Natures proposes situations of art making and presenting while wild camping in the Carpathians. The call is for artists that feel like exploring outside the usual art world terrain, at least for a while. We can dislocate our familiar practices from their art environments and let them be affected, maybe even reshaped by Natures, or we can pursue new ones. We will decide together, on the way, our nomadic path through the Carpathians, prioritizing our artistic processes, keeping in mind that Natures is an art project not an endurance challenge.
In art studios we usually optimize the environment so we can focus on our work with no outside interferences. In Natures, the outside interferes – weather, light fluctuations, wild animals, food resources might affect our practices, hopefully for the better. Maybe in order to depart from our established art habits, we need to leave familiar ways and surroundings sometimes.
Inequality, accumulation, domination, exploitation, territorialism, militarism, seem to be some of the consequences of abandoning nomadism for the safety and comfort that sedentarism and agriculture were supposed to bring. A paradigm of control, management and exploitation that brought us to the present ecocides, wars and crises was deeply established. Natures proposes a return to nomadism, with an aesthetic twist. Nomadism, not in the sense of always being on the move, but in the sense of developing a feel for places and contexts, for when to stay and when to go, for conceptual and experiential wandering.
“Nature” in the current techno-materialist climate sounds like a romantic cliche, a suspect, uncomfortable term. Natures proposes a move from environment as data to nature as experience and base of all experiencing. Experiencing nature, the debates on environmental data (CO2 levels, climate changes) appear absurd – we can directly feel that it’s bad when cities are filled with cars, the air is poisoned, the forests are cut, plants and animals are going extinct – we can care about nature not because the data tells us to be afraid, but because we love it.
“The forest is the Romanian's sibling” was a saying here, coming from the habit of hiding in forests in bad times. We might tap again into this habit because for sure there are bad times, not only for art, and not only in Romania. We can even tap into the stories of mountains as majestic, mysterious, perilous beings in which if you retreat, you might emerge, after a while, changed, if not “reborn”. To complexify, Natures combines these Carpathian perspectives with the Amazonian multinaturalism – multiple realities (natures) that can be accessed through perspectives activated by our bodies, bodies that are not anatomical but bundles of affects and capacities. Back to Natures!
Natures 1 (August 2024), notes and images:
Yesterday evening, a baby fox joined us for a while, then a bear descended towards us, made an arc around, and continued its trip. Later, lying in the bivy under the stars, I had the feeling that I returned home. I felt again that special excitement and joy, Although last month I was staying 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 the most part, in a twisted way, fear only enhances the experience, feeds the joy. (August 14, Wool mountain meadow)
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 19, Paltinul lake)
Yesterday evening, and night, 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 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 in the tree. 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 write, to announce, but what's happening is that my gaze and my being are 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 21 Cozia National Park)
Tomorrow is the closing presentation, and changing the plan, instead of camping at the venue, we decided to camp here and arrive at Somn right before the event. I hope that Jung was right, that when we travel fast, something stays behind, so we would 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.
It’s 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. 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 26, meadow next to Bistrița, Vâlcea)
I tried to find the Natures atmosphere by going again wild camping in the Carpathians, alone this time. I was a bit surprised that the magic was not quite there anymore. The absence of the others was crucial of course, but I realized that another important missing aspect was the artistic component. Natures was actually an art project, not just wild camping, and that artistic component should stay central if I want to find Natures again. Somehow my activities are better if they're artistically motivated. I was fine with wild camping in Tenerife because it was research for Natures. But when I did something similar for a much shorter time, as a holiday, it just didn't feel ok. (September 25, Somn Bucharest)
More notes from inside – documentation as text
Notes from inside – documentation as text