A POEM FOR ENTANGLED LIVING
In the face of an increasingly unstable future, we are called to create new arts of living – ones that recognize the weight of our own actions, and the necessity of others’.
A Poem for Entangled Living is an interactive, collaborative, balancing act about abolition, grief, and the opposing forces that shape the entangled, changing world we live in. It is a invitation to engage collectively with the opposing forces shaping our world and the impossible questions we carry everyday: How can we still find spaces that make us want to live even though the world is dying?
How does each action impact the one that comes after it?
How do we navigate the world’s opposing forces individually and as a collective, and how do we brave the spaces in between?
As in necessary // as in primary rule // as in unavoidable yet often invisible.
We encounter grief every day at every scale. From unrecognizable seasons, to destroyed homes, to the disappearance of flowers beneath our feet, to the loss of loved ones. Every morning we wake up next to it, we carry it, we walk through it, we smash it to pieces, we hide, we put it back together.
We know that a better, different world can’t be built without grief, but rarely are we given permission to engage with it communally. Our grief is just as tangled as our lives are, with origins and consequences stretching far beyond what we can see. Which is why we cannot do any of this alone.
Should “abolish” be the home for that which we wanted to see gone and dismantled, or what we needed to carry us through the long journey of abolition?
STORY OF ART SHANTIES
In February 2024, we installed the piece on the frozen ice of Lake Bde Unma in Minneapolis for the 20th annual Art Shanty Projects winter festival. Early on in the design phase, we decided to paint the base of the structure, and much of the ephemera, white. We wanted the piece to blend in with the snowy, white expanse of Minneapolis in winter. Only the snow didn’t come. And the cold barely made it.
Warm temperatures delayed installation for one week, but we finally installed on clear, black ice, 200 feet out. Still without snow, the structure stuck out against the gray, dull landscape around it.
Slowly, each day, the arms collected long chains of words, images, and quotes as people added, moved, or took away ephemera. We watched children, not yet reading, instinctively string words together, as if there was an obvious order. Some made meaning by walking beneath the chains of ephemera, as if moving through a dense forest. For others, it meant quiet observation from afar, with the full structure in view. Some joyfully called out what another placed before them. Others challenged the placement of certain words or ideas and moved them around as they saw fit. Should “abolish” be the home for that which we wanted to see gone and dismantled, or what we needed to carry us through the long journey of abolition? And each day, new ways of interpreting and interacting with the installation emerged, as every visitor came to their own conclusions.
Originally intended for three weekends, the Art Shanty Festival only lasted for one. Warmth returned and the shanties were broken down and evacuated off the ice early.
The very force that drove the creation of the project, the thing that we invited people to engage with, is what cut its installation short. But if we learned anything from the first weekend, it’s that new possibilities are always waiting to be strung together.
The very force that drove the creation of the project, the thing that we invited people to engage with, is what cut its installation short. But if we learned anything from the first weekend, it’s that new possibilities are always waiting to be strung together.
ARTISTS STATEMENT / INTERPRETATION NOTES
“A Poem for Entangled Living” is an interactive art installation that invites you to engage with the grief that comes with the entangled, changing world we live in. We welcome you through one of the two portals to engage with the structure, its themes, the people, around you, and whatever else comes up for you. At the center of the installation lies a wooden pyramid with a post projecting out of the top. This post holds 3 offset arms that “see-saw” up and down as items are added to them. The arms are each a different color – orange, yellow, and purple – and have words attached to either end. These themes are “opposing forces” words, actions, or concepts that we must learn how to live within as they move in and out of balance. Visitors are invited to explore each of them and what it means to navigate the space in between.
On the orange arm, one end is “growth” and the other is “decay.”
The yellow arm is “abolish” and “rebuild.”
On the purple arm is “forgetting” and “remembering.”
On the ends of each of these arms also hangs a paper mache symbol representing each theme, painted the same color as the arm with some detailing. Growth is symbolized by a tree and decay by a fish skeleton. Abolish is a bird. Rebuild is an ant. Forgetting is a window and remembering is an ammonite – an ancient spiral shaped fossil of a prehistoric sea creature. We chose some of these for their ecological roles and relationships. For example the tree and fish represent the cycle where salmon swim upstream to spawn, die, and their decaying bodies provide nitrogen and other nutrients to the trees growing on the banks of the river. Others we chose as broader symbols, inviting in wider interpretation. These are also the images and words that are screen printed onto the patches that are clipped to the clothesline surrounding the structure. Each visitor is welcome to take a patch!
The base of the pyramid is covered with four black and white painted panels. The panels are painted with the piece’s title “A Poem for Entangled Living”, pointed star shapes with eyes in the middle, and a continuous looping and swirling “string” representing the Entanglement that is central to the piece’s inspiration. Placed between the eyes and the string are also questions and phrases that capture the core ideas behind the piece and prompt visitors to interact with the different themes on the see-sawing arms.
Visitors are invited to interact with the piece by selecting black and white cardboard pieces that each have different words, images, or quotes painted on them. Some examples include paintings of a heart and ice crystals, the words “reciprocity, symbiosis, curious, interdependence, eroding”, and the quote “How will we slouch toward our deep future, toward an almost certain demise whose script we are writing but cannot imagine?” After selecting a piece someone can attach it to any arm they like, creating chains of words and images extending down from each arm and theme. As people add, move, or take away objects the arm will tip back and forth, going in and out of equilibrium. Visitors are also able to stand atop stools - each painted one of the three main colors – to reach the ends of arms that may be extending high in the air, out of reach.