JULIANA CERQUIERA LEITE
Have we really lost our ancient artifacts to science, or have we stored them with our scientists for safekeeping? I don't necessarily agree with Juliana's view that these artifacts have just been shut away, not to be touched by the hands of the artist. Historians, geologists, and archeologists have their own art, one that allows us insightful and accurate information from which to create. We can still see these objects, know what they are made from, and from where they came, we have their story. Sure, they are resilient objects, however, they will only continue to survive if they are kept in good hands.
The issue here is that we don't always know how these artifacts are being looked after. We trust, blindly and rightfully, that those who posses the authority, and those entrusted to protect and safeguard these historical objects, do so. We have to.
Sure, there will be times, like in Brazil, where an avoidable mistake occurs, leading to the destruction of artifacts, and when these events happen, we have to question the integrety of those charged and entrusted with the preservation of these vestiges.
That being said, Juliana's article was hilarious. I hadn't heard the story of the Brazilian museum that burnt down, and the way she describes the catastrophe was great. The idea of sedimentation, and how the layers no longer described the flow of time was something that awoke and spoke to my geological and historical interests.
When reading 'A symbiotic view of life: we have never been individuals' (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23397797/), I got caught in the word 'holobiont'. The word describes how a form of life is deathly dependant on other forms in order to survive. We host bacteria and other living things within the porous confines of the human body, creating a give and take relationship that has allowed all species that are part of this microbiome to benefit.
In 'Hotel Marajora', Juliana describes a possible future of humanity that seems to completely oppose the ideas of transhumanism I had come across previously. Where the transhumanist I had learned about aimed for a digitized future, Juliana sees a mutation between mankind and other aspects of nature. Further immersing ourselves in this idea of the holobiont and symbiosis. While both of these ideas are interestingly antonymic, they both aim the shed the human body and invest the brain into the future.
"A new biological mass, a system of mutation, delicate and controlled"
THE HOLOBIONT THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
This is a collection of photos from my garden. They show the natural world using man-made objects to gain an advantage. These plants benefit by being able to compete for sunlight in environments where they would be shaded, by being given the structural support that they do not naturally have, and man gains by being able to use the opacity of plants as either: a barricade, or as pieces of natural art.
The first image on the slideshow is the wallpaper in my bathroom. It was there when I moved in. I included this to exemplify the use of climbing plants as decoration. We already grant the natural world access to our creations, albeit on our terms and under our jurisdiction. We do not only grant this access physically but also in terms of our own inspirational gain. Yet another example of the stretched-out, ever-loosening definition I have of the holobiont. We coexist.
More and more I am reminded of how waging war on the natural will only backfire on us. We have tried, desperately to sever our tether to nature. We are currently trying to escape this planet. Even though I am supportive of space exploration, I hope it would be under different circumstances. Honestly, in any circumstance that doesn't argue the need to find another home because we are destroying this one. We have forgotten that we are only renting this planet for a short time. I don't think we will be getting our deposit back.
FROM THE GARDEN TO THE WILD
Chapter 6 in Rebecca Solnit's 'Wanderlust' describes the shift from walled medieval gardens to wild "unadorned expanses of water, trees, and grass." such as those curated by Capability Brown. Brown's gardens provided a space to walk among nature. "The Brownian garden, having largely banished sculpture and architecture. no longer commemorated human history and politics. Nature was no longer a setting, but the subject." I personally enjoy this idea of not entirely controlling nature. Allowing it to follow its natural path, weaving itself around the overgrowth of the human world.
Solnit also talks about William Wordsworth's 'founding' of walking for pleasure. I like walking. I like it almost as much as not walking. It's a complicated relationship. I like walking in places I like to walk in, not just down to the shop. It needs to be an event. Places that interest me. I like being in open spaces. In the second week of the term, I went to the Lake District in Northern England. I had never been there before, but it felt so familiar.
I was born in Galicia, in North West Spain. The general landscape there is rocky, mountainous terrain, enclosed by the cold Atlantic ocean, farmlands and lots of wildlife. I used to live in Dover and I would often, almost daily, walk along the cliffs, try to forget I was in a place once describe as the herpes-infested arsehole of Britain (not far from the truth) and try to see France, or at least just look at the oceanic horizon for a bit.