Renga for the Fifth Season
in collaboration with Oliver Kellhammer while co-residents at Phats Valley, Truro, MA | September 002014
The “unseasonable” weather of the Anthropocenic climate is altering what we’ve known as summer, fall, winter, and spring. We, and others, have begun to call the Anthropocene’s unseasonable climate: “the fifth season.” Appearances of the "fifth season" occur outside of linear time and contiguous space. They bring with them strange assemblages of displaced flora, fauna and human-made materials, and incongruous weather patterns.
In 002014, we inhabited the local and quite “normal” autumnal changes beginning on Cape Cod during a residency at Phats Valley. As part of Phats Valley’s “Cartography Primer” project, we experimented with how a 1200 year-old, seasonally-responsive Japanese poetry form (renga) could invite us to newly meet contemporary realities. Our intention was to activate renga’s collaborative "seasonal" poetry process as a means, and embodied practice, for being with the planetary changes that enmesh us.
During the residency leading up to a public event, we visited local sites and attempted to attune to geologic, geographic, environmental and seasonal histories of this small stretch of Cape Cod. Sites included: Marconi Beach, Wellfleet; Provincetown Jetty, Head of the Meadow; Provincelands dunes (Cape Cod National Seashore); Herring Cove Beach; Northern Truro and Phats Valley/Eagle Creek area. Looking for Anthropocenic inflections of the “seasonal,” we met these local sites with an added intention to tune into the larger planetary forces that are now re-shaping them.
We gathered poetic responses to our experiences into a saijiki-inspired almanac (saijiki is an almanac composed of seasonal words, called kigo in Japanese).
Our Phats Valley almanac includes words, phrases, and thought fragments that are both responsive to the local Cape environment and at the same time suggestive of its connections to the dawning “fifth season” that is the Anthropocene.
A public renga-creation event was held on Saturday, September 27, 002014 | 2pm | Truro, MA
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Oliver Kelhammer led a "Disturbance Ecology" walk for the public event. Guests also performed a period of "micro-visioning" of the Phats Valley site, and gathered inspirational “data” for an on-site, collaborative renga creation.
The renga form calls for a participant to write three introductory lines following the 5-7-5 syllable count.
Then, another participant adds another two, seven syllable count lines to complete the stanza.
This was repeated until the scrolls were filled, completing the renga "party."
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Press release for the event:
“The sun and the moon are eternal voyagers; the years that come and go are travelers too. For those whose lives float away on boats, for those who greet old age with hands clasping the lead ropes of horses, travel is life, travel is home.”
—From Narrow Road to Interior, Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉), translated by Helen Craig MCCullough
In the spring of 001689, Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō set out on a five-month journey in Japan. His experiences are documented in his book, Narrow Road to the Interior, also known as The Narrow Road to the Deep North. While traveling, Bashō drew upon and further developed a 500-year old practice of collaborative haiku poetry called renga. Bashō’s style of renga included juxtapositions of place, events and allusions to literary, historic and mythic sources. Renga, in its most basic form, is recognized as being inherently collaborate (linked verses by multiple authors build upon each other’s words), inspired by the environmental and social contexts of the moment (such as what trees are in bloom, what stage the moon is in, and who is present at the time of the renga writing “party”), and responsive to the impermanence of the moment.
On Saturday, September 27th, artists-in-residence Oliver Kellhammer and smudge studio will practice a contemporary translation of Bashō’s collaborate, time-based poetic form and journey-based practice for Cartography Primer No. 2. They will use that translation to produce a collaborative, renga-inspired work that speaks to the impermanence and continuous renewal of “place” and daily life: the change that makes the world.
Today a renga-like creative practice that responds to the unfolding contexts of its own production would involve many social and environmental conditions unknown to Basho. Indeed, the material conditions of daily life in 002014 are barely understood by those of us who are living them.
For our renga-inspired event, we will invite participants to attune to ephemerality, impermanence and change by walking and pausing in Truro. We will ask guests to spend an hour with “the change that makes this place.” We will invite them to use words, diagrams, sketches and found objects to creatively respond to local events and experiences of change as it plays out across their time-based experiences of “this place.” The exact site and route of travel will be shaped by what is present at the event: people, weather, light, season, affordances.
We will then gather around a large scroll of paper. Together, we will create a collaborative, renga-like work on the scroll: a flowing, “call and response” sequencing of words, images and objects that poetically link our collected, incomplete, and ephemeral experiences of “place”.
The resulting renga-like work will take up challenges and possibilities that are offered by change, as it propels all humans into uncertain but linked futures. We will seek ways to share this work with a public audience.
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Transcript of renga generated on-site at Phats Valley 9.27.14, collaboratively written by Ann Chen, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Rachel MacFarlane, Davey Field, Hanna Kang-Brown, Jacob Kang-Brown, Oliver Kelhammer, Jamie Kruse, Jeff Warren.
I.
No coordinates
on these blank rolls of paper
just the next footfall
in an otherwise quiet sky
the Anthropocene I think
trying to read insect
code. Shorts. Longs. Trills. Pulses. Beats.
traffic noise distracts
not long for these cicadas
summers, and summers
so cicadas, really?
I assumed they were crickets
don't know my insects
Seven years cycle by us
Groups A, B and W
Antsy but waiting
National Geographic
will rename us too
infrasounds, rumble of waves
surf frequency is felt
we categorize
into simplification
significance lost
I Bird Pro, the app I use
to count the season's swallows
II.
Brown rhythm machine
Aesthetics of meeting needs
I know it's tasty
Big crab scuttles out of grass
algae clinging to its legs
My gaze it turns to.
Dying days of Summer Sun
we are empty maps
providing trajectories
through the trash and remnants seen
unknown tracks crisscross
circadian rhythm's and
Rosetta Stone for Blue Jays
a fish of highways, schools swim
disappearing acts, and yet
III.
First, take a photo:
note its size and location
in one's research log.
we set out from here to…to...
only the next. We set out.
The catalog grows
of models that are failing
history house looms
deposit your ticket stubs
in the receptacle outside.
Outside that is in
so where shall we go from here?
Unchartered waters
what weather is normal now?
Confusion is hereafter.
Yet the fifth season
must be the season that stays
12 inside of 1
calendars and maps pressed in
to nice particleboard rafts
an inanimate
object cannot move alone
without some help see
poltergeist ghost visiting
this house with such history
IV.
Beware! Of the tick!
RHUS Toxicodendron and
humans are dangerous!
They planted their fears so deep
reemerging like seeds/dough.
toads on the train berm
artifacts of human life
hold them in your hand
enough fish to fill a house
gurgling tides sweep woods to sea
water- spots, ripples
yes! Patent that romance thought
fix a broken tie
crumbling concrete, chips of slag
intellectual property
celebrate stasis
engrave it with initials,
Abbreviations
stains on a T-shirt
marble granite memorial
site as a graveyard.
Transformation all the way
down and up. We are of it.
V.
Turquoise netting scrap
catches my eye below
strange calligraphy
code for a whole other scale
I will join soon enough
what opens will close
so taken for granted are
the gates of our lives
interspecies alliance
we go together from here
VI.
How would you know where
to live if you were human
bugs have it so easy
hyper active burrowers
craigslist no fee apartments
no place anywhere
here or everywhere
we find home in something
new season makes its debut
should I dig in or dance out?
Do the waggle dance?
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“The Cartography Primer” is a workshop series held in conjunction with the Phats Valley residency program. Through walking tours, mapping and other means, it uncovers and documents the unique history of the site. Phats Valley Residency is administered by The Nomadic Department of the Interior (NDOI), a creative research group co-founded by Ann Chen and Davey Field.
Related Posts:
Renga For the Fifth Season | 9.25.14
