August 26, 2006
FIRST UPSIDE DOWN TREE
The man as the tree is a being where confused forces come to be held upright.---Gaston Bachelard
Robert Smithson Alfred, NY 1969 @
>from Robert Smithson's 1970 essay “Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan":
"On this site the third upside-down tree was planted. The first is in Alfred, New York State, the second is in Captiva Island, Florida; lines drawn on a map will connect them. Are they totems of rootlessness that relate to one another? Is this a mode of travel that does not in the least try to establish a coherent coming and going between the here and the there? Perhaps they are dislocated "North and South poles" marking peripheral places, polar regions of the mind fixed in mundane matter—poles that have slipped from the geographical moorings of the world's axis. Central points that evade being central. Are they dead roots that haplessly hang off inverted trunks in a vast "no man's land" that drifts toward vacancy? In the riddling zone, nothing is for sure." @
~Here's a more recognizable upside down tree. Thanks to National Geographic Magazine and gov't tax benefits for industries catering to tourists.
This upside down tree can be found in small apartments. I picture Japanese people who celebrate Christmas, Mickey Mouse and such.
>more from "Incidents of Mirror Travel..." by Robert Smithson:
"When the conscious artist perceives "nature" everywhere he starts detecting falsity in the apparent thickets, in the appearance of the real, and in the end he is skeptical about all notions of existence, objects, reality, etc. Art works out of the inexplicable."
~Ok so maybe above I'm confusing the indescribable or inarticulate with the inexplicable.
Posted by Stubbornson at August 26, 2006 07:22 PM