Meta Post: New Forms

In this course we’ve thought a lot about how our words and our writing can channel natural ideas and environmental personalities. How can we write like a mountain? What does an ocean’s conversation sound like? We’ve debated over how to personify natural subjects or distance ourselves from them for objectivity and true representation, but I think this week adds another layer to the debate: what forms can we utilize to tell nature’s story? How do we choose these forms in conjunction with nature? And how do different forms tell different stories? This week we branch out of the written word and into performance art and art installation. We can apply the questions we’ve asked about writing to art and performance as well. These techniques highlight the importance of process as well as final product (for example, working through a tree’s sense of time instead of a human one can lead to a new beautiful art form of a hidden library). Nature must be essential in all of it.

            Many of us have contemplated this new strand of exploration. Theunconventionalmagellanic writes, that these libraries are “speaking literally and metaphorically through art,” they ask “what story am I telling? Stories in front of us are everywhere.” These new methods of storytelling and sharing can be sobering, as noted by AlphaxWolf18. Tillhumanvoiceswakeus22 also feels out these new forms even as the forms redefine written words, remarking that “the term library is challenged and expanded based on our idea of what a story looks like. The story the trees are telling is about potential, overwhelmed with hope.” These installations expand our sense of story and in doing so they expand our sense of the world.

            And where does nature fit in to all of this? WishingWhistle wonders if perhaps “the trees and glaciers are[n’t] saying anything for themselves…the artists are forcing statements on them by putting them into these types of situations.” If something is used as a building-block for a story, is it heightened in the process or is it concealed by the artist’s intent? Or is there a continuous relationship, hopefully a cooperative and collaborative one, between the two? How can we respect the world around us even as we create new stories and repurpose the world for our individual expression? These questions don’t have definite answers, but I feel like we worked towards them this week through our responses to the water and tree libraries.