conscient podcast

e167 barbara cuerden - tending the garden of art

Episode Notes

• The garden doesn't have to be something that's instrumental. It can be just a place where you sit, where you're thinking of growing something, you know, where the sun shines and where photosynthesis takes place and everything is sort of manifested through the sunlight and the water. It's a fantastic thing on its own without actually having to produce a lot of stuff.

Replace 'garden' with 'art'.

Barbara Cuerden is a neighbour in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa, a colleague in ecological art and a family friend. 

Barbara completed a Masters degree in ecoliteracy and place-based education in 2010 and is also a professional back-of-the-book indexer among other things. 

Overall, her artworks and her way of life, I think, reflect local particularities of place and time

When I asked Barbara to be a guest on the conscient podcast she wrote to me with this thought, that I think you’ll appreciate:

• The solution is nature, which is still out there, in the world outside of our heads. We belong to it. A feeling of connection with the air, the light, the green, the animals, that feeling of connection most of us felt naturally as children... That connection can be found again (and again) and like you say, it can be accessible if we allow for it to take hold of us.

We talked about many connections and points of contact during our conversation, concluding, not surprisingly, that we would all be well served to pay more attention to local particularities of place and time.

There were some very poignant moments during our exchange, which you’ll hear. For example, when Barbara told me a story about

• A little seminar where John K. Grande was speaking. I considered myself an eco-artist until I heard him speak about the meaninglessness of spectacle. Reading his stuff changed my life and thus I became a non-entity.

I was struck by this idea of being a non-entity. Barbara’s story reminded me of conscient episode e74 letting go where I talk about ‘the main barrier to my re-education is… ‘me’, and that the solution, simply, is to let it go…’. 

So this episode explores the dichotomy between connection and letting go and the tightrope between being present and being a non-entity. 

Barbara’s recommended reading is Jenny Odell’s Reading the Rocks in Emergence magazine. 

*

Note: Links mentioned during the conversation:

• Regeneration Hoodoo (click on ‘installation’)
• Stephen Lewis (Canadian politician)
• e161 alchemize - a conversation with kamea chayne (special episode about a 40 part course)
• What can an individual do? (claude’s newsletter posting where Barbara commented about Bill McKibben’s question)

Exact wording of quotes in the episode:

• Instead of the dying light of Western civilization, why not a swinging hoodoo cloud? - Ishamel Reed
• During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. - Kurt Vonnegut
• The effects of modern-day media have led us to generalize and simplify nature, as we do all things. We read experience in an informational way. - John K. Grande

Episode Transcription

excerpts from this episode

'The garden doesn't have to be something that's instrumental. It can be just a place where you sit, where you're thinking of growing something, you know, where the sun shines and where photosynthesis takes place and everything is sort of manifested through the sunlight and the water. It's a fantastic thing on its own without actually having to produce a lot of stuff.'

'The solution is nature, which is still out there, in the world outside of our heads. We belong to it. A feeling of connection with the air, the light, the green, the animals, that feeling of connection most of us felt naturally as children... That connection can be found again (and again) and like you say, it can be accessible if we allow for it to take hold of us.'

'A little seminar where John K. Grande was speaking. I considered myself an eco-artist until I heard him speak about the meaninglessness of spectacle. Reading his stuff changed my life and thus I became a non-entity.'