A Tale of Two Polar Bears: Dominic Harris Contra Heide Hatry

 

Dominic Harris: Polar Bear from the series Arctic Souls (2023)

Code, electronics, LCD screen, sensors, aluminium 

65 (W) x 106 (H) x 12 (D) cm  

Heide Hatry photographed by J. C. Rice on the Great Lawn in 

 Central Park (NYC) making Snow Bears in the winter of 2020-21

 

 

I. 

 

Take two polar bears created by two very different artists: the first constructed in code by the London based British artist Dominic Harris; and the second made with snow by the New York based German artist Heide Hatry ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In a tryptich entitled Arctic Souls (2023), Harris seeks to remind viewers of the beauty (and vulnerability) of three of the Arctic's most iconic inhabitants; the polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the Arctic hare. Whether the portraits also capture each creature's essence is debatable (I would obviously say not). 

 

As Harris reveals on his website, despite looking strangely real and lifelike thanks to the level of intricate detail - not to mention the fact the animals respond to the movements of an approaching viewer - they are in fact high-fidelity digital constructions presented on an interactive screen. 

 

In other words, his work is the manifestation of the purest techno-idealism and ultimately tells us more about him than it does about the fascinating animal species he has chosen to depict, including the iconic carnivore shown here.  

 

 

III. 

 

Harris is an artist who uses the very latest technology to share with us his vision of the natural world, transforming the latter (and the creatures that inhabit it) into an imagined reality that the viewer can not only observe, but interact with and immerse themselves within. 

 

The effect is magical. But as much as there is beauty and playfulness in the computer-generated, artificially intelligent world Harris creates, there is also something disturbing; something a bit uncanny valley-ish. 

 

Harris is undoubtedly aware of this and maybe he wishes to exploit our unease in order to challenge perceptions of what constitutes reality and make us question what we want our relationship with the world to be. To what extent, for example, do we wish our daily experience to be mediated via technology? Do we want to see butterflies in the back garden, or on a giant screen? 

 

Maybe the answer is we want both: but what if we can't have both? 

 

What if in so seamlessly encoding the natural world and transforming everything into digital information we exterminate reality? This is what Baudrillard refers to as the perfect crime; i.e., the unconditional realisation of the world via the actualisation of all data [1]. 

 

 

IV.

 

Consider in contrast the Snow Bears made by Heide Hatry ... [2]

 

Whilst Harris and his team are operating in the warmth of his Notting Hill studio - designing, engineering, coding, and fabricating his diabolicaly clever artworks and installations - Ms Hatry has been scrambling around on hands and knees and freezing her tits off for the last couple of winters in snowy Central Park, making snow sculptures of polar bears.

 

Despite both Harris and Hatry issuing a similar call to preserve the natural environment that polar bears live in, I find her work more poignant and many native New Yorkers were also touched and grateful for her heroic efforts.  

 

I remember once Malcolm McLaren telling me that a man on a mountain top tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound that all the electronic music in the world. Similarly, we might say that someone daubing paint by hand on a cave wall produces a much truer representation of the world than all the digital photographs shared on Instagram; or a woman making Schneebären that will quickly melt to nothing (just like the Arctic sea ice) moves us more than someone using code and colours to create a virtual reality.           

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso Books, 1996).

      In brief, Baudrillard argues that reality has been made to disappear and singular being exterminated via technological and social processes bent on replacing real things and real lives with a series of images and empty signs. For Baudrillard, this consitutes the most important event of modern history; one carried out before our very eyes and in which we have all - including artists - have been complicit, although, ironically, it is artists who also leave clues or traces of criminal imperfection behind them.

 

[2] Some readers might recall that I have written previously about Heide Hatry and her snow bears; see the post dated 16 February, 2021: click here.

 

 

For more information on Dominic Harris and his work visit: dominicharris.com - or click here if you wish to go straight to the page on Arctic Souls (2023). Harris is represented by the Halcyon Gallery (London): click here. 

 

For more information on Heide Hatry and her work visit: heidehatry.com 

 

 

Chaos Continues to Reign

Stephen Alexander: Chaos Reigns II (2024)

 

 

Long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark might recall a post published on a sparkling ice-cold morning in December 2018, just days before Christmas, and which featured a horrific photo of a disembowelled fox ...

 

The post - which can be accessed by clicking here - was what my artist friend Heide Hatry would term a memento mori  (i.e., something that acts as a stark reminder of the inevitability of death).

And, like it or not, what I said then is just as true today; pain, grief, and despair remain ever-present in this world and fundamentally determine the tragic (if extremely rare and unusual) phenomenon that people call life. 

 

In other words, chaos continues to reign - and the obscenely mutilated bodies of red foxes (and other native creatures) continue to litter the roadside [1], reminding us that the wheel is the first principle of evil [2]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] An estimated 100,000 foxes are killed on UK roads each year (i.e., about 274 foxes per day). 

 

[2] See the verse 'What then is Evil?' by D. H. Lawrence, The Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 626. 

What Was I Thinking? (2 June)

Images used for posts published on this date 

in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2023

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm still busy working on an 8000-word essay, the structuring and now even the style and content of which is giving me a real headache, it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by, rather than produce all-new material.

 

And so, let's time travel and reminisce ...

 

 

The Museum of Failed Products 

 

I always thought this post published in 2014 concerning the fact that the vast majority of new consumer products - just like the vast majority of species - are destined to fail, was an amusing if somewhat poignant post, concluding as it does that just as the marketplace can do without yoghurt shampoo or breakfast cola, so too can the universe do without us. 

 

 

Breast Ironing 

 

In June 2015, I wrote about the attempt to suppress the growth of healthy breast tissue in pubescent girls by using hard and often heated objects to literally flatten any signs of such development. Usually, this moral shaping of the flesh is carried out in the name of Love; i.e., it's a bad act performed with good intentions - just like the equally disgusting practice of FGM. 

 

Unfortunately, thanks to mass immigration and multiculturalism we now have both these things in the UK.  

 

 

Cabaret: Divine Decadence and Fascinating Fascism

 

Skip a couple of years forward, to 2017, and I was back in Berlin of the 1920s and early '30s ...

 

For many people, Cabaret (1972) - dir. Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli and Sally Bowles - is a near-perfect film musical; one that appears to starkly contrast the divine decadence of Berlin during the Weimar Republic with the fascinating fascism of Hitler's Third Reich, but which actually demonstrates how the two share the same cultural foundations and possess similar aesthetico-sexual concerns to do with questions of gender, style and performativity. 

 

For ultimately, if life is a cabaret old chum, then politics is just another form of show business and - as Jean Genet once wrote - even fascism can be considered theatre. 

 

Or, as Susan Sontag writes in her famous 1975 essay, there's a disturbing (almost symbiotic) relationship between the world of the cabaret and that of the concentration camp; the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death.  

In Praise of Denial

 

Skip forward another 24 months to 2019, and I discussed my favourite line from Shakespeare - I know thee not, old man ... (Henry IV Part 2, Act 5 scene 5) - arguing that the need to deny our elders, our loved ones, our teachers, our leaders, and, ultimately, ourselves, is an absolutely crucial requirement in the process of becoming what one is.

 

Why? Because too much love and loyalty to another, or to the past, can be deadly and anyone who wishes to live and fulfil their own destiny has to offer a seemingly cruel denial of someone or something at sometime or other, regardless of the consequences or the pain caused. 

 

We deny and must deny, says Nietzsche, because something in us wants to live and affirm itself.

 

 

Schopenhauer and the Sea Turtles

 

 

2 June 2020: what was I thinking? 

 

Apparently, about German philosophers and marine reptiles ...

 

For Schopenhauer, life is a manifestation of a hungry will; concerned only with its own continuation. Thus, we witness innumerable species - including sea turtles, wild dogs, and tigers - caught up in an endless feeding frenzy in order to survive and reproduce others of their kind. 

 

Life is thus not only absurd, it is often atrociously cruel and grotesquely violent. And those who imagine that the earth would be some kind of peaceful paradise if only mankind were to stop interfering or vanish altogether, are very much mistaken. 

Sometimes, Better a Dead Mountain Lion Than a Live Dog 

Finally, last year, a post about German born, New York based artist and Wunderfrau Heide Hatry and her latest muse and family member; a stuffed puma called Luna - proving that the author of Ecclesiastes who insisted better a living dog than a dead lion was not always right. 

 

For sometimes, as Ms. Hatry knows, it is the deceased who have something vital to teach us. Which is why her long fascination with corpses has often resulted in work of great insight and macabre beauty. 

 

 

Flaco the Owl and the Skeleton Tree

Photo by David Barrett of Flaco the Owl alongside 

Heide Hatry's Skeleton Tree

 

"If you hear him hoot, scoot / If you pass his tree, flee

If you catch his eye, fly / Don't wait to say goodbye." [1]

 

 

There are some stories in the news that you wish you didn't have to hear about; stories involving murdered babies, for example [2].

 

On the other hand, however, there are some stories which you wish you had heard about sooner and the case of Flaco, a male Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped his long-time enclosure at a zoo in New York City and took up residence in Central Park in February of this year, is one such story ...

Why? Because his story has not only captured the imagination of New Yorkers, but makes many other people, myself included, genuinely happy. I think we can all identify with this bird in some small way. 

 

Obviously there are concerns for his future safety and wellbeing. 

 

But, push comes to shove, I side with those who have petitioned for Flaco's right to freedom and oppose any further attempts to recapture him - particularly as he seems to be perfectly capable of looking after himself, successfully catching and eating prey, as evidenced by the bones of small mammals, mostly rats, found at the foot of his favourite elm tree and turned into a lovely work of art by Heide Hatry [3], which she recently posted on her Instagram account: click here.  

 

Originally taken to Central Park Zoo in 2010, when he was just a few months old, Flaco was kept in a small enclosure with steel mesh, fake rocks, and a painted backdrop, for more than twelve years and I can't see why anyone with a heart would want to lock him up again.

 

So, if zoo keepers want to monitor him, that's fine - but let them do so as he lives freely in the park, delighting visitors and fans around the world.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the song 'Foul Owl', written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Quincy Jones. The song features on the soundtrack to the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night (dir. Norman Jewison) and is performed by Boomer & Travis: click here.

 

[2] I'm referring to the terrible case of Lucy Letby, a 33-year-old nurse found guilty of murdering seven babies (and attempting to murder six other infants) whilst working on a hospital's neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.

 

[3] Heide Hatry is a German-born artist and a long-time resident of New York City. Her work has often featured and been discussed on Torpedo the Ark: readers who are interested can go to labels and click on her name. Her website can be visited by clicking here. 

Powertooling with Heide Hatry

 

Heide Hatry at the School of Visual Arts (New York)

 using her Fein Multimaster

 

 

There are many reasons to admire the German-born artist Heide Hatry. 

 

In no particular order, these might include:

(i) She's talented ...

 

(ii) She's intelligent ...

 

(iii) She's good-looking ...

 

(iv) She wears interesting footwear ... 

However, I think the thing I love the most is that she seems genuinely excited by her discovery of the Fein Multimaster; an oscillating power tool for cutting, sanding, and grinding [1].

 

In a recent post on Instagram, Heide gushes that the Fein Multimaster "opens up thousands of new possibilities" and thrills at the fact that it vibrates at a speed of up to 20,000 oscillations per minute! She even includes a short video of herself using the Fein Multimaster to create one of her smuggler bibles: click here.

 

Whether we might characterise Hatry's fascination with the Fein Multimaster as fetishistic is, of course, debatable; as far as I know she doesn't identify as a mechanophile and doesn't have a kinky attraction to machines, nor gain sexual satisfaction using hand tools. 

 

But she might do: although, even if she does, that would hardly be something unusual within a culture wherein everybody is enframed by technology and besotted with mechanical devices to a greater or lesser degree. 

 

Of course, it might be that I'm the one with the fetish; not so much for machines and power tools - I hate DIY, and my idea of Hell involves wandering for all eternity inside a giant B&Q - but for women operating machines and wielding power tools. 

 

Partly, it's a class thing; I've always been attracted to factory girls, particularly those of the 1940s, like Rosie the Riveter. 

 

But it's mainly due to the controversial music video for Benny Benassi's debut single 'Satisfaction' [2], featuring six sweaty young women in skimpy outfits in what is essentially a pervy ad for a range of power tools: click here.  

 

 

 [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] C. & E. Fein GmbH is a manufacturer of high-end power tools located near Stuttgart, Germany. Founded in 1867 by brothers Wilhelm Emil Fein and Carl Fein, the company invented the hand-held electric drill in 1895 and was responsible for many other innovations. Fein became best-known, however, for its Multimaster, the original oscillating multi-tool. 

      Readers who wish to do so can visit their website by clicking here. Or for more information specifically on the Multimaster, click here.  

 

[2] Italian DJ and record producer Benny Benassi is widely regarded as a pioneer of electro house, a genre brought into the mainstream with his 2002 summer club hit "Satisfaction", taken from the album Hypnotica (2003).  

      Initially, a music video was made featuring three men and a woman and consisted of one three-second take of the four people turning to face the camera and smile, played in slow-motion to match the length of the song. Various animations were overlaid, including close-up pictures of the lips of a man and a woman singing along to the song. It was rarely shown and is now barely remembered. Nevertheless, anyone interested in watching can click here.

       The second - and some would say infamous - video, directed by Dougal Wilson, and featuring the models Jerri Byrne, Lena Franks, Rachel Hallett, Natasha Mealey, Thekla Roth, and Suzanne Stokes, is, however, firmly lodged in the pop cultural (and pornographic) imagination.

 

[3] This collage features Rosie the Riveter, a model advertising the Fein Multimaster, and an actress from the music video for Benny Benassi's 'Satisfaction'. 

 

 

She Flows Lava: On Why the Volcanic Feminism of Betty Hirst is More Effusive Than Dada

Heide Hatry: She Pees Fire (2023)  

heideihatry.com

 

 

I like Heide Hatry. And I like this image; it's always a pleasure to be reacquainted with Betty Hirst. But I really hate the new title assigned to the picture - She Pees Fire. 

 

That might work on an ad alerting women to the signs and symptoms of a urinary tract infection and in which humour is used to counter embarrassment concerning the body, but, in my view, puns should have no place in the world of art [1].  

The photo appears in the latest issue of Maintenant, an annual journal featuring contemporary Dada writing and art [2]. 

 

Unfortunately, I have concerns with this publication and its claim to provide provocative outsider ideas as Dada has done since its inception. For it seems to me that Dada - like punk - was materially embedded in the politics and culture of its time. 

 

To vainly attempt to appear avant-garde by invoking the spirit of something that erupted over a hundred years ago, just seems a little foolish and mistaken to me. It turns Dada into just another -ism (i.e., a practice and an ideology), rather than an Event, (i.e., something unique and chaotic). 

 

I might be mistaken, but I thought the artists involved with Dada during the years 1916-24 aimed to produce works that were completely original; to eradicate all forms of imitation, not found a new school or a tradition in which their ideas and techniques were simply learned and passed on.        

 

Anyway, leaving this debate aside for now, the new issue of Maintenant (#17) argues that war and peace are two-sides of the same coin and that what anti-war protestors should be demanding is not simply a cessation of all military conflicts, but a peacefire. 

 

By this, I think they mean a deconstruction of the binary that forges war and peace into a relationship of co-dependence and obliges us to think of the latter in purely negative terms; i.e., as the absence of war, or the temporary suspension of hostilities.  

 

Heide Hatry's She Pees Fire is a play on this term, peacefire, which, of course, is a play on the term ceasefire - so we have here a double-layered pun. But, as I've said, whilst mildly amusing, it's not a title I care for. 

 

I also fear it detracts from the power of the image, which, to me, reveals the volcanic potentiality of womanhood; she isn't so much pissing fire, as unleashing Hell - i.e., sending a stream of molten lava flowing into the phallocratic world order from out of the bowels of her being. 

 

It's certainly an effusive feminist image, but, ironically, I'm not sure it works to promote an anti-war message. Nor is it particularly Dadaist in character [3]; for it seems to me laden with symbolic meaning, rather than being nonsensical in character (i.e., it's an art-utterance, not just an absurdist prank intended to shock). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm all in favour of paronomasia if and when it is itself raised to the level of an art form, but I'm extremely wary of puns (and the kind of people who make puns); not because I find them threatening or seek a level of control over the meaning of language, as John Pollack, a communications expert and author of The Pun Also Rises (2012), claims, but because I think they are an easy and lazy form of wordplay - neither witty, nor particularly clever, and certainly not subversive.  

[2] Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, Issue 17, ed. Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, (Three Rooms Press, July 2023). 

      For more information and to order your copy direct from the publishers, click here. Alternatively, British readers may find it easier to go to Amazon UK: click here. 

 

[3] One might remind readers that, for all of its supposed radicalism and revolutionary spirit, Dada was not without its problematic aspects, including what might be construed as misogynist tendencies. See Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity, ed. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, (The MIT Press, 1999).   

 

 

Sometimes, Better a Dead Mountain Lion Than a Live Dog

Artist Heide Hatry & 

Luna the Mountain Lion (2023) [1]

 

 

I.

 

According to the author of Ecclesiastes, a living dog is better than a dead lion [9:4]. 

 

However, as the New York based German artist Heide Hatry knows, that's not always true; sometimes it is the deceased who have something vital to teach us, which is why her long fascination with corpses has often resulted in work of great insight.

 

Her latest muse (and family member) happens to be a stuffed puma [2], which interests because D. H. Lawrence also once drew inspiration from the long slim body and round face of a dead mountain lion, killed by two foolishly smiling hunters, in Lobo Canyon, New Mexico, on a cold winter's morning.    

 

He concludes his beautiful and misanthropic poem on the subject:

 

And I think in this empty world there was room for me and a mountain lion. 

And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might spare a million or two of humans 

And never miss them. 

Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white-frost face of that slim yellow mountain lion! [3]

 

Which is, of course, all-too-true ... 

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Nature Conservancy, there are only around 50,000 mountain lions left in the world; 30,000 in the United States and 20,000 in the rest of the Americas. Contrast this with the fact that the human population is believed to have reached 8 billion in November 2022. 

 

That's 1 mountain lion for every 160,000 people ...

 

And yet, 3000 of these magificent cats are still killed by the latter in the United States each year. Again, compare that with the fact that in the last 100 years there have been fewer than 130 officially documented cougar attacks on people, of which only 27 were fatal (which is less than the number of bee sting fatalities in the same period). 

 

It's very depressing: for whilst I still insist that even a dead puma is at least as fascinating as any of the 470 million mutts kept as pets around the world, it would be nice if there were a significantly higher number of live mountain lions - yes, even at the expense of one or two million human beings [4].

 

     

Notes

 

[1] This photo, taken from Hatry's newsletter, is also used as a profile picture to advertise her MFA Art Practice Lecture Series at the School of Visual Arts (NYC), where she is currently the artist in residence. Click here for further details. 

[2] Mountain lions are known for good reason as the cat of many names - in fact, they are listed in dictionaries under more names than any other animal in the world. Depending on the region and native language, common names for the American lion include cougar, panther, puma, and catamount. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Mountain Lion', in Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 351-352. The poem can easily be found in numerous places online; click here, for example. 

 

[4] Readers who agree, might like to support the work of the Mountain Lion Foundation (a non-profit organisation protecting mountain lions and their habitat): click here.       

Reflections on Heide Hatry's Rusty Dog

Heide Hatry: Rusty Balloon Dog (2015) 

Photo by Stan Schnier

 

 

I. 

 

Ask a metallurgist and they'll tell you that rust is an iron oxide, usually reddish-brown in colour, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water. Which, of course, is true in as much as it's factually correct. 

 

But, when considered from a philosophical perspective, rust is a fascinating erotico-aesthetic phenomenon, which is why it has long appealed to artists; particulary those who see beauty in decay and believe in the ruins. 

 

II. 

 

Victorian writer and art critic, John Ruskin, for example, was a big fan of rust. Whilst conceding that you can't use a rusty knife or razor with the same effectiveness as a rust-free blade, rust, he says, is not a defect, but a sign of metallic virtue [1].

 

What's more, in a certain sense, "we may say that iron rusted is Living; but when pure or polished, Dead". Rusting, in other words, is a sign of inorganic respiration; the taking in of oxygen from the atmosphere by the iron.  

 

Further, it's iron in this oxidised, vital form which makes the Earth not only habitable for living organisms, but beautiful; for rust makes the world softer to the touch and more colourful to the eye - just think, he says, of all those "beautiful violet veinings and variegations" of marble. 

 

 

III.

I recalled Ruskin's lecture in praise of rust when seeing one of Heide Hatry's figures in the Rusty Dog series and whilst reading her thoughts [2] on what these figures represent. 

 

According to Hatry, the rusty dogs pose a challenge to the super-shiny, super-smooth aesthetic of Jeff Koons, exemplified by his mirror-polished stainless steel Balloon Dog (1994); and secondly, they call into question the commodification of art, exemplified by the sale of the latter in 2013 for a then record sum for a work by a living artist of $58.4 million.

 

Unlike Koons's balloon dogs - he produced five in all, each with a different transparent colour coating - Hatry's rusty dogs are small in size and made out of cheap 'n' cheerful material. I'm almost tempted to refer to them (affectionately) as mutts.

 

They remind one rather of the famous animal assemblages made by Picasso in the early 1950s, which incorporated found materials, magically transforming them into works of art. His she-goat, crane, and baboon were playful, certainly, but not just intended to be fun - a key term for Koons.       

 

Ultimately, however, for all his talk of fun and innocence, Hatry thinks Koons is cynical and that his works lack soul - by which she seems to mean depth, seriousness, and maturity, but which I would interpret (following Ruskin) as meaning they don't breathe; don't oxidise; don't rust. 

 

For it's rust which is the anti-Koonsian material - and rusting the anti-Koonsian process - par excellence. 

 

Rust challenges all forms of idealism, including the Koonsian dream of a super-smooth, super-shiny surface that perfectly reflects the viewer in all their narcissism and projects the promise of an everlasting, never changing world, free from corruption and death.       

Notes

 

[1] See John Ruskin, 'The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy', Lecture V in The Two Paths (1859). Click here for the 2005 eBook published online by Project Gutenberg from which I'm quoting. 

 

[2] These thoughts were expressed to me in an email dated 8 Dec 2022 and contained in an unpublished essay - 'Must We Abhor a Vacuum?' - written in collaboration with John Wronoski, in 2014.

      Although I am more favourably disposed to Jeff Koons and his work than Heide, I do have issues with his aesthetic of smoothness and, push comes to shove, I side with those who affirm dirt, dust, rust, and shit (what Bataille calls base matter) over the smooth, the shiny, the seamless, etc. 

 

 

 Readers who are interested, can click here to access the posts on (or with reference to) Jeff Koons on Torpedo the Ark.  

 

 

From the Soil Beneath Our Feet to the Iron in Our Soul (Another Open Letter to Heide Hatry)

 The biosphere cannot exist without exchange 

and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere

 

I. 

 

My friend Heide recently sent me a link to an article by George Monbiot, a writer known for his environmental and political activism, which powerfully argued the case for soil: 

 

"Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It's as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it." [1] 

 

Pretty much, I agree with what he says and share his astonishment for the wonder of soil - that pedolithic mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life on Earth. It's amazing to realise that even a small handful of soil contains thousands of tiny creatures, millions of bacteria, and a complex network of fungal filaments. 

 

And, as Monbiot writes, "even more arresting than soil's diversity and abundance is the question of what it actually is" - not just a ground-up rock and dead plants as many people think - but a "biological structure built by living creatures to secure their survival". 

 

Expanding on this theme, he writes:

 

"Microbes make cements out of carbon, with which they stick mineral particles together, creating pores and passages through which water, oxygen and nutrients pass. The tiny clumps they build become the blocks the animals in the soil use to construct bigger labyrinths. [...] Bacteria, fungi, plants and soil animals, working unconsciously together, build an immeasurably intricate, endlessly ramifying architecture that [...] organises itself spontaneously into coherent worlds." 

 

Monbiot concludes: 

 

"Soil might not be as beautiful to the eye as a rainforest or a coral reef, but once you begin to understand it, it is as beautiful to the mind. Upon this understanding our survival might hang."

 

And that, dear Heide, is where my problem with Monbiot begins ... 

 

 

II. 

 

For suddenly it becomes clear that, ultimately, the destruction of soil only concerns him because it threatens human existence; the "thin cushion between rock and air" should be valued because it supports mankind and allows Monbiot to continue his comfortable middle-class life in Oxford. 

If Monbiot and his fellow greens were genuinely concerned with the preservation of the soil and really believed that the future is underground, then they would advocate for (voluntary) human extinction [2] - not just new farming techniques. Like Rupert Birkin, they would see that we have become an obstruction and a hindrance to the process of evolution and that only man's self-extinction will allow life to continue unfolding in inhuman splendour.

 

Monbiot should be encouraged to understand that nature is not our home and that if life matters at all, then every life matters equally; human presence or non-presence doesn't determine the blessedness (or indeed the beauty) of anything. 

 

Not that I'm saying life does possess any intrinsic value; as a philosopher, I'm obliged to affirm the essential truth of nihilism, which, of course, is the truth of extinction [3] and the fact that life is epiphenomenal - a rare and unusual way of being dead, as Nietzsche says [4]. 

 

Even so-called ecophilosophy should do more than simply further human conceit and perpetuate a kind of Gaia-loving vitalism. Its duty and, indeed, its destiny is to acknowledge the fact that the Earth has interests that do not coincide exclusively with the life upon it; as Giorgio Agamben reminds us, the biosphere cannot exist without the chthonic thanatosphere [5].

 

Ultimately, soil only goes down so far and even those strange microscopic organisms that live in the rock deep beneath the surface of the Earth, are no longer anywhere to be found. For ultimately, the Earth isn't alive - it's a solid ball of iron and nickel with a radius of about 760 miles and a surface temperature as hot as that of the sun, surrounded by a molten outer core.  

 

Equally amazing - and just as important - is the fact that iron not only constitutes the soul of our planet, but, along with other metals - such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and zinc - makes up 2.5% of the human body. 

 

As inorganic biochemists like to joke, man cannot live by SPONCH alone ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] George Monbiot, 'The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing - and the key to our planet's future', The Guardian (7 May 2022): click here. 

      See also Monbiot's article from several years back, 'We're treating soil like dirt. It's a fatal mistake as our lives depend on it', The Guardian (25 March 2015). Nice to see him recycling old material in this (environmentaly friendly) manner.

 

[2] See the post 'On Voluntary Human Extinction' (12 Oct 2013): click here. 

 

[3] See Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). And see my post on this book (26 Nov 2012): click here.

 

[4] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109. 

[5] See Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now?, trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113. 

On Chthonic Vitalism 2: In the Etruscan Tombs with Giorgio Agamben

 

Etruscan tombs (Tarquinia)

 

The aim of those who practice philosophy in the Etruscan manner is to learn how to die.

 

 

I. 

 

For D. H. Lawrence, the Etruscans conceived of everything in terms of life - even death [a].

 

But the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees things the other way round; for him, the Etruscans conceived everything in terms of death - even life - and their civilisation was (whilst vital) fundamentally chthonic in character. 

 

This is evidenced by the fact that although the Etruscans chose to build their homes on sites which were ostensibly above ground, they chose to dwell in a more profound sense in the vertical depths: "Hence the Etruscan taste for caves and for recesses dug into the rock, and their preference for tall ravines, gorges, and the steep walls of peperino [...]" [b]

 

Those who visit the tombs, writes Agamben, "immediately perceive that the Etruscans inhabited Chthonia, and not Gaia" [109] and that they had their true being in the underworld - were epichthonioi as the Little Greek would say - and not on the surface of the Earth facing skywards. Agamben writes:

 

"The uniquely subterranean character of these Etruscan spaces can also be expressed, when comparing them to other areas of Italy, by saying that what we are seeing is not landscape as such. The affable, familiar landscape that we can serenely embrace with our gaze and which overruns the horizon belongs to Gaia. In chthonic verticality, however, the landscape vanishes; every horizon disappears and makes way for the nefarious, unseen face of nature." [110] 

 

 

II.

It's not that Lawrence is wrong exactly to stress, as he does, the vitalism of the Etruscans, it's just that he fails to emphasise the chthonic nature of this vitalism. Agamben is spot on to write of this fascinating people with iron in their soul: 

 

"They did not love death more than life, but life was for them inseparable from the depths of Chthonia; they could inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate her countryside only if they did not forget their true, vertical dwelling." [110-111]

 

This is why the tombs hollowed out in the naked rock do more than merely house the dead and allow us to imagine how the Etruscans conceived of the afterlife; they also allow us to more profoundly understand "the movements, the gestures, and the desires of the living people who built them." [111] 

 

The reason that the Etruscans "built and protected the dwellings of their dead with such assiduous care" [110], was because of their "unshakable chthonic dedication (rather than, as one might assume, their chthonic dedication arising from their care for the dead)" [110].

 

They understood - in a way that most modern people do not - that life only exceeds mere existence and flowers into the fourth dimension when it "safeguards the memory of Chthonia" [111]. 

 

In other words, because we are mortal, then confronting our own finitude and learning how to live in the knowledge and the shadow of death is the most vital aspect of being human. As Heidegger says: Dasein is essentially a being-towards-death [Sein-zum-Tode] [c]. 

The Etruscans demonstrated "that there is an intense community and an uninterrupted continuity between the present and the past, and between the living and the dead" [111]. We forget or dismiss our relationship with the underworld, with the realm of matter, with death, at our peril (a point that the New York based German artist Heide Hatry makes repeatedly in her work). 

 

For ultimately, not only must Gaia and Chthonia be understood as inseparable, but the world of the living (the biosphere) "cannot exist without exchange and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere" [111].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the first post in this series on chthonic vitalism - 'In the Tombs With D. H. Lawrence' - click here.

 

[b] Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), p. 110. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, chapter 1.

 

On Crystal Skulls and Vitrified Brains

Figure 1: Crystal Skull in the collection of the British Museum [1]

Figure 2: Vitrified remains of a human brain [2]

 

I. 

 

It amazes me that even after the series five episode of Peep Show in which Mark smashes Cally's crystal skull with a brick, having only pretended to share her insane beliefs surrounding these objects in order to get her into bed [3], there are are still people who genuinely think these quartz carvings were crafted by the ancient inhabitants of Atlantis and possess magical powers of healing. 

 

Indeed, even claims of a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican origin have been refuted by those experts who have taken time to investigate them and it seems most likely the skulls were manufactured in the mid-late 19th century, almost certainly in Europe, in order to meet the growing demand for primitive artefacts (this includes the skull in the collection of the British Museum shown in figure 1 above).    

 

It's worth noting, finally - and contrary to popular fiction and New Age fantasy - that stories of crystal skulls possessing mystical properties and paranormal powers, do not feature in actual Mesoamerican mythologies. If you'd held one up to the Aztecs, they'd have laughed in your face (before then ripping your heart out).   

 

 

II.

 

Far more interesting than crystal skulls and their fake history, is the fact - recently brought to my attention by the artist and thanatologist Heide Hatry [4] - that the heat from the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD was so extreme that it literally turned brains into glass!

 

Who knew this was even possible? Blondie warn about the dangers of having a heart of glass [5], but I don't recall them saying anything about this.   

 

Vitrification, however, is a real process; one which results when material is burned at a very high temperature and then rapidly cooled and the shiny black matter extracted from inside the skull of one poor soul killed by the volcano is indeed the glassy remains of what had previously been squishy grey matter. 

 

Such a process is, apparently, extremely rare. Indeed, according to Dr Pierpaolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist and the lead author of a recently published study of this topic [6], this case is the first ever discovery of an ancient human brain which has been vitrified.

 

Dr Petrone explains that the victim - found buried by volcanic ash - was probably killed instantly by the eruption and that the intense heat his body was exposed to ignited fat, vaporised soft tissue, and converted his brain into a glass-like substance. 

 

As Mark Corrigan might say: Thank you science, for providing us with this truly fascinating - if horrific - insight.     

 

Notes

 

[1] This and other images of the British Museum's Crystal Skull - along with full details - can be found on the BM website: click here. In brief, the BM purchased it from Tiffany and Co., in 1897, and they readily admit that it is not an authentic pre-Columbian artefact, but one made with modern tools, probably in Europe in the 19th-century.   

 

[2] Image source: The New England Journal of Medicine / Pierpaolo Petrone: click here.

[3] See the episode of Peep Show entitled 'Jeremy's Manager' (E5/S5), dir. Becky Martin, written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, first broadcast on 30 May 2008. The full episode can be viewed on All 4 (the on demand service from Channel 4): click here (note you'll need to sign in or register first). Alternatively, the relevant scenes from the episode can be found on YouTube: click here and here.

[4] See the post dated 3 May 2022 on Heide Hatry's Icons in Ash Instagram account: click here.

 

[5] Blondie, 'Heart of Glass', a single release from the studio album Parallel Lines, (Chrysalis, 1978), written by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. Click here for the official music video (dir. Stanley Dorfman). 

[6] Pierpaolo Petrone, M.D. (University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy), et al, 'Heat-Induced Brain Vitrification from the Vesuvius Eruption in C.E. 79', The New England Journal of Medicine, (Jan 23 2020): click here.

Reflections on Milo Moiré's PlopEgg Painting (With a Note on Heide Hatry's Expectations)

Milo Moiré: PlopEgg (2014)

Photo by Peter Palm

milomoire.com

 

 

I. 

 

British art critic Jonathan Jones really doesn't like performance art and he wants the world - or at any rate his Guardian readership - to know it:  

"Performance art is a joke. Taken terribly seriously by the art world, it is a litmus test of pretension and intellectual dishonesty. If you are wowed by it, you are either susceptible to pseudo-intellectual guff, or lying." [1]

Obviously - and by his own admission - he's overstating things for polemic effect. But still it's clear that he's not a fan of contemporary performance art which, in his view, lacks power, fails to take any real risk, and reveals the extent to which today's practitioners are distanced from "real aesthetic values or real human life". 

 

Practitioners, for example, such as Swiss artist Milo Moiré, whom followers of Torpedo the Ark will recall I have discussed in earlier posts which can be found here and here. 

 

 

II. 

 

Performed at Art Cologne 2014, Moiré's PlopEgg, involved the expelling of paint filled eggs from her vagina on to a canvas, thus creating an instant abstract work of art. At the end of the performance, the canvas was folded, smoothed, and then unfolded to create a symmetrical image resembling one used in a Rorschach test.    

 

Dismissing Moiré as simply "the latest nude egg layer from Germany" [2], Jones denies that PlopEgg is an interesting feminist statement about female nudity, fertility and creativity; it is, rather, "absurd, gratuitous, trite and desperate". 

 

The thing is, even if Jones is right, and Moiré's conceptual work uniting painting and performance is all these things and succeeds only in perfectly capturing "the cultural inanity of our time", what's wrong with that?            

 

And, actually, Jones is not right: PlopEgg resonates in many ways on many levels for many of us; we think, for example, not just of female genitalia as represented in the history of art and of relatively recent contributions to this tradition by Judy Chicago, Annie Sprinkle, Jamie McCartney, et al, but also of Bataille's astonishing novella L'histoire de l'œil (1928) and the famous scene in which Simone inserts a soft-boiled egg into her cunt (as she does later with a raw bull's testicle and, finally, a priest's eyeball). 

 

We think also of Leda, the Aetolian princess, who was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan; the union resulting in an egg plopping out of her vagina, from which the beautiful Helen was hatched. And we even recall with a smile the beautiful jade eggs that Gwyneth Paltrow encourages women to insert in order that they may gain a greater experience of ther own bodies and increase their feminine energy [click here].      

 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Jonathan Jones, 'The artist who lays eggs with her vagina - or why performance art is so silly', The Guardian (22 April, 2014): click here to read the article in full online. All quotes that follow from Jones are taken from this piece.  

 

[2] Jones doesn't specify who else he is thinking of when he refers to these egg layers from Germany, but one possible candidate might be Heide Hatry and her ambiguous performance piece entitled Expectations (2006-08), in which she too squeezes an egg out of her vagina. 

      In one variation of the work, Hatry, dressed as a businesswoman and carrying a laptop, throws the egg directly at the lens of the camera which is filming her, almost as if she wants the viewer to look foolish or feel embarrassed by what they're waching (i.e. to know what it's like to have egg on their face). To discover more about this work, click here. 

 

  

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

The Lovers of Valdaro 

Image: Dagmar Hollmann / Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

 

 

I. 

 

New York based German artist Heide Hatry has recently been posting a series of images on her Icons in Ash Instagram account showing the exhumed skeletal remains of lovers who had been buried together for what they probably imagined would be all eternity, including the pair shown above discovered by archaeologists at a Neolithic tomb in San Giorgio, near Mantua, Italy, in 2007.

 

The Lovers of Valdaro, as they are known, are believed to have been no older than 20 years of age when buried, approximately 6,000 years ago, with arms wrapped tenderly around one another. Osteological examination revealed no evidence of a particularly violent death (no fractures or signs of traumatic injury, for example), so perhaps they died of broken hearts, or having swallowed poison in an amorous suicide pact - who knows?  

 

Anyway, morbid voyeurs who might wish to, can see the skeleton lovers for themselves on permanent display at the National Archaeological Museum of Mantua. 

   

 

II. 

 

Touching as the story of the Valdaro Lovers may be, regular readers of Torpedo the Ark will recall that - for philosophical reasons - I have a real problem with bones. But allow me to summarise these reasons for those readers who are not quite so familiar with the contents of this blog ... 

 

Due to the fact that bones are relatively long lasting, many cultures accord the skeleton - conceived as a noble infrastructure - far greater respect than the soft pathology of the flesh. As Nick Land notes in The Thirst for Annihilation (1992):  

 

"A corpse has one pre-eminent and historically fateful heterogeneous distribution: that between its skeletal structure and its soft tissues. This is apprehended as a difference between what is perdurant, dry, clean, formal, and what is volatile, wet, dirty, and formless."

 

Thus it is that osseological idealists of all varieties - including Christians, Hegelians, and fascists - love bones and skulls, associating these things not only with phallic rigidity, but spirit and intellect, whilst, on the other hand, associating the flesh (and filth) with the feminine. 

 

Unable to face up to the fact that we will all one day decompose and melt into slow putrescence, they posit the skeleton as that which provides figural permanence to human being and marks an acceptable transfiguration of the organic body. 

 

The skeleton is thus the affable mascot of humanist narcissism - reassuring in a way that a rotting, stinking corpse crawling with maggots can never be.       

 

Musical bonus: Dem Bones - aka Dry Bones - is an African-American spiritual song first recorded in 1928. The lyrics, whilst often changing, were inspired by Ezekiel 37:1-14, wherein the prophet visits the Valley of Dry Bones and foretells of the resurrection of the dead: Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again! Now hear the Word of the Lord! 

      Click here to watch The Delta Rhythm Boys giving us their version, a recording of which can be found on their album Swingin' Spirituals (Coral Records, 1960).     

 

Blessed are the Greens ...

Members of Extinction Rebellion's Red Brigade who have 

come to save the world with mime and religious rhetoric.

Photo by Sibylla Bam Bam

 

 

I. 

 

In an email responding to a recent post on Heide Hatry's Schneebären, an angry reader writes:    

 

"I was deeply offended (though hardly surprised) by your blasé attitude towards the global Climate Emergency; a phrase you italicise presumably to express your scepticism, if not, indeed, to indicate you are an out-and-out denier of the unfolding environmental crisis.   

      Why must you treat this serious moral and political issue with the same studied irony and indifference that you seem to treat everything you write about? What is wrong with you? I can only hope and pray that you one day wake up and become part of the solution, not the problem."

 

I would like, if I may, to make a statement of reply here ...     

 

 

II. 

 

As someone with a philosophical disposition, I am naturally inclined towards scepticism; particularly when confronted with dogma, doxa, or a mixture of both - and, unfortunately, there are many people involved with the green movement who believe the things they believe to be incontrovertibly true as scientific fact, accepted opinion, or an item of faith.      

 

I don't deny the issues that concern my correspondent and others like her - in fact, if she goes back to the post which prompted her to write, she'll see that I express my own disquiet about environmental matters (including habitat destruction and the threat to wildlife) - but I do challenge the language used when, as so often, it takes on a religious tone and offers a moral interpretation of events. 

 

I can just about stomach those green activists who think of themselves as eco-warriors - and believe me I hate the language of militancy too - but when they start to also imagine themselves as crusaders and eco-evangelists on a mission to save the planet, then I'm afraid I resort to studied irony as a kind of defence mechanism or antiemetic, because, as Jello Biafra once put it, all religions make me sick [1].         

 

III.

 

Whilst it's obviously not the case that all eco-types are either seeking out a new faith or looking to supplement (and green) an old one, it's pretty clear that some are. That's why I think the author and filmmaker Michael Crichton wasn't too far off the mark to suggest that environmentalism has become the religion of choice for many in today's world.

 

In a 2003 speech, Crichton conveniently outlined some of the ways in which environmentalism has reinterpreted the Judeo-Christian belief system:

 

"There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. 

      

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday ... these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith. 

      

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them." [2]

 

To paraphrase Nietzsche: Environmentalism is the heir of Christian moral culture. In other words, it's a new form of ascetic idealism. And, for Nietzscheans at least, that's a problem. As it is for Crichton. As it is for me. Like the latter, I wish to demoralise environmentalism and abandon the mythic (and apocalyptic) fantasies that it likes to peddle - particularly when these are tied to utopian political narratives that always seem to end in tears (and bloodshed).    

 

  

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring to the classic Dead Kennedys song 'Religious Vomit', written by 6025 Cadona, on the 8-track EP In God We Trust, Inc., (Alternative Tentacles, 1981): click here. 

 

[2] Michael Crichton, 'Remarks to the Commonweath Club', San Francisco, (15 Sep 2003): click here to read the full transcript online. The paper is often referred to by the title 'Environmentalism is a Religion'. 

      Interestingly, Crichton fictionalised his arguments on this subject in his novel State of Fear (HarperCollins, 2004). Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains graphs, footnotes, an afterword explicitly setting out his views on global warming, an appendix in which he warns against the politicisation of science, and an extensive bibliography. It should also be noted, however, that many climate scientists, journalists, and green activists have gone on record to say that Crichton's work is an error-strewn and wilfully distorted interpretation of the facts.   

 

See also: Joel Garreau's essay 'Environmentalism as Religion', in The New Atlantis, No. 28, (Summer 2010), pp. 61-74. Garreau usefully traces the move from theology to ecotheology, touching on both neo-paganism and the greening of Christianity. Garreau also comes up with the amusing coinage carbon Calvinism. Click here to read online.