The University of the Self #54

A Folding Poem for the Earth

A Folding Poem for the Earth

I have been inspired many times by the Fluxus Art Movement, and I have a special admiration for the boxes some of the artists create. I am a hybrid artist, and this folding poem was a time when text, paper and and my desire to express eco-concerns formed an intersection. This piece of work is the result.

Here is a link to a video of the poem with interaction and a narration, which begins a short time in: VIDEO

Image description: Image description: On a black background a person with pale pink hands wearing a red jumper holds a rectangle box. The box has a blue base and a top covered with mottled brown paper and two pictures - one a close up of a parasite and one a close up of a nematode.

Image description: On a black background there is a rectangle box. The box has a top covered with mottled brown paper and two pictures - one a close up of a parasite and one a close up of a nematode.

Image description: On a black background a blue-sided box has a bottom covered with mottled brown paper. Inside are five piles of folded papers of diminishing size. The papers are pages from books and have sections of text and pictures on them.

Image description: On a black background eight pieces of folded papers of diminishing size are laid out side by side and underneath. The papers are pages from books and have sections of text and pictures on them.

Image description: On a black background 17 pieces of folded paper of diminishing size are laid out side by side and underneath. The papers are pages from books and have sections of text and pictures on them.

Image description: On a black background 15 pieces of folded paper of diminishing size are laid out side by side and underneath. The papers are pages from books and have sections of text and pictures on them.

Image description: On a black background 16 pieces of folded paper of diminishing size are laid out side by side and underneath. The papers are pages from books and have sections of text and pictures on them. There is a copper-coloured two pence coin next to the smallest papers.

I love pages from old books.
How interesting it is to use them to measure
how much, if any, the world has changed.
Has it changed for the better or changed for the worse?
Did we heed the warnings?
What has humanity learned?

I found this book about animals, and it is forty-five years old.
Four and a half decades ago, books like this were warning us
that we must take more care of the Earth;
that all of life is precious, that too many lives are at risk.
I thought about extinction.
I thought about vanishing.
I thought about dwindling into nothing.
I thought about what we have already lost,
and what we still have to lose.

I took four pages from this book.
I did this, because everything now is fragments.
I cut a square from the centre of each
and made a number of folds.
I felt as if I was packing the Earth away,
and the information there was less than before.
I could still read much of what was still there,
but each story is interrupted, each thread is broken,
each clue to life is now incomplete.
The page had started to disappear.

I took the four square centres that I had cut out
and cut out their hearts again.
Then I made a number of folds.
The details fracture.
Sentences no longer make sense.
Pictures are misaligned.

I took the four square centres that I had cut out
and cut out their hearts for a third time.
Then I made a number of folds.
Each time, the nature upon the pieces becomes more scant.
Every time I force my manipulations upon them,
I lose more and more.

I took the four square centres that I had cut out
and cut out their hearts again, again, again and again.
Then I made a number of folds.
I am not sure what I see now.
I am not certain what is written there.
I have snipped and creased away the stories.
It is a language I no longer understand.

It is too intricate for my hands.
The fragments slip from my fingers.
They are so small and easily lost.
They are so fragile and already suffer from my touch.
I have reduced everything to precarity.
The original page is unrecognisable.
I have made a stranger of the beauty of the world.

What is left?
What is left?
What is left?

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