Intention Note
This is the text I wrote before I began my tree adventures. It was addressed to my teachers in art school and constitutes a sort of intention note for the project. It is also a summary of my initial goals and ambitions.
The furthest singular act of refusal I can remember from my childhood was the climbing of a tree. In a clear memory I recall the voice of my terrified mother, “Robin, come back ! Come down now !”, while I was deafly proceeding with my exhilarating ascension under the amused looks of my father, until the last point when the branches were becoming dangerously too thin to support the weight of my little body. And there I stayed, hypnotized by the swinging movement of my young host’s trunk while the wind was blowing through the dancing leaves around me. Unfortunately for my mother and her anxiety, my compulsion towards reckless climbing stuck with me until today.
My early teenage years have been characterized by a short consecutive series of clashes with instances of power, traumatic experiences that left me in an absolute attitude of opposition against the figures of authority. These early confrontations pushed me into the construction of an identity in resistance against the norms, and a struggle to grow up with the non-allowance of my own model of existence. What started as a typical teenager crisis was the foundational constitution of an offset attitude that is still at the core of my self-definition today.
From then, my long journey through the big socio-ideological machine has been fraught with events and encounters that only strengthened my tendencies of refusal and avoidance, projecting myself as an outsider, an outlaw. Nevertheless, I obviously didn’t escape most submissive societal mechanisms and of course ended up trying to find my spot in society under the effects of social pressure. Still, I constantly have to deal with these escapism tendencies. I always feel like I am hiding, in permanent transit, withdrawing myself from public view; pretending to be doing something or becoming someone, only to desperately run away before my whole simulacra ineluctably collapses.
This is very much part of me. Instead of trying to tame it, let’s try to embrace it : time to come back to the trees. Because before I had been told that I was “good” with computers, before I constructed the fantasies I live in nowadays, I remember how well I felt up there. To make it short and clear: I would like to follow my intuition that pushes me into climbing trees, not only as a potential artistic practice but as well as the attempt of a poetic mode of existence, the inception of a new will of freedom. The glimpse of a potential new reach in terms of subjectivity. A temporary experience that aims to sustain a better way of life. A solution to crisis. In simpler terms: to start thinking about the reasons why I’m always running but getting nowhere; and to observe society from the perspective of someone who is not running.
Here I’m drawing a bridge between this core aspect of my identity, the notion of refusal, and a poetic vision of the tree as both a shelter and a prison, an interface between ground and sky, society and metaphysics; an alternative to the main spatial feature of our neoliberal paradigm : the constant stream of capitals, impersonated in urban space by the flow of human bodies ; this happening at ground level, in contrast with my voluntarily isolation under the protection of nature to observe from a safe distance the ballet of society without accepting to take part in it. This refusal of production, of inscribing myself into the stream, seem to me to be consistent with this posture of the outsider, who challenges the structures around which he evolves solely by a defiance of the dominant codes: the ideological dominance of speed and productivity. My hypothesis here is that by starting from such a negation, there is potency for the formulation of a radicality, radical meaning here to go back to the roots, obviously in dialogue with the presence of the tree in all its glorious groundedness.
In making this my sole mode of existence as an artist, there are three goals I’m trying to reach : the first one is to avoid any risk of external mediation. I decide to climb and stay in a tree because I feel like staying there, there is no potential disruption of my agency over the conditions and temporalities of my presence/absence, this superposition of states being at the heart of the proposition. Ultimately, I would like to consider invitations but for this first research stage I feel I need to embrace a solitary exploration. Indeed, the second goal is to establish a space for a meditative practice that is developed through my own intuitive codification, as another important aspect of my identity which I want to keep in focus is the figure of the autodidact. A way to formulate that particular point could be: how to operate a synthesis between the figures of the hermit and the autodidact ?
Finally, in considering the urban environment as a terrain to investigate sociability in the frictional duality of public space as both prison and agora: in contrast with my previous explorations of the flâneur or the artist as stroller, I feel that a key concept for the success of this aspect of the research is the notion of implantation. Instead of drifting inconsistently in the streets, in full expansion of my predatory privileges therefore only accessing the city in its superficial and direct sensorial experience, by extending my presence and locally concentrating my focus, I hope to access another type of understanding, create space for my curiosity to be fulfilled in less direct ways, thus rejoining this idea of creating my own meditation methodology.
To approach reality not by systems of knowledge or metaphysical constructions but simply by a vicinity with reality, is what was behind the engagement of Henry David Thoreau for his temporary exile near the pond of Walden. My approach could be seen as a reenactment or even a parody of it, an update on transcendentalism in the schizophrenic age of late capitalism by exposing all the superficial, corrupted aspects of my persona and playing with the contradictions underlying my proposition which at the same fits the transcendentalist pro- gram: look for the truth inside myself to access universality. To capture first in thoughts the diseases of our times, the toxicity of my existence.
The way I envision the following steps of the project is this: I would like to have different sessions, between a few hours and a few weeks; periods during which I would as much as possible isolate myself in this practice, which means to avoid most sociability, including a disconnection from any digital flux. Concretely, I would go to different cities, neighborhoods or villages, find the tree that would host me there then climb it and start spending time in it, considering this activity as my sole assignment during the whole period of my stay. To approach it like a stultifying 9 to 5 job, nothing more and nothing less. I plan to experiment with different settings, probably by defining initial sets of restrictions or liberties; then by sticking to them. I’m not quite sure how writing will take place in these sessions so that’s also something I will experiment with.
Right now my plan is also to finish reading The Anti-Œdipus and A Thousand Plateaux as I feel that the project of Deleuze and Guattari really touches on what motivates me to enter this process : this schizophrenia induced by the difficulty of living in such an alienating system, the superficiality of my consumerist-capitalist existence that cannot be canceled by my understanding and deconstruction of it, this is really the core issue I’m trying to tackle.
Technically, so far I have faced three limiting factors : the first one is the cold. In the current western Europe weather, it’s difficult to stay in a tree for longer than one hour. I don’t think this project has anything to do with body art or physical performance therefore I don’t see any reason to force myself and get sick. The second one is language : it probably makes much more sense to be able to speak with the people trying to interact with me, therefore limiting me to Belgium and France as my playground for direct comprehension. Obviously the third one is my body, as it may become quite challenging to stay for long periods in the same tree. I actually have some legs issues I have to take into account. Already I found out that it’s much easier if there are different parts of the trees where I can move. Finally, I may have to find ways to finance my expeditions, and last but not least, to create long periods of complete escape is very tricky but obviously part of the challenge.
The last question concerns the potential outcomes of the project. Somehow these last weeks have been quite stressful because of this particular point, while I was conceptualizing the project; I couldn’t know if it was because I am so much confined in the scheme of productivity and results, or if I was simply concerned with external reactions. Obviously I’m very curious about your reactions as the framework of education supposedly requires a tangibility of results. To me, it may be interesting to stick with a refusal of production and force me to end up with nothing. Maybe the only tangible result could be my switch from refusal to acceptance, for example the fact that I am, as a matter of fact, in transit. Actually that would be quite an achievement. Right now, I feel like it is very much open ended: the tree as public laboratory, for both quick and slow experiments. Also, I wonder if it would make sense to couple this enterprise with a forced daily writing practice, as I feel ultimately drawn to the production of literary objects. This I would like to discuss with you.