A Hot Air Balloon Flight Above the Forests of Sweden

It was a bit surreal flying in a big red and white air balloon over the forests just north of Stockholm. In the first moments of flight we were so close to the pines, birches, alders, and maples, below that we brushed their tops. Then the quiet buoyancy was interrupted when the balloons engine fire roared, and an elk sprang out from the underbrush. A good start. 

I thought I would be scared, but I wasn’t. I was hanging like a basket of fruit 400 meters up in the air, and it felt so natural, and that was the strangest part.

Floating slowly along I began to look for patterns on the landscape below. Our Force Majeure group had been thinking a lot about the weaving of farming and forest, inspired by Farmer Gotsch a man in Brazil who “behaves like a giraffe”. We had been deeply inspired by his syntropic (opposite of entropic) farming which took the form of rich diverse food forests. His yields are often as much or more then those of industrial agriculture and fair much better during times of drought, while simultaneously building healthy soils, generating water and weather, yielding more nutrient dense food, and asking for no outside chemical inputs. One unique aspect of syntropic farming that really stood out for me was the way Gotsch himself spoke about his work, and the metaphors he chose to use, all of which showed me he was an artist with a loving and hands-on connection to living systems. This quote particularly resonated with everyone in our Force Majeure group:

“We are not the smart ones, we are part of a intelligent system. I am not the owner, nor the boss or manager. I am an endobiont of the macro-organism” - Ernst Gotsch

As I floated above the landscape of Sweden I saw endless the little pockets of farming surrounded by expansive forest. The trees were sometimes farmed and clear-cut, but in a less heavy handed way then other places I have observed in the northwest United States. There was some diversity in tree species, as noted by slight variation in color and movement, more yellow here, more black-green there. This was heartening to see. I could also tell the soil below was thin and rocky in places, since every now and again some granite would peek out, with vegetation growing out from all the crevices. I reminded myself to try and see into the landscape below, not just passively watch it pass.

It was almost as if the land below was asking to be rewoven where a forest becomes a farm, and a farm becomes a forest, the boundaries fluid and intertwined. This kind of seeing and thinking could generate a new kinds of landscapes the world over with less boundaries and more resilience in the face of rapid temperature rise and extremes in precipitation. Over the next phase of work we will be looking into seeing and then designing such a vision for the country of Sweden, a country that has the potential to become a great food and foraging forest, woven into the landscape for the benefit of the whole.

Eulogy for the Topsoil

Each year that passes
75 billion kilometers of soil
a sacrifice to the sea

you have given of your body
asking little in return
and we have consumed the marrow in your bones

what would the world be without you
I do not dare imagine
you have always been there
quiet, bearing and lush
in your final hour, dust against cheeks and gasp that you are e v e r y t h i n g.

Remembering
as ignorance cuts into the surface
the vast gift given
and the vast gift thrown away
but this is our lesson
and this is your eulogy

so in this moment of grief
I thank you

you are open handed
you are inventive
you are a multitude

I will love you eternally.

A Guiding Poem for the Ever-Growing Desert

What is a desert in the making? it is the loss of topsoil 
the foundational life system from which life springs
7 million square miles of the earth’s surface is desertifying
5.5 million square miles has already turned to desert
12.5 million square miles of earth’s 57 million square miles 
or 1/5th the surface of earth
is a desert in the now or a desert in the making

Where are the deserts in making? We name them here

South and North Africa
The Southwest United States
The island of Australia
The Middle East
Central Asia
Southern Spain
North East South America
Along the edges of Chile and Argentina

Where are the deserts that are most quickly expanding? We name them here

The Gobi Desert known as the Yellow Dragon
the fastest moving desert on Earth 
500,000 sq miles and growing
swallowing up over 1,300 square miles of land each passing year 
causing 10 billion dollars in losses each passing year
affecting 400 million people, who face asthma and worse

The Sahara
the largest hot desert in the world 
3.5 million sq miles, and growing 4,000 sq miles each year
matched in size only by the arctic and the antarctic 
Southward expansion of the Sahara each year more the the last

and more to be named here..

We have 12 million square miles of arable land on earth
every year 40,000 square miles is lost
all will be lost in the next 300 years, or less
unless we design a counterforce at scale in the now

The same causes are found again and again in different configurations:
Tillage for agriculture, overgrazing and deforestation for fuel or construction materials, drought, changing climate
in one pattern and then another
how do we see through and past this ever repeating tale

The counter forces are many
rotational herding in the spirit of the buffalo, 
the antelope, the wildebeest, the zebra
livestock move tightly through the landscape, never staying too long
deals are made between neighboring landowners 
each gaining more then is lost
the cattle will weave across wider and wider areas
the fences redesigned to be permeable membranes

They can move amongst thick ribbons of trees and plants, that rapidly build soil
that can withstand the increasing heat, that can gift biomass back to the soil
these plants can be abundantly planted along the fence membranes
where a green wall is seen as a food forest, and food forest seen as a multispecies hyway 

To supplement the rapid regeneration of soil, which is so needed
Biodigesters can make topsoil from the waste of those millions living in nearby cities
Systems can be designed to apply the rich generated humus to the edges of the oncoming desert…

to be continued…

False Comfort and Stockholm's "Green Index"

During my work at the Center for the Force Majeure, a question has come up over and over about the role that the arts and culture can play in influencing planning and policy. Inherently the Force Majeure Centers work touches on both these topics, by repeatably calling for vast changes in the way we see and interact with living systems. I believe that the artist has the potential to see the world as plastic, a great canvas of creativity, and therefore are tuned to the types of spontaneous ideas that are coded out of traditional planning processes. Think of the possibilities.

Our center had been invited to Stockholm by an art group called Mossutstallningar (Moss in english) for a art exhibit called Artistic Undressing’s, which was conceived of as an artist led generative critique of the development in the Stockholm Royal Seaport. This development had been advertised as the ultimate “sustainable development”, one that the rest of Sweden and the world could learn from. The reality however, as is often the case, was very different.

The first dysfunctional symptom was the lived story of Stella the director of Mossutstallningar and her art group. They have been pushed out of the harbor area because they raised her rent by just a cool 600%. Looking closely at this development scheme one quickly finds many dysfunctional guiding metaphors, loosely referencing ideas of a utopic “New Urbanism”. Put very simply, new urbanism advocates for tightly packed mixed-use housing, that is walkable and less resource intensive. It is a nice thought in principle, but in practice something else begins to appear. Thousands of small square apartments, a few random restaurants, lots of beige and grey, and hyper-curated patches of grass surrounded by concrete.

Our “sustainable” accommodations in the Royal Seaport development.

Stella had booked an apartment for us to stay in one of these sustainable developments of the Royal Harbor so we experienced this phenomena first hand. Everything felt very controlled, made of straight lines, shiny glass, with very little life, few inviting places to gather, let alone verdant growing walls, roofs or creative and colorful playgrounds for the kids to play in. We often reflected on sterile tone of it all during our time there.

It is in this context that we had a meeting with Stockholm city planners in a nondescript brick building with fluorescent lights. Two women and one man, all seemed surprisingly perky. I thought maybe we had a chance co-create? I could see in their eyes that we “artists” were perceived of as an oddity, a refreshing break from endless paperwork and standardization.

To begin Newton presented his past works of art that made a tangible impact on planning: Baltimore Promenade, Knowle West, The Greenheart of Holland. As he spoke I watched them become more and more intrigued, not sure what to make of this eccentric artist who clearly had worked in their territories before, even successfully, but had also clearly come from another world.

Then we turned to them and asked: What is the worse piece of planning in your city? and alternatively, what is the best planning in your city? We got a rather generic but telling answer: The worst planning is done when the developers tell the city planners what they want to do, the best planning is when city planners think ahead and make a plan for the developers. This is when they brought out the big guns… enter “The Green Index”. They then began speaking about the new developments being planned according to this numerically based “green index”. A rating system that makes developers meet some minimum standards in order to build in an area. Lastly they added, it was helpful but that developers are experiencing a “learning curve”. We all found this idea absurd… on a learning curve while developing a city that will last for hundreds of years and impact millions of lives?

This is when it started to get interesting as we now could see the deep limitations in thinking that were at play. We mentioned that developers will only do the absolute minimum to meet the requirements of the “green index”, and have very little financial incentive for inspired creativity. We asked if they had thought through this limitation, possibly designing creatively themselves to envision greater possibilities? They looked at us blankly, then started to get defensive. They said that the green index was in fact very new and innovative, and besides that, developers don’t like to be told what to do. (My question: Do inspiring ideas have to become mandates? maybe, and maybe not.)

We then talked about vertical orchards, community foraging gardens, promenades, while they looked at us with annoyed amusement. So one of them said, “ok that is all great, but what would you do on the north side of a building wall that gets very little sun?”. We all were shocked at the how basic of a problem this was, the response: work with botanists to make a design with shade tolerant species, a solution so simple it’s almost painful. However her question was telling, it showed a deep disconnect between the city planning process and understanding the basics of the living, breathing world.

We all left stunned. Newton and Ruby threw out working with Stockholm city planners at all. I decided to do a piece entitled “False Comfort and Stockholm’s Green Index”. I also spoke with Stella about making a visual workbook of “creative possibilities” to offer developers, hoping to spark whatever amount of visionary spirit they may have that sees beyond a “green index”.

A Dialogue Between Art and Policy in Scotland

I have recently returned from my second expedition to North East Scotland with the Center for the Force Majeure. I found this country illuminating in so many ways. The people, the landscape, the colors of green, the light quality. I felt a warmth and understanding radiate from this spot in the world that I had never before experienced. We were working in a small Scottish village named Banchory, with the inspired Barn Arts Center, led by Mark and Fiona Hope, two incredibly generous and brightly spirited people. Another vital connection we have to this region is Anne Douglas, a prominent thinker and champion of practice led PhD research in the arts. Anne and I are now thinking a great deal about how to bring the arts to bear on policy making.

Last year as well as this year, we stayed with Marc and Fiona at there home named Sunninghill. A beautiful old home overlooking the small village of Banchory. Fiona has a rambling garden that spills over the side of the hill. She forages, cooks and feeds us such healthy loving food.

Last year, Marc took us traveling up the Dee and Don rivers that had been experiencing catastrophic flooding during the previous year. He wanted us to help him think through how to address this ever increasing issue. Little did he or Anne know where that request would eventually go. My memory of this first visit shows up as a warmth in my heart. They not only invited us in and cooked for us, we also had the most stimulating conversations about the possibilities to heal the landscape, create new models of trade, and reconnect to life itself. Marc and Fiona’s Sufi nature often came forward here, that kind of depth plus a keen and discerning intelligence, combined with a knack for bringing people together.

The first set of proposal-images we made featured a guiding poem written by Newton that beautifully reimagined Scotlands great commons: the topsoil, the water, the forests, the air, the commons of mind and bespoke of them as the true wealth, deep wealth, of this nation, Scotland. What I have realized is that this was such an important first move, as it created a large scale vision helping guide the second stage of thinking, keeping us from patchwork and getting caught going down endless rabbit holes. It also helped crystallize the core actors of the living system in a way that everyone could imagine and see in their mind’s eye. It also pointed to a national unity and power, in that it said “Scotland could become the first country in the history of countries to give back more to the life web then it takes.” There was something about these two psychological and linguistic elements woven together that broke new ground and provoked new seeing. The images along with a animated video poem can be seen here.

The second phase of the work took this guiding poem and made proposals for restoring the commons (albeit still at very large scale). In brief they are: For the topsoil - learn a new form of Syntropic farming from Farmer Gotsch. For the forests - learn from the elders, the 2000+ year old trees, and design a new type of forestry. These elders have lived through drought, heat, fire and are the essence of resilience. Here is a group we found that is already moving in this direction, called the Archangel Tree Archive. For the waters- a provocative idea was put forth for the future when the waters rise - could they make a virtue of this phenomena by creating highly productive estuarial lagoons at some of the mouths of their great rivers? All that is needed is a narrowing of where the fresh water meets the sea using sand bars, then a grand sea nursery appears that can meet 1/5 the needs of the people for protein thereby reducing the need for cattle, and timber… and then a virtuous cycle is born.

Lastly, a beautiful moment of seeing revealed that Scotland has a rich foraging community, with 1 million of the 5.3 million people engaging in this pastime. A very high overall percentage. It was a “million person conversation” with the landscape. So after gathering many of their stories and looking for patterns in them, we proposed to awaken this special foraging community, a group of people whom are in direct touch with the landscape and naturally averse to big business. The call was to bring them together, and ultimately try to form a voting block that could transform the country from the inside out.

What a challenge and gift Newton and the center had given the country of Scotland, what refreshing ways of seeing the landscape anew. During this second visit we asked the question : how do you do something like this on a country-wide scale? Is it possible? Is it just big thinking that will be stopped by little thinking? We had many interesting meetings around this challenge, and I listened as well as reflected on the patterns I heard being spoken around me. All were very interested in these ideas becoming a reality, but how? This is the next stage of thinking that needs to be done. A big takeaway from these fascinating conversations with land owners, politicians, academics and local enthusiasts was that a “grand synthesis'“ was needed in order to bring efforts together and become emergent, more than the sum of the parts. We wanted to envision and the enact the work at scale, in a way that countered the 6th mass extinction itself. We spoke of holding “deep listening” sessions, to see who was thinking and doing what where. This was deemed step 1. Yet I am left wondering what is step 2? These listening sessions needed to be guided towards action, or it had the danger ending up as just more talking.

This got me thinking about this ennobling problem, and I felt that one of the things Newton and Helen have done so beautifully is turn ideas into icons, visible images that everyone could see and discuss. Creating a locust for synergies to emerge. Therefore I realized, there is a real need to visualize the great network of people working, and to turn it into an icon to compose and re-compose as a ground. Where are the overlapping geographies of focus, what strengths can be combined to create a new order of doing? That way we could be begin to design how we could work together for the good of the whole, a country wide whole. This is now in the incubator - how to manifest a multidimensional mapping that allows us to co-create has been calling to me after this experience. I will pursue this impulse, Stay tuned.

Seeing Berlin with Fresh Eyes

I recently visited Berlin with the Center for the Force Majeure group. We were there because we had been invited to do a exhibition in an old botanical Museum. The idea was to cross-pollinate by bringing the arts into a scientific institution, and science displays into the artistic institution, a cross cultural exchange so to speak.

We landed in Berlin at 9AM with about 3 hours of sleep, our hotel was not ready so we went to a museum, not just any museum however, this was the Topographie of Terrors. It is where the headquarters of the Nazi Regime was located. Probably not a great choice since my psyche was vulnerable from lack of sleep and extensive travel. I had physical reactions to the endless black and white photographs of laughing nazi officers, and images of the endless lines of jewish and polish people with a strange empty look in their eyes, knowing and not knowing. I literally heard recordings of the judges yelling and condemning innocent people to death simply for for speaking their minds.

I left there with a nauseous belly and my head swirling unable to process the depth of terror I had encountered. We then jumped on a hop on and off bus and drove through East Berlin, with its endless concrete apartment buildings and distinct lack of growing things, it was a damp day with clouds coming then going. The most informative moment of this ride was when we passed into the westside of the city, and then suddenly the heaviness was lifted from the greenery and a sense of quality of life being restored. Why was the wall and the communist regime such a failure? The philosophy Marx put forward had many merits and also many things overlooked leading to a dysfunctional system when put into practice. I left the bus wondering what are the missing pieces?

All this settled into my psyche over the next couple of days as I experienced the hip edgy, realness of Berlin city. We had meetings with Sandra Bartolli to discuss the exhibition at the Botanical Museum. This was a interesting experience. The museum itself was old, outdated with some 70s flare, they had big centerpiece botanical “models” everywhere. When I first entered I saw a bunch of head sculptures of famous old colonial botanist, the bronze sculptures hung out from the wall, and eerily stared at all those who entered.

The director of this odd locale kept saying that they are different because they focus on botanical “models”. By which she meant simplified versions of things like stamens being represented with sticks and balls. Yes sticks and balls. I thought that this place need to come alive, grow, break free from its colonial past, transform with vines and crawlers and open air courtyards and skylights. The botanists working there are surrounded by claustrophobic and stale versions of life, models of life, plaster and plastic. How can we have enlightened and progressive botanists if they cannot see beyond the past?

A Love Letter to Industrial Agriculture

Dear Industrial Agriculture,

This is a letter soaked in anger and intimacy, you are so close to me. I see you building cities, universities, and libraries, only to watch the intelligence you generated rendered useless in the fate of your presence.

I having been meaning to write to you for a long time now. I am learning to see how you sneak around the corners of supermarkets and nibble away at the future. You seem to have a very inventive nature, endlessly shape shifting into more and then more slowly degrading realities. You are everywhere omni-present and omni-directional. You are marching in a straight line to the end of the world.

Like an abusive lover, drunk on power, you have forgotten who you really are. We can stay alive together, need not die for the other. Symbiotic and entangled is the nature of things, staying alive is the conversation.

I know you like endless miles of predictability. Yet, I also know you can change. I have seen food forests and other wild tangled intermixed abundances in a few blessed fields. This is real loving, a co-mingling. Of the 57 million miles of the earth’s surface you are 12 million miles and counting. This is 20% of everything we have.

And what is your responsibility here? What is your Declaration of Self?

affectionately yours,

Kelly

What Can We Learn From the Buffalo?

Buffalo used to roam the Southwest of the US in tight, ever moving herds
They moved across the landscape, never tarrying in one place to long
Unfenced and unbound they followed the smell of fresh grasses and fewer predators
Turning grass into rich dung and urine
Pushing seeds into the rich co-created dirt beneath their feet
giving back as much or more then they took

Now the cows are many and locked into fragmented fields
they do not move, and in their hunger they eat and eat of the same brittle patches of grass
they are creating a desert, where little can grow and no herds can survive
the soil beneath them is slowly turning to dust
our fragmentation is causing them to self destruct and along with them we go

what if they moved again together in regenerative circles that intertwine
a dance across the landscape
can we see past our fences of understanding
can we allow the herds to roam once again?

we propose a new kind of seeing take place 
the great South West becoming a pattern to weave
herds enriching then moving enriching then moving
regenerating the soil beneath

they can be our helpers, giving of there flesh as well as there physiology
and what can we give them in return?
green open pastures, with tender grass and the occasional flower
we can give the gift of moving together through the world
following their own evolutionary nature

a new design can be rendered with herds weaving in and out across the landscape
in rhythm in time with what it takes to rebound
and regift the soils abundance once again
it does not need to be all or nothing, it can be all and everything
a system not a herd or field
a cycle not a a fenced and fragmented puzzle

The Simple Complexity of a 9-Layered Forest

NOTE TO SELF: IT IS AS COMPLEX AS IT IS SIMPLE. THE TRICK IS TO SEE AND ACT, AGAIN AND AGAIN.

1. TALL TREE CANOPY LAYER

2. SUB-CANOPY LARGE BRUSH LAYER

3. SHRUB LAYER

4. HERBACEOUS LAYER

5. GROUND COVER CREEPER LAYER

6. UNDERGROUND LAYER

7. VERTICAL CLIMBER LAYER

8. AQUATIC LAYER

9. MYCELIAL/FUNGAL LAYER