It is almost September and I am ravaged by fighting dogs

 These are the trees in the cemetery where people train  fighting dogs by hanging them from their teeth to strengthen their jaws.  The trees are struggling to survive as the bark, in places,  is stripped all the way around. Some have died.  Each year they start to recover a bit but then on a single night or perhaps two they all get ravaged by dogs again.  In their ragged state they seem to stand for something, something negative and gratuitous.  People post about them on Facebook pages, they are a symbol of a decline into something less than human, a disregard for nature and the dignity of trees.  The problem for me is the cemetery as well as been filled with dead people is often full with ravaged people. Ravaged for all sorts of reasons, whether illness, addiction, loss of hope or just a general flatness in  the way things turned out.   People tend to make less of a fuss about the ravaged people than the trees unless they find them threatening. Sometimes they are threatening as they buy their heroin from the dealer at the gate and stomp at high speed along the avenues yet mostly they are polite. They will play with the dog and are generally more friendly than most other people although they, like most other people don't have much time to waste.

I was a bit sad we could not do my tree poster and it did make me think that this was going to be another project where I never find my feet.  The tree poster was a good idea because it was practice. This means I thought about the project for a long time and then nothing came into my head.  My practice  is a little hobbled at the moment by my PhD and Covid and the fact I may be a little ravaged by moving house.  The idea is slightly opaque which is good but sprang from a long running personal myth that in the 1970's things were simpler.  Yes we had an impending ice age and mutually assured destruction but we learnt important stuff from posters that we put on our bedroom walls.  Not if you were in the majority world perhaps but none of us, or not to make any assumptions, not many of us were in the majority.  As a nerdy boy I learnt my trees from this poster. 

 

I thought to find a tree and photograph it and say why it was like you would be a good place to start on the treescape project mainly as it would be difficult for people as they might think it was a waste of time.  It would open  up a conversation on anthropomorphism,  animism  representation and metaphor.  Not Object Oriented Ontology or Feminist new materilism- it would be a shared thing that we had all in common and at the very least it would of made us all go on a walk and find a tree.  We would then all be held in a single image that referenced a more innocent time. As a proper artist in residence I would get to do this and it would not be mediated or discussed as a proposal as the idea is I would or should provide a provocation that might encourage people to think together differently.   It would be done for good or ill and I would and should confidently absorb any flack that falls out from it. 

As with keeping your eye on the ball paper it is a small piece of collective art-making, it is minor and a little feeble but sits separately and alongside other things that are happening. It isn't in any way a warm up activity or a workshop. At least if participants are able to approach it as this then it will of failed yet something else would emerge from it.

This isn't a complaint or anything I am quite pleased I don't have to do it. The timing may be wrong and it might fall flat on its face.  You know everyone and have a better sense of things. It may not be a time to introduce practice and it may smell of patriarchy and instrumentalist yet it is part of a practice and at least the fact I thought of something that emerged from the great raveling has made me feel creative and a little more confident.  Ideas don't actually have to happen to be ideas of value. I am now going to bite a tree to strengthen my jaw for next week.