Rice/Tree/Burial
was first realized in 1968 in Sullivan County, New York, in a private ritual.
It was a symbolic "event" and announced my commitment to
environmental issues and human concerns. It was also the first exercise in
Eco-Logic—an act in eco-philosophy. I coined the words to be used this
way emphasizing the importance of eco-logical thinking. This work is considered the first ecological realization in public art.
I
planted rice to represent life (initiation and growth), chained trees to
indicate interference with life and natural processes (evolutionary mutation,
variation, decay, death), and buried my Haiku poetry to symbolize the idea or
concept (the abstract, the absolute, human intellectual powers, and creation
itself). These three acts constituted the first transitional triangulation*
(thesis, antithesis, synthesis) and formed the Event. According to evolutionary
theories, Event is the only reality, while the reality we perceive is forever
changing and transforming in an expanding evolutionary universe in which time,
space, mass, and energy are all interconnected and interdependent.
Rice
represented a universal substance referring to sustenance and the life-giving
element, while the seed itself denoted the nucleus, first principle or cause—the
beginning. The act of sowing implied the source of growth, the introduction of
a thing into another environment in order to initiate a process, the setting of
something into motion (fertilization, conceiving, induction).
The
chaining of trees signified linkage, connective units and associations,
flexibility and restraint. It implied bondage, defeat, interference with growth—decay. The act of chaining brought attention to the
mysterious life-force of an organism and its partial
triumph over boundaries and restraints—its uneven, limited transcendence.
Chaining trees also expressed choice, the selection and defining necessary in
the creative process.
The
texture of the forest, having been interrupted by the reordering of its
elements, yielded unique structures of isolated or combined sculptural forms.
The chains became additional limbs and blended into their surroundings to
become visible only in certain lights, angles, and perspectives, conveying the
conflicting and interdependent aspects of art and existence, illusion and
reality, imagination and fact. The chained trees stood as monuments to human thought versus
nature.
The
burial of my haiku formed the essence of thinking processes (consciousness,
deductive reasoning, and the logic of emotions). It represented the concept as
essence of invention, which connects and defines life and death and acts as
modifier and rationale for both.
I
kept no copies of my poetry, thereby relinquishing, "giving up to the
soil," something personal and precious—an act that also symbolized
the self-denial and discipline required by this new analytical art form.
The
act of burial, or placing into the ground and receiving from it, a
cause-and-effect process, marks our intimate relationship with the earth. On
the one hand, it indicates passing, returning to the soil, disintegration, and
transformation; on the other, generation and life-giving,
placing in the ground for the purpose of planting. It is also a metaphor for
human intelligence and transcendence through the communication of ideas - in
this case, to future descendants.
All
three imply change from one form to another, cyclic phenomena, transformation—as from chaos to order and back.
Consequently, all three idea representatives or metaphors—the rice, the
tree, the burial—become analogous, interactive and interdependent,
creating the tension of opposing forces acting on each other and the momentum
necessary to pass from one state to another and into further propositions.
Their interaction creates a counterbalance as they pass into each other's realm
or meaning to become successively interchangeable through their inherent
polarity.
The
ritual marked the beginning of my involvement with the creation of a
"visual philosophy," a complex process which explores essences as forms of communication. It finds methods to put analytical
propositions into visual form, defines elusive processes and creates analogies
among divergent fields and thought processes. It challenges the status quo and
tests its own validity.
In
the summer of 1977, the ritual was re-enacted and realized on a full scale at Artpark (Lewiston, New York), completing the first cycle in
the evolutionary process of my work and marking an important phase in its
development. This periodical summation is a natural evolutionary phenomenon.
Organisms probe their environment to find best possible ways to survive by
developing memory and the ability to compare. In our limited existence this
long view of reaching back and re-examining provides answers as to where we
have been and where we are going.
I
planted a half-acre rice field 150 feet above the Niagara gorge. The site
marked the birthplace of Niagara Falls between Canada and the U.S., twelve
thousand years ago. The rice grew up mutant, an unforeseen consequence of Artpark having been a dump-site near Love Canal.
I
chained the trees in a sacred forest that was once an Indian burial ground,
long since looted and desecrated, working under the watchful eyes of the
Indians who seemed to hover over us in the trees and cover our bodies in the
form of eerie spiders.
I
then climbed out to the edge of Niagara Falls and filmed it for seven days,
adding the forces of nature, as a fourth element, to this cycle of dialectics.
With this act I also affirmed that my art functioned on the edge of the unknown
in a delicate balance of the universals and the self, of the moment and of
eternity—and was not afraid to assume the risks such art must take.
The
shaky ledge from which I filmed had been dynamited to control the retreat of
the falls. Soon after my filming, it fell into the white foam below.
The
time capsule was buried at Artpark at 47° 10'
longitude and 79° 2' 32" latitude. It contained no objects other
than the microfilmed responses to a questionnaire that had traveled around the
world, and a long letter I wrote addressed "Dear Homo Futurus."
The
questionnaire was composed of existential questions concerning human values,
the quality of life, and the future of humanity. The responses were primarily
from university students in various countries where I spoke or had exhibitions
of my work. Within the context of the time capsule the questionnaire functioned
as an open system of communication, allowing our descendants to evaluate us not
so much by the objects we created—as is customary in time capsules—but
by the questions we asked and how we responded to them.
The
microfilm was desiccated and placed in a steel capsule inside a heavy lead box
in nine feet of concrete. A plaque marks the spot: at the edge of the Indian
forest, surrounded by blackberry bushes. The time capsule is to be opened in
2979, in the 30th century, a thousand years from the time of the burial.
There
are, still within the framework of this project, several time capsules planned
on earth and in space, aimed at various time frames in the future.
*Dialectic
Triangulation: A Visual Philosophy and Exercises in Logic (1967-69)
From The Organic
Notebooks 1967-79
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