Linda's lecture started from a tricky question. She said, "The land is so beautiful, but is that all?" Touched by the charm of nature is what we experience every single day, in which case the relationship between land and people is distant and visual. However, artists have a wide array of "the sense of distance" towards nature.
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| ana mendieta |
Frederic Church assumed a kind of management duty by taking care of nature rather than letting it be wild and raw. He interacted with nature with a slightly overpowering approach. However, Ana Mendieta's interaction with nature was much more organic. I was moved by how she melted into the nature, as wood, fire, mud, neither an observer or a manager. This is an extremely intimate relationship with nature by being part of it.
David Hockney apparently preferred the observer role. He viewed and took notes on how other people interact with nature. In the famous piece, he was in the scene, but not quite the typical nature-human relationship.
After going through multiple artists' works, I was wondering how Linda approached this problem? It seems like there would be nothing new in terms of this land-human relationship. However, Linda did present a quite "exotic" relationship. She focused on the mutual exchange, the dynamic balance between land and people. From my view, Linda and her land are like lover, friend and business partner. She gained materials from the land by constructing her house using natural woods. I was especially touched when she mentioned maple sap. How maple sap was dipping from the tree and she tasted the very original sap without any human modification. She said it was a form of vital energy from the nature. However, she also gave materials back to nature by foraging, during which process the interaction became even more sensual.
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| Linda's house (This one is taken from her website, just for reference) |
Linda's project reminds me of this week's lecture on mass production. Mass production has a central idea of materialism. However, as Linda mentioned, to generate something new from this ongoing trajectory, scientists and artists should work collaboratively for Neo Materialism. Materialism should highly integrate with the environments rather than develop solely on its own. Although it would be hard to come up with rational and effective approaches to implement Neo Materialism, it is still significant to further explore and emphasize the relationship between human and nature.
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| Group Photo. Love this lecture! |
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