Skip to content

Jamie McCoy

Brachen, Rewilding, and Mappamundi

I did research in several different veins this week, further exploring gardens and borders. There are a couple of directions that look promising that I want to dig deeper into.

I read a little bit about the gender roles in maintaining cottage gardens, finding that it has gone back and forth between a feminine and a masculine duty over the centuries. I also learned that in the early 1800’s in England, there was an effort to give gardens to people in the working class. It was thought that “the male labourer possessing and possessed by his garden was to be made moral through useful bodily toil” (Sayer 45). Simplistic and paternalistic.

I then turned my attention to the Brachen in Berlin and several rewilding efforts. It is here that I want to spend the bulk of my research time moving forward, as I feel I have just scratched the surface and I am captivated. The Brachen in Berlin were abandoned spaces, caught between the eastern and the western sides of Germany during the Cold War. These spaces, at one time industralized, were allowed to fall into disrepair, and plants reclaimed the space. Then, once the wall fell, developers started re-taking these spaces. I ready about how these Brachen, for so many, represented hope and possibility when they were industrial voids — far more than anything they became.

I want to learn more about the power of plants to take over man-made things. I want to find examples of other places where this has been documented, and I want to research what happened in the first couple months of the pandemic when the US/Europe/Asia was at its most shut-down. I would like to capture the duality of the fragility and resilience of the plant species that inhabit our past and present.

Tactically, I am still interested in the mappamundi, and I think I want to make one from the perspective of the plants (likely local to Chicago) and try to use that as a media to record them/tell their story, or something along those lines. I found the mappamundi intriguing in that they “by exaggerating the spread of time depicted within their borders, the mappamundi also demonstrate that maps in general need not be seen as reflecting only spatial realities… they may also consist of historical aggregations or cumulative inventories of events that occur in space.” (Woodward 519). The mappamundi captured geography, yes, but also history, religious stories, and itineraries. They cant necessarily be used to locate latitude and longitude of towns, but they could probably tell you the order that you would come across those towns as you moved up a given river. There were also precise legends inscribed in them, and they captured illustrations of different animals and humans.

I think this is something I’d like to explore from the perspective of plants in Chicago. Maybe there is a good way to capture some of the history of the landscape and plant species as they have changed over time. Maybe there are ways to also capture the plants that are still here – weeds, cultivated, I’m not sure. I’d like to talk to someone at the Morton Arboretum or someplace similar for my interview to try to get some of that information. Also, just as the people who were trying to protect the Brachen in Berlin did not put them on a map for fear of calling attention to them, I like that a mappamundi would not give you terribly accurate locales of any of the plants included. Not that I’m all that worried, but it ties in with our reading about refusal, as well.

Borders Assigned Reading

All of these readings pointed to the fascinating connection and disconnection between digital space and physical space, and the limbo of living in interstitial space.

A couple of general thoughts:

It’s so easy to forget that “the cloud” does have a real touch-it hold-it physicality, and that because of that, there are legal and material considerations involved. It’s easy to forget what keeps “the cloud” up and running, and how fragile that system is. And that it has a location, a place where it is based, a place where there are laws and regulations. And in many ways, this feels right. Ideally, an elected official should have a say in what happens online, because the consequences of online actions manifest in the real world. But the international nature of “online” makes it nearly impossible. Is it a world-wide elected official? A representative council of worldwide leaders? The UN’s job? And how do we get people that actually UNDERSTAND the cloud and tech to want to go into that role. I don’t want facebook, google, twitter, etc to  be deciding how they should behave.

In some ways, this reminds me of the duality that is playing out across the world with remote work right now. Where are employees, what can employers ask and demand. What can employees ask and demand. What are the responsibilities and rights of each, how does pay scale differ based on where employees physically live, how much privacy, autonomy, oversight should they have… it’s all fascinating.
And both the cloud readings and la frontera bring into focus the people who find themselves in the interstitial spaces. The people who fall into the cracks but do not fall through to somewhere else. In La Frontera, there are geo-political “cracks” or borders between political entities, where entire populations are trapped. These interstices create other cracks and dualities — between culture, ideology, language, and belonging. It speaks to the stabilizing force of identity, home, and belonging, and the turmoil without it. The Cloud readings discusses those cracks as possible places where the system can be either strengthened or exploited. Where the laws of specific areas do not apply, are not iron clad, and therefore there is room for creating the kind of internet space that would be either equitable and desirable, or lawless and independent.

Systems Thinking and Gardens

  • Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

 
I embarrassingly have to admit that my understanding of GMO’s is limited at best, as it’s not something I’ve spent much time thinking about. If I were to choose though, I would find myself in a mix of systems 2, 7, and 8. I certainly have concerns about engineering more food, largely centering on what the effects will be on the environment, and how healthy these foods will be for humans/animals. Will the costs to the environment be significant? Will the benefits for humans be significant? Will benefits outweigh costs? I am skeptical. I also acknowledge that I don’t know much about this issue, and that I don’t feel great about passing judgement on this issue. This feeling pushes me towards the second system, hoping more than believing that someone more educated on this than myself is overseeing such projects. This is probably a naive thought.

  • Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives, and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating? For instance, if the subject is “Safari Parks”, 3 stakeholders could be (1) Animal Rights activists, (2) the region’s Board of Tourism, and (3) the local land itself. The first operates in a system of ethics around the treatment of animals; the second in a networked system of economic benefits for the community (hotels, food, and attractions), and the third, in an ecosystem that the safari park may put at risk, by introducing pollutants from animal waste and fertilizer, and ecological competitors such as escaped non-indigenous plant products used in the landscaping of the Safari Park.

 
There are lots of different kinds of gardens, each with vastly different stakeholders. There are public gardens in parks, suburban home gardens, rural food/kitchen gardens, private gardens, and more. For this question, I will write about suburban home gardens.
Three stakeholders could include
– Homeowners
– Environmentalists
– Lawn care companies
Homeowners operate in a system in which investing in the garden improves the quality of their home and environment either financially, emotionally, or in comparison to their neighbors. Some homeowners with gardens maintain them out of love for gardening, others do it out of obligation or a need to keep up appearances in front of their neighbors, and some (probably far fewer) do it to supplement their food supply. These homeowners end up investing considerable time, money, and other resources into garden maintenance. The reward they get from it varies — some spend lots of time in the garden, some see the value of their homes/neighborhoods increase because of the gardens, etc.
– Environmentalists operate in a system in which gardens are a significant use of resources (like water) for relatively little payoff. Because most gardens are full of ornamental non-plants, they can frequently disrupt the ecosystem. Combined with the amount of water it takes to maintain a garden and the frequent use of fertilizers, some environmentalists would propose different kinds of gardens than those which are frequently seen: rock gardens, native plants gardens, etc.
– Lawn care companies operate in a system of seeing gardening as an economic opportunity. Because gardens are popular and require a lot of work and we live in a capitalist society, there are many people who can’t or won’t take care of their own gardens. Therefore companies are happy to step in and provide the labor required.

Borders: Gardens

My initial explorations around borders and gardens started with some reflection. I love nature, trees, and forests, and never thought I would live — and love living — in a city as big as Chicago. Over the last couple of years I started my own urban garden on my back porch as a way to connect more to nature, as something to nurture and cultivate, as something to take my mind off of the pandemic, and for a variety of other reasons I’m sure. So it strikes me that gardening for me could be creating a border between different mental states, building a border between myself and the outside world… I also wonder about what constitutes the border or boundary between nature and gardening.

I then started research with Wikipedia. I learned that people have been gardening since ancient times and that gardens have served a variety of purposes. They are status symbols, sources of food, and expressions of art and philosophy. I learned that there are different ideals of what gardens should be that vary from culture to culture and across time periods.

I read an essay called Gardens as a Metaphor, by Clare Cooper Marcus, who talks about gardens from the context of creating myths and paradise myths. In many cultures, there is a creation myth in which order is created out of chaos in the form of a paradise garden. People have searched for this paradise garden on earth, and have claimed to have found it in many places. Early European and other Medieval mapmakers put paradise on maps of the known world, usually depicting them around the borders.

Marcus goes on to describe Tibetan Buddhism’s concept of Shambhala, a hidden oasis beyond the Himalayas, and searches to find Shambhala. There are many guidebooks that have been created to help people find Shambhala, which I definitely want to look into. Edwin Bernbaum concluded that Shambhala is not a place, but a state of mind, and that “we can read the guidebooks into Shambhala as instructions for taking an inner journey from the familiar world of surface consciousness to the hidden sanctuaries of the superconscious.”

Marcus theorizes that we are drawn to gardening because it unites the different hemispheres of our brain, and it “requires knowledge and intuition, science and nuturance, planning and faith.” Perhaps this theory points to gardening as something that lives at the border between different modes of being, different ways of seeing and operating in the world, an activity that can live in some sort of intersectionality.

And finally Marcus points to the idea that gardens are often set apart, held sacred, held dear. This definitely relates to the idea of borders.

I also read an essay called Nature is More Than A Garden by Ian L. Harg. It was not terribly informative, but illustrated Harg’s perspective that gardens present nature as orderly, benign, abundant, and peaceful, which is in contrast with some of the realities of nature untended by humans.

Things to research more

  • Tibetan guidebooks for Shambhala
  • T in O maps from the middle ages
  • Rain gardens
  • Victory gardens –> what would be a current form of victory garden?
  • Gardens as a tool in response to climate change
  • Gaia Hypothesis
  • Findhorn Community garden

Explore

  • Border bw nature and gardens, wilds and gardens
  • trees and gardens and borders
  • garden as collaboration bw humans and nature
  • gardens and the idea of home
  • “the known world” –> what is our version of the known world. and the unknown world?

Could make

  • T in O maps
  • Guide to Shambhala
  • Seed collection book, survivalist seedkit
  • garden quilt or a map as a quilt

Emergent Strategy Response

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18)

  • Q: Have you felt trapped inside of someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?

I think in responding to this, I have to consider if I actually have broken free. At the macro level, I think it’s safe to say that I have not. I feel very trapped inside the imagination of a capitalistic, materialistic, progress-for-progress’s sake culture. Despite lofty goals, I find it hard to break from the worn-in paths defined above. But if I have taken anything from this reading, it is that a macro-level reading of experience might not be the most fruitful place to start, so let’s look for some bright spots, shall we?

Being an artist, maker, and designer is a break from some imaginations. Growing up, I knew that I was vocationally called to making things, but it was not clear how that would translate into a career path. It is probably a similar story for many such artists and designers (and peers in this program!), but the imagined state of “starving artist” is pervasive. I was lucky to have a network of support that trusted me as I learned to trust myself, fumbling forward through art, craftspersonship, and several other threads to my current home in the world of design.

Other examples might be found in moments of change — moving to new cities, leaving jobs, leaving boyfriends. Deciding that something different is out there, and that “different” looked promising. I do want to spend more energy imagining futures that I want to see, for myself and for the world around me.

 

  • Small is good, small is all.
  • Change is constant. (Be like water.)
  • There is always enough time for the right work.
  • There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
  • Never a failure, always a lesson.
  • Trust the people. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)
  • Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than on critical mass — build the resilience by building the relationships.
  • Less prep, more presence.
  • What you pay attention to grows.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

I am heartened by the idea that “small is good, small is all.” I hesitate to call what I do a “creative practice,” even though I think that empirically that’s what it is. But the work that I do is sporadic, scattered, and simple. The things that I do feel small. Embracing “small” makes me feel as though I can do work that would fit into something I would call a practice. That it doesn’t have to be daunting, it doesn’t have to be complex, it just has to be, and hopefully be intentional. I am excited to focus on setting intention in order to catalyze small works.