In the midst of the Covid-19 turmoil, in April 2020, Jatun Risba enacted the work Be-coming Tree, a durational actio (a performative act with spiritual or civil implications) which formed an embryonic entanglement with woods in order to re-member the invaluable beauty, vigour and generosity of wild habitats. The hour-long performance in which the artist was lying naked above the trunk of a huge uprooted beech, was live-streamed via facebook so as to contaminate the World Wide Web with the qualities of the Wood Wide Web. The aim was to inspire terrestrial kinship, hope and resilience during the challenging time of a global lock-down. 

Postmodernity started a correspondence by making a video-art piece created as a response to Risba’s actio ‘Be-coming Tree’. The resulting artwork describes a new movement of this era based in the alignment between Body, Mind and Spirit with Nature. Postmodernity gave a sublime look and sound to the performance, transmuting Risba’s actio into a dream. In this imaginative scenario Postmodernity depicts the beauty of human breathing in proximity and correspondence with an uprooted tree, in particular, and with an uprooted natural world, in general. The video reflects a condition of being-in-the-world where humans and nature have started ‘breathing as one’. According to Levinas (in Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence), the attitude of ‘breathing as one’ is the foundation of ethical relations. An orientation, the submitted work ‘Be-coming Tree’ is pointing towards by shedding light and colour on the potential of the sublime. 


Add

Be-coming Tree