Detail #1 of my "Self Portrait as a Tree Checker, Thunder Bay, ON, Spring 2004" project that i did for last year's planting show. Dan came up with the idea of projecting and tracing a map underneath the photos.----In this project, i took at least one photo of myself every day, using the mirror of whatever vehcihle i was driving. i didn't attempt to pose or dress it up at all--i just decided (as in this shot, mid orange eating) to snap a pic at any old random time.----Art is just so bloody fun, ain't it???
10 comments:
This looks like some sort of war photo. (It looks like you might be signaling for food). Tree planting is a war sort of isn't it?
It also reminds me a bit of "the panels" where I inset a picture. It creates the other world, a difference like interiors and exteriors. In my work I often try to establish a psychological space. But you describe the process as involving a sort of contrived arbitrary selection, are you still intending to say anything in particular? Or is it more documentary? Will these be in the book =) ?
I found it to be a lot like war. The way you re always walking in this troop wearing a helmet with your shovel over your shoulder. And the place is a warzone. And you re always getting attacked by bears.
Your on the front line : Man vrs nature.
I rather
see
Lorne
as man
in,
through,
and with
nature
YES!!! thank you, carlosdude. often, the language of planting is very warlike and violent--planting fast is "pounding" or you're going to "fuck that land up" by "slamming" trees into it--planting poorly is being a "slut" or "slutting trees in"--i try, though i don't always succeed to avoid that language, and try to think of or express it as somehow co-operating with the land... working in conjunction with it rather than, as some people express it "pound it out".
I did find the act of opening the hole and putting the seed in to be kind of sexual. Using your bare hands in the moist soil. Mm.
Creepy tree planting MOFOs.
lol
Why do we need tree planters? Because natures natural cycles can't keep up with our greedy harvesting. So the natural world threatens to punish us with reduced resources. We respond by "artificially inseminating" her. If forced production, attempting to make the world our handmaiden isn't a form of man vrs nature, what is?
The art of treeplanting is a small part of the larger industry. I certainly wouldnt have the nerve to be riding the machines extracting the grown trees but Im happy to pop those baby seedlings back in the ground. I heard that in Canada, the industry was so young that trees planted by hand had never before been harvested. After planting, the trees arent ready for 30 years. The way I see it, in thirty years we will have either outgrown our need for lumber by learning to use synthetic materials, or apocalypse will have happened. Either way, all my little tree children will have lived out a nice long life.
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