Last year I wrote about solastalgia, the psychic pain of climate change. I interpreted human emotional spikes as Earth’s way of communicating with the organisms that live upon it.
I compare the nature of the planetary dialogue with the transmissions that run our human bodies. Take, for example, white blood cells’ activation when there is an infection in our body. It’s automatic, fast, effective, coded in our biology. A similar mechanism should work between Earth Body and human bodies. But there is a disconnect. Humans seem to have forgotten how to act like white blood cells. I think we can…
Solastalgia: A form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home.
_ Glenn Albrecht
Earth is a living body.
Artist is a translator.
The artist’s body is the first to converse with Earth’s body through the language of turbulence, making their ailments one and the same. This encrypted language is as old as the very first exhalation. It’s transmitted for the artist to receive, and decrypt.
Human communication aided by sounds, signs, and symbols has reached peak sophistication. It’s not enough. We continue to invent new devices to enhance our connectivity. …
“10 yıl yaşlanmış. Çok güzel kadındı.”
AVM’nin park yerinde ayak üstü tesadüfen rastladığımız annemin arkadaşının arkadaşı bir kadından bahsediliyordu. Üniversite çağındaki kızını Dersim’deki patlamada kaybetmiş.
Annem yıllardır yanında olmadığımdan, aramızda kıtalar olmasından yakınır. Kızı dizinin dibinde oturan annelere için için imrenir. Annem yaşlarında bir kadının karşısında, boyundan uzun, üniversiteyi bitirmiş ve hala hayatta, kızı yaşlarında bir kız olarak dikili durmam, o kadına neler hissettirmiş olabilir?
O kadınla tanıştıktan sonda öğrendim hikayesini. Bilseydim, ve şu anki aklımla karşısında duruyor olsaydım, bir anda sarılırdım ona. Seni seviyorum. Sana ihtiyacım var. Bu dünyanın sana ihtiyacı var derdim.
Belki 10 yıl gençleşirdi.
She was having both sides of a heated argument.
She muttered something.
She snapped at that.
She locked in on a sentence to repeat it over and over again.
She interrupted that thought.
She went from being two people to one person to more than a few by the time I was done putting money in the meter.
Her camp was set outside the USPS parking lot on Cherokee. You could barely call that a camp though. Some of them at least have a proper tent. Under the bridges, I’ve seen handwashing stations, proper sofas, sometimes even bookshelves and decorations…
ASLI SONCELEY
Artist. Environmentalist. Immigrant. Mother. Investigating the links between environmental health and mental health.
