East Belfast Mural Walk

Yesterday my friend Mary took me on a walk through protestant East-Belfast. We passed many UVF and UDA murals, including two on the lower Newtonards road which were being painted by a group of men, some with their paramilitary tattoos exposed. Some murals have been up for decades, some are worn by the long passage of time, and others have been continually retouched. The areas that bear these murals also often fly flags from lamposts or houses, either the Union Jack or the Ulster Banner. These are heavily protestant, unionist communities. Even so, the murals have the sense of being-imposed on the areas. Certainly there is some public support for the Unionist paramilitaries, but the failure of the UVF associated Progressive Unionist Party to break through in the polls suggests that these groups are seen as community protectors rather than community leaders. It is strange to me that the Independent International Committee on Decommissioning didn’t add the removal of pro-militant murals to the scope of the decommissioning of paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland – the presence of these works is a strong material-symbolic approval of the use of violence, and participate in the binding of the local area to its identity as requiring extra-judicial protection of what are today essentially gangs.

Why Phenomenology needs Science against Post-Structuralism

It is a view which has become so prevalent that one hardly needs to summon arguments: if men are more agressive than women “it’s because of discourse and socialization”, if conservatives are more industrious than liberals, “it’s discourse and socialization”, and if some people have higher measured intelligence than others, “it’s all a result of privileged upbringing and imperialist discourse which validates certain kinds of knowledge over others”. In other words, when we look to explain certain phenomena in our late-modernist, post-structuralist world, we look to discursive and socio-economic factors and those alone to account for the observed differences between people or groups.

There are good reasons why we do this. 19th century Marxist explanations of social phenomena were a bulwark against social darwinist biological reductionism which sought not just to explain social phenomena in terms of biology, but to use that explained biological origin as a justification for inequality and oppression. And 20th century discourse analysis has been a key form of social critique – it reveals to us the epistemic framework within which certain “facts” appear as normal, but which are in fact products of a language which reproduces certain power relations – and which can be changed to make the world more greatly accord with our values.

“Change” is really the key, I believe, to the dominance of economic and discursive analysis’ prevalence – because discourse and socio-economic conditions are explanations for social phenomena that do not essentialize or reify the phenomena, progressives like them. Progressives love things that can be changed because it means that suffering in the world is evil rather than tragic – and that’s a good thing because it’s empowering and it places responsibility on those studying it to do something about it. On the other hand, biological explanations for social phenomena seem to explain to us the world as we can’t change it – as it simply “is”, fixed in a genetic essence.

Such a strong duality between explanations of phenomena which are “fixed”, and which are changeable is, however, deceptive and closes us off from recognizing the particularity of bodies. Bodies are not merely the products of their socialization (which, in the larger sense, includes discourse), because the way a body copes with a situation is always in the style of its particularity. To believe otherwise would be to say babies are entirely blank slates, and that there is nothing about their bodies that is the motivating cause of their style of dealing with different situations. Of course, the style of the body is developed always within a social-discursive context, but to deny the explanatory power of the biological is to reject the idea that the style of the body in any way (or, at least, any measurable way) exceeds the disciplining and educating of that body.

Fundraising for Palestine (Kalandia Youth Media Project)

As some of you will already know this may to july I’m travelling to Palestine to volunteer at the Kalandia youth media program as part of a trip run by Operation Groundswell. The trip is self-funded, and I’ve been lucky enough to have parents with aeroplan points so all I have to pay of my flight are taxes and fees. However, I need to raise 1000$ “mandatory fundraising component”, which goes towards the projects that this trip and others do in the communities that we visit.

During our six-week trip, we will work with the Kalandia youth by leading workshops and classes where the youth will develop their media skills in photography, videography, and the use of social media. We will also be travelling with the youth to Bethlehem and Nablus to collaborate with the radio and videography programs in those areas. Also, there will be time to create site projects such as documentaries and photography collections – the aim is to put these materials together in an arts show at the end of the program for the Palestinian community and also the people of Israel.

Personally I have reasons beyond the volunteering for travelling to Palestine. Politically, I’m motivated by the Palestinian cause – I believe that as residents of an American client state we can not in good conscience stand idly by as America defends Israeli war crimes and blocks a fair settlement for the Palestinians. And as a scholar my work is on the phenomenology of conflict situations, aiming to develop a better concept of the social, resistance, and reconciliation. These reasons aren’t opposed to the volunteering, of course, they intertwine into it – but they also attract me towards other oppertunities that the trip affords. Oppertunities like meeting former IDF soldiers in Breaking the Silence and Combatants for peace. Like meeting Rabbis for human rights (pretty self-explanatory), and Bustan, who work with Bedouin communities in the Negev.

So, if you can afford to make a donation, even a small one, please consider contributing. I promise to do my best to turn your contribution into real value on the ground for people in the communities we visit. You can donate on my pledge page, where you can read more about the program and my reasons for participating.

What is “Twitter”

This isn’t a joke. Of course, we all know what Twitter is. It’s that smartphone thing, where you say short things, and other people say things, and you read the things that other people say who don’t necessarily read the things you say.

But seriously, what is Twitter? Twitter is an asymmetrical social media site. That means that instead of having “friends” you have followers, and the amount of followers you have is in no way limited by the amount of friends you could conceive of having, or wish to interact with online. Facebook has a natural upper limit of the number of friends a person someone can acquire. I don’t mean the actual limit (some people have hit it – I think it’s a few thousand), but the limit in terms of the content streaming down your wall which you don’t want to deal with. Or the hundreds of people messaging you everyday when they click “message entire list”.

Where is the (cultural) production?

A protest photograph is forwarded on facebook. An Egyptian tweet comes through on the Aljezeera or Guardian twitter-live-feed. Where do these “come from”? The easy answer is of course “the photographer” or “the city square” or “the author of the tweet” (as if tweets had authors like Moby Dick). The problem with the easy answer is that it’s wrong, another problem is the difficulty of explaining how it is wrong.

Take, for instance, any form of cultural production. Take sculpture, take pottery, take essay-writing, take photography, take architecture. Where is the work produced – what is the location of production/instantiation of a/the new artifact? It is not when the photograph is taken, or when the sculpture is planned or conceived - it is rather when a decision is made to show this photograph rather than another. Or, to construct this sculpture at full scale rather than one which is intuited as less potentially successful (I’m thinking of Serra’s workflow here). The cultural production is, in other words, in the decision to put forth the work. Not the making of the work, but the setting it into the cultural location, produces its reality and the infinite (but not incoherent) potential connections, effects, excrements, alienations.

Ideals as Forces of Historical Particularity

In a recent long drawn out argument with Milan over tensions concerning the oversight of institutions which can not be subject to normal democratic control, i.e. central banks, I had some thoughts concerning not so much what a Government is or could be – but rather concerning the implications of the kinds of answers we give to these questions on how we think about our current situation and how we might change it. To put it simply, I tend to think of Democracy as an ideal which we are not living up to, and that the political duty put on us by our right to live in a rational state puts on us a duty both to make our state rational and to (but not in this order) find out what it would mean to make a state rational. This to me is obvious – what is not obvious is how to go about doing it.

But what I realized in the discussion was that I was making a problematic assumption by separating the ideal (the “rational state”) from the means by which we achieve it. It is good, I think, to hold open how one might make a state rational, and also to hold open what a rational state would be. However, what I was ignoring was how the category “rational state”, even emptied of most of its content, remains a non-neutral ideal towards which we project, and which determines our struggle in various ways.

To explain what I mean, I will employ the example of a statue that stands here in Montreal on the road leading up to McGill. The statue is a luminous yellow of a gathering of people. The ones in front are looking forward, calm, confident. Some silly, some caniving. As you walk backwards along the statue, the people in the crowd are less and less focussed on the focal point out in front, and more on each other, on fighting, on cheating. At the back there are people starving, laying on the ground.

What they are staring at is ideals, values, utopia maybe. The ones in front see, but it is ambiguous to what extent the ideal is drawing them forward. At first, it looks quite clearly that it gathers them, but then you notice some of the faces in the front row are anything but genuine. And besides that, the ones in front shield those behind from the ideal – hence the fighting, caniving, etc.. And at the back, there are the starving, laying on the ground.

The statue is perhaps a bit didactic, and certainly not an “argument” – but it does make me question the “ideal – real” idealist pull, “progress”, the “It will be ok so long as we strive for good values”. Because, striving for values leaves people out. Instantiation is always partial.

In “No Country for Old Men”, Anton Chigurh says to Carson Wells character, when he is sitting with him in his hotel room with a gun trained on him: “If the rule you follow led you to this, what use was the rule?”

The point being – values should be evaluated based on their effects, not their pretensions.

Of course, I already accounted for this by leaving means open, it is our duty to figure out which means will get to the ideals. But – it is rationally required to go farther – to determine “empirically”, or at least by experience, which ideals actually bring us places we want to go. So, even the projected ideal “rational state” must be re-evaluated in the light of what means it inspires us to create, and what the real effects of those means actually is.

Anyway, the point is to not take the ideal as a neutral “utopia, would be nice”, but (at least for the ones in play) as productive agents which make and motivate our world and experience. It is easy for us to see the politically problematic nature of ideals in history, i.e. “Wilderness”, “Civilization”, “Noble Savage” – but it is not similarly easy to see the contingency of the ideals we strive for. We assume they are right, and that the difficulties lie in the way we try to bring these ideals into reality. But the ideals are themselves what bring the world into reality – not the world they purport to beckon, but the one they actually bring.

“Chic-ness” and Cheapness – the materiality of the modern aesthetic

We find today everywhere examples of mass produced luxury. Sitting in a coffee house atop dark wood chairs, next to a floor to ceiling fireplace adorned with an exotic artwork, I am both everywhere and nowhere. Starbucks, or Second-Cup, even the new-look Macdonalds embrace an architecture of bare wood, rock and leather wingback chairs alongside glass panel windows, bare metal, intricate lighting and world music. “Comfort” “Nostalgia”, “Modern”, “Chic” are the values put forth in such a decor – these are “3rd spaces”, like homes (who of us have these anymore in a world of rental housing, difficult roommates, distant parents) without the intimacy. We revel in them, we feel at home in the intimacy of anonymity. Critiquing this modern form of intimacy is a study unto itself, but not the one I pursue here. Rather, I wish to concentrate on the materiality of these places – the role materials play, the way they show up, and the way they might be emblematic of a relationship to matter that is dominant in the present.

The first thing to say about the materials in coffee shop architecture is that they are cheap. The brick and grout in the fireplace have a superficial look – the grout doesn’t sit nicely between the bricks, and though I’ve seen worse bricklaying than this, it feels very much like it’s been built to have a certain appearance (old, nostalgic), rather than with any kind of function or service length in mind. The wood around the the hearth is more explicitly cheap – a place where the finish is flaked off reveals particle board beneath. Of the screws attaching the board to the brick, 3 fit flush, but the fourth sticks out – a telling sign of a job carelessly done.

The seats on first inspection look better – a dark mahogany, and surprisingly solid for coffee shop chairs. But a well used seat betrays the dark finish – it is of course a cheaper, lighter toned wood (possibly Alder), stained to appear like rich, dark mahogany. I could go on and give the same analysis of the drapes, the tables, the lighting, the floor, etc… but it serves no further purpose – the point is already made.

But what is the point? So the materials are cheap, the workmanship a bit shoddy – but isn’t this what we should expect from something like an infinitely reproduced coffee shop? Of course we should – it is not my intention to criticize the coffee shop for not being something I would like it to be. It can be criticized only because it is not something it feigns to be, because its materials show up as one thing immediately, and then quite another upon reflection. The reason I bring this issue to the forefront is I wish to claim this is becoming a basic characteristic of our relationship with materials in capitalism more generally.

It is a cliche now to say capitalism is characterized by turning everything into a commodity – this is to say something infinitely reproducible and exchangeable. This inclines us to think of matter as the raw resources which are tapped, processed and formed into these commodities On this account, matter has no positive characteristics – the only things we “see”, we buy, we come into contact with, are forms – objects, their quality having to do with how they are put together rather than anything inherent about the matter. However, in situations like the fireplace, the “dark” wood chairs, we encounter commodities in their material aspect as false appearances. Traditionally speaking matter can never “appear” – anything that shows up must show up as an image, as something formed, usually something built by a machine that put an order into some disorderly matter. However, what we “see” in the mahogany chair is the false appearance of a matter which isn’t there – we see the mahogany (in a certain sense), and we also see the absence of the mahogany (when we recognize that it is only a cheap finish). W see the absencing of the appearance, the becoming-mere of the mere-appearence of the mahogany. Or with respect to the fireplace, we first see the fireplace “as” old, worldworn – and then immediately that is revealed as mere appearance, we recall we are in a new Second Cup in the JCC at Bloor and Spadina, and that this piece of exotic african art is nothing but a piece of Second Cup, second rate mass produced kitch?

But why is it interesting that we see the matter in this particular way in coffee shops? Is this not a hipster’s hubris to believe coffee shops will reveal the nature of contemporary reality? Perhaps, but this architectural aesthetic, or better this interior design modality, is not limited to coffee shops. We see the same fake rock, false mahogany and photocopied exotic art at restaurants like the Keg, the Olive Garden, the current generation of fake brewpubs, and other examples. What is common to all these locations is a rejection of the old plastic-fantastic Macdonalds model of interior design, and a look to the Whistler post and beam style, and the modern European coffee shop for inspiration. But the problem with simply replicating any of those styles is simply that they are inherently against mass production because they employ local, high quality materials, and sight-specific interior design to create spaces appropriate for the place the space takes in the community. In order to mass produce these styles it could not have been otherwise than to empty the materials of their quality, to use cheap alternatives with thin varnish surfaces. The result of this is a chic-ness characterized by cheapness, an aesthetic of mere appearance, of materials that devalue themselves in front of your eyes, of spaces which appear comforting but then spit you out. Perhaps we should not be surprised that a commodification, a reproduction and replication of particularity, turned out to produce its own reversal.

Summer Ponderings, Existential Crisis, Meaning and Purpose

“Back in touch”

This summer I have not spent much time reading and writing. In other words, I have not done much philosophy. I’ve found myself wondering, “What is the point of philosophy?”, “What is philosophy for?”. Of course, easy and bad answers to these questions exist. The usual solution is to posit some principle which you accept as unconditionally valuable and true and them demonstrating some sort of philosophy as a means to it. For instance, if you think politics or global warming or math or physics is really important, I could probably show you why we need philosophy. But this isn’t, and can’t be a serious way of responding to the initial question, “What is the point of philosophy?” because philosophy has in it the notion that all values and beliefs must be put into question. Therefore, attempting to justify philosophy externally requires either an infinite regress, or a suspension of philosophy. In other words, if philosophy is putting everything, even one’s most deeply held beliefs into question, what can the purpose or value of philosophy be? The answer is not difficult – philosophy is valueable in itself and without it, nothing has value. This truth is preserved in worn out catchphrases like Socrates’ “The unexamined life is not worth living”, and Kant’s “Know thyself”.

But the value of philosophy cannot be discovered through catchphrases anymore than the safe operation of complex machinery. In each case what is in question is a practice much more complex than the simple labels we use to refer it. And if the value of philosophy is knowable only through the practice of philosophy, we should not expect to be able to express it adequately in writing. We should not be able to refer to it, but only engage in it.

And yet, this summer has been a summer of abandonment. Perhaps philosophy is only important and fulfilling as long as one continuously engages in it. But in that case, is it just a cult?

It is not as if I’ve stopped doing philosophy because I’ve found some more worthwhile practice to engage in. Or even to consider engaging in. When people ask me, “What would you do if you weren’t going to grad school?”, I haven’t the slightest idea. Very few professions seem worthwhile enough to engage in today. I can’t help but ask myself – sure, being a railway engineer or an architect or an environmental planner are important, but what serious difference would be made in the world if I took up any of those professions? And – to examine the unjustified assumption therein – what is the point of making a difference in the world? To make it better? Who’s “better”? Is that a desire or an obligation?

The answer I come to in these lines of questioning is that without a transcendent Purpose held above all others the value of which is not put into question, whether that be called God or the universal salvation of humanity or continued progress and the end of poverty or freedom or democracy or preventing global warming, then no purposes or values retain the kind of solidity we unjustifiably want when we try to give our life meaning. Meaning does not actually reside in ends but in ongoing activity, our day to day practices, our vacations, our social, intellectual, emotive life.

It is worthwhile to ask what we mean when we say “X gives life meaning”? Do we mean life means X? It seems rather it means life with the addition of X, life gains the quality of “worthwhileness”. But what is worthwhileness? Is it only the absence of existential crisis!?

In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that we fill our life up with occupations, everyday busyness and tasks, and thereby come to ignore that it is us with reference to which these are meaningful. The ignorance of the self as the locus of value is associated with inauthenticity and avoiding existential angst. So, according to that, worthwhileness looks very much like the stuff we fill life up with in order to avoid the fundamental mood of man’s existence.

So, the opportune question arises – is philosophy merely another means of busyness by which to avoid the unpleasant angst which collects man whenever he cannot preoccupy himself? Is it merely the most enlightened way for those that know of God’s death to wait for their own?

A response that has quite a bit of popularity is a sort of back-to-the-land movement in philosophy: “Theory must be grounded in reality!”. This is stupid for two reasons – first because reality is through and through theoretical, and secondly because traditional philosophy wanted nothing other than to know the really real (i.e. for Plato the most real thing is the forms, and the purpose of philosophy is to become acquainted with the forms). (Contemporary physics is incidentally fully Platonic – they are only interested in the forms matter takes on – its shapes, its properties – what is measurable in essence. The idea that the ideal or the formal is disconnected from the real and “abstract”, spoken from contemporary materialism, is nothing but ideological hypocrisy).

My summer has largely been characterized with trying to get “back to the land” in its own ways – traveling across the country by van (and soon by rail), visiting friends in Vancouver and Victoria, spending time at the cabin. Taking the road less traveled has been the watchword – trying to notice the quality of where I am. Trying to find where we are in history, what is history? What is the past? Where is it for us? Where is the future? Always, always trying to find the future. Doing philosophy by doing, in other words is, perhaps, what I’ve been doing. What have I learned? Not nothing. To start I’ve learned that our time is obsessed with its history, usually only insofar as it can remain mysterious and not understood. Perhaps for us history is characterized by wonder. Perhaps wonder at the non-eternity of the present – even the lingering of the past in the present, the non-ability of the present to cover over everything, demonstrates the contingency of the present and hints at the future.

My summer has been a summer of content. Doing things, seeing people. Although, since I haven’t been working very hard I sometimes find that I have less to talk about. Since the “less” I have to talk about is philosophy, this probably makes me more likable.

As I’m writing this entry, the Dayliner is about to arrive in Victoria station. Summing up then – have I come to any conclusions? The purpose of philosophy can’t be anywhere outside philosophy, but philosophy is over. The obvious solution is to become some sort of teacher of philosophy (they teach dead languages after all), although this solution is nothing like “correct” since it requires positing values like “awareness” and “sharing” which themselves can be interrogated and lack stability. A summer of content leads to less content (cries of “get a job!”).

But then, the solution appears immediate and obvious – the purpose is flourishing. This cannot be argued (although many try). Community’s of reciprocal capability – this is the point of a department/office/social network. The key is, without the recognition that the subject is the value-er, the origin of value, one remains in a continuous search for transcendental justification (philosophy). But since all transcendental signifiers – purposes which cannot themselves be put into question (i.e. God or the salvation of mankind) make the basic mistake of pushing the origin of meaning outside the subject they remain engaged in curiosity, occupying oneself to cover up the angst which is man’s basic emotive attitude towards his own location in the nexus of meaning as value-er.

The main objection to solution as “flourishing” – for the Greeks eudaimonia is not “flourishing” because it applies immediately to the eternal and only derivatively to being-in-activity inasmuch as being engaged in an activity can be thought analogously to be aeonic (eternal time, time of ages) as opposed to chronic (clock time). Counter objection: eternity and the chronic are both contingent modalities of temporality. No reason “being well” must be thought primarily in any particular temporal modality. Today, “well” replaced by value, by normativity. Today eternity replaced by future as primary authentic modality. Today, flourishing must be futuristic – but what is the future today? The past recapitulated? The radical new? (Here – more space for thinking).

Form inside matter

The AGO currently has an exhibit in its Italian gallery of beams of wood carved away to reveal the heartwood. Literally starting with a building material, the artist is able to reveal the tree inside it – in other words, in something whose form has been neutralized, made identical (one beam is the same as any other), he finds a particular shape.

The work reminds me of Aristotle – who says the wooden bed is not natural insofar as we consider it a made thing, something whose end (telos) is a human activity – however, it is natural if we consider it the kind of thing which in the right environment will rot or even from which could sprout a new tree. But, the work is not the same as placing a bed in mud and waiting for it to rot – the from revealed in the tree has much more endurance, it is not rotting – it looks as if it might last in its current form eternally.

So, the work is about form in matter-for-production, but without being about the generation and corruption of matter. Rather, the beam shows up the form in the wood as something natural yet eternal, which fits with the modern concept of nature as fixed lawlikeness. But, this fit is only analogous – we think nature as fixed process (i.e. gravity is a law which holds the same everywhere), but here we have a shape of a tree frozen in time, revealed, and put into museum conditions which will enable its permanent endurance.

So, the work is about something in between form in the Platonic sense (i.e. geometric forms), and form as a contingent particular (i.e. the shape of this mud field after a rainstorm). Or, perhaps it is traditionally Aristotelian – form is permanent, what matter shows up as, yet non-mathematical.

Another reason the piece is interesting is that it is a hands-off piece according to the directions given by the Artist to the gallery. But, since the piece is so clearly hands-on, security guards constantly need to tell people to not touch it (photography is allowed, however, unlike in the rest of the gallery). The artist is certainly bright enough to know the work is a hands-on work, so the only reasonable conclusion is he is including an ethical-political dimension in the work about law as the order of authority, for the sake of maintaining the perfection of the work – which is being lent to the gallery. In other words, the market value of the work requires it to be maintained in identical condition (which is part of the work). The parents telling their children not to touch the work enacts the authority of the permanent over the flux inherent in human engagement with nature. The security guard I spoke with seemed to understand this – he agreed at least when I made the point that the work is a hands-on piece regardless of what the artist or gallery say – the relation between the work and the audience is determined by the work itself, not by what someone says about the work.

The work is being loaned to the AGO with no fixed end date. I encourage anyone in Toronto to go see it, especially on a free evening when the extra people and extra security should bring even more clearly the dynamics here described into your experience of the piece.

Serra’s Shift

Yesterday morning my father, myself, and a few roomates and friends piled into my new one dollar van to drive north of Toronto to see Richard Serra’s early site-specific work, “Shift”. Although I first heard about the piece four years ago in a course on late Heidegger, a lack of private transportation meant this was my first time seeing it – a very appropriate first use for the new van.

The piece is set into a field, but not the field next to the road. Instead, there is a field of mud and soybeans between the sculpture and the road. This, and the fact that it is unpublicized, is an essential part of the work – it comes from a period of artists removing themselves from the gallery scene. (However, I don’t think it would be awful in the future for the work to become public, a small interpretive centre, gravel walking paths etc…)

The work is set into a farmer’s field which is in use, so around the piece is planted a crop (soybeans we think, and from all the corn lying around it is likely on a rotation). The farmer is surely using a very large machine, and thus can’t cut too close to the sculpture – which means most of the concrete is hidden underneath wild plants. Mostly, you don’t literally see the sculpture, but more of a hedge of wild grasses and flowers encircling it. My father was quick to point out that this hedge of wild in the middle of a cultivated field isn’t wasted space – it actually benefits the farming activity by being a natural habitat for bumblebees, and generally increasing the field’s biodiversity.

What these hedges cover is a series of concrete walls extending horizontally along a falling slope until they reach a certain height above the ground, at which point they drop to the ground and begin extending horizontally again. The work represents the way the field appears on a topographical map – in other words, representationally, according to concept, idea. Perfect. Demonstrating the topographical representation in a concrete medium allows the actual field to show up in its organic, sinuous character – which differs essentially from the rigid straightness of the representational line.

At first, then, not being able to see the concrete lines appears to detract from the work. But soon enough one can see that the overgrown hedges are actually part of it – they help bend the concrete flatlines into the curve of the field.

In this photo it’s easy to see the curve in the lower section of this part of the work. It’s not an illusion – since the ground is curving, the height of the grasses that surround the concrete do curve – the concrete stays flat, and is only exposed at the end (bottom left). You can also see these curves reflected in the rows of planted soybeans. Except – these are not the same curves at all. The curves in the rows of plants are actually representational curves, they are planned out geometrically by the farmer who wants to plant the field in the most efficient way, to extract from it the maximum number of calories or dollars. Whereas, the curve in the wild hedge has no perfect linearity or pre-planning or expected function – the plants grow up and recoil back by the law of the propagation of life, rather than a system-thinking.

Shift is a wonderful piece – it provides a place to reflect on representation and nature, on farming and efficiency, on publicness and the secret, and on the possibility of spaces that are somehow excluded or exempt from the all-domination of the market. Yesterday was my first trip to it and I hope to visit it many more times in the years ahead.