Harvesting Osha

A recent excursion to harvest Osha in the Elk mountains of Colorado.

Thanks to Brooke for collaborating on this adventure and taking some of the photos.

Travels by Bike

Last fall I went on a much awaited bike tour through the North East. These are some of the images from my two-wheeled rural derivé.

Dead Dinosaurs

While oil has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico over the past couple months, I happened to travel through a number of other locations that have been negatively impacted by resource extraction. The term "resource" implies that it's there for the taking but doesn't speak to the environmental destruction and institutional oppression that happens in the process.

Oil fields in the Central Valley, CA

The coal silo at Black Mesa, AZ

Since the creation of the world's largest privately owned coal mine in the mid-1960's, the Dineh people at Black Mesa have been resisting relocation and facing environmental health issues like polluted ground water. Places like Black Mesa are examples of how forms of domination (racism, environmental destruction, capitalism, etc.) are linked and need to be actively challenged.

Natural gas drilling on the Roan Plateau, CO

I think it's important to remind ourselves that these are not just isolated places. Our unquenched thirst for oil, coal, and gas has links and effects in every community. It is our lifestyles choices that fuel this demand. We can make lifestyle choices and create the structures within our communities to be less dependent on fossil fuels. We can also actively support and work in solidarity with struggles that directly engage with these issues.

Under a Bridge in My Dreams

It's been quite a while since I posted anything. This time away from the make-believe world of ones and zeros has been somewhat intentional. On that note, this post is dedicated to being the creators of culture. I'm revisiting some old images. I made these images three years ago, before I had figured out what this project was really about or how they fit into it.

If you're reading this I think it's safe to say that your concept of culture is not solely (if at all) based on traditions passed down for generations through various vectors (religion, regional dress, customs, dialect, etc). So often the things that we define ourselves with, culturally, are not elements that emerged organically from within our communities. They are elements of pop-culture, mass media, and consumerism that come from outside our communities. This post-modern sense of culture is very different, and almost contrary, to what we might think of as culture in a classical sense. This shift isn't entirely negative. However, you could say that we are immersed in a colonized culture. I'm speaking very generally and from my personal perspective. Of course, this is not the only way of being.

I see culture being as much of a verb as it is a noun. With action is our own participation. We could deplore the contemporary degradation of culture, but we are still participants in that action that is culture. We make choices everyday that create or reinforce cultural meaning. I'm interested in those ways in which we can be active, conscious participants to create and engage with culture in liberatory ways. Ways that promotes the values that we want to see in our communities. For me, these images speak to being a participant in the creation and production of culture.

These images were created during a night of music and art underneath the streets of Prescott, AZ. The images hardly come close to representing this night, but if I didn't have them I'd think it was all a dream. Random people showed up because they followed the music that they heard coming through the storm drains on the sidewalk. Thank you, Adam, Sarah, and everyone who was there for making this night happen.

Food and Community

This collection of images explores the role that cooking and eating food plays in fostering a sense of community.

Whether in houses or public places these are, more or less, collective efforts to nourish ourselves and others.

Sometimes a form of community activism, other times just part of our daily necessity to eat, we pool resources and efforts to create meals that we can share with friends and strangers.

Whether food is grown, dumpstered, or purchased it becomes a focal point for sharing and creating community.

Places of Sleep pt. 3

Continuing with the theme of the politics of sleeping in strange places....This is a collection of places where I slept while adventuring around the country this past fall. These include hobo jungles, a drainage ditch, and a cargo trailer, and one of the most amazingly wild valleys where I've been fortunate to spend four days.

Streator, IL

The Blue Range Primitive Area, AZ

Some of the things that interests me most about this set of images center around issues of priviledge, class, the marginalization of those deemed "homeless" and the domination of the natural world. How do these image tie all those ideas together? It stems from a difference of social acceptability (and often legality) of "camping" in nature and sleeping on the street.

Elkhart, IN

Some these images work with a juxtaposition of places with a somewhat wild feel that are actually in urban centers and vice versa. When a person is "camping" in nature it suggests recreation, a break from work, which is a product of privilege and class. Recreation, and therefore camping, is a commodity to be consumed. By this logic people who are unemployed or cannot afford that leisure time, would not be recreating. Ironically, in the image where I'm most obviously camping in the Blue Range (in a tent, in the forest, wearing fancy outdoor gear) I'm actually working, and the trip itself was the product for which my labor was exploited.

The Blue Range Primitive Area, AZ

Am I recreating, here? I don't know. I know that I loved being in that wild place, I enjoyed my job, I was able to live for a while on the money I made, and I was paid less than my labor was worth in order to turn a profit. This is capitalism, class, and the domination of nature. The domination of the natural world, from the rise of agriculture to the industrial revolution to the ecotourism and outdoor education industries, has made nature a source of raw materials to plug into the capitalist equation. Outdoor recreation and camping fit perfectly into that equation, making it acceptable to sleep in nature and enjoy the exotic other that is supposed to be separate from our daily lives.

Worcester, MA

On the other hand, the urban landscape is human constructed and controlled for very specific purposes. Houses are meant to be lived in and paid for with rent or mortgages. The streets are for commerce and moving about, increasingly by car. Ways of being that step out of those guidelines are deemed socially unacceptable or illegal because they challenge the dominant systems and social norms. Similarly, people who hold less power or participate in activities that challenge these systems are further disenfranchised through these very norms and systems. This relates to sleeping in public places in similar ways that it relates to sex work, serving free food in public, the unpaid work of mothers raising children, skateboarding in public places, and illegal immigration. Obviously there is a spectrum of oppression and disenfranchisement.

Worcester, MA

I've lived most of my life in non-urban places. I grew up camping and backpacking with my parents. As I continuously questioned the world around me ten years ago, it wasn't that big of a jump for me to sleep in public places. What intrigued me from the start is the stigma and reaction to this activity.

Rvivr @ The Outpost

Rvivr, from Olympia, came to town a couple days ago and played a show at our house along with a few local bands.

Jankum playing fireside

Rvivr

Rvivr

Rvivr

Rvivr

Rvivr

NoHighFivesToBullshit

NoHighFivesToBullshit