Trine Struwe & Mads Juel

Body of Water, 2021

THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION

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Dear Earthling,

I hope you are well.

I went to a dinner this past week, with other students of an online course on Regenerative Economics. Folks with inspiring and important practices, ranging from impact investments to regenerative agriculture and community building.

The meal itself was eye-opening. Our host had aligned it with some key principles of regenerative economics, close to those of permaculture. Seeking balance is one. When planning the dinner, she had asked herself: When is it good enough? Why do we sometimes serve too much food out of fear of seeming stingy? She had decided on two simple dishes with few ingredients, being vegetables of the season. She served water out of wine bottles, drawing our attention to the current drought in Denmark (it hasn’t really rained since the second rainiest February in 148 years). She wanted us to honor the clean water, we’re still able to drink from the tap. For her cooking, she used sugar from two already opened sugar packets, brought home from cafés, bearing in mind the amount of energy used for sugar production. And our mushrooms were foraged and dried last year. The time, she had spent on this meal, and her thoughtful attention to all parts of it, felt deeply caring, and the meal itself abundant.

“We make things holy by the kind of attention we give them,” says storyteller Martin Shaw. I’ll add that ‘attention’ and ‘time’ are, speaking in economic terms, really the only true valuable assets, we mortals have (hence ‘to pay attention’).

LISTENING TO THE NATURAL WORLD AND TO THE HEART

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I am currently running a course on Art & Personal Leadership, and the last two lectures with guest teachers, curator Magnus Kaslov (presenting artist Knud Viktor’s practice) and artist Peter Voss-Knude also touched upon deep attention to the living world and balance.

The artist Knud Viktor (1924 – 2013) lived on a mountain in France, built his own recording equipment out of scraps, and recorded the sounds of the more-than-human life around him. He was a deep ecologist and called himself a citizen of the earth. The sounds include a worm eating an apple, a snoring rabbit in its hole, and larger symphonies with cicadas. Listen to his Petite Sons here.

Deep listening, which is only possible when silencing the mind and the self, is such a beautiful and important (albeit not easily fit into our lifestyles) way to strengthen empathy with fellow species. Viktor magnified his observations and recordings of the inhabitants of the mountain, inviting us to reflect: How loud and big must something be for us humans to acknowledge it?

Indeed, both complexity and distance make it more difficult to engage and empathize with matters than when they are experienced directly through our sensory bodies. This is a human issue of short-sightedness, and a larger lens is required in times of global ecological disaster. The arts play a role in this, touching hearts and minds by magnifying important issues. On a daily basis, both mindful and empathic behavior makes a difference, acts of kindness, seeking balance, and honoring place, using our attuned bodily senses in local contexts, in our organizations, in our gardens or balcony boxes, in our neighborhoods, in supermarkets.

Knud Viktor, Les Éphémères

Released by IDL, 2019

I have had the pleasure of working with artist and musician Peter Voss-Knude at Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde. His work dealt with the fear of terror (which you may remember as the collective fear that dominated right before the collective fear of Covid-19, which has currently been replaced by the collective fear of Russian aggression).

Peter shared a morning ritual with the cohort. A special method to check in with oneself in the early hours of the day, on the verge of the state of dreaming. Really knowing oneself and listening in deeply, acknowledging the potential important messages of dreams leads to clarity, he explained.

Peter has engaged with the Danish Defense in several projects, moving into non-comfort zones, to understand communities different from himself. These meetings with ‘the other’ have resulted in art works such as the 1.1 tons rosa quarts, said to have healing qualities, which replaced a terror barricade in front of the Jewish synagogue in Copenhagen. And a whole pop-album, The Anti-Terror Album. Meeting ‘the other’ with curiosity, and not succumbing to the same rhetoric, but answering with pop, kindness, and joy, is a practice of his, which I admire. I long for more dialogue and less debate!

I recently spent my first night alone in a tent. I felt gratitude to the beautiful place, I could call my home for the night. Except for the wreath of anemones, I offered to a fallen tree, I left no trace. I felt alive.

Take care,

Birgitte