Seasonal Adjustments

SEASONAL ADJUSTMENTS The Complexity of Sustainable Art

Jeff Schofield 1

This catalog is published to coincide with the “Seasonal Adjustments” art exhibition held from 8 May through 5 June 2021 at KINK Contemporary Gallery, 78th Street Studios, Cleveland, Ohio.

Layout, cover design and typesetting: Peter Bjorndal Written texts: Steve Panton, Madelaine Corbin, and Jeff Schofield All artwork images by Jeff Schofield except as otherwise noted.

Diagram by Jeff Schofield and Madelaine Corbin.

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

This publication is also available as an online digital file. © 2021 Jeff Schofield 38 Williams Street, Pontiac, Michigan 48341 JeffSchof@yahoo.com Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp.

Printed in the USA by Maple Printing Press, Detroit, Michigan 987654321

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www.JeffSchofield.net

4 “Between Earth Day and World Environment Day:

The Complexity of Sustainable Art” by Jeff Schofield 6 “A Matter of Degrees: The Art of Jeff Schofield”

by Steve Panton Artwork by Jeff Schofield 10 Beach Litter 12 Weeds & Wildflowers 16 Four Degrees or More 20 Toys and Trinkets 22 Core Markers 24 Family Tree 26 Conversations 30 Wind in the Rafters 32 Barn Razing 34 Michigan Forest Fire 36 “Are we the weed or the wildflower?”

by Madelaine Corbin 41

KINK Contemporary Gallery statement

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BETWEEN EARTH DAY AND WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY: The Complexity of Sustainable Art

by Jeff Schofield EARTH DAY CELEBRATES NATURE on April 22nd

every year, and the United Nations has set aside June 5th as World Environment Day for protection of the environment. The ecologically themed art exhibition “Seasonal Adjustments” occurs between these two events. As a sustainable artist, I create large scale environmental installations using natural materials and found objects.

A burnt pine forest, submerged tree trunks, collapsing barns and littered beaches; these landscapes embody generations of conflict between humanity and nature. My art practice explores the acts and remnants of human intrusions upon the earth. Working directly with the environment, I create immersive installations depicting visual aspects of climate change.

Outside Ourselves Event-based artwork Collaboration with Saree Silverman

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The landscape is my palette; forests, trails, streams and beaches provide fertile ground for artistic inspiration as well as raw materials for making art. I upcycle found objects such as burnt tree trunks, salvaged wood, thrown away plastic, rusty car parts and all sorts of outdoor debris, marking events like wildfires, flooding and deforestation. Through processes of collecting and cataloguing, I create large scale artworks evoking cycles of growth, decay, death, and rebirth. My art practice interrogates the landscape to develop installations expressing material life cycles, overproduction, mass consumption, accumulation and waste.

Both a sculptor and an architect by training, I create environmental artworks in three different veins; event-based pieces, site-specific installations and found-object artworks. In “Seasonal Adjustments”, I exhibit event-based artworks involving natural materials such as burnt tree trunks, salvaged barn wood and invasive plants. By contrast, I also present colorful found-object artworks celebrating gaudy plastic and metal debris recovered from Cleveland’s urban cityscape. Many plastic items come from my participation in the Edgewater Beach cleanup at Lake Erie during Earth Day 2021.

An environmentally engaged artist, I have attended art farm residencies throughout the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes region where I interacted with conservation groups and com-

munity preservationists to create art evoking local sustainability issues. This place-based and research-oriented process explores site-specific ecological narratives in different climatic regions across the country. The resulting multi-disciplinary artworks probe the intersections between sculpture, architecture, installation and land art to examine humanity’s complicated relationship with nature. Through disruption and provocation, my artworks comment on human transgressions of both natural and constructed environments.

“Seasonal Adjustments” brings the energy of nature inside the gallery to highlight contrasts between natural landscapes and human cityscapes.

Each artwork’s expression is reduced to its bare essentials, heightening the tension between the natural and the manufactured. The installations aim to provoke a range of emotions, teetering

between sinister and playful, seduction and repulsion, subversion and humor. “Seasonal Adjustments” evokes human infringements upon the earth and the effects of that altered earth upon humanity. With this ecological exhibition symbolically bookended between Earth Day and World Environment Day, the collected artworks embody a compelling visual call to care for ourselves by caring for nature.

Colored Pencils Site-based artwork

Picnic at the Beach Object-based artwork

Detroit, April 2021

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A MATTER OF DEGREES: The Art of Jeff Schofield

by Steve Panton THE EARTH IS FALLING APART. To a certain extent,

this is natural. Wind and water cause erosion; they always have and, at least on any timescale meaningful to humans, always will. But over recent years, geologists have come to another, mind-blowing, conclusion—that human activity is now responsible for moving over ten times more earth than all of the natural erosion processes combined.1 This is, if we needed it, yet another reminder that we are entering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene—the age where human activity has become the dominant influence on the world's environment.

The artist Jeff Schofield has seen a fair bit of earth moved in his life. In his previous career as an architect, he amassed an extensive portfolio of

Capital Gate Sustainable architecture and urban design Photo by Gerry O’Leary

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major projects, including Capital Gate (2011), a 35 story tower in Abu Dhabi that features innovative structural design and a world record-setting 18 degree lean.2 He's also thought a lot about how to make buildings more environmentally sustainable. Among the design features that make Capital Gate more energy-efficient are optimized structural steelwork, a low surface area in comparison to its volume, shields that protect the tower from the sun, and an innovative way to recirculate cooled air around the shell of the building.

In the modern era of computational modeling, the impact of these energy-saving measures is easy to predict. Recirculating the cooled air in Capital Gate saves ten percent of the energy required to air-condition the hotel guest floors, for example.3 But the problem is that taken together, all the technical solutions in the world aren't sufficient to reverse the self-destructive path that humanity is on.

The cause-and-effect between cultural production and sustainability is altogether harder to predict. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that achieving a sustainable balance between humankind's material needs and the planet's environmental health will require an epoch-defining cultural shift. This relationship between culture and sustainability is the issue that Schofield, like many other contemporary artists, is exploring in his art.

After the Floods Salvaged barn wood I first came across Schofield's art in Popp's Emporium, a modified storefront on Carpenter in Detroit that houses a satellite gallery of the artistrun, neighborhood-based art organization Popps Packing. Raw, modest in size, and abandoned for some time other than a blind pig that operated in the basement, it is hard to think of a more striking contrast to the glittering edifice of Capital Gate. On the evening of my visit, the gallery was displaying art by three recent graduates of Cranbrook Academy of Art, whose work shared a common concern with the environment.

Schofield's piece, After the Floods (2019), comprised heavily weathered barn timbers vertically suspended from the roof by chains and grouped

in front of the wall that directly confronted visitors as they turned and entered the space. It immediately struck me as a significant work, and I was surprised to encounter it in such an unlikely location.

I subsequently learned that the timbers were from a barn that had stood for approximately 140 years on the Missouri Riverbank, close to farmland owned by Schofield's family. The barn had been allowed to fall into disrepair after the river's repeated flooding had made the site untenable.

The barn's demise makes it symbolic of the increased frequency of extreme weather events resulting from human-induced climate change.

But it is also symbolic of humankind's hubris in thinking they can control the American continent's hydrology. By its own estimation, the US Army Corps of Engineers currently maintains a staggering 24,998 miles of levees,4 much of which is in the Mississippi basin. It is a project of earthchanging proportions that many are beginning to see as folly.5 The barn is an iconic American structure. To see one deconstructed and suspended from chains, as in After the Floods, feels clinical and slightly sinister. There are two materially, thematically, and formally related works in the show at KINK Contemporary. Michigan Forest Fire (2019) comprises over thirty burned tree trunks suspended vertically. More even than After the Floods, the piece conveys a brooding sense of actual and

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symbolic violence, both to the trees and perhaps even humans. Significantly, the fire referred to in the work's title was started by an arsonist. In another piece, Barn Razing (2019), Schofield has taken timbers from a second barn, this time the victim of repeated high-wind events, and attached them horizontally to the wall. The change in axis gives the piece the impression that the wood beams are not objects on display but active agents that have suddenly punctured the wall of the gallery's inner sanctum. In this way, the violence inherent in the piece seems to be directed not to the timbers but against humanity's complacency in the light of the current environmental crisis.

The performance/video work Four Degrees or More (2020) provides a similarly dramatic wakeup call. The performance occurs around a table designed to pivot about its central axis. Springs hold the table's surface horizontal, but it tips to either side when objects are placed on it. During the performance, glass jars containing natural or discarded human-made objects are added alternately to either side of the table. Eventually, the table tips to the degree where gravity overcomes the friction between the glass jar and the table, at which point jars slide and shatter on the floor, the table realigns, and the performance continues. The "Four Degrees" of the title refers to an estimated tipping point for global warming. In each cycle of the performance, the audience

already knows what the result will be, but still, we watch, paralyzed as disaster approaches.

The outcome in Four Degrees or More depends on the turning moment created by the weight and distribution of natural things on one side of the table compared to those of the human-made objects on the other side. In Schofield's performance, there is the potential for the balance to tip in either direction. But on a global scale, the year of its creation, 2020, was the year that scientists estimated6 that the total mass of humanity's footprint (primarily building and infrastructure) now exceeds the total biomass of living things on the planet (primarily trees and shrubs). In this sense, the world has already over-balanced; humanity is now indisputably the dominant

Michigan Forest Fire Wexford County pine wood fire 1 May 2018 Photo by Michigan Department of Natural Resurces

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factor in the world's environment. Still more disturbing is the ever-accelerating imbalance.

When the timbers in Barn Razing and After the Floods were cut in 1880, global anthropogenic mass was less than 3% of global biomass. If current trends continue, the global anthropogenic mass will be double the global biomass within the next twenty years.

In works like Beach Litter (2019) and Toys and Trinkets (2020), Schofield laments "some of the most pernicious aspects of our global culture: mass production, overconsumption, pollution, and waste." The cheery palette of the found objects in these two pieces belies the long-term damage contained in their small but irreversible contribution to humanity's global footprint.

Schofield's frustration is with the short-term thinking of contemporary consumer society. His message is that humanity needs to wake up

before it's too late. It's not a novel idea, but it has the potential to be felt in a different emotional register when presented in such colorful visual terms.

In the performance/video piece Fallen Tree (2020), Schofield attaches ropes to the limbs of a massive wind-snapped Mulberry. Over what appears to be an extended period, he pulls strenuously on the cords, temporarily reanimating the tree's limbs. As the video progresses, Schofield visibly tires, the sky progressively darkens, and it is clear that a storm is blowing in. The performance may debatably be considered allegorical, cathartic, or penitential, but it is undeniably futile. We cannot overcome nature; we cannot bring fallen trees back to life; we can only strive to be a culture that learns to control our own actions.

Detroit, March 2021

Fallen Tree Mulberry tree performance, video still

1. Ball, P. The earth moves most for humans. Nature (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/news050307-2.

2. DuFresne, P. M. and Schofield, J. 18 Degrees: Capital Gate Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi: The Ultimate Diagrid, Birkhauser (2017).

3. Ibid. p146.

4. National Levee Database. Available online.

5. Morris, C. The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina Reprint Edition, Oxford University Press (2017).

6. Elhacham, E., Ben-Uri, L., Grozovski, J. et al. Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass. Nature 588, 442–444 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-02 0-3010-5.

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BEACH LITTER Wood, plastic & metal objects, reused glass jars, lake water 30" x 48" x 6"

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THIS INSTALLATION EXPRESSES human transgres-

sions of natural sites. The litter was collected during a week of beach combing along the Lake Michigan coast. Despite the cheerful colored containers, the non-biodegradable debris actually serves as a testament to human neglect of supposedly "clean" environments.

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WEEDS & WILDFLOWERS Wild plants and resin in recycled glass jars hung on metal wires 7 x 8 x 1 feet

I COLLECT WEEDS that grow through cracks in the

sidewalks in my Detroit neighbourhood and wildflowers that thrive in the local parks. They are an integral yet neglected part of life in the city. This installation makes visible the unseen and invisible details of urban public spaces. Isolating a single weed or portion of the plant in an entire 12

jar emphasizes the uniqueness of each living entity and makes every specimen more precious.

The collection shows the diversity of plants deemed weeds that, to most eyes, have a sort of white-noise-in-green effect. These minutia reveal the abundance of our biodiversity which must be preserved for future generations to enjoy.

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FOUR DEGREES OR MORE Wood shelves, wood table, and recycled glass jars containing found objects 6 x 10 x 6 feet

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THIS PERFORMANCE PIECE portrays the actions and

remnants of human intrusions upon the environment. It involves glass jars containing, on the one hand, natural elements and, on the other hand, discarded man-made objects. The table is a metaphor of the imbalance between forces of

nature and humanity. The title invokes global warming; if the planet’s average temperature increases by four degrees or more above current levels, it would permanently alter life on earth as we know it, with disastrous consequences for future generations.

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TOYS AND TRINKETS Found plastic and metal objects cast in concrete bases 1 x 10 x 10 feet

THIS HOARD OF FOUND OBJECTS embodies our

throw-away culture through its most basic elements, the man-made products that permeate our daily lives. I collected these discarded items along streets and sidewalks, in parks and river banks, along beaches and mountain trails. Then I mounted each one onto a concrete base like some 20

cheap plastic trophy or a kitsch souvenir. These colourful remnants of our daily lives are deceptively pretty. In fact, they represent some of the most pernicious aspects of our global culture: mass production, over consumption, pollution and waste.

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CORE MARKERS Found plastic and organic materials cast in concrete, plaster, mud and resin Each cylinder 3 feet high 22

THIS INSTALLATION COMMEMORATES the Edenville

Dam flood that devastated the town of Midland, Michigan, on May 19th 2020. “Core Samples” are made from forest materials and discarded plastic items found in the aftermath of the flood. These materials were cast into concrete, plaster and resin cylinders along with mud from Wixom Lake

which overflowed the dam during record rainstorms. The samples embody both the cause and effect of this extreme weather event. The pollution from constant manufacturing of products whose remnants are represented here lead directly to climate change and provoked the flood.

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FAMILY TREE Human hair, dog and cat fur, and metal needles 8 x 8 feet

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THE INSTALLATION AROSE from a forensic investiga-

tion involving people in the extended Cranbrook Academy of Art community. I've collected dozens of hair samples from students, faculty, staff and their relatives to demonstrate the immense diversity of this population. Our similarities and differences are revealed through red hair, blonde hair, black hair, curly hair, purple hair, etc. This intriguing collection celebrates the many races, genders, nationalities, languages, and cultures living in Detroit.

Hair locks pinned to a white wall appear both familiar and creepy. This conflation accurately

expresses the conflicting emotions I received from people asked to contribute their hair. Some showed reluctance, distrust, suspicion, repulsion and disgust. Others asked if I would clone or sell their personal organic material. Hair is a visceral embodiment of who we are, and represents our intimate being as a biological specimen in the earth’s ecosystems. Hair is the only “organism” we can separate from our body, like picking flowers from the garden. Healthy hair reveals how well we flourish in our environment and how well our environment sustains us in return.

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CONVERSATIONS Paperback pages hung on cotton ropes 10 x 20 x 2 feet

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CONVERSATIONS IS A KINETIC INSTALLATION that evokes

the complexity of human ideas and words, which are exchanged, written, passed along or forgotten. It is made from over 1,000 pages torn from novels written in many different languages and alphabets, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Hindu and Roman. The paperback books were donated by people from

countries around the world, and embody their diverse cultures. The pages flutter in the ambient air currents, capturing delicate nuances of light, and emitting rustling sounds like autumn leaves or whispers. The artwork engages the spectator through movement and sound, evoking notions of lost stories, faded memories and the passage of time.

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WIND IN THE RAFTERS Linen sheets hung in an old barn 30 x 50 x 50 feet

THE DECREPIT BARN dates from the 1880s and has sur-

vived increasingly frequent floods and intense storms for a century and a half before falling apart.

The pink linen sheets refer to building insulation products. The barn’s foundations were disrupted by swirling waters during back-to-back flooding in 1992 and 1993. Despite the irrevocable damage this caused, the barn continued functioning for decades, providing shelter for machinery and equipment,

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even as its weakened corner continued sinking into the earth. Half the barn had collapsed by 2019 and was overrun by weeds and sapling trees. Finally, the structure was demolished in 2020 and the site is now a plowed field. This artwork is a monument to the effects of climate change. It expresses humanity’s long term degradation of natural cycles and embodies our neglect for the built environment.

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BARN RAZING Salvaged barn wood 8 x 5 x 8 feet

THIS DAMAGED WOOD was salvaged from an old barn

built during the 1880s in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Now in disuse, it started falling down after years of record storms and winds. Today I’ve upcycled the decaying wood into an installation expressing the effects of climate change, in particu-

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lar the progressive violence of this barn’s collapse due to excessive weather events. This provocative installation of fragmented wood represents humanity’s unsustainable trajectory in attempting to control both natural and constructed environments.

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MICHIGAN FOREST FIRE Burnt tree trunks hung on metal chains 10 x 8 x 6 feet

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THIS INSTALLATION COMMEMORATES a forest fire in

central Michigan ignited by an arsonist. I gathered dozens of charred tree trunks from the ground where they fell and hung them in a white cube space. This futile effort at reconstituting the dead trees evokes the emotions of loss and destruction

that arise from the blackened trees still standing in the devastated forest. Placed indoors, the quietly hanging trunks are a metaphor of human bodies perishing from the consequences of abusing nature.

The charred trees create an ominous presence expressing the fragility and vulnerability of life.

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ARE WE THE WEED OR THE WILDFLOWER?

by Madelaine Corbin Superscript numbers designate footnotes.

Roman numerals designate endnotes.

ARTIST JEFF SCHOFIELD OFFERS inter- and intra-

world relations throughout his solo exhibition, “Seasonal Adjustments.” As humans are welcomed to navigate the communal constellation in the immediate time of our bodies1 (versus the slow time of planets), Schofield gifts us the opportunity to experience a place where life has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen.i In this space, artworks are suspended in time.2 The objects and event-memories are halted in their decay for the fleeting moment of this exhibition, poised between Earth Day and World Environment Day. The consequences of time are amplified with the reminder of the other between—the one that follows World Environment Day and precedes the next Earth Day. “Seasonal Adjustments” sits in one interstice before the next in a constant cycling of time, attention, and interaction.

Schofield’s event-based, site-specific, and found object art installations are multiscalar compositions. Each piece is first a world of its own.

Artistic collections of individual units coalesce into organisms, memories, and speculations that interact with one another in a singular space—an organism with a speculation, a memory with an organism, a speculation with a memory. The compositions then pull viewers into different spaces and relations while pushing outward to the natural world beyond the gallery walls: planks of barn wood exist here and also out there, a weed lit by a bulb is suspended inside and also grows under 1. Ken Chen writes that the navigation of a space in time with our bodies (rather than emitting brain pulses into the dematerialized zone of the imagination) is where we act and react spontaneously.

These experiences lacking performativity and instead welcoming spontaneity are where life happens, Chen says.

2. A selection of the artworks is also suspended literally in place.

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the sun outside, the burnt limbs of trees hang from a ceiling and also rest upon the earth where fireweed now blooms.3 Commemorations of events and speculations about inter species identities are on display as Schofield ruefully explores what it means to affect and be affected by our metastasizing ecological catastrophes.ii The work’s mission suggests a blurring of boundaries between worlds. Their interactions—our interactions—are vital.

Schofield’s works act as descriptions of climate change and anthoropocentric (in)action. His ‘descriptions’ (versus hypotheses) are rooted in past events: the climate retaliated, devastation occurred, remnants were collected and organized.

While this process of describing initially appears linear and in the past tense, the results offer unexpected and exponential ideas. The mathematics of Schofield’s work articulate a darkness to the perception of accretion. One piece of sunfaded plastic plus one weed encased in resin does not equal a total of two. Instead, the results of human intrusions upon the earth equal infinite, cascading results. Singularly, a piece of shiny blue plastic on the beach is not frightening. What that one piece means, however, when tens, thousands, billions4 of littered plastic pieces accumulate is a monstrous accretion not easily halted. What Schofield offers is the isolation of each unit, specimen, or cell. The cells of his works grow, evolve, and become together. Schofield offers a 3. The earth leaves flowers on its own graves. Unlike those that humans often leave, these flowers are not cut but instead continue the processes of blooming, seeding, sprouting, and evolving.

4. This count of litter is not linear but logarithmic (101, 103, 109) and synonymous with the climate catastrophe which progresses in effects tenfold with the realization of each disaster preceding the next. It is also the inverse of an exponent (which is how a footnote is visually written).

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community of communities to be wandered and wondered. In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben writes, A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of the wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates the extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity.

And in this environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what.iii

Repetition amplifies the conversations across the exhibition. In Weeds and Wildflowers, a suspended meadow of plant specimens is paused between overtaking or succumbing to one another. The space between a weed and wildflower is charged.5 A plant is deemed an invasive species when its “introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health [emphasis added]” as defined by the National Invasive Species Information Center.iv The introduction of native and non-native species to one another is most often catalyzed by humans. There are many repercussions6 for bringing species to new locations where they will invariably evolve, mutate, grow, or die on drastic scales. Extensive research, funding, and energy is expended to manage ecological relationships.

Weeds and Wildflowers highlights more than the relationship between the plant types. The third participant in this story is the human

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5. In this iteration, the plants appear to share several similarities: their colors, body parts, and a helplessness while encased in resin for the viewing pleasure of humans. However, the differences between the plants are also highlighted. Schofield writes about the “white-noise-in-green” effect that the natural world often elicits when plants aren’t noticed as individuals.

6. This blind date of sorts does not allow species to meet one another in their own time. Instead of pacing these interactions to match that of evolution or tectonic shifts, these relations are mobilized at the unreasonable speed of freighters, petroleum, and human desire.

Subject to Flooding, collaboration with Ashley Beatty “A tree is not a forest.” viewer. In an inversion7 of the invasive species definition, what might a weed consider a human?

Who is invasive to whom? Of course, humans exist within a varied and complex category. We participate in different yet interconnected histories, cultures, and ancestral pasts. The goal is not to reduce humans to the greatest offenders of atrocities against the natural world, but to offer space for individuals to ask, “what might a weed think of me?” There are likely many cases in which a weed and human may be allies, collaborators, mentors, students, and caretakers as both can attend to one another. Equally, humans may at times be invaders, colonizers, and oppressors.

Schofield’s installations supply plants, objects, and happenings from far apart geographies to be navigated together in his immersive exhibition. Installation artwork is critically dependent upon a philosophy of space. In 1967, Michel Foucault delivered a lecture titled, “Des Espaces Autres,” or “Of Other Spaces,” that dis7. From human-to-weed to weed-to-human is not a reversal meant to simply indicate a change in direction. Instead, it is an inversion that suggests a shapeshifting and a shared identity for a split second.

rate entities. These unique nodes that hold the network taught are complicated by emerging ideas that differentiate less and less between bodies.vii What is suggested instead is an umwelt,8 or a constant streaming between an organism and its experienced world in a “process of perpetual cocreation and mutual generation,”viii such that the very streaming is the organism. Additionally, organisms and their environments are physically made of one another. As Timothy Morton writes,

Synthetic Harvest, collaboration with Ashley Beatty “heterotopian garden” sected a new network of in-between-space: the heterotopia. Heterotopias are meta worlds within worlds.v According to Foucault, a heterotopia is an incongruous space that acts as an alternative to utopia or dystopia.vi In the heterotopic garden of Schofield’s exhibition, collections of contradictions interact with one another, materials like plastic break with our concepts of time, and each piece encourages a reach outward from gallery to natural world.

Tapping into the heterotopia is one step toward revisioning how we see ourselves. The concept still preferences individual units as sepa-

Evolution means that life forms are made of other life forms.9 Entities are mutually determining:10 [emphasis added] they exist in relation to each other and derive from each other. Nothing exists independently, and nothing comes from nothing.ix

If we are composed of coursing relations and materialities, and our environments are composed of the same, then perhaps the formal nodes don’t exist at all. And we, as individuals, do not exist at all. Instead, the messy, abstruse, swarming space of our relations is exactly where our nodeless, more-than-human identity thrives—the umwelt-topia.x The umwelt-topia builds upon the previous perspectives of mutual or inter-determining into a realm of animistic, intra-determining.11 The significance of the umwelt-topia is to stop seeing things as other. Ursula K. LeGuin writes, One way to stop seeing trees, or rivers, or hills, only as “natural resources,” is to class them as fellow beings—kinfolk . . . I guess I’m trying to

Nurse Log “Entities are mutually determining”

8. Biosemiotician Jakob von Uexküll developed the idea that those aspects of an organism’s environment that the organism responds or reacts to is called the umwelt.

9. This idea of mutual determination reaches beyond the bounds of life form inter-determining into a realm of animistic intra-determining.

10. “-ing” is notable here and indicates an ongoing process as one that is always constructing.

11. This intra-determining is occurring both between our bodies and within our body (our shared body of everything everywhere) simultaneously.

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subjectify the universe, because look where objectifying it has gotten us. To subjectify is not necessarily to co-opt, colonize, exploit. Rather it may involve a great reach outward of the mind and imagination.xi

Swelling opportunities for exploitation are desiccated when we recognize ourselves as one complicated entity, one vital materiality.12 xii Between streets and sidewalks, parks and riverbanks, beaches and mountain trails, the incompatible materials coalesced by Schofield exist as the worlds we compose and that compose us. In this umwelt-topia, we are the weed and the wildflower. We are the plastic and the ocean waves, the tree trunks and the fire that burnt them, the barn siding and the fungal growth, the barn rafters and the billowing wind. We are the “and” that sits before, between, and after each element. Schofield’s work may first describe events, objects, and sites, but inevitably his installations also ask us questions about the world we want to see when we leave the gallery. One answer might be found by incorporating his artistic process into our daily lives: first to notice and collect,13 next to listen to and be astonished by the unexpected born from accumulation, and finally to be affected and share the story.14 After all, we are already sharing this one, ontogenic becoming.

Detroit, April 2021 12. Reference to Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett. The full quote reads: “A lot happens to the concept of agency once nonhuman things are figured less as social constructions and more as actors, and once humans themselves are assessed not as autonoms but as vital materialities.”

13. Collect observations, objects, ideas, and all types of physical and non-physical happenings.

14. Share the effects both within our own lives, habits, and interactions with the natural world and also share the effects with other humans participating with and inhabiting in the natural world.

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Metal Bouquet “subjectify the universe” i. Paper Monument, ed. As Radical, As Mother, As Salad, As Shelter: What Should Art Institutions Do Now? Brooklyn, NY: Paper Monument, 2018. ii. Fuller, Mattew and Olga Goriunova. Bleak Joys: Aesthetics of Ecology & Impossibility. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. iii. Wohlleben, Peter. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World (The Mysteries of Nature (1)). Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 2016. iv. “Executive Order 13112. Definitions,” USDA, National Invasive Species Information Center. https://www.invasive speciesinfo.gov/executive-order-13112-section-1-definitions. v. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias—1967.” Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec.

Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité, 1984. vi. Ibid. vii. Chaudhuri, Una. “Queering the Green Man, Reframing the Garden: Marina Zurkow’s Mesocosm (Northumberland UK) and the Theatre of Species.” http://www.scapegoatjournal .org/docs/02/02_Chaudhuri_QueeringTheGreen.pdf viii. Ibid. ix. Morton, Timothy. “Guest Column: Queer Ecology.” PMLA 125, No. 2 (March 2010): 273–282. x. Corbin, Madelaine. The Stuff of Everyday Magic. Detroit, MI: Blurb, 2020. xi. LeGuin, Ursula K. “Deep in Admiration.” Lecture from “Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet” at the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA. 2014. xii. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.

KINK CONTEMPORARY is an experimental exhibition

space founded in 2019. KINK strives to connect the artist, both established and emerging, and who has a unique voice and technique, to people of all ages and backgrounds.

This is an exhibition space culminated by artists FOR artists. KINK Contemporary works hard to promote creative passion, working with each artist and listening to the needs and suggestions in order to continually improve their mission.

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