Natures, notes from inside
Situations of art making and presenting while wild camping in the Carpathians.
Natures, notes from inside, documentation as text:
August 19, Paltinul lake
Yesterday a bear was coming our way, we made some noise and it went away. This morning I was relieved when they passed close to the tent and apparently went their way. But they didn't. They stopped quite close actually, eating our food, retrieved from where it was hanging, at the entrance in the forest. I talked to them, politely asking them to leave from our camp and immediately realizing that we are the ones in their territory. I tried to explain the situation, telling them that we're sorry to come uninvited to their place, and asking them if we can stay one more day. They, mother and big cub, although now certainly aware of us, were mostly ignoring us, which we appreciated. They stayed until they finished to unpack, spread, and eat what they liked from our food, basically everything. After what felt like an eternity, they left, making an arc around us, respectfully keeping their distance, and disappearing in the forest, not before the cub climbed a tree to take another good look at us. The encounter was a mix of fear and curiosity, and confusion about what would be the proper way to behave. I felt that somehow everything depends on our behaviors and states. And, although that's what we work with as performance artists, I didn't feel exactly confident performing to this rather demanding audience. Yet, apparently our performance was good enough.
August 21, Cozia National Park
Yesterday evening we were walking and walking without finding any suitable place to camp. Just an inclined path in an inclined forest. Exactly when the full moon was rising, we arrived at some cliffs with breathtaking views. It was not easy to find some places where to place the sleeping pads on the cliffs. It's early morning now and I'm lying down on my uneven pad. I have a huge precipice very close to my left, and Eliza has one, just a bit farther away to her right. During the night I woke up a couple of times, half-asleep rearranging my posture and position in relation to the precipice. Yet, taking in consideration how worried we were, we slept quite well, and no bears, and our food is still hanging there. And the landscape looks just out of this world. The thing with these kinds of places is that they're not very “productive”. I have things to do, to prepare, to organize, to announce, but what's happening is that my gaze, and my being is locked on the amazing landscape, in a light, suspended meditation, captured by the sublime. I'm staying like that in a state of just being. Not just being unproductive, but outside of the entire mindset of productivity. The normalized background anxiety is now exposed, and it's melting away. Well, not totally unproductive though, I somehow managed to write this, in some breaks from the wonder.
August 14, meadow on the Wool Mountain
Yesterday evening a baby fox was joining us for a while, then a bear was descending towards us, making an arc around, continuing its trip. Later, lying in the bivy, under the stars, I had the feeling that I returned home. I felt again that first night of wild camping excitement and joy, like the first night camping in Tenerife earlier this year. Although last month I was in the countryside and for a few days in a mountain house, wild camping feels so much better, so paradoxically more at home. Not protected (enclosed/jailed) by fences and walls, you're interacting with the world, you're part of nature, your body opens, and this can be a little scary, yet, for most part, in a twisted way, fear only enhances the experience, feeding the joy.
August 17, Paltinul lake
It's difficult to keep the artistic component going. At all times there seems to be something else to do, even if just to stay and look at a fire or a landscape. Art can eventually come as a luxury, something to do in an empty time, yet the time here never feels empty. Another possibility is to come as a second layer to what we're already doing, like a second attention and intention in doing things. And another one would be to be practical – maybe in being helpful to better connect with nature, to better feel where to stay and when to go, to find food, safety…. But why call something like that art? The assumption in this question is that art should be decorative or representation. If we overcome the assumption, an answer would be, because art works with the power to affect and to be affected.
August 26, meadow next to Bistrița Vâlcea
Tomorrow is the presentation, and against the plan of camping at the venue, we decided to camp here and to arrive there right before the event. I hope that Jung was right, that when we travel fast something stays behind, so we will still be partially here and our bodies’ presences/absences might convey this. Maybe our bodies will be mediums for the natures that we encountered, maybe we will be in two worlds or maybe between the two, nowhere.
Is sad to return to the city. It was always difficult to return from wild camping. And it was always difficult to go wild camping. It always feels like a difficult switch, too big of a change going from one to another. It's like you need a body at home and a different one for going nomad and wild. From the home body perspective, going wild seems complicated, uncomfortable, dangerous, exhausting and unnecessary. From the wild body perspective, going civilized feels wrong, diminishing, ugly depressing.
August 29, Bucharest
Natures feels like a dream. A very pleasant and significant dream of a far away world now. I'm staying “home” waiting for my body, for the city body to reemerge. These days I feel without one, floating in a buffer zone between realities – not in Natures, not at home. It's not much I can do, I just wait for the return to happen. The city feels hostile, the Natures gone. But, taking the capacity of making plans as a sign, I'm slowly arriving, although the plans are for leaving again.
September 5, Artworlds Bucharest
I went for the I Ching to see about my dilemma of where and how to live. After returning from Natures I feel a lot of unrest in the city, actually I feel physically unwell. I put my finger (I have my simplified method for I Ching, that I do very rarely, maybe once in 3 years) on the paragraph about “THE CREATIVE” line in the “fellowship with men in the open” hexagram. It makes a lot of sense because my dilemma is if to move to the countryside and immerse myself more in nature, or to stay in cities, immersed in the art world. And the answer seems to be neither, or both, basically Natures.
The fellowship with humans is complicated in the art world, but also in nature, because of a corporate mindset that started to prevail in both. More than 20 years ago I was hiking for days in the Retezat mountains with a few friends. We climbed several high peaks, and on their difficult tops it was “nice”, even “impressive”, but I mostly felt emptied and exhausted, and something was missing. On the way home, while resting in a simple meadow, nature and me both changed, everything finally became truly beautiful. The peaks were more interesting to look at from a distance than to be on them, nature was finally there. I realized that what matters is a certain sensibility without which you cannot encounter nature. I understood that I'm interested in a certain affective atmosphere, in the communion with nature and not so much in the sport of conquering it. I'm afraid that much of the mountain culture of “achieving” peaks and marking them done on mountains to do lists, is corporate infected, and the people going in nature for alternatives to their corporate environments are often only expanding them. Somehow this is the same in art too.
With Eliza Trefas, Smaranda Găbudeanu, Bogdan Drăgănescu, Florin Flueras.
