Between projects I am slowly adding to this group of drawings. I am interested in themes around deep ecology, embodiment, interconnectivity and animism. The drawings are on Arches acid free hot pressed paper with watercolour and pencil. The photo in this group was taken in 2006 and exhibited in the Carlow Arts Festival in 2007. It remains an anchor point for my work.
The first drawing in this group is called “Council of All Beings/For Whom the Bell Tolls”
In 1985 Joanna Macy, an environmental activist, eco philosopher, systems thinker and Buddhist, created a workshop titled ‘Council of All Beings’. Participants make masks of beings from the ‘more than human’ world. While wearing these masks they take on the essence of that particular being. They bring their mask and the essence to the council and tell of their experience living on a planet where their safety or existence is constantly threatened. At the centre of the council sits a person, who does not wear a mask, representing humanity. They must bear witness, listen and remain compassionate. The workshop is a way for participants to grieve for the Earth and its inhabitants. The idea is that collective grief can be healing.
In this drawing a person sits at the centre of ‘the Council’. They are surrounded by people wearing animal heads. The animals chosen are either extinct in Ireland or are on the critically endangered list. The person at the centre of the Council should be listening and bearing witness. Instead, they are engrossed on their mobile phone. They are not listening and not aware, and in some way not present. Climate change is not any one individual’s fault. Yet, if we keep collectively looking away and not bearing witness, what happens to us as individuals? Collectively looking away or in this case, the faded person at the centre of the council, can be imagined as Western capitalist culture: big oil, pharmaceutical and industrial agriculture. These groups are collectively choosing not to bear witness or change. Not to pay attention to the shifting base lines. Humans are at the centre of the ecological web and by continued extinction of other species, we too are endangered. On an individual level the idea of the person in grey and faded speaks to our concentration levels because of mobile phones and social media. In many ways the human race is fading.
We don’t perceive ourselves as connected to each other or the web of life. But perhaps we are more connected than we imagine. The mass extinction of species currently happening is a bell tolling for humanity, should we choose to pay attention.
Perhaps it’s harder to pay attention now when so much is at stake. What happens to us when we deny our interdependence within the ecological web?
“No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were;
any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.”
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne
1624