BACKGROUND + CONTEXT

From 2007, I developed a series of seven artworks, The Writing on the Wall (2007-2019), in Germany, Taiwan and the UK. Derived from Rembrandt’s painting, Belshazzar’s Feast (1636 approx.), that depicts the moment from the biblical story of Daniel, when a mysterious hand writes a prophecy on a wall. These artworks, written directly onto gallery and exterior walls, in charcoal, use poetic texts to question the nexus of climate, species and cultural crises.

In parallel, I have developed a series of artworks with communities of people (2008-2019), based on the form of a Socratic dialogue with other-than-human life forms. These dialogues have enabled people to see and engage with their world from the perspective of oysters, seagulls, trees and mushrooms.

CONCEPT + FORM

The nexus of climate, species and cultural crises demands action across all disciplines, ages and societies. This project, therefore, uses the physical phenomena of clouds as a metaphor to generate an opportunity for students from the arts, natural and social sciences to co-learn with me and each other, some ecological ways of doing and being. In this case, the form of a Socratic dialogue will provide a collaborative method of creative inquiry that is performative, non-deterministic and emergent in nature.

In response to a poem on the subject of clouds, global warming and evolution, this process will produce the content of the final gallery artwork. However, the overall form of the artwork is a multi-form, process-based, co-learning dialogue. As physicist, David Bohm, notes: A new kind of mind thus begins to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. This creates opportunities for potential ‘Transdisciplinary Knowledge’ to emerge.

PROPOSAL + PROCESS

August-September: Based on research into the biochemical and meteorological dynamics of clouds under stress from global warming, I will write an ecologically provocative poetic text. I will, also, write a proposal for how the project may proceed. The poem and the proposal will be submitted for review and any amendments will be made.

October: This proposal develops an idea that I used for my first ‘Writing on the Wall’ in 2007, in Germany. As I was unable to attend before the opening of that exhibition, I wrote a poem and instructions for two students to write the poem on the gallery wall in charcoal. To take the idea further, this time I would like to work online with your students, and those from other disciplines, to interpret the poem into Chinese, so the Chinese and English poems sit side by side on the gallery wall. It is important to note the difference between translation and interpretation. Here, interpretation opens the dialogue of difference and diversity of meanings between cultures and language. It would, therefore, be good to work with the group of students online, as a co-learning exploration of collective ownership.

November: As the final expression of the process, the initial English poem and the emergent Chinese texts will be projected and written directly onto the gallery wall, in charcoal. The students need to organise themselves as to who will do the writing and how this will be done. They may, then wish to present the texts as a spoken performance at the exhibition opening. At the close of the exhibition, the texts will be wiped clean and painted over. The artwork will have had its time.

ARTWORK

The artwork is, therefore, an English poem and Chinese text (maybe, also, a poem?), a dialogue, a choreographed and spoken performance, a temporal visual mural and above all, a collaborative co-learning process. Videoing the whole process may provide useful documentation.

CONSIDERATIONS

• Given the potential situation regarding COVID and the cost of an in-person visit, this proposal assumes that I will work remotely with students and that they will execute the writing process.
• Ideally, I would like to work with students representing at least three different art forms (i.e. visual, literature, performance), three natural sciences (i.e. biology, chemistry, physics) and three social sciences (i.e. psychology, history, economics). Twelve would be a good number to fit on screen at any one time. We would meet six times on VooV, for 90 minutes, during October.
• An exterior wall could be used, but this brings other technical issues that need to be resolved. If an exterior wall is chosen, rain, wind and sun will erase the texts over time, providing another temporal dimension.

POEM

A Dialogue With Clouds, takes the form of six stories in the shape of clouds. Each story is comprised of six Haiku poems (three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables). While the Haiku form provides a physical structure, the stories, themselves, are circular and like clouds have no fixed structure. They are dynamic in nature and like a Haiku they articulate particular patterns. The patterns, like ecology connect as they emerge.

Additional thoughts…

One thing I wanted to pass by you, regarding the exhibition is to develop an idea that I used for my first ‘Writing on the Wall’ in 2007, in Germany… Because I was not able to attend before the opening of that exhibition, I wrote a poem and instructions for two students to write the poem on the gallery wall in charcoal. Would something like this be acceptable to you? In your case, it would be good to take the idea further and work with the students to interpret the poem into Chinese as well, so the Chinese and English poems are side by side on the gallery wall. By the way, although charcoal does wash off, it is better to repaint the wall after:-)

Regarding the artwork, it would be good to have a group of students, if possible, so they can have a conversation about the ideas within the work and ultimately own the work collectively. That way new things emerge. For the exhibition I mentioned in Germany, two students volunteered – a boy and a girl. As it turned out one was right handed and the other was left handed, so the got two ladders and both wrote from the centre outwards, at the same time. I arrived to find them two thirds of the way down their ladders on the same line of text. They had learned to coordinate with each other as they worked. For me, this was far more exciting than the poem I had written and totally unexpected!

The proposal for a collaborative opening to uncertainty and letting art emerge itself is brilliant.
These all remind me of the significance of learning the creativity from nature, evolution, or Dao:

17 August 2022

Hi David

Fantastic! I’m trying to decode and interepret it first:) It’s great to provoke thinking and open dialogues.

So according to the format, your intention is to juxtapose 2 stories and project both at the same time, with the student on the left interpreting one on the left side and the one on the right responding to the other? Is that right?

Thank you
All the best
Jin

Jin, hi

My poem is something to provoke dialogue. Some of the Haikus are straight forward, some are not and need to be talked through to arrive at meanings – maybe a number of different meanings. This is how possible understandings emerge between us. This provides the material for the students’ texts.

Do not focus on the left and right writing. That was something that emerged on that one occasion in Germany. This is a new event and situation. It is for the students to devise their own way working. I offer some advice that they may use:

1. Indoors, it is possible to project texts onto a wall with a video projector, and trace the text onto the wall.

2. Outdoors, it is difficult to project, except by night, so guidelines need to be drawn and it requires students with confidence in calligraphy. They don’t need to be experts, just confident.

3. Only use natural, low energy, materials – charcoal is best

I hope this helps, but please do keep asking questions.

All the best
David

19 August 2022

Thanks, David! I see. The interactive generative process is a perfect example of emergence. I’m looking forward to it…

All the best
Jin

12 October 2022

Hi David

I hope you and your family are fine and healthy.

I should have emailed you earlier. i apologise for that. Since I’ve been overwhelmed by a lot of things. Some are good, some not.

One of the biggest of the problems is the financial issue of the exhibition, which took me a lot of time to deal with. I have to say we have a complex and very different system from yours. I’m still confused but will do my best to make the exhibition happen.

In terms of the good ones, the Healing Garden project has recently been invited to do ecoart workshops and eco public art projects in Xinyang, Henan province in the middle of China. At the first stage of a long-term urban regeneration program, we will focus on the theme of water/soil/food systems at Xinyang Normal University. So we have seen the hope of scaling up our project to reach lager areas, other campuses and communities, though still with many uncertain things.

Another good news is we have established our Ecoart Studio funded by a unique program at SCFAI. The enrolled students coming from different departments will have much more freedom to pursue their own interests for they could exempt two courses of their own departments each semester. They are even allowed choose to graduate from the Studio. It means our teaching have gained a lot of more consistency and freedom to systemically implement our transdisciplinary experiments.

So regarding the training and co-learning of the new members of the Studio, i’m writing to ask if you have time to make dialogues with my students to co-interpret and to possibly generate new meanings from your poem. I’d like to mention we’re going to do a project about a compost toilet system with functions of water harvesting, purification, alongside the Metabolic Rift theory of eco-Marxism, traditional farming, and future urban planning. Water harvesting and purification are also important themes we proposed at Xinyang Normal University.If so, i’d like to ask when you are available for it and some details on how to structure it. If you agree, I will do the publicity for it right now. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions and concerns. Thank you!

All the best
Jin

Jin, hi

Good to hear from you and I hope all is well with you and your family. I am fine, but my wife has had some issues with her teeth that have now been resolved, I’m pleased to say.

I’m sorry to hear how difficult your funding system has become, but well done for your tenacity! The exhibition will happen, but sometimes things take their own time to come to fruition.

Congratulations on the Healing Garden ecoart workshops! This is very good news, in the way that art can shift the way people think. But do be careful about ’scaling up’ – while ideas are transferable, they must pay attention to the particularity of the situation and place – difference and diversity are as crucial as commonalities. You may remember that I was Visiting Professor at Zhongyuan University of Technology (Henan Province) and one of the things I researched, apart from post-mining landscapes, was ‘Dragon Culture’. My theory is that Chinese Dragon Culture started in response to the Yellow River catchment seen from Zhengzhou. I can explain in greater detail some time, but this is important to understanding aspects of Feng Shui..

Also, establishing the Ecoart Studio, is a great achievement!!! This potentially places ecoart at the centre of an interdisciplinary academic network with the potential for generating transdisciplinary knowledge. Such emergent practice is essential for the future of our planet.

Yes, I have time to engage with the new members of the Ecoart Studio in dialogue. Connecting clouds to wastewater management systems will be good fun, as well as an ecologically insightful way of connecting the water cycle to the processes of metabolism and the stresses of the climate crisis. I would hope to help the students make these connections for themselves through a series of dialogical questions. The process then becomes the structure. Do you need me to write anything more specific now?

Time-wise, I have a Zoom presentation to the University of Murcia (Spain) on 20 October and an initial draft for a monograph book to prepare for by 31 October, so I would prefer sometime in early November (1, 3, 4, 7,8, 9?). However, if you need me to start things earlier, please let me know and I can see what I can do.

All the best
David

13 October 2022

Hi David

Good. We’re fine. Thank you for your quick response, your guidance and encouragement!

Thank you so much for reminding me the particular context of difference places. I don’t understand what Chinese Dragon Culture means：）You mean Dragon Vein in Feng Shui? Yes, maybe you could explain later…

It would be great to have dialogues with you to shape my student’s ecological thinking. Thant’s fine with us to talk in earlier November. The dates are OK. I appreciate if you could let me know your best time later this month. You don’t need to write something. But i appreciate if you have some books, online materials, some keywords or questions for us to research. I’m also thinking about the book list mentioned by Betsy Damon in Eco-art in Action.

I’m glad to hear you’re going to finish the first draft of your book. I’m looking forward to reading it. Exciting!

All the best
Jin

30 October 2022

Jin, hi

OK, you got me thinking, so I have attached a pdf with some questions and research materials for your students, as a starting point for a dialogue. I hope you find them stimulating. Let me know if you would like to make changes.

See you on Friday. All the best

David

Let us consider the following questions…

LEARNING

⦁ What are your expectations of this session – what do you want to take away?

⦁ What do you want to learn – do you have an idea of things you need to know?

⦁ How do you prefer to learn – what methods of learning have the most meaning for you and do you find some easier than others?

⦁ What is the context of your learning – how does your learning connect to other things?

⦁ How will this session contribute to your practice – will this engagement change the way you think and act?

⦁ How do you think I will benefit from this session – what’s in it for me?

ECOLOGY

⦁ What did Gregory Bateson mean when he wrote, ‘Ecology is the pattern that connects’?

⦁ What is the Water Cycle and how does it work – what is wastewater?

⦁ What is the Metabolic Cycle and how does it work – what is compost?

⦁ What is the Carbon Cycle and how does it work – where does it come from and where does it go?

⦁ What is the Atmospheric Cycle and how does it work – why is this important?

⦁ What is the Adaptive Cycle and how does it work – what can we learn from systems and processes?

ART

⦁ What is art and what can it do – how does your art work?

⦁ What is the difference between art and science and are they complementary or do they incompatible?

⦁ Are there such things as background and foreground – how do we see, perceive and cognate our world?

⦁ What are the differences between art and life, culture and nature?

⦁ What have art and the climate crisis got to do with each other?

⦁ What have art and species extinction got to do with each other?

SOME USEFUL RESEARCH CONNECTIONS

⦁ The Force Majeure – Tibet is the High Ground (2009) – Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison ⦁ https://theharrisonstudio.net/the-force-majeure-works-2008-2009-2 ⦁ Pp 7- 19

⦁ The Force Majeure – The Garden of Hot Winds and Warm Rains (1996) Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison https://theharrisonstudio.net/the-force-majeure-works-2008-2009-2 P 5

⦁ Biopolis https://www.biopolus.net/

⦁ Panarchy – Gunderson and Holling https://passel2.unl.edu/view/lesson/2e6e3c012632/2
https://www.resalliance.org/panarchy

Hi David

Thank you so much for your help! These questions and materials are very pertinent but challenging as well. We’ll read them and will be enjoying the co-learning process with you:)

BTW the compost toilet might be postponed till next spring, but as a preparation of the project, the metabolic cycle is an important context for students to understand.

We’re looking forward to talking with you on Friday.

All the best
Jin

22 November 2022

Jin, hi

I thought I would just check to see how you and your students are doing? I hope all is going well, but please feel free to contact me, if you wish.

All the best
David

23 November 2022

Hi David，

We’re very grateful for your help! After having talked with you, students came up with some interesting ideas such as turning the process into public art or into a theatre piece, or interpreting it from Chinese eco-philosophical perspective.

They’ve worked cooperatively for translating each section and we’ve done an online discussion going through each the sections. We found your piece which is quite open began to unfold more interesting stuff once we delved deeper…

One of the students who is interested in poetry has shared with us a quite good translation of one section. Now she is revising all the sections and will also do the performance.

But i have to let you know the serious situation here. Our Institute has imposed another lockdown for over two weeks and we can’t go outside of campus. We know the policy for controlling Covid is becoming very insane, but there is nothing we can do about it.

We’ve just discussed the option of displaying the works online. If so, we need to do and document the performance at least at the beginning of December.

Anyway, I’ll let you know our progress and the issues we may encounter.

All the best
Jin

Jin. Hi

It sounds like the creative development work you and your students are doing is terrific!!! I could not have wished for more. Of course, I share your disappointment over the lockdowns restrictions, but again, its sounds like you and your students are discovering creative opportunities. I look forward to seeing the outcomes.

All the best
David

29 November 2022

Thank you! David,

We’re all right.
The lockdown on campus is still continuing. I know the current political situation is quite chaotic.

Regarding the exhibition, we’re asking if it’s possible postpone it till next January and we’re waiting for response from the Institute.

All the best
Jin

16 March 2023

Thank you so much! David

Congratulations!!!

I’ve been busy with teaching and preparing an ecoart programme for a university in Henan province.

Also, I‘d like to inform you the ecoart exhibition postponed last year will be held at Yuan Art Museum in Chongqing at the end of April. We’ll update you with our progress 🙂

All the best
Jin

17 March 2023

Thanks Jin

Henan Province:-) You know, I was a Visiting Professor at Zhongyuan University of Technology… Henan Province was, I believe the heart of Chinese Dragon Culture, based on the Yellow River. So, between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers you have Chinese civilisation!

I’m very pleased that the ecoart exhibition is going ahead. Yes, please do keep me informed the progress.

Meanwhile, I hope you and your family are well
David

18 March 2023

Hi David

Thank you for reminding me of your relation to Henan province. Xinyang is located in the southern part of Henan. It’s so rich in culture and biodiversity, yet very fragile as well due to climate change. Our main task is to tap into the ecological wisdom in books by the visionary botanist in Qin Dynasty, Wu qijun and in practices such as keeping heirloom rice seeds.

Sure, will do. The exhibition venue is located at a tourist spot called Longmenhao Old Street right in the centre of Chongqing. With quintessential traditional Chinese buildings, the place is actually recently rented and renovated by the Yuan Museum. So it would be very interesting place and so hopefully the exhibition could attract more audience:)

Jin
All the best

Jin, hi

Your work is becoming very rich indeed! I hope your students and colleagues appreciate these developments. I took a quick look at the online catalogue of Wu Qijun at the University of California. Sadly, I cannot read the Chinese text, but his drawings are a great example of valuing drawing as a way to deep observation – something that photography cannot do.

Meanwhile, the evolution of the exhibition is exciting in its own right. Serendipity can be a Wonderfull thing:-)

All the best
David

1 May 2023

Hi David

I’d like to update you on the progress of exhibition. It will open on 7ththis month (due to an accident, it postponed again to this date) and the performance will begin at the opening as well. Two girls (one is left-handed and good at translation; the other is good at Chinese calligraphy) will do the job. But the space is very special, not enough for show the texts on the wall. So they came up with the idea of writing on long suspended rice paper. Please check the attached image on the left for showing the experiment they did in classroom and the right one for showing their plan in the actual exhibition space. Instead of using charcoal, they will use Chinese ink which made up of pine soot and also contains carbon, which would carry similar meaning. We’d appreciate if you could have any suggestions on it.

All the best
Jin

Jin, hi

This looks great! I love the way the two young women have creatively addressed the situation to re-invent the work and make it their own. Please make sure you as their guide and they receive full credits for ‘our work’. In other words, the art is in our collaboration. It manifests in the physical performance and artwork as an act of creation.

The frame for the paper complements the architecture of the space, and the use of rice paper and Chinese ink adds will add a wonderful etherial quality. I look forward to seeing the finished work. It would be good to video or ’time-lapse’l photograph the performance.

This is very exciting for me to see the start of this work as my EQUINOX exhibit comes to an end – a kind of handing over of ecological artworks, similar to ‘wave hands in clouds’ in Tai Chi.

Thank you so much for your persistence and creative facilitation with your students. They have a truly inspiring teacher!

All the best
David

25 May 2023

Dear friends,

I co-curated an exhibition entitled “Emergence：Eco-art Actions on the Climate Crisis” in downtown Chongqing, China. We feel greatly honoured that a few members, including Betsy, Beverly, Basia, David, Aviva and Ruth, participated in the exhibition. I am deeply grateful for the help and generosity of these ecoartist friends and mentors and in the future I’d like to facilitate more meaningful exchanges between my Institute and colleagues from our ecoartist-list. During the opening, I provided a guided tour and introduced the works to the audience.

The inspiring works include Betsy’s precious video documentation of Keeper of Waters, the public performances in Chengdu in 1990s; Beverly’s Dead_Ocean_Scrolls_&_Other_Possible_Futures_&_the Pandemic_Healing Deities and Tacoma Story Hive responding to the Covid and climate depression; Basia’s project of ice books co-created in Chongqing in 2021; David’s Dialogue with Clouds, a series of haiku poems for generating a co-learning, interpreting process and a performance reflecting on the potential disappearance of clouds due to climate change: Aviva’s Blued Trees Symphony and Requiem for dead trees and dying horses; and Ruth’s Walking with Trees communicating the ecological grief for giant sequoias and echoing the wildfires in Chongqing last summer.

As the title suggests, the principle of emergence, the unexpected creativity of living systems, empowers us for envisioning new ways of being and acting, and for avoiding the high-entropy trajectory of endless growth. We hope more healthy interactions, exchanges, and connections among communities could be created out of climatic chaos for wakening up and calling more people into actions.

I apologise for sharing this information too late since I felt under the weather after the opening and just recently got my energy back.

With deep appreciation
Jin

28 May 2023

Jin, hi

Thank you so much for the WeTransfer images, it is great to see some of the in situ process and the engagement of you and your students.

A UK friend recently asked about this work: ‘Very lovely David , is the other text/ Chinese a translation of what you have written or an answer.’

And I replied: ‘The Chinese text and the final installation is an interpretation and reinvention from my text, derived through a co-learning dialogue with Lipeng Jin’s students over several months of email exchanges and online meetings. My initial text, then became the catalyst for them to learn for themselves about the significance of +2C on the inability of clouds to form. Beyond ‘knowledge’, the process of making the collaborative artwork became their emergent storying of the climate crisis.’

And so the dialogue continues…

All the best
David