AS SO ABOVE BELOW
Index 2 Lizzie Thomson & Erin Woodbrey
AS SO ABOVE BELOW
We acknowledge the Nauset and Wampanoag Peoples and the Wangal and Gadigal Peoples of the Eora Nation as the first and continuing custodians of the lands and waters on which our artistic collaboration has taken place. We pay respect to their Elders, past and present and extend our respect to all First Nations Peoples.
The following experimental text is derived from 20 months of email correspondence. It includes fragments of our thinking developed together across different times-zones and oceans. We think of this text as a non-alphabetical index. It is an indication of our process as we wandered and crawled through various fields of sensations, gardens and geological formations. In keeping with our inquiry into non-linear perceptions of time, this book need not be read from start to end. It can be picked up for a brief glance and put down again, opened at any page, read backwards or recycled into new forms.
Chapter III Weather Changes + a Softer Way of Traveling
Fragility and persistence; She weeds little circles around the native plants; some kind of future > I was trying to find words but I mainly feel it walking around with me... Other forms of life underneath us, around us, inside us, above us, behind us, in different times and spaces and worlds ~ Following sensations as they are passing ~
… the last burnt up time being place
and tender hands replace earth underfoot
and all the dust.
and time,
and being and walking
and hands, wrists and donkeys…
and maybe now ankles?
Subtle shifts in perceiving…
I might need to call it a night soon!
Like I want to make sure I am as present and awake as possible
And it's so endless.
something about being aware of ecologies when you hear your dog bark and know that the donkey is across the road…
place-thought
space-time-mattering
'a theoretical understanding of the world via physical embodiment –
Place-Thought.
Place-Thought is the non-distinctive space where place and thought were never separated because they never could or can be separated.
Place-Thought is based upon the premise that land is alive and thinking.’1
space and and
trees
veggies
and
horses
donkeys
and
and
chipmunks
the tiny tree seedlings that I planted out the front of our house after our neighbour chopped down the tree in front of her place little flaps can be lifted up to reveal the insides of bodies so much time has past
The body is so mysterious and spatial
I love the simplicity of the parts of the drawings/diagrams that flip up and the play of inside/outside outside/inside. I hope I can be much more present again for a while now and get back to some dreaming
but when
I'm
running around like I
that, inevitably
fall behind on something
else.
how the background is hard to see ideas or scores shifting between background and foreground...
the donkey's schedule might determine our own
I keep thinking of it turning into winter where you are!
they are kind of like elbows in a way that they are also corners and maybe in being joints, hinges as well.
do you want to set up a time to do our experiments at the same time?
our knees (like friends of our elbows) when we're crawling
A cubit is an Ancient Roman unit for measuring space.
(a bit like 'a foot') It is based on the length of the forearm,
It’s a kind of personal unit of measure;
from the elbow all the way down to the tip of the middle finger.
a means for measuring space in relation to the scale of your own body, the length of your own forearm. The size of a room is different for us all.
The word cubit comes from the Latin noun cubitus,
And cubitus is derived from the word cubare meaning to lie down.
It refers to the Ancient Roman habit of reclining on the elbow... even while eating.
meaning elbow.
the dilemma of how creating always involves destroying something else
(long pause)
It seems to be much slower for life to shift back into the flesh again little joints places to crawl Mushrooms
crawling puts me in a relationship, in a position, of being simultaneously above and below ground
facing The Incalculable?! > doesn't fall in line words in the lungs of a person listening
thinking of it as a soft way of travelling
Feet Weeds Stepping Ancient Sky Walking Below Ground Chipmunks Ecologies Embodiment Soft Future Tender Hands
Chapter IV Inside/Outside Outside/Inside; {repeated gathering}
BONEY PLANETS
TIMING ORBITS
BONE TIME ORBITING PLANETS
PLANETARY TIME
TIMING BONES ORBITING TIME
I could see all the stars through the Apple Tree, and it made me also wonder if any other animals were up there too ~ decolonizing the sky ~ I have been dreaming of doing a gentle dance duet with a Donkey... Maybe we need to wait for the Donkey to find us? 11am / 9pm sounds good. PS. I’m still thinking about the Afterlife of Trees.
It is so strange to think that even at the same Time we're always in a different Time
What does it mean to write?
Hot Flushes Heat Wave
the last burnt up time being place
~ “incompletely continues” ~
what I thought was plastic was actually bone, and what I thought was bone was in fact plastic
{Planetary Bone Score} > May I take this?
how
the slower
and lower mode
opens up
different sensitivities sensibilities perceptions
if it had died naturally or been killed to be eaten
the dilemma of taking something and how the advice was to give your attention to the thing and ask, ‘May I take this?’
Some rocks and other organic matter, sometimes even rocks looked like trash,
for us to postpone
and what I thought was plastic was actually bone, and what I thought was bone was in fact plastic
changeovers
But I hope maybe they’ll move out at the end of the summer and I’ll be able to visit with the donkey again.
the
weirdness of
this lockdown
does strange things
to
my sense
of
timing
of some kind of
duet with a donkey
there was a drought and you were putting out water for the chipmunks
Did you still have time to crawl today? I haven't read my horoscopes for a long time
You and Erin Woodbrey appeared together on 387 messages between Nov 2018 and Feb 2022. There were 6 messages from last week and on average 4.3 messages per week for last year.
Oh take care in the dark! all the animals and crawling things around the tree at night. I can imagine that if I were there more often for longer, I would see a lot more.
some time/ mind/ knowing-company
the day crawling inside the night crawling, a square of day inside the night. Time inside time Time crawling into time.
I’ve been meaning to make a morning crawl
I think I know what time is where you are and then realize
my math is totally
off
and adding/subtracting days…
And it’s so endless. I was thinking how donkeys, hands and books could all be thought of as carrier bags; labour, in both the agricultural field and the literary field
~ the sound of exhalations ~ a humble attempt to accept death; a continual rethinking and resituating of oneself in the world;
Magic; soon-ish; producing almost nothing.
strange paintings like the donkey disguised as a horse
And I came back to the painting of the globe with the 2 people
above and below,
and I realised that the little writing on that painting says
‘There is life here too'. And this feels so connected to crawling and to our project a practice of awareness of all the other forms of life underneath us, around us, inside us, above us, behind us, in different times and spaces and worlds...
Sky Tree Bone Wave Eaten Magic Almost Nothing Bags Matter Trash Postpone Changeovers A square of day
Vanessa Watts, ‘Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-humans (First Woman and Sky Woman go on a European world tour!)’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 2, no. 1, 2013, pp. 20-34, p. 21. 1
Published on the occasion of Sister City II, Praxis Gallery, Adelaide, 2022, curated by Andrea Przygonski.