#solastalgia art

[solastalgiart]

📸 | snapshot

xie lian soft-launches his bf hua cheng and the internet loses it

[charonte-simi]

the sea is no long-distance lover,

and your body is made mostly of water,

and is thirsty for home. Because you, dear,

love danger's liquid caress-

the kind that leaves its salt all over you,

that wrecks your days with unquenchable want.

Because the water knows your name.

and when it calls, by god, you answer.

- Lauren K. Alleyne. "Island Girl Blues". (Solastalgia, Paul Bogard)

[edge-oftheworld]

i'm looking at the Indigenous history of Sydney as part of uni, and actually, realising how much easy for you to say fits the nostalgia/solastalgia of pre-colonial, pre urbanised country. like it genuinely fits SO WELL. every single line from the misunderstanding and often invisible struggle to 'I'll try and change my ways' (to function within a colonial system, how much of the blame is put on the individual) to the refrain of 'easy for you to say, harder for me to take' to both verses--like the self-deprecating 'i'm headstrong and stubborn and stuck in my ways' which people see and it's easy to internalise, to the 'youth that was stolen and filled with mistakes' which hits so much harder if it's referring to something like the Stolen Generation, still concluding 'i'm overdramatic and drenched in my pain', living in the moments where 'between all the gasping i finally breathe' (is that the person? the land? does it matter?) with 'a darkness that holds me and loves when I bleed, it locks all the doors and it hides all the keys' (oppression and generational trauma do that!) and moving forward to 'what I couldn't see, a glimmer of hope that was staring at me'

[mybeingthere]

SAM REVELES: SOLASTALGIA

Exhibition at The Hilliard Art Museum.

September 09, 2023 — February 03, 2024

A series of four large canvases produced for the exhibition chart the artist’s affective experience of visiting the Gullfoss Falls in southwest Iceland. These “Golden Falls,” formed by water from the melting Langjökull glacier, create a dramatic spectacle in the Hvitá river canyon. There, waterfalls more than 100 feet in two stages, carve a deep canyon into the landscape. The site was at the epicenter of an international debate in the early 20th century: in 1907, an Englishman attempted to develop a hydroelectric plant fueled by the water’s power.

A local sheep farmer, Tómas Tómasson, refused to sell his land to the businessman; his daughter, Sigríður Tómasdóttir led a 20-year legal battle to protect the land from development. The first three paintings in Reveles’s Gullfoss series take yellow, blue, and red, respectively, as their central color palette, following dynamic lines that suggest the majestic power of their namesake.

The fourth painting in the series is marked by thick strokes of overlapping and slightly translucent colors: peach, yellow, salmon, azure, crimson, a verdant green. Guiding the composition from the corners and edges of the canvas, densely gridded pencil lines undulate and flow into one another, suggestively evoking the many moods of water.

[burlveneer-music]

Green-House - A Host for All Kinds of Life - studiously avoiding the "New Age" label, they nonetheless represent the best qualities of that much-maligned genre

In an era of rampant, man-made climate chaos, “solastalgia” (the longing and distress experienced by individuals as a response to environmental change/degradation) has emerged as a useful, semi-viral concept — a catch-all term for the pervasive sense that the world as we know it is far from well, and only growing less so. But, for many of us, a problem, a trap, an ineffable hollowness, exists at the very crux of this concept/premise: how can we mourn (or even sense the loss of) that which we have never known? Especially for lifelong urbanites estranged from nature, who nevertheless grasp the severity and complexity of the problem—how might they remember? How might they mourn? Perhaps indirectly—that is to say, in an exploratory and non-dogmatic fashion—Green-House, a project birthed by Olive Ardizoni and now officially a duo project featuring long-time collaborator and confidant, Michael Flanagan, seeks to address this gap in understanding. Six Songs for Invisible Gardens, the debut Green-House EP whose 2020 release coincided with the depths of Covid-19 “lockdown,” responded to the rampant heartsickness of human and plant life, especially in non-rural areas. The packaging of the cassette release famously included wildflower seeds for the listener to scatter. This gesture (at once simple and daring, especially when one considers the logistical element) exists as testament to the sincerity and seriousness of Ardizoni’s convictions. Music for Living Spaces, the first full-length Green-House LP, followed in 2021— a refinement of the formula that enshrined Six Songs as a cult, eco-ambient hit. Out October 13, 2023 on Leaving Records, they have returned with the LP A Host For All Kinds of Life, a third entry in a series of releases whose titles have incidentally all revolved around the “for” construction: an unofficial canon of offerings, or maybe rather instructions as to how the music contained therein might, could, and should operate in/on the listener’s life and “living space(s).” Decidedly the most expansive Green-House release — one need only consider the LP’s title and the kaleidoscopic, fractal cover art designed by Flanagan—A Host For All Kinds of Life troubles the very notion of “ambient music,” a category with whom Green-House has always existed in some degree of tension. What if a song’s seeming softness constitutes its biting edge? What if easeful, contemplative pleasure can radically alter our mindset? Our very role as worldly subjects? Drawing on the works of Lynn Margulis and our burgeoning understanding of the evolutionary role of biological mutualism (associations between species in which both species benefit), A Host For All Kinds of Life is a deeply entrenched and politically grounded song suite. And there are indeed discrete songs here, with defined structure, momentum, and sway; see the gilded, sixties-evoking melodic arabesque of the record’s ninth and penultimate track, “Everything is Okay” (which incidentally ends with the release’s only human voice—a tender message left for Ardizoni by their mother). In conversation, Ardizoni speaks often of the centrality of joy—that Green-House’s very existence can be traced to a conscious decision they made to not only choose joy as an act of rebellion, but to find that joy in whatever plant life they could access in their immediate environment. In this sense, all of Green-House’s releases (and A Host for All Kinds of Life especially) embody a radicality that may elude the casual or first-time listener. To choose, model, and express joy in an ailing world requires courage, a courage that must be jealously guarded and constantly replenished. A Host For all Kinds of Life encourages the listener to slow down, take stock, tune in to the more-than-human world around them, and gather their courage and joy in light of the uncertainty to come.  All songs written and produced by Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan Bio by Emmett Shoemaker

[female-malice]

The solace and comfort gained from a positive and creative relationship to home is conducive to physical and mental health. When the human-nature relationship is spontaneous and mutually enriching (symbiotic) we experience a state of ‘eutierria’ which I define as a positive feeling of oneness with the earth and its life forces (eu=good, tierra= earth, ia= suffix for member of a group of {positive psychoterratic} conditions). By contrast, when the home environment is changed in ways that take solace away and create feelings of distress, the result can be a breakdown in physical and mental health. Solastalgia is the melancholia or homesickness you have when you remain locked in your home environment while all around you, your home environment is being desolated in ways that you cannot control. The existential and emplaced feelings of desolation and loss of solace are reinforced by powerlessness.

“Soliphilia” is the love of the totality of our place relationships, and a willingness to accept the political responsibility for protecting and conserving them at all scales. The concept has its origins in the French solidaire (interdependent) and the Latin solidus (solid or whole), and, the love of one’s fellow citizens and neighbors implied by the Greek (philia). Soliphilia is manifest in the interdependent solidarity, and the wholeness or unity needed between people, to overcome the alienation and disempowerment present in contemporary political decision-making about the environment.

[blogdojuanesteves]

ASPHALT FLOWER>CLAUDIA JAGUARIBE

ASPHALT FLOWER (Éditions Bessard, 2022), obra mais recente da fotógrafa carioca Claudia Jaguaribe publicada na França, acompanhou a exposição Quando eu vi a Flor do Asfalto entre agosto e setembro do ano passado na galeria Marcelo Guarnieri, em São Paulo. É um livro que, segundo o curador francês Marc Pottier, radicado no Brasil e na França, nos faz lembrar do filósofo australiano Glenn Albrecht, autor do livro Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (Cornell University Press, 2019).

Albrecht conhecido pelo seu conceito de “solastalgia* oferece aos seus leitores uma visão radical do mundo para sairmos da crise ecológica, diz o curador. Refere-se assim à perda de um lugar natural único, vítima das transformações provocadas pelo nosso desenvolvimento exponencial. Uma forma de "saudade", uma mistura de melancolia, nostalgia e esperança, sentimento tipicamente lusófono ou "saudades que se sente mesmo quando ainda se está em seu país." É assim, segundo este,  uma questão evidenciada neste livro de artista feito por Jaguaribe.

A fotógrafa, no entanto, vem abordando estas questões há tempos como por exemplo em seu livro Quando eu vi (Editora Punctum, 2009) onde a natureza se faz presente em experiências cromáticas e na sua forma de apresentação, com imagens estruturadas em instalações, como em Asphalt Flower, que apresentam-se essencialmente correlatas entre publicação e exposição. Uma marca que se tornou frequente para a artista, vista também em livros e mostras mais recentes como No Jardim de Lina (Editora Tuí, 2018) e Encontro com Liuba ( Editora Tuí, 2019). ( veja abaixo links para reviews destes livros).

 "Asphalt Flower", esclarece Claudia Jaguaribe,  "revisita a ideia de paisagem como um jardim, um espaço de conexão entre homem e natureza onde é possível observar a dinâmica dos ciclos da vida (crescimento, floração e declínio) como um reflexo da sociedade que o molda. As imagens de flores sobrepostas que integram-se simbioticamente às formas asfálticas e nos mostram uma superfície que encapsula a natureza desde os tempos bíblicos e que não pode mais ser separada dela. O trabalho possui o formato de uma frisa composta por partes que, unidas, formam uma única imagem." 

 As imagens da exposição, de grande formato, criam uma espécie de dimensão peculiar que propõe um jogo ao leitor: procurar entender os layers sobrepostos habilidosamente pela artista. A transcrição desta "tridimensionalidade" só vista na mostra, ganha uma interpretação para o livro por outras articulações: no projeto gráfico por dois caminhos distintos ( textos e fotografias), estruturados pelo recurso do formato Leporello**, que permite de um lado ver o texto e de outro as imagens. Um artifício também utilizado em seus livros Sobre São Paulo ( Editora Madalena, 2014) e Entre Vistas (Editora Madalena, 2014), ambos, como em Asphalt Flower, com edições limitadas e numeradas, acompanhadas de prints em um box especial, além da edição normal.

 Jaguaribe em sua longa trajetória altera satisfatoriamente e de maneira constante a ideia conservadora da exposição de arte, rompendo com formatos tradicionais e materiais usados, para além das impressões convencionais, ora em duratrans, ora experimentando assemblages, suportes esculturais, projeções de vídeos ou mappings (como em Entre Vistas), o que realmente produz um desafio para a transcrição em um livro. No entanto, as possibilidades gráficas arrojadas empreendidas em suas publicações sustentam por si mesmas essas versões como mais um bônus para o leitor que tenha visto as exposições.

 Para os editores, "A relação entre a natureza e a humanidade é uma das questões mais importantes do século XXI. A incerteza do nosso futuro e os desafios para a nossa sobrevivência física e psíquica na Terra levantam questões ecológicas, sociais e artísticas que demandam uma urgência no seu tratar. O Brasil, país de dimensões continentais, possui características e estruturas de alto contraste que tornam tal situação ainda mais agravante. Se por um lado habitamos um território composto por grandes extensões de biomas preservados, por outro, testemunhamos o aceleramento de sua devastação."

 Não deixa de ser uma representação artística de longa data encontrada na obras de grandes artistas por diferentes motivos, não apenas estruturais ou filosóficos, que vão desde as pinturas do pós-impressionista francês Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) em suas cenas das florestas- as quais eram imaginadas, até mais contemporâneos como o fotógrafo holandês Ruud van Empel, na qual as estampas da flora são uma recorrência no seu trabalho, assim como nas de Claudia Jaguaribe, respaldadas pelo processo digital, que aliás é um dos objetos de estudo do curador Marc Pottier.

 Outras possibilidades dadas por Pottier, fazem referência a captação das imagens pela fotógrafa nos jardins criados pelo seu conterrâneo, o pintor e paisagista Roberto Burle Marx (1909- 1994). Para ele "A coleção de obras da série "Meu Jardim Imaginário" mostra o encontro da flora exuberante com o ambiente urbano. As fotografias criadas celebram a excelência e a força do exotismo brasileiro onde estas são a base deste trabalho em seus jardins híbridos sobrepostos a espaços urbanos e florestas que sofreram danos ambientais, cujas cicatrizes podem ser vistas e para as quais "Asphalt  Flower" traz uma nova expressão.

 Na utilização do contraponto, as vívidas imagens da flora captadas por Jaguaribe, como nas pinturas de Rousseau, provocam uma interação temática. Para ela, entre a rigidez do asfalto (o resultado do uso de um material fóssil que ambientalistas tentam extinguir), que aqui é tomado como coadjuvante aproximando a obra não somente da questão ambiental mas também filosófica, assim como os personagens do pintor emaranham-se em meio a floresta. O resultado é que flores, folhas e o asfalto, em recortes trabalhados digitalmente, criam um "maravilhoso emaranhado", citando a arquiteta Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) ao subverter a idéia ocidental da linearidade no tempo ou do próprio formato Leporello do livro.

 A fotógrafa, com imagens exuberantes propõe uma outra realidade que antagoniza com a que de fato vivemos, como o desmatamento sistemático da Amazônia, que, como diz Marc Pottier, leva-nos à perda do discernimento. As imagens sobrepostas que adentram o corpo do asfalto recortado em forma de plantas, passam do cinza às cores neon artificiais e saturadas. "Ela nos oferece um triunfo lúdico do híbrido celebrando as núpcias de Eros e Thanatos." completa o curador.

 Claudia Jaguaribe trata seus livros como obras de arte. Asphalt Flower é uma grande foto única que  no decurso do seu formato gráfico desdobra-se e retoma sua ideia de um jardim imaginário, de uma natureza artificial ou "segunda natureza" na qual ela trabalha há muitos anos. "Seu canto é o das sereias que despertam sua consciência para o futuro do mundo", pensa acertadamente Pottier."Há muito ela acredita que os jardins expressam melhor o que conecta os seres humanos e a natureza." Ela os vê como um lugar icônico, com os tais ciclos da vida, já mencionados acima -crescimento, floração e declínio- e os enxerga como um reflexo das sociedades que os moldam. "A sua composição fotográfica situa-se entre a ideia da ruína de um mundo que parece caminhar para uma catástrofe natural e um futuro ao qual empresta sempre uma força de resistência e resiliência."

 Asphalt Flowers, como notamos em quase toda a obra da fotógrafa, trafega na ideia mais contemporânea do imbricamento entre uma estética do sensível e da beleza, que configuram o que chamamos de  arte, contradizendo a visão aristotélica em que esta última se contrapõe a práxis, uma vez que tanto a beleza quanto a sensibilidade neste caso, unem-se no compromisso com a "verdade" ao despertar- mesmo que subjetivamente,  em quem entra no mundo de suas fotografias as emoções que nos levam ao exato sentido preservacionista do qual o mundo está tão carente.

Imagens © Claudia Jaguaribe.   Texto © Juan Esteves

 Infos básicas

Imagens e conceito: Claudia Jaguaribe

Editora: Éditions Bessard

Tratamento de imagem: José Fujocka

Design: Mariana J.Lara Resende

Consultoria artística: Pierre Bessard

Texto: Marc Pottier

Edição bilíngue Francês-Inglês e numerada de 500 exemplares.

* Solastalgia é um neologismo, formado pela combinação das palavras latinas sōlācium e a raiz grega -algia, que descreve uma forma de sofrimento emocional ou existencial causado pela mudança ambiental. É melhor descrito como a experiência vivida de mudança ambiental percebida negativamente.

** Leporello é um formato gráfico que lembra um acordeon. O nome é oriundo do personagem homônimo da ópera Don Giovanni, do vienense  Wolfgang Mozart, que estreou em 1789. Leporello era empregado de D. Giovanni, e fazia suas anotações em um papel dobrado como um acordeon. 

Leia aqui reviews sobre livros de Claudia Jaguaribe:

 Entre Vistas -https://blogdojuanesteves.tumblr.com/post/104279483161/entrevistas-de-claudia-jaguaribe

 Encontro com Liuba - https://blogdojuanesteves.tumblr.com/post/185064246616/liuba-wolf-nasceu-em-sofia-bulg%C3%A1ria-em-1923-com

 Beijing Overshoot -  https://blogdojuanesteves.tumblr.com/post/173964568616/beijing-overshoot-claudia-jaguaribe-beijing

 para adquirir o livro : www.editionsbessard.com

Saiba mais sobre Claudia Jaguaribe em www.claudiajaguaribe.com.br

Saiba mais sobre a galeria Marcelo Guarnieri:

https://galeriamarceloguarnieri.com.br/

[enmusasblog]

Nya 10-spårs albumet “Songs in the Key of Collaboration” från Martin Høybye är ett soundtrack till en lång resa av interkulturellt samskapande och forskning. Albumet släpps 3 maj via Songrise Produktion. “Prompted by a serious water crisis in Cape Town, I set out to explore songwriting as a response to anthropogenic environmental impact, broadly speaking. The aim was to both explore how songwriting might shed light on lived experience, and to develop songwriting as a research practice, by making songwriting accessible to others and collaboratively share stories in this way”, säger Martin Høybye ”Songs in the Key of Collaboration" är en ny Songrise-produktion som släpps 3 maj 2024 genom Songcrafter Music. Albumet producerades av Dennis Ahlgren, och är en del av Martin Høybyes konst- och praktikbaserade doktorsavhandling ”Songs in the Key of Collaboration - Engaging with Anthropocene moments through personal and collaborative songwriting," (Aarhus University, 2023). Fem år senare ser han tillbaka på en uppsjö av möten i det projekt som gav honom en doktorsexamen från Aarhus Universitet 2023. Upplägget var inspirerat av konceptet "antropocen" - en term som antyder att mänskligheten har blivit en kraft som utövar global geologisk påverkan och skapar en framtid som inte alls är den vi hoppas på. “These crises will continue to impact the planet for generations to come. Droughts, floods, sea level rise, wild weather events, and resulting changes to sense of place and identity will follow. We may find ourselves grieving the loss of certain animals and plants, the loss of stability and familiarity. We may indeed experience a feeling described by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht as solastalgia – when we feel homesick yet are still at home,” säger Martin Høybye Låtskrivandet fungerar som ett svar på den miljöpåverkan som han kallar "antropocenens överväldigande". Låtarna har skrivits i två olika miljöer. Under 2019 arbetade Martin med att mäta olika erfarenheter av miljöproblem i efterdyningarna av Day Zero-vattenkrisen i Kapstaden. Den andra miljön var Covid-19-pandemin i Danmark 2020–2021. Låtskrivarsamarbetspartners har kommit från Sydafrika, Danmark, Demokratiska republiken Kongo, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ghana, England och Sverige. Tio av 35 låtar är presenterade på albumet. De omfattar möten mellan känslor och idéer från olika människor, länder och levnadssituationer. I samband med albumet släpps videon till låten “Dream of the Anthropocene” som ställer frågan om hur vi ska närma oss varandra när världen är i kris.

“Working with a team of artists and practitioners, I will work to spread this approach more broadly. To inspire others to share their practice, share their art. A song is a drop in a very big pond, but I believe in ripple effects and taking action by sharing ourselves, our experience, and knowledge. That may sound radical, but I believe inaction and non-sharing is actually more radical,” säger Martin Martin Høybye har släppt sju fullängdsalbum, senast "The Hourglass Sessions" fr��n 2019. Han har skrivit låtar i samarbete med människor i Sydafrika, DRC, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ghana, England, Sverige och Danmark sedan 2018. Martin Høybye har även skrivit två musikrelaterade böcker (2010, 2016). Tidigare släppta singlar är  “End of the World”, “Where the Water Was”, “Freedom Is a State of Mind,” och “We Can Change.” Diverse lovord om Martin Høybye:  'Årets låtskrivare' – SongIsland  Hederspris – Danish Songwriters Guild  Danish Music Award-nominerad (Årets låtskrivare)  Danish Music Award-nominerad (Årets album)  Vinnare av Unison Songwriter's Competition  Flera finalistplaceringar och hedersomnämnanden, (USA Songwriting Tävling, Internationell  låtskrivartävling, The Great American Song Contest, We are Listening).  För mer information om Martin Høybye https://xn--martinhybye-mgb.dk/co-write-with-martin/ För frågor kontakta: Anette Ståhl – Enmusa Music tel: 0707 180120 anette@enmusa.se

[skillstopallmedia]

Capturing beauty despite worry

We have known for a long time about the environmental commitment of Cowboys Fringants bassist Jérôme Dupras as an environmentalist, scientist and university professor. This winter, he pushes the alliance between the arts and science even further by releasing an instrumental album inspired by the climate crisis. Posted at 6:00 a.m. Solastalgia, the title of this album which will be launched on…

[faithfromanewperspective]

what we have is deeply colonial. celebrity culture always is. because what does it do to Indigenous artists shaping Indigenous culture? it removes them from their land and takes their livelihood and tells them they have to reinvent themselves every cycle of whatever kind of art they do if they want to afford to eat. and it's not just Indigenous artists who suffer from this. we all get solastalgia to some degree if we have to go through more change than we can deal with.

and art only shoots itself in the foot for this. because, if all songwriters are drawing inspiration from LA, surely there is only so much inspiration there is to draw? if all actors are in hollywood surely they all act the same, surely it's like a speciation event in biology when some individuals of a species go off into an island and evolve into a species of their own? if all writers are trying to be on the new york times, surely they are all writing to the same criteria? don't we yearn for individuality? don't we yearn for art that is better, diverse, reflective of each of us rather than a select few?

realising how art brings the benefit of social and cultural capital to community, how are we to quantify and pay its benefits and the workers behind them fairly in the absence of local communities it arises in? how are we to tip our artists, when it's a global competition for the monopoly of our entertainment or when pimps, no, far more stages removed than pimps, of those creating art, demand all of our spare money in the name of supporting creative intellectual property? how are we to ensure fair wages, when the system is designed so that the more you sell, the higher the cut of what you sell is? spotify and its awful practices are no anomaly. in fact its injustices might be tame. how are we to let the community enjoy art when we take all our budding artists out of their local communities and ship them straight off to california to follow their dreams or fail? how do we create a local economy without art? how do we salvage what we have? i know my local musicians, but none of them are local anymore, except in friendly nostalgic instagram comments about local places and inside references. wouldn't the streets be better if they were here? wouldn't we have no need for hysteria in the fandom when we see them outside? wouldn't we have the opportunity to connect like normal people, if their only way to earn a living wage wasn't to be insanely busy and known as a face and a brand but not a soul, to millions upon millions of people?

[snappingthewalls]

[solastalgiart]

🥟 adorable dumpling

my heart hurts for hualian again tonight o/—<

[edge-oftheworld]

there's a tunnel in brisbane under the city called the clem 7. its name reminds me of the halsey song, clementine, but really--when you're in it it feels like travelling through space. it's too expensive usually to go through by car, but if you're travelling to chermside from the south there's a bus that takes you through it for $3.64 and you bypass the hustle of the city. now my boring old commute feels like that same kind of wonder--something i never thought i could feel about the bus ride I've done thousands of times again and forgot I ever did. i'm travelling through space and time, or is it in my own head, places and memories I thought I forgot coexisting all in this moment, all in the notes of this song?

i'm 16 and in love for the first time, and it's consuming me, i'm feeling too much and i have homework to do and i can't remember the last time i slept until sunrise. listening to the mouth of the river on repeat the way home from year 11 camp, not sure if i'm awake or not, the bus ride feels like a dream. brisbane is the one city that doesn't move on ever; all the people i connect to it and memories, happy and sad, i've lost from my teens or never gotten a chance to process, all the people I connect to them have left the city. i forgot that feeling. i remember it now.

sitting in my bed trying to study, i do urban design but i study it online, my lecturer is standing in pyrmont making a video and we're learning about the inner west. about the connection to the land of the Indigenous people of greater sydney, and not for the first time i think, i'm not indigenous, but i feel it too. and i feel the fragmentation, my sense of home in different places, different dysfunctional places, i never did find a place where i'm able to get my needs met. hopefully i get to create one one day. she's talking about the evolution of landscape through colonialism and whatever else, all i hear her saying, is the city tends to move on all the same. sydney always did. i knew there was hope and i knew the nostalgia was lost when they built the train bridge over the georges river at east hills. and i have something to do with my life and a defense against the frustration of traffic i never did learn to handle, but at what cost? in undergrad we learned the term 'solastalgia'. and i know what it is for me and i can't imagine how far away usamerica is or having to go there to create. i create all the time. i don't get anything else done.

where is home? my two cities are only a train ride apart, or a short flight. but i've never seen the homes of my ancestors. they live in me but i don't know them, i don't know their land. i want to. i want to connect to places in lots of places. i want to integrate them all into who i am. i want to discover things about myself i see in other people like i do even with more distant family here. i need to make peace with my high school self too, how do i go about that? how is it a song that's putting the pieces of me together and it hurts while it does, but maybe i can study the ways in which the city moves on meanwhile. cities are my art and it always hits home when i see them represented in my favourite form of communication, music. it's like someone photocopied my brain. God, perhaps. maybe I am the photocopy. and i'm okay with that. i'm okay with learning from what other people create. it's what i do i guess. but 16 year old me? who discovered urban design for the first time without knowing what it is? am i ready to face her? i have to. or i won't ever concentrate on anything else

[musings-of-the-friendly-nerd]

The Beautiful World

Our world is not beautiful, but at the same time it is. We have beautiful landscapes and are making incredible technological advances each and every day, and yet what use do we have for them? Sure, one can complain that our generation has been left with the debt of the very generation that blames us for shortcomings imposed on us, but the most dangerous part is the world we are developing in. Hatred and fear are growing in popularity among the populations that care. As for the rest, apathy and inaction become the norm for their jaded selves.

Solastalgia is defined as an emotional distress caused by a rapidly changing environment. In the 19th century, the idea of solastalgia became common, as the more fortunate members of society no longer wanted to see the ugly cityscapes that were popping up everywhere, choosing instead to escape to the more beautiful natural world that lied there before humanity changed everything. Ignoring the slums, the vices people suffered with, and the poverty that resulted, they sat in their homes looking at a beautiful world.

This piece focuses on a gallery with a large window to the outside, a perfect scene to show the two extremes society is in. On the right, we see our protagonist, an average person wearing grayscale clothes, an analogy for the average human male figure. He’s looking at a “painting” which is really just a photograph I took a few weeks ago. The reason I chose that photograph is the serenity of the scene. When the picture was taken, I was stressed, I was not in what one would call an ideal condition. That same scene was photographed in the dead of night, and even drawn at 3 AM on one particular sleepless night. What brings me to it is the peace that it brings. Looking at the bridge, and seeing Prudential Tower through the trees, gave me the impression that nothing was wrong with the world. That exact message, while necessary for me at the time, is exactly what is wrong with the world. While it is healthy to escape sometimes and appreciate the beauty of the world, it becomes dangerous when problems and responsibilities are actively ignored in exchange for this peace and serenity.

The scenes outside are only a glimpse of the harsh reality that we face in this country. Being the child of immigrants, I chose a scene at the border, although race relations and issues of the LGBTQ+ community could also have been chosen. Here we see abstractions of a child being ripped away from her mother by a white man, child in one arm, assault rifle in the other. The only identifying feature here is skin tone, for some clear reasons (cue pointing at my own arm). Otherwise, this could be any woman, child, and soldier who for some reason this administration sent to the border. Behind this tragic scene are members of the Ku Klux Klan in their recognizable white hoods holding signs, one with a swastika, the other reading “Spic go home”, which is about as offensive as the n-word for African Americans. Their presence would be powerful enough without a blood stain on the ground. The shape intentionally suggests that the body that left it there was crawling, and it is supposed to be the father of the child that is being taken away. The Border Patrol truck is there as a display of the authority that is doing this to the innocent people, and a few dumpster fires are thrown in as more imagery to show the unrest of the situation.

Rounding out this visual ton of bricks is the image to the left of the scene. Despite it being heavily blurred, you might recognize the words “this is fine”, referencing a comic by K.C. Green that achieved meme status in 2015, and encompasses exactly what I want this work to dispel. For those that can’t make it out entirely, it’s the dog sitting in a burning room, and in the next panel he takes a sip out of his mug. This comic was used extensively during the 2016 election when we got this rogue Oompa Loompa voted into office and became the symbol of actively ignoring a problem when it could very well be consuming you as we speak. It got so bad that the original creator reached out to the satirical Political comic publisher The Nib to create a second version where the same dog screams out “This is not fine”, proceeds to try desperately to put out the fires, then sits in its chair in the ruined room in pain. This piece, like Green’s response comic, is meant to wake everyone up. This is not fine, and instead of telling ourselves that the world is all peaches and cream, and looking at everything with rose tinted glasses, we can recognize the world for what it is, and do something about it. The worst thing that you can do when faced with a problem is actively ignore it.

I started out this piece saying, “Our world is not beautiful, but at the same time it is.” I would like to change that statement. The world is not beautiful; therefore, it is. People fighting for justice, rallying for their own sake or even better, the sake of others. This ugly world gives many the chance to prove the beauty of it by standing together and making it better for future generations. This can all happen, we just need to stop ignoring the problems around us, and do something about the world we’re in.

[cursed-mars-bars]

Thank you @abiaswreck for tagging me!

Tag Game: Put a playlist on shuffle, list 10 songs, and then tag 10 people.

Just Pretend by Bad Omens

Domino by Stray Kids

The Night That We Met by Lord Huron

Fire on Fire by Sam Smith

Happy Pills by Weathers

Project by Chase McDaniel

About Damn Time by Lizzo

I Ain’t Worried About It by One Reuplic

Rock Show by Halestorm

Roundtable Rival by Lindsey Stirling

I’m sorry if you have already been tagged by someone else!

@tasteleeknow-new  @mxxndreams @starrgaziinggg @yoongihan @skz-bb @thebangtancloud @solastalgia-art @freckledivy @ambivartence @hyunskizzz 

[thedailyhaley]

SOLASTALGIA - Bea Fremderman - Dismagazine

Do you experience this feeling of dread in relation to ‘eco-anxiety’ on a daily basis?

I think my eco-anxiety has transformed into eco-paralysis. Meaning that I know the ecological problems that we are facing are larger than what we can control and I’m really unsure what to do about it on an individual basis. Changing my light bulbs, recycling and taking public transit can only do so much at this point. Only a much larger, top-down change must happen in order for us to prevent our planet from warming further.

How do you see your work and art practice in relation to the feeling that the direction the world is moving is beyond our control? Is it born out of hopelessness or hope?

I think my interest is born out of hope. Foreseeing or hoping for an apocalyptic ending is really a deep desire for a radical societal change.

What’s it like to work with materials that seem to corrode with time?

I knew I was working with ephemeral materials when I started the project and part of the process was seeing what would happen in time with the objects. What I found interesting is that I was using materials as metaphors for how nature takes over humanity and in the end nature did in fact take over the work and did what it wanted with it. The chia on the clothing died; the fruit dried causing the sutures to loosen up or tighten depending on the fruit; mold grew on the lint bowls and finally the brick wall sprouted enough cherry radishes that it uprooted the wall and partially collapsed. I knew the exhibition was going to change and there was nothing that I could do about it. That really adds to the show. Change is part of it, decay is part of it. Instead of seeing these changes as elements that take away from the work, I see them as an additive-process.