there is so much energy and information flowing through me, I can only trace glimmers here
moments of deep joy, inspiration, connection
how to flow these into form, create lightly
creature structures to contain them with grace
the elsewhere traveling sauna for healing rituals – I can’t wait to coincide with their heat sweat magic:
“Ritual technology for healing… elsewhere is a bespoke sauna on wheels.
Elsewhere Sauna create new local practices drawing on ancient sweat bathing traditions.
A mobile healing space designed to experience the elemental properties of the steamy atmosphere within the wood-fired sauna, alongside the cool respite of partnering with local waterbodies in the region of nipaluna/Hobart.” Images courtesy of elsewhere sauna, created by Selena de Carvalho & Nanna Bayer
What is sauna? A place where we go to sweat to cleanse the body and mind, to cure from illness, socialise and relax…”
In crafting Elsewhere Sauna, we, Selena de Carvalho and Nanna Bayer considered how to approach this creation with care for materials, their origin, learning new skills. Beginning this journey with the purchase of a dilapidated retro-box trailer, we relined the sauna with radiata pine, a low impact plantation timber, the furniture is crafted from recycled western red cedar and the door combines celery top and radiata. We pressed, glazed and fired the tiles ourselves, stripped and lined the interior, rebuilt the floor, re-painted the outer shell of the trailer and worked with local blacksmith sculptor Pete Mattila for metal detailing. The canvas awning was end of the roll Australian made cotton canvas fabric. We devoted ourselves to the process and breathed life back into this 1950’s council mess room on wheels.
We understand that the secret to sauna is the combustion of stored sunlight, wood ignites to release the carbon energy of heat. The fire wood we choose to heat Elsewhere Sauna is plantation sourced from an accredited member of the Firewood Association of Australia.”
Selena de Carvalho & Nanna Bayer, Elsewhere sauna
“EveryWhen” the theme of ISEA24 in Brisbane this June
Oh I am so excited for this, can’t believe I missed the CFP last year but will have to find a way to go. The concept and creative focus makes my solarpunk heart beat a little faster… so much juicy joy to enfold!!
“The Everywhen is the concept of all time simultaneously present in a place and describes the notion that past, present and future are co-habiting any given location. Where many western cultures believe time is the constant and travels in a linear progression from now to then, First Nations Australians describe the before then, then, now and the future then existing in the constant presence of place: The Everywhen.
It is believed that in the time before time, all creation was made and manifest in the landscape; that all stories, art, song, dance, imaginative thought, creative inspiration, technology or invention was made complete in the time before time and can be seen in the topography, plants, animals and natural world. Some have described this concept as the Dreaming or Dreamtime where a web of stories and songs hold the landscape together (as described in Songlines by Bruce Chatwin[1]). Still, by co-opting the phrase Everywhen as applied by Australian Anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner[2], we can better expand the more sophisticated scientific notion of time and space, that all time is accessible at every point in time. By sitting on country you can access all of creation.
In this concept the creative act is not a process of unconnected inspiration, solo achievement or act of individual hubris but rather the process of timely connection to the landscape, accessing the already laid out ‘creation’ and relaying this to others. The role of the artist is to be the interlocutor between past, present and future through their deep relationship to place.
Art is an act of memory.
The destruction of the environment is the destruction of creation and builds obstacles to accessing inspiration and ‘new’ thought. The busying of yourself removes you from the state of mind where you find deep connections to place. The western concepts of personal ownership and copyright can be antithetical to notions of collective responsibility, collaboration and social and environmental ecological connections.
We see the Everywhen as a way of accessing notions of Deep Time, the Metaverse and the Multiverse through rooting ourselves to a specific Where. In a time of globalisation, how can we value where we are and make art that connects through time.”
ISEA2024 EveryWhen Theme
the grist imagine 2200 Imagining Climate Futures & future ancestors talk was amazing and inspiring, with great reflections on imagining our futures and tips for their cli-fi spec-fic writing competition (Write!)
We need more romance and mystery in these stories, said the editor. Hell yeah! that is my vibe. cosy mystery romance cli-fi! Now, there’s a genre I can embrace.
so much has happened since then, was it only a week or 2 ago? I don’t want to break flow to check my calendar. the evolving island of solarpunk life is truly weaving a magic spell around me. I feel so deeply connected and in flow with life, it is genuinely rejuvenating and such intense joy to come alive to again.
I will try to stay awake. conceptually, metaphorically – no sleep deprivation, that is so not my vibe.
Just not drifting off back into freeze / overwhelm again. Being stuck in that place is tedious and dull.
Although I guess the mulching is a necessary part of transition, from old chapter of life to the new.
On Kawara “I got up” is the artwork I think of now. Although I misremember it as “I woke up!” but actually the getting up is important. So conceptually elegant, simple and beautiful. I love that interplay of embedding creative practice into rituals of everyday life. That is something to achieve – or is it more simple to try, not try. just do. There is nothing to achieve, in fact. Other than being present and awake, stepping into the day with life anew. – perhaps that is the most creative act of all.
and now I am drifting on a sea of minimalist conceptual art
The sublime sunrise paintings by Sho Shibuya, painted on the front page of the New York Times each day from an image captured by photographing a small patch of sky through his apartment window.
“I find happiness in ordinary things. The New York Times paintings, for instance, started from my lockdown experience, looking up at the sky and feeling inspired, then painting on the newspaper, which is a very everyday object,” the artist told CR in 2021. “If you look at things a little differently, you can create something beautiful out of the mundane.” Sho Shibuya quoted in Creative Review 01.08.2023
There is something deeply joyful in this daily practice, that I would like to emulate. If I can find form.
While locked down and feeling overwhelmed in his Brooklyn studio apartment, “I realized that from the small windows of my studio, I could not hear the sounds of honking cars or people shouting,” explains Shibuya, who is the founder of the creative studio Placeholder. “I could hear the birds chirping energetically and sound of wind in the trees, and I looked up and saw the bright sky, beautiful as ever despite the changed world beneath it.” Shibuya Images and quote via Spoon Tamago June 24, 2020
I must find that piece I wrote from the balcony in Berlin during lockdown, for a collective exhibition. Maybe this is the form, although far less elegant. At least a daily practice of journaling to help filter.
Perhaps the shape will come, form following function as I learn more each day about what it is I’m doing. Here on the planet, here in this moment, looking out at a wild rabbit dragon cloud careering four feet first across the sky. It has changed now, in the moment between seeing, writing and picking up my camera to capture that image. The endless passing moments that we cannot represent 1:1 through art or we would be all the time trying to catch up with the last, and the last, and the last. I don’t want to be tied to this desk so much anymore, my capacity for screen time has faded and my desire to be out in the world has exponentially increased. The brain fog is lifting moment by moment, as long as I don’t wear my focus out.
So here’s to ventures into the unknown, without a map or goal or aim – the plan is to stay aligned with clear intention, and take inspired action to move the dial – does a dial go forward? Maybe it just spins.
I know, that sounds so vague. Too much meditation and visualisation – which brings me to the crux of my challenge in life. The world I can imagine in my mind is so vivid and clear, that reality often disappoints. How to make the transition from one world to another – and still find a bridge back to the everyday? That is and has always been the sticking point for me – not to get lost in the abyss of the gap between worlds. However much I do love that liminal space, the bridge is built to cross over, not to stay stuck on or under.
Then again, this moment is also an unfolding of my desire to be rooted in place. To find grounding and connection with rich earth between my toes and the loamy soil to nourish and grow rhizomorphic fruits.
To be deeply embedded with community, culture and nature. Like a thousand year old tree, rooted in the forest and sharing nutrients, information and the pleasure of life in the sunshine and rain with each other.
That is possibly enough digressing into Deleuze and Guattari territory for today – now it is time to get up, focus on the final pieces of the camping trip gear I need to call into presence and pick up my new audio recorder bought specifically for listening to trees. And conversations with artists / activists at the Tarkine.
….