This week, we bend an ear to the lucid voice of Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery Atlanta, home to what is in our view the most important and most powerful work of public art in North America: the National Memorial to Peace and Justice.
The entire New Yorker interview is worth a close reading; except below, with images relayed from the website of EJI.
RAISE UP!
Now comes distinguished civil rights attorney and founder of the Racial Justice Network, Nekima Levy Armstrong, in response to the police killing of George Lloyd, a response that cuts to the heart of the matter with just a few sentences of searing truth set against the brutal exercise of police power:
In the midst of a pandemic caused by a pathogen that has a particularly nasty impact on human lungs and on communities of color, we invite careful consideration of the following transcript:
Finally, outraged by this repugnant and wanton act of murder, and by all the implications and histories tangled within, we relay a statement released by Frank Chapman, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression:
WHITE STRIPE FOR A MODERN-DAY LYNCHING
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Among the many vulnerabilities exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, surely the catastrophe created by the neoliberal commodification of elder care must rank among the most acute, with devastating losses suffered within nursing homes, including both residents and caregivers.
Now comes Lynn Casteel Harper, presently Minister of Older Adults at The Riverside Church in the City of New York and author of On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia and What It Means to Disappear. Released during the early days of the pandemic as it spread throughout the United States, the book offers a luminous exploration into the gradually descending darkness of dementia, advocating for alternative elder care practices that support those afflicted to “vanish well”.
Excerpts from a recent interview below, with masks relayed from the website of William Utermohlen.
MASK WITH RED NECK
MASK WITH BLUE EYES
Hear hear!
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Now comes Naomi Klein with a lucid analysis of one possible though not inevitable outcome from the Age of Covid-19, a post-pandemic shock doctrine that would retrospectively confirm Black Mirror as an anticipatory documentary rather than an exercise in the dystopian imagination.
The entire essay is worth close consideration; a brief excerpt below, with an image (caption added by DP) from the studio of Jakub Geltner.
FLOCK DOCTRINE
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Thus at exactly the time when we need to connect more deeply to the realities of the natural world, while also connecting with each other in more compassionate and immediate ways, the hubristic pseudo-titans of Silicon Valley invite us into a world of perpetual surveillance, behavioral algorithms and learned helplessness.
After all this grief and suffering, they propose to accelerate the Great Acceleration to warp speed, an appropriate tempo for such a warped, narcissistic and nihilistic vision. Shaped by terror of fleeting mortality, their wish to live in an untouchable world discloses a puerile refusal to acknowledge limits. At a time when we humans need to do (and be) less and then less again, their shallow understanding insists on more always more.
This too shall crash.
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Aware that the pandemic has severely attacked vulnerable communities of color, including tribal communities whose members may not have access to adequate health care nor clean water, we turn to a young voice from the Navajo Nation (Diné), Alastair Lee Bitsóí, relayed from the pages of the Navajo Times. Excerpts below, with images from the studio of Tony Abeyta.
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With endless rain slowly coming to an end here in the mountains, mushroom foragers are preparing their mud boots for slogs off the beaten trail. Mushroom hunting is an excellent activity during a time of social distancing, since foragers are naturally inclined to steer clear of other humans so as not to divulge their precious discoveries.
Below, a few excerpts from an extraordinary Derrick Jensen interview with master mycologist Paul Stamets dating from 2008, yet still sounding fresh as an April morel. The images are from the hand and eye of Azuma Makoto whose stunning botanical sculptures raise our spirits every time we stumble across them in the fungal forests of the internet.
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Now comes philosopher Byung-Chul Han, known for his enquiries into seemingly (and only seemingly) benign themes such as smoothness, tiredness and the culture of “liking”, with a few thoughts on panic, contagion, immunity and resistance. Excerpts below from an essay first published in El País.
Images are relayed from the virtual studio of Lawrence Weiner.
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Now comes Dahr Jamail, with a timely and crucial reminder that zoonotic pathogens might be released in the future not only as a consequence of human encroachment on wild habitats, but also as a direct result of climate breakdown.
His entire report is worth careful consideration; excerpts below, with Images from installations of Olafur Eliasson’s large scale meltdown, Ice Watch.
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About Ice Watch, Olafur Eliasson states:
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During a time of year when we are moved to reflect upon themes of rebirth, redemption, sacrifice and regeneration, we turn to the perennial wisdom of Thomas Berry, in a passage from a 1996 lecture at Harvard on Ethics and Ecology. Images are from the stunning growing grass sculptures of Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy.
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In closing, we offer a poem by Mary Rose O’Reilly in anticipation of new life that shall emerge, in time, from the vessel’s wreck:
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Now comes artist Julie Poitras Santos, with a creative perambulatory digression, as relayed from the pages of the esteemed Brooklyn Rail. Images are from her related video, The Conversation. In times of pandemic, the sense of personal agency experienced via the simple act of walking through the natural world becomes especially precious.
The entire DP staff will now set forth on a slow woodlands ramble, in conversation through uncertainty.
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