Archive for the ‘performance’ tag
Natural Intelligence
“Natural Intelligence” pays tribute to Ivan Ladislav Galeta, renewed Croatian video and conceptual artist. Performance shows a very simple act of mowing with hand scythe, in the spiral form from the centre towards the outer edge and after finishing mowing returning to the centre of the spiral from where mowing started. This act evokes tradition, work, agriculture, the relationship between man and nature in past times, though the very name of the performance has additional suggestions. “Natural intelligence” is the antithesis of today’s much hyped “artificial intelligence”. By a simple action, which I learned from my grandfather who was a farmer I want to say that nature has an intelligence that should be given attention and respect.
Symbol of spiral has a reference in many artists who use it in their work, perhaps most prominent being “Spiral Jetty” by Robert Smithson. I also want to remember anecdote from Galeta’s life where he mows in the shape of a spiral on his property in a small Croatian village (as opposed to the usual way of mowing in the shape of a rectangle) and thus attracts the curiosity of passers-by who approach him with the desire to correct his work, to which Galeta answers: “If I didn’t mow like this, they would never approach me and never talk about why I mow like this”.
Spiral is a direct trace that man leaves in his relationship with nature and symbolizes life and growth, evolution and expansion. A large number of plants and animals develop in a series of patterns that are directly related to the spiral. From the shape of DNA known as the “double helix” to seashells, cones and fingerprints, the growth of hair on the head (during the performance I stops and pas due respect to the spiral on my head).
It symbolizes development, expansion, rotation and progress – the cyclical nature of evolution where rhythms repeat. It evokes the archetypal path of growth and transformation, both physically and spiritually. The spiral is the bridge between the harmony in the cosmos and the harmony within us — the infinite resonance or life energy. Connection and union with divine and cosmic energies. Revolutions of time, stars, planets and ways of natural progress.
The performance “Natural Intelligence” was designed and performed by Kruno Jošt, produced by UKE in 2023.
Ode to Jerusalem Arthichoke
“Ode to Jerusalem Artichoke” was primarily created as a composition written for violin and clarinet consequentially developed as a performance with Matej Hermšćec on clarinet and Mija Dugandžić-Marić on violin in the Jerusalem artichoke field.
Composition was conceived and a musical notation was made for a plant from the family Helianthus tuberosus L., which botanically belongs to the family Asteraceae (Compositae). When creating the composition, the specie, the way of growth, the time when it blooms and the relationship it creates with the environment (pollinators, other plants and animals) and advantages of cultivation, (e.g. soil remedy and easiness of growing in permaculture) as well as tuberous growths used in human and animal nutrition were taken into account.
This plant is cultivated all over the world today due to its edible and medicinal tuberous root, and it was cultivated by Native Americans even before the arrival of European settlers. Jerusalem artichoke has a wide range of therapeutic effects: immunostimulating, sedative, tonic, atherosclerotic, hypoglycaemic, laxative. It stabilizes sugar and cholesterol, as well as metabolism, removes radionuclides, stimulates tissue regeneration and normalizes intestinal microflora, is a nutrient base and building material for intestinal epithelium and increases immunity and haemoglobin, increases absorption of calcium and magnesium ions which is important for osteoporosis prevention. reduces appetite and thus contributes to the rapid saturation of the body with food. It effectively satisfies the need for carbohydrates and does not increase blood glucose levels and stimulates insulin production, prevents obesity and salt deposition, neutralizes toxins and heavy metals.
The “Ode to Jerusalem Artichoke” project is primarily realized in its desire to transfer the feeling of biophilia and ecocentrism to “other-than-human” inhabitants of the environment. This project is designed on the theoretical aspects found in writing of Clair Bishop, Donna Harrraway, Aldo Leoplold, T.J. Demos, John k. Grande and others that advocates the decolonization of our environment, an attempt to realize the transition from the relationship humans have to the plant world where human is the subject and the plant the object to the subject-subject relationship.