20201212

There is a mug with the old TeaK logo in the Sturenkatu 21 Posti logistics backroom. A positive trace. The work easy.

Mailmans short term memory is infrastructure. #ॐ

Customers have five digit codes which correspond to packages they are picking up. To speedup delivery I memorize them and keep the numbers in mind for the twenty steps it takes me to reach the shelfs where I collect the packages. For those twenty steps, the internals of my brains are a part of the logistics network.

20201210

The taxpayer is the ultimate maintenance artist. #ॐ

Got a job as a temporary Christmas Maker (postal mail and package logistics worker). An epic month sliding from an artist, to a voice actor, to online event broadcaster, to art teacher, to a thesis inspector, to logistics. Skidding trough rough patches but I’m moving too fast to notice the burn.

As the pandemic pushes creatives, who have been seasoned by years commitment in busy productions, to temp-jobs where will the folk who previously worked these sites end up? The work I got is a work a first year art student didn’t get – What will they eat for Christmas? This is survivors guilt I guess.

20201207

Cuentos Patrióticos (1997) Francis Alÿs. Artist forms a self-organising assembly with sheep. The assemblies uniformity can be verified from its geometry and pace. It starts to dispense after the shepard releases their leash. In the process the sheeps solidarity to each other, sence of routine-established-security and alliance to men is tested.

Someone Explains How Poland Uses Clams To Control Its Water Supply And It’s Pretty Crazy (2020) Judita K. The title is self-explanatory. Here is a link to an article on the matter in Polish (with super pictures). In short: If the clams close their shells it is a sign that there is something wrong with the water. Their hulls are attached with sensors which measure their movement. Selected animals serve the water company for three months after which they are released. The article is illustrated woth pictures of a film called Fat Kathy / Gruba Kaśka (2019) Julia Pełka.

Listening to The Strangeness of Dub (2019) Edward George. Music history merged with philosophy! In episode ‘Oh, Slavery Days!’ George links the tones of solos played by Don Drummond, philosophy related to memory and liberation with the living history of Atlantic slave trade.

Folk who don’t work with crafts to sustain themselves underline a belief that mastery is a process were an artisan develops an intuitive relationship to materials they use. In practice the artisan is in a relationship with their tools and only trough them with the materials they use for their craft. The maintenance of tools (such as a furnace) takes up a considerable chunk of labor efforts. Ultimately a craft is a process where tools are maintained and made. The proper placement of tools around a workspace is most important. #ॐ

20201123

Popular ecologically geared art in Finland (art which aspired to advance global ecological sustainability) of the early 2000 was founded on the premise that if people would be made aware of their personal impact on the environment, they would automatically rectify their behavior. This dream lives on in apps which measure domestic power consumption and personal carbon admissions. These dreams build on a belief that when rich people (people who are responsible for the ecological collapse) are made to see the scale of resources their lifestyles depend on, they will seize their harmful activity and better themselves.

It feels evident that representations or even direct depictions of suffering rich people cause, are not enough for stirring up a desire for personal change. (Or that that personal changes are not effective) Which is why the current grant scheme is that audiences have to be trained how to relate, experience and to feel their impact on others. Feeling the suffering of others is expected lead them to adjust their behavior accordingly. In other words artists are aiming to affect change by re-working on their audiences skills in empathy.

Both approaches assume that humans are benign or rational, and that catastrophes are a result of a lack of knowledge or a lack of empathic skills. I think we should develop approaches which are based on the assumption that people harm others intentionally and enjoy doing it. It should be argued that western lifestyles are a death cult and people desire death. This does not mean that they want to die, but it seems they need to be in its proximity for stuff to make sense. There exists an addiction to blood.

Both approaches deploy sneaky pedagogy. The audiences curiosity towards arts and artists is used as a vessel for infusing them with knowledges which alter their behavior. Early ecologically geared art in Finland attempted to shock audiences back on a track of rationality. (Wake up! To the suffering eating meat causes!) Later ecologically geared art seduces and allures audiences to modify their emotional responses and behavior. (What is this think with sleepy metaphors? Whats the deal with people being simultaneously woken and shamed for not dreaming of anew?) These changes echo the shift from the control of bodies, to the control of desires.

I want to acknowledge artistic responses to ecological concerns, which assume that people are evil but that it is ok and can lead to fun results. Having fun is made hard. Life is often portrayed as a survival story. I, for one, have been bombarded by depictions of global catastrophes since childhood. When I close my eyes I can visualize the color schemes of movies, where the survival of the human race is dependent of the resilience of special individuals. Dealing with this imagery and the trauma it caused, is what I’m after when identifying as a recovering survivalist.

Those kind of survival stories are centered on character arcs but what supports the arc is the actuality that everyone else is dead. Those movies and that art I made, are not a celebration of the resourcefulness of man, they are enjoyment over the succulent presence of death. Dead is the only thing a resourceful man is not. It is the landscape which offers contrast to their shape.

These depictions and all representations of human resourcefulness are fantasise of a grand reboot. They enforce the idea that a singular moment in time, the moment of innovation, could work as a fixed point in which the fate of the world is in human hands. A space rocket launch is good illustration of this dream. As the ship leaves orbit the entirety of earth is left behind, this constitutes everything on the earth as a group. A monumental gesture, pushing a button to launch a ship from earth, enforces the idea that all life is progressing at the same pace and that all life is in contact. But I think life is not necessarily in contact with all-other-life and not-all-life on the planet makes sense.

The spesific kind of environmental collapse we are working hard towards, is presented as a global phenomenon which sets all-life on the same baseline. It gives a rush. But this depiction is a manifestation of a particular and particularly monotheistic mindset. It has aesthetic baggage and assumes what life is like. That it has a shape it should abide. Our efforts towards an environmental collapse is a prayer for life to have a comprehensible shape.

A good example is a recent article on rural cat communities in Finland. (Paheneva kissakriisi… / yle.fi) The article details how escaped cats have formed super-local communities (some groups had 250 cats) and focuses on groups which habit very small areas (one population lived primarily under a bridge). As these communities don’t move, they inbreed, which brings about an array of anomalies. The text depicts a case were inbreeding led to a kitten growing the organs inside out. This is not how life is not supposed to look like, hence their existence is interpreted as suffering – According to the article these rural mutant kitten groups are terminated regularly.

Animals adapt to modem and future-modern habitats and the problems is that when they do, they super-exceed our understanding of what they are and what nature is. #ॐ

Time does not progress at the same pace for all. Some of us live in pockets. An environmental collapse only makes sense if you assume that we are all equally effected by pollutants. We are not. It carries with it a dream that we will all come together in death. We will not. The resourcefulness of the mutant kitten groups is deemed horrifying because it shows the shape of things to come. It’s going to be fun.

20201007

It is easier to make a thing complicated, then it is to make the thing easy. #ॐ