Photos From St Patrick's Cathedral

Friday night I returned from a 10 day trip to NYC and NJ filled with art and fun. If you follow AOA you likely know my love of St. Patrick's Cathedral. I made several visits (4 I think). Here are a few shots from my visits.

Summer Work VI

Another batch of lithos. This group is a random collection however...no unifying theme or direction. These first 2 prints are variations of each other and the one table top photo icon from my earlier postings.

The next two images modify Ben Franklin's famous statement that (insert whatever) is proof that God loves us. This takes that statement and pushes it into geography and patriotism and comes out as another intentionally arrogant pro America statement. While those of you who know me or my comments on the blog know that I would hardly be considered patriotic, the statement seems to hover between reality as something you might see on a t-shirt and just being over the top. Its one of my favorites...not so of my lovely Canadian wife.

The 3rd print is one Ive been talking doing for a long time of the fly-over states. The fly-over states, if you dont know are the states that most people only see from the air as they pass from one side of the country to the other. They make up a rather irrelevant and unrecognizable lot to many Americans. This print intends to highlight that attitude.

Summer Work III

This series offers a twist to the previous postings. Maintaining the form and materials I made the iconographic dimension more explicit. I also began to experiment with the Ziatype process. The transitional piece uses a vintage photo of my father writing home during his 2 years stationed in Germany in the 50's. The small cyanotype is of an old home. The next image is of my father-in-law and the third, my brother-in-law. I shot these images this summer on our trip home to SK. These last two, and likely the third in a less literal way, are about place and the dialectic between humanity and the land.

Gather Us In...A New Favorite Hymn

Several weeks ago at St. Paul's, we sang "Gather Us In." Now, as with many things, it takes several hearings before it stands out so I have probably heard this hymn before. It grabbed my attention right off the bat with the place reference. It describes so much of what I have been trying to articulate about Philip Sheldrake's work Spaces for the Sacred that welcomes the periphery into the whole...the marginalized and broken, the ambiguous and forgotten people and memories are brought out into the Eucharist. Here...not just in the church, but at the altar we bring our fears and our dreams...offering the human pathos. So much more should be said about this wonderful hymn. If you've not heard it you can hear it above and read it below.

Here in this place, new light is streaming
now is the darkness vanished away,
see, in this space, our fears and our dreamings,
brought here to you in the light of this day.
Gather us in the lost and forsaken
gather us in the blind and the lame;
call to us now, and we shall awaken
we shall arise at the sound of our name.

We are the young - our lives are a mystery
we are the old - who yearns for you face.
we have been sung throughout all of history
called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in the rich and the haughty
gather us in the proud and the strong
give us a heart so meek and so lowly
give us the courage to enter the song.

Here we will take the wine and the water
here we will take the bread of new birth
here you shall call your sons and your daughters
call us anew to be salt of the earth.
Give us to drink the wine of compassion
give us to eat the bread that is you
nourish us well and teach us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true.

Not in the dark of buildings confining
not in some heaven, light years away
but here in this place, the new light is shining
now is the kingdom, now is the day.
Gather usin the and hold us forever
gather usin and make us your own
gather us in all peoples together
fire of love in our flesh and our bone.

Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work

In Laundry Liturgy and Women's work, Kathleen Norris reflects on the nature of the mundane tasks and the potential for sacramental inbreaking. Tonight as I did the dishes alone in our hot kitchen, something sparked my memories of working at Inspiration Hills. For three summers (1995, 1996, 2000) I worked as grounds crew, lifeguard, and sometimes reluctant counselor. I would spend glorious hours in the sun, evenings worshipping with new friends, late night games, and lots of laughing. In my recent years of growing interest in sacred spaces, I often ask people if they have places they consider sacred. Its fairly frequently that church camps become what so many people recognize as sacred space. Inspiration Hills is that for me as well. Both as a camper and staff, my story is not complete without this place. So tonight, as I did dishes in our hot kitchen, I remembered the hard and thankless work done by my friends at just one camp to make a summer, week, even meal a sacred possibility for thousands of campers. This work doesn't pay well. We would told that we would be exhausted but yet somehow feel refreshed at the end of the summer. And we were. My thought tonight is that in the midst of the summer heat...tensions can run high, frustrations mount, irritability sets in, songs are sung over and over and over. And inspite of our weaknesses, God moves, both staff and campers respond. Tonight I am reminded to pray for both campers and staff alike...for receptivity and endurance.

Sacred Spaces

I apologize for this blog's dormancy for the past few months. I can assure you that it has not been abandoned yet.

Today I simply want to post a link to a friends blog post on Sacred Space. In the link the article describes a group that works to create sacred spaces amidst violent and drug ridden urban centers. Their hope is create alternative spaces for reflection and the sacred. They seem to take a wide or pluralistic view of the sacred. What is striking to me about these spaces is that they are created for others without a sense of exchange or obligation...as a grace offered freely. My cynical side wonders if the church can create and maintain spaces for human flourishing (which i would argue necessarily involves the pursuit of religious practices) if they are followers of another religion or denomination? Can a evangelicals create sacred spaces for Catholics? Can Christians create spaces for Muslims, Buddhists, Pagan's? And vice-a-versa? What is at stake for religious groups to do so? Can we get past issues of religious truth to recognize the dignity of all humanity in order to create open spaces where community and identity may flourish?

Empty Spaces and Prayers of the People

Recently Bill Caraher and I briefly discussed a possible project on the idea of abandonment and what seems like a contemporary growth of interest. As my part, I am hoping to photograph abandonment across North Dakota and the region at large.

In preparation for this work, I've been doing a little web and Amazon surfing. Yesterday I ran into this amazing website on trekking the lands surrounding Chernobyl and the devastation that has been marked upon the land. While many sites of abandonment are ambiguous in terms of emotion and meaning, there is no doubt of the horror and sadness left in its nuclear wake.

As I looked at these images and considered the toll this accident took on this place and hundred of thousands of lives I was brought back to the words of the Book of Common Prayer and the prayers of the people. I encourage you to take some time and look through her site. Consider the effects of humanity on this place. Consider the place's effects on humanity.

Form IV
Let us pray for the Church and for the world.

Grant, Almighty God, that all who confess your Name may
be united in your truth, live together in your love, and reveal
your glory in the world.

Silence

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the
ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another
and serve the common good.

Silence

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

Give us all a reverence for the earth as your own creation,
that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others
and to your honor and glory.

Silence

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

Bless all whose lives are closely linked with ours, and grant
that we may serve Christ in them, and love one another as he
loves us.

Silence

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

Comfort and heal all those who suffer in body, mind, or
spirit; give them courage and hope in their troubles, and
bring them the joy of your salvation.

Silence

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

We commend to your mercy all who have died, that your will
for them may be fulfilled; and we pray that we may share
with all your saints in your eternal kingdom.

Silence

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

Two New Prints

I've recently completed two more prints in editions of 10 each continuing this idea of religion as a chain of memory. I've begun this series with my own father and images of him and his own handwriting of central religious statements in his life.

The top landscape image is from Karina's cousins home just down the road from hers in Sask. The left image is of my father at 19 or so visiting Pompeii while stationed in Germany. The image on the left is me at Paphos this past summer on my residency in Cyprus. The text is the Lord's prayer.

The second print is also a landscape just down the road from Karina's home. The image is of me being held by my father with the Apostles Creed printed over top of both images.

I think I have committed myself to using gold for the text. As I think about its significance and associations with value, it seems to make sense to put the "tradition" in what makes an easy tie to value.

N.T. Wright's Heaven Is Not Our Home Article

Yesterday I posted two prints that owe their origin in some way to an article by N.T. Wright published by Christianity Today back in March 2008.

What I have read of Wright's work I have really appreciated. This article, in particular, hits on several key concerns for me (namely sacred space). Often my artwork spins out of my prolonged wrestling with such ideas. As I search for understanding, I often try to find visual images that help me make sense of such complexities. Have a look at Wright's article and take a look at the 2nd and 3rd print.

International Peace Gardens

On our way home from Canada last month we made a stop at the International Peace Gardens which rests on the US/Canada border. Dedicated in 1932 as a site contending for world peace and promise of peace between the two nations in which this park rests.

Walking around the park that beautiful day the strange liminality of the place struck me. This site and this channel of water symbolizing the national borders leads up to the two vertical towers and eventually the doors of an architecturally modern chapel bathed in orange light.

The non-sectarian chapel, constructed of concrete and marble, echoes horribly. The slanted walls are inscribed with memorable quotations about peace from men and women around the world.

And while the park is beautiful, and worth the $10 entry fee, it struck me that the state with more nuclear weapons than most countries has this place dedicated to world peace. This is not the first time the North Dakota's nuclear arsenal has left me with an uneasy feeling. I was impressed at the irony that only miles away were nuclear silos embedded in the ground. I wonder, do other people recognize this irony? Do they dismiss the presence of the weapons in light of their privileged patriotism? And I wonder about this site and its dedication to peace around the world. Does it's peaceful dedication ring hollow as nuclear silos buried across this prairie landscape? Or could it be that it's proximity to these profanities of space offer an alternative way of thinking and being? Anyway...just some random thoughts this Tuesday morning.

Sacred Sites at Sacred Destinations

I ran across this site some time ago but had forgotten about it until today.  Take some time to explore some of the sacred sites of the world at sacred-destinations.com.

Off To Canada

Tonight we leave for our week-long Canadian holiday with Karina's family in Saskatchewan. Its been nearly a year and a half since we have been home and we are both excited to go enjoy the familiarity of Springside (who by the way is celebrating their 125th). This trip is especially poignant for Karina as this will be her last visit to her childhood home as her parents home...a place that she considers to be one of those sacred sites of memory and formation. This summer they are in the process of building a new home some 15 miles away and will relocate before our trip home for Christmas. While this is exciting, for her and likely for her siblings, this is no doubt the cause of mixed emotions and floods of memories of their lives lived together in this place. It has been good cause for me to reflect upon my own homes, the liminal transitions of moving, and the processes of packing and unpacking.

On occassion I remind myself of the homes, doing a mental walk-through the rooms, trying to remember where furniture pieces sat, people who sat in them, and the conversations and events that transpired there. Perhaps I am simply sentimental, but it is good for me to recall the formative events of my life in terms of place as it is helpful to rightly appreciate my current place and its significance.

My hope for the family and their visit is that they will allow themselves the space to practice the memories of this cherished farm, gardens, fields.

PKAP & Cyprus Odds & Ends

This is likely the most random collection of photos that will be posted from Cyprus and PKAP. There are enough photos that do not seem to constitute a themed posting. This first image is a truck I noticed walking back from the museum one day. What stood out to me was the colors of the plastic crates inside amidst so much white. This was taken around noon so unfortunately it comes with harsh shadows. The second shot is of a little Coke vendor van that was parked in a large empty lot on the way to the dig sites. Everyday we passed it I wanted to stop to shoot it. Finally on my 2nd to last trip out to the sites we stopped. The 3rd shot is of a hotel along the same route. I love the simple angularity of the structure while the wires provide a nice movement in the the opposite direction. The last shot is another one I took on the walk back from the museum. This little shrine was erected to remember the life of a man who died at this spot. There is an image of him next to a motor cycle above the little plaque on the right. There is also a lantern to the left and within the tower piece on the right accompanied by a cross and wreath. I had expected to find more things like this. I saw numerous diminutive roadside Orthodox chapels, but only one or two like this.

Cyprus Buffer Zone

I had meant to post this video some time ago, but now is a fine time as well. It comes from a group at Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. It gives a great overview the sense of contestation over Cyprus and the great divide among its people.

Cypriot Anti-Consumerist Graffiti

One of the things that struck me about Cyprus were the ubiquitous American consumer logos...Coca Cola, Starbucks, TGI Friday's, Bennegins, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and the list goes on and on. I should not have been surprised given the state of globalized commercialism. And yet, I found signs of displeasure with it. Within moments of our arrival in Nicosia, I saw the "McCancer" stencil not far from the a tourist area near the border. I began to see more and more of these subtle stenciled works.

I began to think of these not simply as graffiti dirtying up the walls of the city, but as contests over place. In my posting from 2 weeks ago about Cyprus and contested space, I noted that, "the island rests divided by political, religious, and other ideological space imprinted upon the literal space of the island." Here is a physical space that has come to carry an ideological critique. An "anti capitalista" ideology must live among some segment of this community to emerge into an attempt at claiming space.

I find these subversive and witty little stencils compelling evidence of contested space.

Placemaking in St. Paul, Minnesota

Yesterday Crystal Bailly, a fellow UND student, posted a link to this site from her Facebook account about an interesting community art project developing in the Twin Cities. Community art events are always interesting to me. Often, or at least this is how I interpret them, public art works are for the enjoyment of community. This one is too, but their emphasis on placemaking is an intruiging nuance. What does a public art project, shared and created by a neighborhood have to with placemaking?

Their website states, "Through the process of creating the community square, social connections and relationships between neighbors increase and improve, strengthening the ability of a community to respond to issues and opportunities and to take care of one another. The benefits of placemaking by street painting are multiple: development of relationships and social networks; creation of a community gathering place; calmed traffic; crime prevention; and a local neighborhood identity." And this, "Placemaking is people coming together and actively working to turn generic public spaces into community places where people can create connections with one another. By using elements such as art, sculpture, benches and plants, and by “activating” spaces by planning human activity, a generic space can be turned into a place where community gathers, happens and thrives."

I find their use of the public streets quite interesting. Marc Auge critiques contemporary culture for merely existing in a placeless environment where he cites malls, freeways, and even televisions as "non-place" that simply facilitate movement of consumers across the city without the construction of any placed based notions. This project instead, celebrates the a unique community and their community that engages in a shared project to beautify and mark (and perhaps in a sense name or claim a shared space) for the benefit of both the insiders and outsiders to the community.

I have some basic questions about process...who and how are the works designed? How long do they last? Do they move in the neighborhood from year to year? Are their restrictions to content?

Anyway...I thought it was an interesting concept. Thoughts? Are there other similar projects out there?

Cyprus & Contested Spaces

Yesterday morning I sat out on the balcony to read and enjoy some coffee as Larnaca slowly came to life. I picked up Philip Sheldrake’s Spaces for the Sacred again to review his comments on contested space…another of the central ideas following me in Cyprus. Even long before the 1974 revolution, this place has been contested…likely even back to the times of the ancient settlements that we are excavating. Looking on the internet I learned of the shooting at Holocaust Museum in DC. This tragic event is only additional proof of the contested nature of space and memory.

The DC event is not unique but it is complex. The museum, full of painful memory for most of the world, rests in an uneasy tension, like the sites of the Holocaust themselves, between the extremes of sacred and profane sites. They are at once set aside, protected, and made visible for memorial purposes, thus they seem to function like many truly sacred sites. And yet, they are record to the horrific atrocities that humanity is capable of. A sort of complexity begins when the ideological, political space is enacted or embodied within a literal space. In the DC event, an anti-Semetic ideology become embodied in a violent action within this space. While I dare say that most of the world would acknowledge the Holocaust and its lingering memories and sites, this was an act of contesting both space and memory.

I mention this all as preface to the Cypriot situation. Here the island rests divided by political, religious, and other ideological space imprinted upon the literal space of the island. The North and its Turkish influence is often painted as the aggressor holding the Greek land hostage since 1974. While this past is too complex and long for me to recount here (as if I even know enough about it to do so), Cyprus is a fine example of contested space. A few days ago Becky Savaria, and undergraduate from Messiah College made a fine posting on the PKAP Undergraduate Blog regarding these tensions as they are made evident here in Larnaca (a central city within the Greek side of the island). Greek Cypriots who were displaced during the revolution have employed some subtle and not so subtle ways of carrying on their memories of the 1974 events (As Becky's post suggests). The image here is another of those place memories that inheres a political statement as well. Famagusta is one of the Turkish occupied cities lost to the North in '74. This shop owner, and many like them, keep the collective memory alive, as well as their political allegiance in a public way. For many tourists who do not know the tragic history of this remarkable island, these are simple store names rather than signs of contested space and memory.

Place studies have historically focussed on a singularity of meaning the work of Mircea Eliade's work. Not until recently have scholars begun to question the political nature of place/space and the pluralities of meaning and interpretations offered by distict people groups. Place in general, and sacred spaces in particular are "just as likely to cause division as provoke consensus and harmony" (Sheldrake, 5). Once postmodernity had moved past Eliade's modern concepts of singularlized placed meaning, we are allowed to see the power of naming place. Paul Ricouer also suggests that we look to the narrative of the oppressed and in so doing we examine place by which stories are being told and which are being suppressed. The French philosopher Henri LeFebvre reminds us that the ways of which we understand space is historically conditioned. His "socio-spatial outlook" becomes our means of orienting both ideologically and literally in our environments. It would seem that the metanarratives of those in power become culturally and even in the case of these images, architecturally embodied to reinforce the Greek Cypriot narrative. Sheldrake reminds us that with such images or narratives of power, there seems to be a responsibility to explore the variety of meanings (told and untold) upon any given site.

What does this mean for photography today, and for me particularly on a residency in an ongoing contested space? I haven't work this out yet, but when I look at other contemporary landscape photographers like Jeff Brouws, Edward Burtynsky, John Ganis and others, ones notes a sort of objectivity of their work, a sort of banality in composition renders these politicized places as cultural oddities. Certainly their choice of subject denotes a subjectivity of the artist, but they are imaged in a manner that offers sort of enduring grace in the degraded environment. Could this be a way forward? Can such images be made of contested spaces that are open enough in meaning to allow suppressed narratives to emerge? Can the two coexist in an image?

Sorry for the roughness of these thoughts...writing usually helps me clarify my thoughts. I think these need more work.

Sacred Spaces: Treading Upon or Entering In?

Of my studies in place, sacred space is one of my primary interests. During my short time in Cyprus I have passed through a series of mosques, basilica ruins, churches and monasteries. I have visited these places, photographed them from a variety of angles and purposes, and yet, have I really entered them?

I wrote earlier this week of Belden Lane’s text Landscapes of the Sacred, in which he makes a fine delineation between Plato and Aristotle’s conceptions of place. Earlier Lane uses a 4 fold typology with which he interprets sacred space: 1) sacred space is not chosen, it chooses, 2) sacred space is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary, 3) sacred place can be tread upon without being entered, 4) the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal.

As the week has gone along, Lane’s third axiom, “Sacred place can be tread upon without being entered” stuck out. Was I merely treading upon these sites without entering into them? What does it mean to existentially enter such a site? W. Paul Jones in his wonderful work A Table in the Desert: Making Space Holy suggests there is a profound difference between “secular and sacred memory” where he contrasts tourist attractions with sites of holy pilgrimage. This reflects my own experience of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. It was only upon my 3rd visit did my heart and mind make that liminal journey from touring art student who appreciated the architecture to a pilgrim seeking to understand the O/other in that place.

Lane suggests that our bodily presence in a particular place is never identical to being open to the fullness of time and place. Heidegger, the modern philosopher suggested with his concept of “dassein,” which translates from German to mean “being” or more accurately “being there,” connotes the idea of dwelling deeply in a place as to unite the 4 horizons of being human: earth, sky, gods, and men. And yet, we often live in that paradox of occupying a place without entering into that place. In essence, we tread upon, without entering in…the literal threshold ceases to become an existential one.

It is interesting that our projects involve work on, or near, an early Christian basilica. While we are not working directly within the nave or apse, we are working to understand the remnants of a side room that has toppled with considerable force. As we work to uncover mortar that once held the walls and floors together, are we merely treading upon this once sacred space? Has anyone, through the course of their work passed through the literal to that existential threshold to a sacred space as the original site intended?

What does photography add to this mix?

Photography is so closely related to memory and yet is often hard to tease out. Two of the primary texts that students of photography read, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and Roland Barthes Camera Lucida come down harshly on photography’s connection to memory. Barthes would suggest that photography actually stifles memory. Yi-Fu Tuan, the well known human geographer, alternatively suggests in his text Place and Art that photography and other art works become “virtual places” that viewers can return to over and over to rehearse memory and experience.

Perhaps that is why I love photographing place/space/landscape. These images provide me, and perhaps others, an opportunity to repeatedly return to places through a virtual pilgrimage. The images provoke the viewers memory and imagination that the liminal spaces may be entered into again without being physically present to the place.

One profound challenge to this theory I share with Tuan is the ubiquity of images in our consumer society. We consume images at an astounding rate and with the onset of the digital imagery we produce them at an even higher rate. Will the sheer volume of images negate the potential for a liminal entry into the image? Or, like the places themselves, do we need to learn to protect such images in the ways we “use” them? Is there a proper attitude with which we should attend to photography that would more readily facilitate or allow the slide from consumer or tourist of place to sacred place?

Just a few musings from a very full week.

Photos

1) Hala Sultan Tekke

2) Agios Lazaros

3) Apse of 5th C. Basilica at Kourion

4) Apse of early Basilica at Pyla-Koutospetria

Topos & Chora at Pyla-Koutsopetria

An Artist Residency is often described as “the space to work.” This means for many both physical space as many residencies provide living and working quarters. But often more importantly for the artist it provides time to pursue some sort of project deemed valuable by the residency hosts.

The PKAP residency has provided both time and space for me to work. For me, that means photographing, reading, and writing about the significance of place/space/landscape. One of the 2 books I took along is Landscapes of the Sacred by Belden Lane who teaches at St. Louis University.

Yesterday I was reading how place is radically different in the thought of Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle preferred “topos” while Plato emphasized “chora.” Aristotle’s topos suggests a point on a map or an objective container that exerts no influence on those who enter those places. We see this legacy still at work today in cartography and GPS systems able to pinpoint location. Plato however takes an experiential view of place in his conception of chora. He suggests that place is the “wet-nurse, suckler and feeder of all things.” Plato is interested in the human connection to a particular place and the “choreography” of the reciprocal dance of humanity and environment.
What struck me as I read over Lane’s thoughts was how in the past week I have moved from topos to chora. The night before I left Sioux Falls, I sat in the basement with my friend Terence Mournet trying to find the sites on Google maps…a perfect, high tech example of Aristotle’s topos. It was an objective space…coordinates on a map…exerting minimal influence upon me save for some anxiety of the unknown. And now, after less than a week on this beautiful Mediterranean island, topos has become chora.

But how does this transformation of place come about? What moves someone from topos to chora? Lane suggests that is through the performance of various rituals. Philip Sheldrake would similarly suggest that it is through the accumulation of memory. Ritual and memory being intimately related, place emerges through ones daily activities which may be conceived of as a form of ritual. From our early rising hour to the drive out to the sites, dropping people off at their respective trenches, to pulling out the tools for the day (which perhaps become sacred objects by this performance), the digging, sifting, picking, etc. These rituals, now well into the second week for some, and years for others, all feed the accumulating memory from which chora would seem to emerge from.

Bill Caraher pointed out another layer to these two words yesterday as well that adds some nice texture to the conversation. My Greek from seminary is very rusty (sorry Dr. Rainbow), but an alternative meaning to chora is one of the goals of the project. Chora also means “country”. The Pyla -Koutsopetria site existed in an in-between state of sorts between city and country. The project, in some ways, is attempting to articulate the significance of this village. In this process, the site once located merely on a map for us all, is becoming significant place through our daily work here. Topos is giving way to chora.

Experimental Cartography V