ebb / flow
ebb
VERB
1 (of the sea or a tidal river (or a people)) move away from the land; recede.
flow
VERB
1 (of the sea or a tidal river (or a people)) move towards the land; rise.
I think about ebbing and flowing, moving toward and away from the land. Many moderns attempt to conceptually move away from the land, moving into urban spaces where the land is gridded, cut into blocks, concreted over, and used mostly as decor. Many of us moderns have forgotten our connection to land that we once carried as land based peoples. We've lost the evidence of our reciprocal relationships to the point that many of my friends are unaware that the buildings they live in, the computers they communicate with, and the clothes they wear all come from the land. I think about the need to move toward the land, as a form of healing the anxiety and depression inducing divisions in our lives.
I think about ebbing and flowing, moving toward and away from the land. I think about decolonization and the repatriation stolen of lands. I think about settler-colonization and the move toward these lands. I think about the potential need for settlers to move away from these lands in order to heal deep and ongoing violences that are foundational to our dominant culture and all settler-colonist's origins.
These reciprocal ideas remind me of Testing, a video work by Li Binyuan. In it, he climbs away from the land on bamboo shoot until his weight bends the shoot moving back toward the land. Eventually he looses the strength to hold himself away from the land and falls, landing painfully on the ground. This makes me think of the potentially painfully unsettling task I've set out for myself of spiritually and corporeally moving toward the land in order to feel connected and whole, while also needing to move away from my rights to the land(s) I call home in order to work toward decolonization.
see also: concrete, decolonization, ebb / flow, groundlessness, home, land, map, origins / foundations, spiritual experience, stable / settled, "what is"
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ebb
VERB
1 (of the sea or a tidal river (or a people)) move away from the land; recede.
flow
VERB
1 (of the sea or a tidal river (or a people)) move towards the land; rise.
I think about ebbing and flowing, moving toward and away from the land. Many moderns attempt to conceptually move away from the land, moving into urban spaces where the land is gridded, cut into blocks, concreted over, and used mostly as decor. Many of us moderns have forgotten our connection to land that we once carried as land based peoples. We've lost the evidence of our reciprocal relationships to the point that many of my friends are unaware that the buildings they live in, the computers they communicate with, and the clothes they wear all come from the land. I think about the need to move toward the land, as a form of healing the anxiety and depression inducing divisions in our lives.
I think about ebbing and flowing, moving toward and away from the land. I think about decolonization and the repatriation stolen of lands. I think about settler-colonization and the move toward these lands. I think about the potential need for settlers to move away from these lands in order to heal deep and ongoing violences that are foundational to our dominant culture and all settler-colonist's origins.
These reciprocal ideas remind me of Testing, a video work by Li Binyuan. In it, he climbs away from the land on bamboo shoot until his weight bends the shoot moving back toward the land. Eventually he looses the strength to hold himself away from the land and falls, landing painfully on the ground. This makes me think of the potentially painfully unsettling task I've set out for myself of spiritually and corporeally moving toward the land in order to feel connected and whole, while also needing to move away from my rights to the land(s) I call home in order to work toward decolonization.
see also: concrete, decolonization, ebb / flow, groundlessness, home, land, map, origins / foundations, spiritual experience, stable / settled, "what is"
<--- --->
stills from, Testing, by Li Binyuan. 2015.
