Ensemble 16
Je Me Demande ... Doubs River ... Lac Des Rousses ...
Evanescence?
2006-2022
Each drawing: 59"x37"
Tableau: varies
From “je me demande” to a potential ritual/memorial: the snow pictures recall Table of Ice, a residency organized by Delphine Ziegler between Villers-Le-Lac and the Saut du Doubs at the French-Swiss border, after receiving six stools from The Future Is On The Table #3.
There, a phrase that is tattooed on my back “Je me demande si le blanc est une couleur fraîche” (“I wonder whether white is a fresh/pure color”) took its full meaning, and I felt compelled to write/sweep it off the mirror-like ice in twenty foot high letters. As the sun went down, the snow became ice and the words evanesced.
A Man Walking Through The Snow
The window, five inches from my face
shows me that the snow is deep now,
and it keeps coming down,
the snow keeps coming down.
There is a man outside
walking in between the trees.
He is going somewhere,
as I sit here on my bed,
he is going somewhere,
where another woman will see him walking,
maybe not through the trees,
maybe through a wheat filed,
or across a frozen pond.
He will walk,
I will lay,
and the snow will come,
until my window was covered,
and I won’t see the trees,
I will just see him in my mind,
and he will walk, and he will walk,
and he will walk.
by teenage Celeste Mauclet
This tattoo was done in 2006. It is now faded, watery, cloudy, nebulous, confused, certainly neither fresh nor pure.
Since then, I see faces fading in the landscape, as a celebration of people who have passed away. Because… c’est la vie! (Rosalie)
I see portraits the size of one or two football fields. I also see accessible points of observation or drone films and photographs.
Delphine, now a filmmaker, immediately partnered with me to explore all the layers that allow people to talk easily about death. In its present form, EVANESCENCE arises from thinking about seniors who die of Covid without any celebration and youth who pass away too early, from sickness, abuse, violence or self-destruction.
Celebrating the passing is a reality that concerns all of us. Since snow and ice themselves are terminally threatened by global warming, we wish to show them respect for their symbolic relevance as artistic materials and tools. The deceased him/her/them-selves has another chance to be ‘actor’: as a presenter and soundboard for a transformative exchange between nature and us who are still alive.
The film may become a tool to generate unfettered, inestimable learning exchanges about emotions, sorrow and death (grief, burial, cultural or spiritual environment), imagining with others the desirability and benefits of this project (the visage of a deceased dissipating in nature) as an empathetic commemoration of that passage. Such a memorial effort, performed in a powerful landscape, may liberate the transformative forces contained in the closeness of nature with man and the awareness of their growing vulnerability.
Sketches are transferred on digital maps to establish markers (latitude-longitude).
A surveyor determines the place of each marker on the site, allowing drafting lines with a hoe, before enhancing them with shovels or brooms as paintbrushes.
Profess can be followed thanks to drone technology.
Cooperating with a professional surveyor on site allows for multiple potential collaborations with local artists, acquaintances or assistants, adaptation to physical conditions and community demands.
Eventually, portraits literally depart due to sun, wind, rain, more snow, or skaters. This Evanescence could not be captured in 2023. Recording nature as it reclaims the snow drawing when it fades (by aerial/drone photography, panoramic video, time-lapse recording) may create possibilities to grasp within the fragility of our bodies, that of a degrading environment and our systemic responsibilities.
Linking inescapable human death to environmental vulnerability, shows a symbolically and mutually beneficial relationship between these two realities – both frightening, yet both depositories of stories.
I am nourished by many memories of ungrieved death, murders, ignored climate warnings, the overall cruelty. In the United States, Covid ended the possibility of large funerals. Yet gun shootings have provoked a need for collective mourning. I take heart from all searches for alternative manners of grieving and burials.
EVANESCENCE, looking for more partners, supports and sites, is a work in progress.
This project hopes to engage all the people whose way of living is directly impacted by rising temperatures; Workers whose job is with hospices or palliative care; End-of-life midwives, doulas, morticians; Death-care innovators, alternative funeral homes, associations engaged into the transformations of burial and celebrations; or You who live with an ungrieved death, lost a loved one in an unexpected way; You artists, curators, grassroots cultural workers, concerned with growth, growing and cultural landscapes,
Thank you.
“In French, the word “thought” is obviously feminine”
This mural has been painted by her students, in honor of my sister, at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Medellin in Colombia (2022) They loved each other so much. She is, here, beautifully alive. Thank you so much.
Linda