As part of the
UCLA Art|Sci Center’s Eco-Centric Art + Science Week, I attended
Linda Weintraub’s hands-on workshop. Entitled “
Welcome to My Woods,” this interactive experience helped reconnect participants to the natural physical world. Prior to entering the exhibit, Weintraub first prompted us by asking us to consider what percentage of the day we spend in physical contact with natural, non-man-made, non-mass-produced materials. All those asked responded that this was between 0-2% at best. This question helped to put into perspective the synthetic nature of modern life, and underscored the questions of mass production and artificiality discussed in lecture and in Walter Benjamin’s “
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
 |
| The "map" of experiences available to workshop participants. |
The medium used to engage participants was that of nature itself: from the woods near her home in upstate New York, Weintraub collected numerous items and materials such as wild mushrooms, wood in various stages of decay, bones, maple syrup, rocks, acorns, and more. The workshop consisted of six distinct areas, each featuring various items in boxes and each dedicated to engaging certain senses or perceptions. From living in our modern society, disconnected from nature, our natural senses that once were critical to the survival of our ancestors have waned in ability. Each station helped one to reactivate and explore these senses, with areas dedicated to “Flavor & Aroma”, “Mass & Weight”, “Form & Beauty”, “Touch & Texture”, “Volume & Dimension”, and a central station (“Bare Your Soul, Bare Your Soles”) that allowed participants to experience the feeling of walking barefoot on natural ground.
 |
| The workshop space, with the central "Bare Your Soles" area in the middle. |
The variety of texture, form, and composition from nature itself was on prominent display. The top of each box containing the items bore instructions for a small task designed to engage one’s senses with the object or objects within. We touched, sorted, smelled, weighed, tasted, imagined, and more. Each box and task brought one closer in connection to the woods. The musty smell of old wood, the delightfully delicate sweetness of real maple syrup, the miraculous cycle of growth and decay seen throughout – these and more helped to reestablish, or at least reawaken, the natural bond between humans and nature that so many of us have lost today.
 |
| The "Volume and Dimension" Area, several activity boxes with instructions on the front are placed in the circle |
 |
The poster on the side wall, presenting a series of events centered around "The Greening of Art Pedagogy", in which this is one of them
|
From living in this modern era, in a wealthy nation with an advanced technological economy, the transformative effects of mechanization and industrialization sometimes seem very distant. This is not in itself a fault of our own – we’ve grown up this way, so accustomed yet blind to the externalities this way of life causes. We don’t speak of “our environment,” it is simply “the environment.” Luckily, there are those among us working to bring to us reminders of the natural world from which we have so forcefully disengaged ourselves.
 |
| Me setting in front of the central circle |
Indeed, Weintraub did more than bring the woods to us – in a sense, she brought us to the woods. Closing one’s eyes, taking in some rich aroma, and feeling, actually feeling, the wood crumbling into dirt: it was easy to be transported to what seemed like another world. And yet, this is our world, out there, waiting to be experienced by bodies that have adapted but since forgotten to coexist with nature. This experience threw into stark relief the contrast between our everyday, plastic existence and the infinitely complex, endlessly fluctuating world of nature.
 |
| Last glance before leaving while Ms. Weintraub is rearranging the activity boxes to get ready for the next group |
Comments
Post a Comment