NATURE DIS/CONNECTION (GINGKO), 2023
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NATURE CONNECTION : FOREST BATHING and EARTHBOUND
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NATURE DISCONNECTION : WALLS, OVER-PRODUCTION/CONSUMPTION and BUSINESS AS USUAL
Digital images: Gaby wearing a hand-sewn Nature Immersion Hood (Gingko leaves and cotton thread)
An exploration into our state of disconnection as children of the Industrial Growth Society. What happens when we explicitly re-connect our human-selves within Nature?
NATURE CONNECTION : FOREST BATHING
Let us fall back in love with our natural selves and recognise our position of connected interdependence with all beings: that way we may stand a chance of saving the things we most need in our life…
Being amongst trees reduces stress and strengthens our immune system, by taking in a woodland environment with all our senses open whilst breathing in the trees’ essential oils or phytoncides (part of trees natural defence system against bacteria, fungi and insects).
Forest Bathing (Shinrin Yoku) was championed by Japanese researcher Dr Qing Lee with the support of the Japanese Government, which saw the potential health benefits for both humans and the forests themselves (as people would feel more inclined to protect the trees if they understood their health giving effects).
Photo credit: Shona Kitson
Location and care: Liz Banks
NATURE CONNECTION : EARTHBOUND
When I first found these beautiful Ginkgo-Biloba leaves they were strewn around the base of a small tree in my local park, and held in the clutches of a deep, December frost.
Following an invitation from 6Music DJ Mary-Anne Hobbs to make and share an artwork based around 'the natural world', I collected an armful of the ice-laced leaves thinking to extend We Breathe Trees in some meaningful way. As the yellow fans dried out on an old towel it became clear that I wanted to fully immerse myself in their leathery vibrancy.
I sewed the leaves in a spiral over a glass bowl to form a hood that I could wear and escape from the city, from the hustle and bustle, and to be immediately within a tree-canopy, even in the dead of winter.
I didn’t want to remove myself from the urban jungle, so much as return myself to the Earth.
Photo credit: Shona Kitson
Location and care: Liz Banks
NATURE DISCONNECTION : WALLS
We live disconnected lives, behind high walls - estranged from nature and cut off from traditional, support networks.
Richard Louv, identifies alienation from nature as Nature Defecit Disorder which "contributes to a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, conditions of obesity, and higher rates of emotional and physical illnesses. Research also suggests that the nature-deficit weakens ecological literacy and stewardship of the natural world."
In 2022 Scotland, England and Wales had the highest imprisonment rates in Western Europe, up by 70% in the last 30 years. Around 50% of the UK’s prison population has a neuro-divergent condition that impacts the ability to engage and 42% had a mental health diagnosis prior to imprisonment.
But there is pioneering research proving the restorative effects of nature connection within prisons on the attention, mental-health and well-being of inmates (and officers). Meanwhile a study in 2016 showed three-quarters of UK children spent less time outside than prison inmates (under an hour a day).
Photo credit: Emily Walmsley
NATURE DISCONNECTION : OVER-PRODUCTION/OVER-CONSUMPTION
How to measure what is a ‘reasonable’ amount to want and expect when - irrespective of individual or planetary means - our beautifully absorbent brains are media-saturated by mesmerising, aspirational visions of comfort, cleanliness, convenience and adventure?
It can feel unfair to curtail our own ‘reasonable’ dreams when so many others are buying and doing so much more. Thus are we hooked by fanciful fairy-tales of fulfilment spun by advertisers for profit-seeking corporations.
‘In an affluent society...men become consuming animals or a commodity which consumes those commodities that abstract capitalism needs to have consumed…Eventually, he spontaneously desires what capital wants him to desire, even alienation, on every level of life.’ (Enzo Paci)
It’s confusing and upsetting to be faced with so much excess amidst widespread deprivation and destruction. It hurts to see how much we take and throw away as if it is of no consequence. It is the essence of our extractavist society at all levels.
Is it not incumbent on those of us who have benefitted most from the industrial growth economy to make the most urgent changes to our lives?
There is no Plan(et) B.
Photo credit: Emily Walmsley
NATURE DISCONNECTION : BUSINESS AS USUAL
As much as I love living in a city - where people and ideas bounce and inspire, and connected thinking quickly turns into collaborative action - I’m knocked off kilter by the noise, the speed, the hassle, the hustle, the waste, the inequality, the greed, the filth and the unrelenting hardness of it all.
I keenly feel the lack of of living soils, wide skies and broad trees to ground me. The concrete jungle normalises disassociation - from ourselves, from each other, from the Earth - and Business as Usual - with economic growth as the be all and end all - would keep it that way, cos it stops us imagining a different way of living. But at what cost?
I was writing essays on ‘global warming’, deforestation, resource and pollution inequality for my A’ levels in 1991… and 32 years on Business as Usual still holds sway. And Earth’s life-support systems are starting to fail…
This year I turn 50, on 21st April 2023, the first day of The Big One - an invitation for a critical mass of citizens to gather in Westminster, joining in solidarity to challenge Business as Usual and to demand a new way forward. I shall be issuing party invitations… I’d love for you to come…
Photo Credit: Emily Walmsley