Capstone OP3. Project Review 1: Artist Farmer

Review Specification The purpose of this document is to review a period of about one year of intense artistic activity, resulting from my collaboration with my great friend and mentor, Jorge Iván Restrepo. I intend to review the key moments in our work together, as evidenced in photographs from my substantial documentation of the work. Through these photographs I explore what it means to be an artist farmer, and how art can be used as a teaching tool for understanding complex ecological processes. The accompanying documents in the appendix include three papers I wrote in reaction to the works as well as relevant journal entries. I have designed the main report as a chronological account, divided into sections for each of the pieces. The annotated references are presented as a straightforward ʻsources citedʻ section with generous annotation in the form of footnotes throughout the text. Since my main outcomes (the photographs and musings on the work) are integrated into the report, this OP far exceeds the normally required length and scope and it is the readerʼs responsability to skip over some sections if time is a constraint. This OPʼs design allows for both reflecting on the work accomplished as well as providing a pool from which to extract material for consequent grant proposals, articles and further expansions on the meaning of the work.

Project Specification The work described ion this page must be understood as part of my effort to make Permaculture teaching more accessible and complete in general terms and specifically to the learning community at Zamorano, the Panamerican School of Agriculture. It analyzes the very effective method of raising awareness about environmental issues through collaborative art “happenings” or performances. This exploration is important because the themes I began to explore through the documentation and cocreation of these works inform my understanding of permaculture, sustainability, and my place in the universe as an individual and as part of the family of living beings on Eaarth.1

Key Words: collaborative art, carbon tax, happening, performance

Artist Farmer: the works of Jorge Restrepo

through the lens of Jorge Espinosa

Yo vengo de todas partes,

Y hacia todas partes voy:

Arte soy entre las artes,

En los montes, monte soy.

Yo se los nombres extraños

De las yerbas y las flores,

Y de mortales engaños,

Y de sublimes dolores.

-Jose Martí

Introduction

In my long term visioning for the decades to come I see myself more and more as an artist farmer.  I have thought a great deal about this persona, pondering the life events and influences that have shaped me in this way and the possible implications for the realization of my vision.  I have been deeply involved with art and agriculture through theory as well as practice, thinking about and getting my hands dirty with paint and with soil all my life.  Recently I have come into contact with more people who embody this persona and although there seems to be a trend of trained artists going back to the land and finding the growing of food to be a more suitable expression of their artistic passion than selling out entirely to any industry, I am understanding that this persona is ancestral and (dare I say) archetypal.  The writings of Charles C. Mann regarding the degree to which the precolonial Americans designed their landscapes into truly sustainable and productive ecosystems sheds new light on the space and interaction between art, agriculture, and ecology.^[1]

My friendship with Professor Jorge Iván Restrepo at the Panamerican School of Agriculture, Zamorano has had great influence on me.  The work we did together served as my only connection to art at a time when I had become completely focused on my agricultural education.  It must be said that in both Jorge Iván’s case and mine there are other epithets that can accompany the persona, we could call ourselves “artist-farmer-environmentalist-educators,” and still anyone familiar with our outlook on life can assert that the art that moves us is in more than one way educational and the farming that we care about is regenerative.  A parallel must also be drawn to understanding the teacher’s role as one of cultivation and drawing out yields of wisdom in those occupying the student role, and since the ultimate goal here is cultivating an understanding of deeply applied ecology and permaculture, then the role of the artist farmer is literally to farm artists or designers and the works described herein explore that idea as well.

Each of the following sections is dedicated to a collaborative moment named by Jorge Iván according to his own artistic vision.  Despite his eagerness to share credit with me and the fact that I went from simply documenting the work to helping him come up with and pull off each of these stunts, it must be said that these works exist within the enormous catalogue of this very prolific and talented artist.  Each section reflects on our process, the meaning of the work, and gives some insight into a very productive cocreative relationship. 

Performance Timeline

I describe the works in the order they took place, this list provides a chronological timeline.

10/27/08: Planetarium I

12/02/08: Moonbath and Negentropy

03/07/09: Birth of Planets

05/26/09: Pass the Ball

08/04/09: August Performance

08/30/09: Black Faced Vultures and August Installation

09/29/09: Calligraphy

11/24/09: Flying Over

11/12/09: Carrying Capacity

11/24/09: Breaking the Rules

11/27/09: Air

^[1]Charles C. Mann, 1491.  Article available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/2445/and the book is cited in the references at the end of the document.

Jorge Iván asked me, “Do you know what our name means?”  “Campesino^[1],” I replied.  He seemed surprised that I knew this since few people know the etymologies of even common names like ours.  The fact that he was a teacher and I a student at the Panamerican School of Agriculture, and that our life pretty much revolved around farming, did not seem oddly coincidental rather completely appropriate.  He asked me to document a collaborative art happening he was organizing, both in photographs and  writing^[2].

“Planetarium I” consisted of his students taking a black colored ball and walking around with it for a week, becoming familiar with it and then finally over the course of a few minutes in the classroom, keeping it in the air as long as possible, to the sound of a composition by sound artist Walter Suazo. From the vantage point of documenter, (questionably the only one in a spectator role) I can clearly see how each individual effort at keeping the ball in suspension gets woven into a choreography of organized chaos and joins the pulsing of Suazo’s composition which emanates the syncopated beat of this miniverse’s heart.

The photographs bear witness to the expectation and wonder with which the students release the ball, gazing upward following it along its orbit, waiting for its homecoming, only to launch it back into the air, over and over again. Despite the exhaustion, neck pain, redundancy, and fumbling, in that moment, the responsibility and concern for that ball's destiny are fully experienced by each and every one.  When it is over the students are asked to supply written feedback.  By then exhausted, they express a renewed respect for nature and the universe.  One of the sentences scribbled on the scrap paper provided that most stood out was, "the fate of the planet is in the hands of its youth."  I was struck by the subtlety with which Jorge Iván made the students reach that realization, compared to how lost even the right message can be when delivered through tedious lecture. 

The “moonbath” at Zamorano was traditionally a hazing ritual performed on the first year students by the sophomores, juniors and seniors.  It consisted of waking the younger students up in the middle of the night and walking them to the pool where they were forced to jump into the water, fully clothed. Jorge Iván turned this ritual on its head by making the seniors dive into the manure fertilized fish pond, bearing black balloons filled with their own breath.  This was to count as their final exam for Jorge Iván’s class and was the last exam before their upcoming graduation so they were happy to comply. Jorge Iván and his students entered the aquaculture pond, and the icy water and muddy bottom made for a clumsy yet ceremonious procession.  Once in, the students spontaneously began to splash their teacher; spurts of water and mud from 93 directions hit the professor in the face.  He received this with roars of laughter and his arms open wide until the participants got tired and finally let him breathe.  After their unscripted splash attack they proceeded to their prescribed positions as I witnessed from a (not entirely) safe distance through my camera lens catching all of it.  Though completely unplanned, the images forged in that moment were laden with meaning.

With the calm that ensued, the individuals spread out with balloons in hand: a caricature perhaps of “too little too late” efforts to sequester some of the carbon we have spewed into the air as we feel its effects in climate volatility, melting ice caps and rising sea levels.  It is impossible to divorce the somber situation in which this new generation inherits the planet from the optimism and emotion these young people feel only a week away from their graduation.

The work seems to be a sort of meeting point between fear and hope―two voices coexisting in perpetual eco, manifesting the complaints of one generation to the other, for its neglect and excess, somehow an affectionate and optimistic complaint, portent of an important transfer of command, in which the new generation takes the baton and prepares for what is to come.

Accompanied by their balloons and still vibrating with the energy from the bath, the students get settled in the water. Tending toward a greater order is a characteristic of living systems sometimes called “negentropy,”^[1]also negative entropy or syntropy.  Life is ordered in ever more complex levels of interdependence (e.g. between tissues and organs, between ecosystems and species). The ability to contemplate and value the complexity of living systems, and the receptivity to learn from them and apply this wisdom to our daily lives are competencies that are deciding the future of all life on the planet.  These competencies are expressed through the life and work of visionaries that are laying the groundwork for a future of regeneration.

David Holmgren, Bill Molison, Sepp Holzer, P.A. Yeomans, Masanobu Fukuoka, Allan Savory and countless other have laid the foundation for an agriculture that can feed the world and heal the land.  Their students have spread far and wide and are currently heading this regenerative effort on multiple fronts like the Transition Initiative which seeks to empower communities to go off oil, and the Carbon Farming Course^[2]which is evolving into a diverse pattern language of tools and strategies for regenerative agriculture.  These patterns range from Keyline Design, Edible Forest Gardening, Perennial Crops, to Holistic Management and beyond.

The urban environment is also being addressed. In the middle of the desert in Arizona, Arcosanti[3]is under construction―a truly sustainable city that has no cars, with multifunctional buildings integrating home, work and production of sustenance, aspects of human life now segregated by uncontained urban sprawl and unchecked industrial momentum. This is being accomplished on only 2% of the land that a normal city uses. Imagine efficiently planned cities, surrounded by forests and farms.  Paolo Soleri is the architect who conceptualized “arcology” as the meeting of architecture and ecology.

He along with the aforementioned artist farmers, propose viable alternatives for human beings to live on the planet sustainably, through the establishment of ascending levels of complexity that some call design.  Another master of negentropy is Joel Salatin, who was a strong presence at the Carbon Farming Course held in Chestnut Ridge, New York, 2012.  He has recreated symbiotic relations observed in nature among plants, ruminants, insects and birds, using livestock to create a productive ecosystem on his Polyface Farm[4], which yields abundant food in a regenerative way, increasing soil fertility and maintaining a considerable extension of forest.  We human beings as a species have to awaken from our ignorant slumber and embrace negentropy as our modus operandi.  If we do not we will sink in the mire of new challenges facing us in a world we have changed almost beyond recognition.

Through this collaborative work of art, the teacher has challenged his students to dive into abstraction, and become immersed in complexity itself, to see themselves as part of the great master work that we the human race have the capacity to become.  The same side of the brain responsible for abstract thinking and artistic creativity (the right) is the one that facilitates feeling our connectedness to others and our environment.^[5]  Having completed this ritual bath, which over centuries has symbolized initiation, purification and preparation for the fulfillment of sacred tasks, students and teacher exit the pond in laughter.

^[1]Negentropy is a term coined by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in the 1950’s. Charles Eisenstein makes a reference to this concept in the introduction to his book Sacred Economics. 

^[2]The Carbon Farming Course was held in Chestnut Ridge, New York in January and February 2012.  See www.carbonfarmingcourse.com

[3]See www.arcosanti.org.

[4]The Polyface Farms website gives further detail on this type of agriculture, see www.polyfacefarms.com.  Michael Pollan goes into far more detail in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

^[5]Beautifully illustrated by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her TED Talk, A Stroke of Insight.

This was one of the few works we did together outside of Zamorano.  I recall this installation as marking a moment when I became at ease with our combined aesthetics.  Although I had documented the previous works successfully and brought my own vision and understanding to the work and building a strong bridge through my environmental preoccupations and my existentialist search for my place and humanity’s place in the universal ecosystem, I feel that I resolved the slight tension I felt with Jorge Iván’s aesthetic with this work, because the photographs won me over with their beauty.  We set up this installation at a visually stunning Honduran fishing town called Amapala, whose population is being hit hard by the depletion of fishing stocks and new extremes in weather conditions. 

In Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, Bill McKibben speaks about the new world we have brought into being through our reckless consumption of fossil fuels.^[1]The sweaty orb representing a new planet being born helps me digest this idea on a visceral level, through my feelings.  In the book and in the events unfolding in the news the future being painted is so grim that processing on the level of emotion is necessary lest I dissociate from my feelings entirely and become cynical.

It was around this time that Jorge Iván asked me what I thought it was that we were doing, my understanding of his question was if I considered what we were doing to be art.  I responded, “No estamos haciendo arte, estamos haciendo vida.” Not doing art, doing life. Somehow as I said it I settled a question for myself, of being versus doing.

^[1]In Eaarth: making a life on a tough new planet, Bill Mckibben provides an alarming wake up call to the reality of climate change, many of the concepts embodied by Jorge Ivan’s art can be anchored to the science and thinking presented in this book.

Catedrarte: Pass the Ball, August Performance and Flying Over

Catedrarte is something I began to call Jorge Iván’s art. Cátedra is a word used to refer to not just the lecture a teacher gives but also the content and spirit of his or her teaching.    These three happenings I see as building on each other and functioning as an integrated whole.^[1]  They embody quite fully the power of using art to teach and so in studying them I emphasize Jorge Iván’s role of an artist educator.

Pass the Ballpresents us with two students playing with a black soccer ball, allusive to the planet that we recognize in Jorge Iván’s work.  The players pass the ball from one side of the classroom to the other over the professor’s head while he tries―with little success―to give his lecture. 

The class is spellbound by the distraction imposed by the players and witness the symbolism of the world being kicked and knocked around by human beings, while the voice of reason is ignored by an amused public.  One has to ask why in our Latin American countries, the majority of the people seem to care only about soccer while entire governments are being made and dismantled.

Flying Overagain shows Jorge Iván trying to teach his class while faced with another distracting force, this time manifesting as an ‘infiltrated saboteur’ who flies a mini-helicopter by remote control around his head while he tries to talk.  This occurred only a few days after the military coup in Honduras, a little after which there was a failed attempt by the deposed president to return to the country.  It was a time of great tension, exacerbated by the constant flying of military helicopters over national territory.

In August Performance we see the students covering their ears right in the middle of  class. While the professor speaks of dismissals and replacements, related to Human Resources Management, and with subtext allusive to the recent political coup, the students try their hardest not to listen to him.  Their hands are covered by black rubber gloves, framing their faces so they stand out and leaving no room for doubt the students are really trying to avoid listening.

In the context of the country’s political situation, these works are prompted by the current events and show how collaborative art can confront the current situation, questioning history as it is being written.  It takes the student-subject out of the passive learning modality and throws him and her into the middle of events, so as to learn through active questioning. In these three works we see that learning becomes progressively more difficult, first due to external factors as in “Pass the Ball.” Then “Flying Over” represents the forces from within that are detrimental to social and educational development, and finally in “August Performance” the greatest challenge for learning becomes apparent: the limited self. Through apathy, stubbornness, disdain and cynicism, our ego sets us traps daily; and we―often not so innocently―fall into vicious cycles of self-sabotage and conformity, to which we can easily remain subject all our lives. Thus distracted, we stop demanding accountability from our leaders and ourselves as if they needed more excuse to turn deaf ears. This work questions the meaning of playing deaf right in the middle of a coup with both sides trampling the constitution as they please, in the middle of an environmental crisis in which all sides trample living systems, and all pretend not to listen. As the saying goes, “there’s none more deaf than someone who does not want hear.”

These works and this unique style of artistic education pin us down as students, only to free us. They force us to question that which steals our attention and to ask ourselves what it is that distracts us as a community and as individuals.  What good is a university degree if I am a slave of the distracting forces that surround me and cannot identify and be critical of my own distraction and confusion? What kind of an engineer am I if I am not able to design my life in a way that is truly sustainable? Therein lies the importance of Jorge Iván’s work. Exemplified so well by the three experiences that these students had, the integration of art as a tool for teaching stands out as a very encouraging sign under any circumstance, but especially in an agronomy school, in which we are taught to just do things that often make no sense, without asking why.  Spurring critical thinking in the new farmers of the world can be an important first step in righting some of the great ecological wrongs perpetrated by humanity being foolish with our agriculture.  Masanobu Fukuoka (another master of negentropy) famously said, “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.^[2]”

^[1]“Catedrarte” was also the name of the last of three articles that I wrote regarding these happenings.  As Jorge Iván and I got closer and I became a more consistent sounding board for him, it seemed appropriate to have other people that were further removed write their reflections on the works.  Many of the ideas used in those three articles I wrote (available for review in the appendix) are paraphrased and expanded on here. 

^[2]Masanobu Fukuoka, The One Straw Revolution. 

We went back to Amapala for a weekend with plans for a much larger installation.  Jorge Iván had spoken of wanting to confront buzzards with his black orbs.  So we set up a bunch of balloons all up and down the beach and spread fish guts all around them.  In a matter of moments the vultures had arrived and were pecking away at the dead flesh and at each other.  The relationships between the carrion eating birds, the landscape and the black orbs was astonishing, the symbolic implications of seeing the heads of the vultures over the black balls which by now evoke entire planets, masses of carbon in the form of petroleum or greenhouse gas, invite deeper questioning. Who stands above the mess we have made? Who benefits from the death and destruction?  In the ecology of our globalized consumer society, who occupy the niche of carrion feeder? 

I ask not to point fingers but to recognize the principles of nature at work in everything, despite the dark symbolism, there was tenderness to be seen in the animals, especially when I caught them engaging in their vulturous displays of affection. I am led to the realization^[1]that people at the top in this system, those who have benefitted in the short term from ecosystem destruction, are also unhappy and at a loss for what to do with a bunch of “money that cannot be eaten.^[2]”

I marvel at the ways Nature balances herself.  The way habitats disturbed by humans suddenly become crowded by poison ivy, and how jellyfish will be best adapted to the oceans we are so carefully acidifying, and wonder what it will take for humanity to assume its proper role.

I spent what seemed like an eternity photographing the vultures and became aware (for the first time in a really tangible way) of the altered state I enter when I photograph, it is pure creative flow state and it is somewhat intoxicating. I realize reflecting on this that I engage in creative pursuits ultimately because I feel good and with energy that flows freely and abundantly. 

Creativity is a fully renewable resource, and we all have the ability to generate meaning and value constantly. In the same way that natural resources need to be looped in regenerative ways, I finally collapsed from crawling around with vultures under the sun and went back to the shade where everyone else was and ate a huge fried fish and recovered, though I remained in a sort of meditative state for hours.  We cleaned our mess up off the beach and lined up the balloons in a neat pile which itself became an installation of great beauty that I could not escape photographing.

^[1]A realization beautifully expressed by Charles Eisenstein in the video Sacred Economics available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs

^[2]From the commonly known Cree indian proverb, “When the last tree is cut down, the last river poisoned, the last fish caught. Then only will man discover that he cannot eat money.” 

Zamorano is a community that exists in a sort of “first world” bubble in the middle of the “developing world”.  It is one of the few places in the country where there are no walls around the houses. There are plenty of green areas, water is safe to drink out of the tap.  Life is so busy there for the students that months can go by without reading the news. When democratically elected president Zelaya was ousted, our lives went on as if nothing.  Massive protests were going on in the city 30 kilometers away and it was just another day for us.  I went rappelling.  Jorge Iván decided to put together a calligraphy book like the ones that kids get when they are learning to write their first words.  “...mi mama me ama, yo amo a mimamá...” (My mother loves me, I love my mother) is a common one used to teach kids the letter M. The things we were having the students write over and over would be questions regarding “el golpe.”  Golpe means ‘coup’ but it is also a physical blow or strike. This series of photographs shows grown men and women using childish calligraphy pads that invite them to question the political events around them.  Decisions that concern the well being of our communities, the integrity and future of our ecosystems, are constantly being made without the awareness of the people involved.  This piece joins others like the Catedrarte triad described above inviting the participants to question, become aware, and find a way to engage.

We rounded up the graduating class of soon to be agronomists like cattle, crowded them into the feed lot and then put them out to pasture. 

Countless accounts describe the horrors of the industrial food system toward animals, the arrogant tunnel vision of specialists, and I feel the spirit of that combination is well summed up by Joel Salatin’s notion that, a society that treats its animals like they are just hunks of protoplasmic mass to be disposed of in ingenious ways is bound to extend this same treatment to its citizens.

Treating students like cattle is also symbolic of an educational system that reflects the industrial paradigm.  Conventional education also fattens students up in questionable ways only to go send them to slaughter into an unequal, corporate dominated, corrupt economy where money created as interest bearing debt pushes people into competitive uncooperative behavior which yields no winners.  The carrying capacity of a field, like of the Earth is flexible depending on the way these animals live on the land.  A field grazed under Holistic Management regenerates, while conventional grazing destroys land.  Regenerative agriculture fixes carbon into the soil, industrial agriculture releases it as the life in the soil dies and the acidotic cows belch methane into the air.

Is the true problem we face the number of people or the way we are choosing to consumeresources extractively rather than in regenerative closed loops that mimick nature?

“Breaking the Rules” I see in a way as a nod to the fact that Jorge Iván was the one who pushed for the students of Zamorano to be allowed bikes on campus, only seniors had bikes originally and large amounts of time had to be devoted to walking from work to the residence halls and to class. He pressed for the installation of all the bike racks at school.  This happening was a smack in the face of the status quo because students are not allowed to bring their bikes into the classroom, and on this occasion they were forced to bring their bike into the class.  For me it spoke directly to the problem of transportation as the world becomes more urban and Soleri’s arcology addresses this directly, “An arcology would need about two percent as much land as a typical city of similar population. Today’s typical city devotes more than sixty percent of its land to roads and automobile services. Arcology eliminates the automobile from within the city. The multi-use nature of arcology design would put living, working and public spaces within easy reach of each other and walking would be the main form of transportation within the city.^[1]”  Zamorano has the capacity to be a completely carless community, and  many of the most respected teachers make the commitment to get around entirely on foot and bike since carving up invaluable ecosystems with roads and petroleum infrastructure is just as inane as having your bicycle resting on your lap in the middle of class. 

This was the culmination of our work together in this period.  It was a long distance collaboration between Jorge Iván and an artist friend in Argentina, Gabriella Alonso.  It sums up aesthetically and conceptually all the things that are meaningful, relevant, and beautiful in this work.  The sunset timing was dead on, with a margin of about two minutes to make these images and we nailed it.  This was no longer a class event, the entire student body was present. All the teachers gave their students extra credit for participating.  It was about a thousand students, and their balloons, filled with their CO2.  As the sun was setting they were asked to release their sequestered air first slowly making their balloons whimper, and then by releasing the balloon to the air as it propelled itself on its reserves.  Our society is like those balloons right now.  Blown up out of control, propelled for what will seem like instants in the global timeline, by carbon that is not renewable.  And how to not become that spent or busted limp thing on the ground that the balloons became fractions of a second after this shot was taken is what has some of us really concerned. 

In Al Gore’s TED lecture, “New thinking on the Climate Crisis,” he makes an open call for a tax on carbon and gets a round of applause.  This is where we need to be the most careful and recognize the double edged sword.  Carbon has indeed become synonymous with nonrenewable fossil fuel, with climate volatility and greenhouse gas emissions.  What is ironic is that carbon is also the proteins, carbohydrates and lipids we are made of, it is our very breath, quite literally, the stuff of life. 

If we talk about taxing carbon, regulating carbon, how do we make sure that the military industrial complex is properly taxed for its true costs, rather than the common man and woman having to render accounts for their breath?  How do we make sure of this when governments will not be held accountable?  I feel cautious when people demand any government, benevolent as it may seem, to control and regulate and further restrict freedoms, because if we ask for it we will get it.  I want a better world like anybody else, a clean, sustained future on this planet, and if we have to arrive at that by coercion rather than by a massive awakening and voluntary movement, how green, how sustainable, how genuine is it if it has to be through coercion? and how do we trust that the enforcers can be brought to account?  Costa Rica’s case provides an inspiring model for the meeting of a conscious population with conscious decisionmakers.  A few decades ago the government imposed a tax on fossil fuels and despite the degree of corruption that our Central American countries are infamous for, the money started to be directed to the paying of environmental services related to forestry. All of a sudden, lands that had been regarded as unproductive and idle and had been forced into cattle ranching despite steep slopes and incremental degradation, have since then been reforested and now Costa Rica is commonly known as one of the greenest nations of the world.  The shift was made possible by rewarding people for taking steps toward regeneration. The slightly more expensive fuel may be an important sacrifice for industries and urbanites to make so that concrete steps can be taken towards the healing of lands that are in situations similar to Costa Rica two decades ago.

Books

1. Eisenstein, Charles.  Sacred Economics: Gift Economies in the Age of Transition.

2. Fukuoka, Masanobu. TheOne Straw Revolution.  NYRB classics, 2010.

3. Mann, Charles C.  1941: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.  (The article published under the name 1491 in The Atlantic Monthly is available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/2445/)

4. McKibben, Bill.  Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  New York:St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011.

5. Pollan, Michael.  The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  New York: Penguin Books, 2006.

6. Toeffler, Alvin & Heidi.  Revolutionary Wealth.  New York: Doubleday, 2006.

Videos

1. Bolte Taylor, Jill. A Stroke of Insight.  Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU, last accessed May 9, 2012.

2. Eisenstein, Charles.  Sacred Economics.  Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs, last accessed May 9, 2012.

3. Gore, Al. New Thinking on the Climate Crisis. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-0p7GbPJ14, last accessed May 9, 2012.

Websites

1. Arcosanti: www.arcosanti.org

2. Carbon Farming Course: www.carbonfarmingcourse.com

3. Polyface Farms: www.polyfacefarms.org

A.1

“Planetarium I”

Collective performance by Jorge Restrepo,

with sound-art by Walter Suazo, and documentation by Jorge Espinosa

How did Atlas, the mythological being upon whom the cruel joke of having to bear the Earth's weight on his shoulders, feel about his burden? The Earth's rotation on its axis and its trajectory around the sun are things we generally do not give much thought to, much less feel responsible for.

In an environment of strict academic rigor, what could a professor at Zamorano University possibly be aiming for in pulling an auditorium full of students out of their dress code and routine, to keep a bunch of little black pingpong balls in the air?

Planetarium puts in the hands of each student of the Human Resources class three of these little balls. Throughout the following week, they familiarize themselves with the spheres, their weight and form, and become adept at juggling them and keeping them in midair, throwing them up and catching them over and over again.  At the end of the week the work culminates in the classroom where, during the four minutes of sound composed specifically for this piece by Suazo, the students, attired in black, keep their spheres in orbit, thus recreating a complex planetary system in which everyone embodies for a few brief, yet seemingly eternal moments, the mythical Atlas.

Restrepo's art has the habit of altering the order of things.  They are not simple paintings that one can observe from a safe distance; from here to the wall.  These are works that leave us asking ourselves where the line that divides the piece from the audience has gone (if such a line even exists.)  The participants along with their emotions, gestures, and expressions disappear into the black happening hole and are dissolved, set free from all preoccupation, fully embodying the experience of collective art  in which the audience and the artwork are one.

From the vantage point of the documenter (questionably the only one in a spectator's position) I can clearly see how each individual effort at keeping the ball in the air gets woven into a choreography of organized chaos and joins the pulsing of Suazo's composition, which emanates the syncopated beat of this miniverse's heart.

It is common knowledge that when it comes to conceptual art, the idea is what matters most, and the execution (in this case particularly ephemeral) serves as an impermanent vessel for the concept.  Professor Restrepo, playing the twofold role of teacher and artist, arms himself with this under utilized tool commonly reserved for a small (and in the case of Honduras, tiny) elite, to teach his students.  One learns concepts, memorizes them, occasionally even applies them, but this kind of experience leads to a complete internalization of the idea, in such a way that it becomes part of one's being, like bones, or skin.  What idea is being incarnated here?  And to what end?

We (humanity) have walked irresponsibly and without conscience on the face of the Earth, and we are changing the planet to the point of making it uninhabitable even for ourselves.

The photographic document bears witness to the hope, expectation and wonder with which the student releases the ball, gazing upwards following it along its orbit, waiting for its homecoming, only to launch it back into the air, over and over again.  Despite the exhaustion, neck pain, redundancy, fumbling, in that moment, the responsibility and concern for that ball's destiny are fully experienced by each and every one.

When it’s over the student, by now exhausted, expressing a renewed respect for nature and the universe, with words we all know, but with a sparkle in the eyes that indicates a profound understanding of this ancestral thought, says, "the fate of the planet is in the hands of its youth."

Zamorano, San Antonio de Oriente,

Honduras, October 27, 2008

A.2

“Moonbath” and “Negentropy”:

Diving into Abstraction

Moonbath

Jorge Restrepo and his students enter the lagoon of Monterredondo, dressed in black, holding recently inflated black balloons.  The icy water and the muddy bottom make their entrance a clumsy but, nonetheless, ceremonious procession.

Once they are in, the students spontaneously begin to splash their teacher; strong spurts of water coming from 93 directions hit the “teach” on his face. He receives this with roars of laughter and his arms spread wide open until the participants get tired and let him breathe.

With the calm that comes after splashing the teacher, the individuals spread out with their balloons in hand, forming a caricature of carbon sequestering, and then they settle down “with the water up to their neck,” just like a good part of the world population could find themselves one day in the not-so-distant future.  It is not possible to divorce the somber situation in which this new generation inherits the planet from the optimism and emotion that these young people feel, only a week away from their graduation.  In a few days they will go out into the world to struggle to reach their dreams.

Restrepo’s work functions as a meeting point between fear and hope, aspects that we can observe here as complements―two voices that coexist in a perpetual eco, growing wings instead of mutually excluding themselves.  The teacher sets the stage, and the work takes on a life of its own, manifesting the complaints of one generation to the other, for its neglect, errors, and excesses; but it is also an affectionate and optimistic complaint, portent of an important transfer of command, in which the new generation takes the baton and prepares for what is to come.

Negentropy

Accompanied by their balloons and still vibrating with the energy from the bath, the students get settled in the water.  Tending toward a greater order is a characteristic of living systems called “negentropy,” also known as negative entropy or syntropy.  Life is ordered in ever more complex levels of interdependency (e.g. between tissues and organs, between ecosystems and species). The capacity for contemplating the complexity of  living systems and the receptivity to learn from them and apply this wisdom to our daily lives are the human competencies that will decide the future of the planet. How else to imagine and achieve a sustainable future for humanity on this planet and on any other that we may wish to colonize either in fiction or in reality?

In the middle of the desert of Arizona, Arcosanti[1]is being built―a sustainable city, without cars, with multifunctional buildings that integrate home, work and production of sustenance, aspects of human life that have been segregated by uncontained urban sprawl.  This is being accomplished on only 2% of the land that a normal city uses. Imagine efficiently planned cities, surrounded by forests and farms.  Paolo Soleri is the architect who conceptualized arcology as the meeting of architecture with ecology. He has managed to propose a viable alternative for human beings to live, establishing ascending levels of complexity. 

Another master of negentropy is Joel Salatin, who has recreated symbiotic relations observed in nature among plants, ruminants, insects and birds, using livestock to create a productive ecosystem on his Polyface Farm[2], which yields food in a sustainable way, while increasing soil fertility and maintaining a considerable extension of forest. This capacity can be seen in the life and work of visionaries such as Joel Salatin and Paolo Soleri.  We human beings as a race have to awaken from our ignorant slumber and embrace negentropy as our modus operandi; otherwise we will sink. 

The teacher challenges his students to dive into abstraction, to become complexity itself, to see themselves as part of the great master work that we the human race are.  The same side of the brain responsible for abstract thinking and artistic creativity (the right) is the one that facilitates feeling connected to others and to the environment.  Having completed this ritual bath, which over the centuries has symbolized initiation, purification and preparation for fulfilling sacred tasks, students and teacher exit the lagoon, smiling.

A.3

‘Catedrarte’

Artful pedagogy and pedagogic art

Three collective academic works of art by Jorge Restrepo

The world changes more rapidly than books and university curricula can keep apace with.  Learning is under the constant threat of becoming obsolete before it can take shape in the minds of those who undertake the well-worn uphill course of scholarship. Thus today’s educators have the gargantuan task of serving as translators of theory in accordance with the changing world, seeking better ways to challenge their pupils to enter into important discussions, internalize the ideas and understand them through experience, and help them develop a critical vision and capacity for analysis. After all, educators are those individuals whom we expect to know how to learn and teach others to do so, although unfortunately this is often the exception, not the rule. 

Jorge Restrepo or Jorge Iván, as we students here at Zamorano know him, is one of those exceptional individuals in love with learning.  Thus his teaching is not limited to standing in front of the class and mechanically regurgitating theory.  He, like any student, knows that a book well used can be of greater use for that purpose.

Jorge Restrepo is an educator.  It is also true that Jorge Restrepo is an artist.  But it is more fitting to avow that he is an educator-artist, and that what he imparts is not just any lecture…

In the second trimester of their third year at Zamorano, the Agribusiness students of 2010, who have recently begun their career, meet with Jorge Restrepo in his course on Human Resources.  This is not just another class.  Restrepo adeptly weaves into thesyllabus works of collective art designed for developing competencies of innovation and critical analysis, stimulating complex thought in the students while he doles out theory throughout the course.  The three works that were implemented in class were “Pass the Ball,” “Flying Over” and “August Performance.” 

In “Pass the Ball,” two students play with a black soccer ball, allusive to the planets that we have learned to recognize in the works of this artist-educator.  The players pass the ball from one side of the classroom to the other over the professor’s head while he tries―with little success―to give his talk.The class is spellbound by the distraction imposed by the players and witness to the symbolism of the world being kicked and knocked around by human beings, while the voice of reason is ignored by an amused public.  One has to ask why in our Latin American countries, the majority of the people seem to care only about soccer while entire governments are being made and undone.

In “Flying Over” we again find Restrepo trying to teach his class while faced with another distracting force, this time coming from an ‘infiltrated saboteur’ who flies a mini-helicopter by remote control.  This occurred only a few days after the coup d’etat in Honduras, a little after which there was a failed attempt by the deposed president to return to the country. It was a time of great tension, exacerbated by the constant flying of military helicopters over national territory.

In “August Performance” we see the students covering their ears right in the middle of the class. While the professor speaks of dismissals and replacements, the students try not to listen to him.  Their hands are covered by black gloves, framing their faces so they stand out, leaving no room for doubt that the students are really trying to avoid listening.

In the context of the country’s political situation, these works are prompted by the current events and show that collective art in conjunction with education confronts the milieu, questioning history as it is being written.  It takes the students-subjects out of their passive situation and throws them into the middle of the events, so that by questioning, they learn...

In these three works we see that learning becomes progressively more difficult, first due to external factors as in “Pass the Ball.” Then “Flying Over” represents the forces from within that are detrimental to social and educational development, and finally in “August Performance” the greatest challenge for learning is presented―oneself. With apathy, stubbornness, disdain and cynicism, our ego sets us traps daily; and we―sometimes not so innocently―fall into vicious cycles of self-sabotage and conformism, to which we can easily remain subject all our lives.  And thus distracted, we stop demanding that our political leaders render accounts as if they needed more excuses to turn a deaf ear.  This work questions the meaning of playing deaf right in the middle of a coup when both sides of the political conflict are trampling the Constitution as they please, pretending not to listen. As the saying goes, “there’s no one more deaf than someone who does not want hear.”

These works and this unique style of artistic education first pin us down as students, later to free us.  They force us to question that which steals our attention.  They oblige us to ask ourselves what it is that distracts us as a community and as individuals.  What good is a university degree if I am a slave of the distracting forces that surround me?  What kind of an engineer am I if I cannot identify and be critical of my own distraction and confusion? 

Therein lies the importance of Jorge Restrepo’s work.  Exemplified by the three experiences that these students had, the integration of art as a tool for teaching stands out as a very encouraging sign under any circumstance, but especially in an agronomy school.

For those of us who have crossed between the artistic and technical realms, two contrasting types of people stand out.  We see those people who adopt critical analysis as a lifestyle, seeking to understand the why of the facts that transcend, but disconnected from practical applications and isolated from the technical world.  On the other hand, are the technicians, some concerned about the production of foodstuffs, others immersed in their processing and commercialization, learning to live in terms of yields and rates of return without questioning the world around them.  But in real life, success lies in teams and people capable of integrating the how(the technical) and the why(the critical). 

These collective works give the people of how an invitation to the complex thought that characterizes the people of why.  They invite students to enter a space for integrating these concepts, which they would otherwise have to develop later on in their personal and professional lives through trial and error, painfully knocking their heads against a wall.  This type of integration should form part of all university curricula.  Jorge Restrepo is a pioneer in art, in education and in art-education.  This integration of disciplines foretells a bright future for both fields.

Welcome to ‘Catedrarte.*’

Zamorano, San Antonio de Oriente,

Honduras, February 7, 2010

*’Catedrarte’ is a contraction of the words catedra and arte.  Arte is Spanish for Art and Catedra is a word used to refer to not only the lecture a professor imparts, but also to the content and the philosophy behind that lecture or teaching style.

[1]www.arcosanti.org

[2]www.polyfacefarms.com

3/1/12

Al Gore’s New TED Talk Notes

Optimism, belief bringing about new behavior

“As important as it is to change light bulbs as it is to change the laws!”

In order to solve climate crisis we must solve the democracy crisis... and we have one!

Military historians told him military conflicts are put in three levels: local battle regional theatre war and the rare but all important global war, each requires different resource allocation and approach, and organizational model

Environmental problems fall into same categories he says!

we must global or strategic conflict world wide global mobilization for r e cons eff and global transition to low carbon economy we have work to do for response, Political Will must be mobilized before mobilizing resources!

North Polar Ice cap is the size of USA minus AZ, then lately eastern usa and half of usa... around artic circle houses falling antartica snowmelt size of california, earth and venus are same sizeish same amt of Carbon, carbon got leached out of atmosphere on venus its in the atmosphere, 855 F vs 59 F

IPCC more than 90 % certain if variations in sun caused it there wouldnt be differences in upper and lower strat.

List of challenges global warming is still near the bottom we are missing a sense of urgency, alliance for climate protection: worldwide contest the 1.2 billion elephants in the room CNN 2 questions about climate crisis

we have given to the developing countries the mentality... Peak fishing, Bolivia

PUT A PRICE ON CARBON he gets applause

Revenue Neutral? CO2 tax to replace taxation on employment invented by bismarck 19th century integrate responses to poverty with the solution.  A proposed energy supergrid for Africa and Europe

If you are investing in tar sands and shale oil... junkies find veins in their toes when the arms and leg ones collapse, Kyoto is ratified by all minus australia

New prime ministers priority is to change that. Australias drought made them change.

Making individual heroism so common... we those of us alive in USA have to understand history has presented us w a choice just as jill taylor was figuring out how to save her life while distracted.... so are we in a culture of distraction, a sense of generational mission... hero generations staring the country ending slavery, if we had one weeks worth of what we spend on the iraq war we could.... im optimistic because i belive we have the capacity at moments of great challenge to set aside distractions

what a burden we have... how many generations in human history have had a challenge worthy of our best efforts, that can pull from us more than we know we could do, approach the challenge with joy and gratitude. 

Poets will say they were the ones.... 2129 Sponsored by clean coal!? 2400 All candidates.

Buck Fuller?! 2644 It depends on us but not just the light bulbs... Whats needed really is a higher level of consciousness.

African proverb: “If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far go together.”  We have to go far together.

3/8/12

Reflection on Process of Writing Aritcles for the Works: I was happy to no longer do it.  They were published somewhere online maybe I do not remember and I do not care to find out.  I have too many trees to climb to keep track of things like this, I am amazed that I even found them.  Its too bad that I have such a distaste for it.

Reflection on process of creating OP: Another impossibly difficult and beautiful OP for me to create. I must emphasize and bring special attention to the difficulty I experience with the OP writing process. I literally despise it.  Is it my Attentioin Deficit Disorder that I have never wanted to go on speed for? I must say the voice of Maynard James Keenan, Eddie Vedder and Bill Hicks’ humor have been my greatest helpers and inspirations through this aweful, insomniac, excruciating process.  I have multiple times wanted to throw in the towel and not make this OP. I also could not have done it without the loads of yoghurt banana maple syrup I was self medicating with through the process. Writing is painful for me. But not telling the stories is also painful.  I am at a loss for what to do.  I cannot imagine sitting through this for however many OP’s I need to make in order to graduate. This is not what I bargained for. Is there really no other way?

3/19/12

Jorge Ivan’s response to reading first draft

10:20:32 PM

Espinosa: mira socio este es el documento que te dije que estaba creando quiero saber que te parece, si tenes alguna sugerencia, si te gusta si te ofende

Espinosa: etc.

Espinosa: lo estoy presentando a gaia u como uno de mis informes de avances en aprendizaje permacultural, considero todo el trabajo que hicimos juntos crucial a mi desarrollo como permacultor asi que espero que te guste, le falta un poco todavia

Restrepo: listo, veo algo acá y lo leo en la noche

Espinosa: tenes que darle aceptar

Espinosa: te llego el archivo o te lo mando al correo?

Restrepo: bajándolo

Restrepo: no problem

Espinosa: bien socio

Espinosa: aterrizó el documento, abrilo y leete la seccion que escribi para Aire

Espinosa: es la última

Espinosa: porque va en orden de los performance

Restrepo: It is really amazing, I will read it now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! uawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Espinosa: Jajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajja

Restrepo: we are so famos

Espinosa: jajajajajajjajaajjaajajajjajaajaj

Restrepo: Picasso was nothing compared to us

Espinosa: amen\

Restrepo: see you

Restrepo: now  I amgonna readit

Restrepo: I wanna be your student

Espinosa: okidoki socio disfrute, un abazote  jajajajajajajajjajajja

11:36:16 PM

Restrepo: regresé al Skype

Restrepo: sólo para felicitarte por el fantástico escrito que hiciste

Espinosa: lo leiste todo?

Restrepo: lo leí todo

Espinosa: Esooooooo

Espinosa: te gusto?

Restrepo: y tuve la profunda satisfacción de saber que había elegido no sólo al fotógrafo

Restrepo: sino al amigo

Restrepo: al sensible

Restrepo: al filósofo

Restrepo: al profundo

Espinosa: jajajajajajajajajaja

Restrepo: a alguien a quien pude amar a través del arte, en la más limpia y transparente amistad

Restrepo: es en serio

Espinosa: que alivio mi socio

Restrepo: no lo pueden entender fácilmente otras personas

Restrepo: cómo puede haber una forma tan pura de construcción del arte, si pretensiones

Restrepo: pero a la vez con grandeza

Espinosa: no sabes lo feliz que me hace que digas eso

Restrepo: ha sido una experiencia lindísima realmente

Restrepo: me siento orgulloso no sólo de tu lente

Restrepo: sino de saber que he co-producido

Restrepo: y más aún

Restrepo: co-evolucionado

Restrepo: mi trabajo sin tu lente no existiría

Restrepo: pero lo importante no es la buena cámara

Espinosa: puta socio que belleza

Restrepo: sino la cámara inteligente, filosófica

Restrepo: la cámara que es capaz de entender la complejidad de las situaciones, el momento de la humanidad

Restrepo: no hablo sólo de captar el cuerpo, la sombra, la composición

Restrepo: sino saber que ese gran fotógrafo es antes que todo un gran ser humano

Restrepo: que puede acaparar los conceptos y pixelarlos

Restrepo: Gran Jorge

Espinosa: socio querido gracias por tus palabras, Gran Jorge te llamo tambien

Restrepo: has sido una de las personas importantes en mi vida, más aún porque, como ya lo escribí, has estado en una de las facetas más profundas de mi vida que es el arte allá en el pantano

Espinosa: y si mano que tal coevolucion no me había terminado de dar cuenta hasta que las vi todas juntas

Restrepo: no puedo imaginar el mundo sin arte

Restrepo: ni abordar la complejidad con otros dialectos

Restrepo: Jorgito, ver reunido todo esto, como tú lo dices, es una confrontación, simplemente quedo helado

Espinosa: socio se te extraña mucho pero como ves camino con vos bien presente

Espinosa: jajajajajajajajajaj

Restrepo: me tiro a tus pies por la admiración de lo que has hecho

Espinosa: y yo a los tuyos socio

Restrepo: es que no sé donde comienza el trabajo del uno y del otro

Restrepo: es fabuloso

Restrepo: quizá nadie nos entienda

Espinosa: jajajajajjajjajj vale chimba

Restrepo: todo fue muy lúdico, realmente, muy profesional, muy rápido-como tenía que ser-

Restrepo: lo importante es que el producto está allí!

Restrepo: Bueno socio, más que socio, mi amigo coevolutivo, mi colega, maestro

Espinosa: simon, y el potencial para ir mucho mas alla tambien esta alli socio no sabes lo fuerte que me ha pegado eso

Restrepo: a mí también

Restrepo: ha sido revisar en los minutos en que duró la lectura

Restrepo: tan intenso trabajo

Restrepo: en medio del más espectacular espacio: la familia, la escuela, mi hija, mi esposa, tu abuela, los colegas, el cielo azul del zamorano

Restrepo: todo ese escenario hizo propícia la creación

Espinosa: hubiera sido imposible NO hacer lo que hicimos

Espinosa: era inevitable

Restrepo: ...bueno, ha sido simplemente maravilloso. In día dijiste: esto no es arte, esto es vida

Espinosa: amen socio

Restrepo: ...y todo alimentado con la comida de Digna, jajajaja

Restrepo: somos al final de carne,

Espinosa: jajajajajajajajajja

Restrepo: jajajaja

Espinosa: uuuuf si

Restrepo: bueno socio, eres mi orgullo y mucho en el arte

Restrepo: dejemos que la vida avance

Restrepo: una pregunta

Espinosa: okidoki

Restrepo: este texto ya es de uso libre? lo puedo traducir, etc?

Espinosa: claro

Espinosa: es tan tuyo como es mio

Restrepo: sería vueno poner un corto pie de página indicando que Aire es una obra de JRestrepo y Gabriela Alonso.

Espinosa: lo unico es que esperaria a que me lo revisen mis colegas y mi asesor de gaia u por que puede haber cambios

Restrepo: ok

Restrepo: espero la versión final antes de tocarlo o distribuirlo

Espinosa: y por eso te lo enseñe a vos primero para cosas como esa

Espinosa: ok

Restrepo: leiste lo de Gabriela Alonso?

Espinosa: no que fue?

Restrepo: lee atrás

Espinosa: a eso si a eso me refería

Restrepo: te mandé un parrafito, creo que hay que mencionar que es coautora de Aire, sólo eso

Restrepo: ok

Espinosa: perfecto

Restrepo: Bueno

Restrepo: me fundo en un abrazo infinito contigo mi socio

Espinosa: ya socio igual

Espinosa: fundidisimo

Restrepo: qué bueno que llegaste a mi vida para compartir ese espacio! los frutos me dejan sin palabras

Espinosa: jajajajajajajajajajajajaj

Espinosa: que bueno mi socio

Restrepo: TQM

Espinosa: te quiero mucho

Restrepo: JAjajaja lo escribimos al tiempo. Ok  una feliz noche. Quedé flotando después de esta lectura y del ejercicio al expresarte algo más sobre la experiencia artística y de vida juntos! las palabras no alcanzan!

Espinosa: si me di cuenta!

Espinosa: igual socio dulces sueños

Restrepo: qué sientes tú en este momento? pocas veces me he sentido tan cerca de otros seres humanos...el arte es magia...el verdadero arte!

Espinosa: lo mismo socio, un gran alivio de haber terminado el escrito porque fue muy duro para mi, porque me estaba urgando el alma, y alivio al cuadrado porque te ha gustado, y la felicidad de reconocer un logro del cual estaba conciente a medias

Restrepo: :)

Espinosa: muy agradecido porque son pocos los momentos donde se pueden alinear dos conciencias a tal grado que como decis vos no se sabe donde empieza uno y acaba el otro

Restrepo: Hasta mañana nuevamente!

Espinosa: ya socio, un abrazo

Restrepo: un abrazo infinito!

Process Reflection

After a very difficult initial phase^[1]in which I struggled immensely to get all the photography sessions organized and digitally backed up, and the stories on paper, my effort was met with such excitement and support from Jorge Iván^[2]that I was motivated to bring this document to a more highly refined state before presenting it.  It is structured as a document within a document so I can easily extract the main report concerning the art and present that for grant proposals and other purposes, without including the Gaia U related specifications and reflections that sandwich the text.  In the narrative it may be observed that what began as simple observation and documentation evolved into direct experience, and now my process of reflecting on it and harvesting the learnings and unlearnings prepares me and enables me to make more art more successfully, and to use it as an un/learning tool for others and myself.

This document reflects a small un/learning cycle within a much greater one.  The smaller one I see as the Output Packet creation process itself which has taken place in the period of February to May 2012.  I realized that I wanted to use Gaia University to help me process and integrate all the things that I am working on in my life, and that really taking my time to do things well even if I have to go on leave multiple times for months may be necessary to do right by myself and the work I believe in.  I feel that by doing this I am honoring the principle that my personal and professional selves are not separate people, and they are not different areas of my life in which I can measure growth in one without the other.  The larger circle I see as the closing of a loop of working with a dear friend in the best way possible so that I can start another one to cultivate not just the future work that we create, but the working relationship also and not by coincidence, one of dear friendship.