people's clothing</span>, we all might have been finding a collective human connection. </span></span></div><div><br><span><span></span></span></div><div>Much Love and happiness!<br></div><div>Ruby<br></div><div><br></div><span><span><div><br></div></span><br></span></div></span><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div id="yahoo_quoted_3503362799" class="yahoo_quoted">
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On Monday, November 19, 2018, 7:15:47 PM EST, Hans Baumann <hans@hbaumann.com> wrote:
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<div><div dir="ltr">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br></div><div dir="ltr">Thank you for the introduction Tim. The exchange that has occurred<br></div><div dir="ltr">over the past several weeks has been exceptionally rewarding to follow<br></div><div dir="ltr">and I would like to extend this discussion. I am specifically<br></div><div dir="ltr">interested in the following question raised by Kate Brettkelly:<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">"When we celebrate the deep time of earth, do we actively overlook the<br></div><div dir="ltr">durations and experiences of indigenous peoples?"<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">My contribution to the CCA Biennial, "The Crystalline Basement", was -<br></div><div dir="ltr">in short - an examination of geothermal energy extraction from a<br></div><div dir="ltr">humanist perspective. All of the themes that Kate mentions in her post<br></div><div dir="ltr">- deep time, earth history, universalist frameworks - are embedded in<br></div><div dir="ltr">the science and practice of geothermal engineering. Regardless of its<br></div><div dir="ltr">"green" credentials, geothermal energy extraction is guided by<br></div><div dir="ltr">utilitarian concerns: how much can the system produce, is it<br></div><div dir="ltr">economically viable, et cetera. Within this paradigm of extraction,<br></div><div dir="ltr">"deep time" and other geological concerns have the capacity to enact<br></div><div dir="ltr">the sort of erasure that Kate refers to in the above quote. At<br></div><div dir="ltr">Standing Rock, Black Mesa and countless other sites, indigeneity has<br></div><div dir="ltr">come into direct conflict with the desire to exploit the material<br></div><div dir="ltr">remains of deep time.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Over the past year, I have led a series of storytelling projects with<br></div><div dir="ltr">members of the Navajo community. Early in the genesis of this project,<br></div><div dir="ltr">I was introduced to the Navajo concept (and I am paraphrasing here)<br></div><div dir="ltr">that narrative, identity and geography are mutualistic concepts. As<br></div><div dir="ltr">one storyteller - a man named Ron Maldonado - explained it:<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">“As people lose their stories, they lose a sense of their own being.<br></div><div dir="ltr">You can’t tie yourself back to the landscape anymore … In order to<br></div><div dir="ltr">know who you are, you have to know where you came from … It's a<br></div><div dir="ltr">different way of seeing the world … and it’s a history that goes back<br></div><div dir="ltr">to the beginning of time”<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Over the course of working with Ron, I came to understand "deep time"<br></div><div dir="ltr">as something that grounded him and that acted as a source of his<br></div><div dir="ltr">identity. Is this the same universalist concept to which Kate refers?<br></div><div dir="ltr">I would argue that it is not, and I would like to suggest that<br></div><div dir="ltr">concepts of deep time, earth history and the geological realm are<br></div><div dir="ltr">inherently benign. Their generative capacity and their potential to<br></div><div dir="ltr">erase, suppress or silence ultimately reflect the spectrum of our<br></div><div dir="ltr">relationships to the nonhuman world, whether this is as a source of<br></div><div dir="ltr">difference or one of connection.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Best,<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Hans Baumann<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">--<br></div><div dir="ltr">H. Baumann<br></div><div dir="ltr">310.980.4165<br></div><div dir="ltr">www.hbaumann.com<br></div><div dir="ltr">_______________________________________________<br></div><div dir="ltr">empyre forum<br></div><div dir="ltr"><a ymailto="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br></div><div dir="ltr"><a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></div></div>
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