Egg and Shell Form.

‘We see and hear what we are open to noticing’. Jerome S. Bernstein

We live within lands, seas and airs filled with forces of natural, exuberant abundance. In every moment newly created seeds of life burst into being. From these young held within their given shells, healthy young embryo shoots are nurtured into community nesting sites where they learn complex new forms.

Before passing from the husks of existence, life ripens spirit seed toward its threshold.

The works here are hand built in the Nerikomi style, requiring a staining of the porcelain or clay body.

Bio

Peter Cameron is largely self-taught, and has been painting, drawing and sculpting most of his life. He states that through actively engaging the imagination in the arts, we can learn about the reciprocal nature of diverse sense perceptions. Working ‘en plein air’ then becomes a realising of relational ontology, the land constantly asking us to be in dialogue.

He has produced around 20 solo exhibitions and has poetry published in ‘Cordite Poetry Review’ amongst others. His works have been included in many group shows and are collected publicly and privately. Peter lives in Garigal country, Sydney, Australia. www.petercameron.com

Peter Cameron, July 2023

Art, Microbes and Planetary Health
online dialogue to mark World Microbiome Day, 22 June 2023

This day of Solstice, the turning of the light.
For more than 15 years ReAct Latin America, a dedicated team of art, science and health professionals have been coming together to re-imagine action on antibiotic resistance. This dialogue is a celebration of the Day.

The vital importance of microbiome for health in all bodies is now widely acknowledged and the collaborative research has developed deep roots. What this team does well is listen to the phenomena, following where resistances are and what these mean to various systems of health, attending to all the senses. As human beings inhere in an open system of complex functioning relationships, we may learn more from these viewpoints than the generally accepted, industrially reduced, mechanical model. To look at relationships inside and outside all bodily structures at the same time requires an ability to visualise moving patterns, requiring all our wits and senses. Vital relational collaborations create vital new narratives. Inter and intra-disciplinary teachers learning with students, cross-cultural work, art dancing with song talking between languages.

Illuminated also are central questions of how we as humans are relating to the other realms of natural phenomena. Listening to the other depends on mutual respect and reciprocity; hearing is a further step. Language is the major tool in branches of medicine these days, this being how the story of a disease is told. Relentlessly we listen to metaphors of industrialised war being used when talking about health or hygiene. The lasting implications and consequences of this often-brutal language are staggering for all life on this planet. From a short 200 or so years ago, it remains a profound shift in our perception of what health is, who can be a provider of health and therefore what class of substance can be considered (and marketed) as medicine. War has a bleak view of relationship, especially coupled with a mindset that sees nature as other, and inert to the raging ‘dominion of a man’.

In any question many of our sense perceptions are engaged including the so-called unconscious. Within our current culture we usually do not see the arts as methods for the processing of complex issues, problem recognition and dissolving. (I paint to see more clearly where I am). The arts have always played a crucial role in health. In myriad forms of music, we feel the deeply connective passions of joy, sorrow and beauty. These experiences take us well beyond our usual understandings. We know music heals. Many are unlearning the (fearful) cultural constructs that deem the arts as superficial except when institutionalised. All churches know the potency of idols. Many arts practitioners sense how their work has a profound logic that is supra-rational. Many scientists, including Einstein himself, placed great importance on his violin and on his dreaming. Historically, dreaming was always done for the collective. Here we are led beyond the places where our plodding rational mind simply will not attend. So why are we afraid?

In the last few hundred years Science has developed tools to discern some of the hitherto invisible processes involved in our creation. And our destruction. For about 80 years bacteria has become a primary instrument for health. But now 130,000 tons of antibiotics are used each year! This group shows how we need to listen more closely to the relational processes before we understand the mounting consequences of over usage. After being somewhat disorientated on a cartesian plain, the sciences slowly, reluctantly understand that there is no such thing as an impartial subject and how the viewer’s presence influences the study, the other. Some still regard Nature as other and consequently, feel they do not belong here. Self-awareness itself is a long discipline.

In many first nations cultures it is in the interstices, those spaces between the threads of relations where the potent lasting stories of culture live. Western culture essentially opposes that where subjects – specifically humans of a particular race and gender – form a constructed hierarchy of ‘control’. We will each decide for ourselves what is important when it comes to health. This group looks further into the details and repercussions of various practises. Does buoyant health live in the individual or in the community, or in the land, water and air elements of that place? Or is vitality the system itself, the practical, daily emotional, spiritual relationships between each, every element affecting every other. What do studies of microbes our oldest ancestors, tells us?

The team show how we can relearn our relationships with medicine and ask, what is health in this rapidly changing world? If we return to engaging our wide range of perceptual senses of body spirit and mind, we will rebuild our capacities to be more responsible to our family of loves, the wellbeing of this land, the dreams of children.

We are gently reminded to overcome the fears that threaten our conscious development. Simply eating fresh foods strengthens gut bacteria returns us to our being with this community land and its healthy diversity. In being given strong conscious capacity, humans were encouraged to not deny their unconscious elements by building a strong culture of reciprocal responsibilities. Power and authority were separated, heterarchical structures adopted throughout. We know timeless cultures where this has worked well through apparent insurmountable obstacles like crushing ice ages. Humans do have capacity. The language of cultural abstractions and distraction has failed us all. Our deeper gut senses are calling. Most are quietly watching and listening now as the light turns.

What is being put forward is a powerful, vital way of being with our current circumstance. The dynamism of this collaboration stimulates much more than mind. Silvana beautifully elaborates connecting tissues across several senses where our fears can transmute into initiative. Satya tells us how battlefields turn into dancefloors. These fundamental shifts of perception are real opportunities to make the unseen visible. We’ve been given a wonderful example of how to embrace the courage of the way.

Peter Cameron, 22/06/2023

https://padlet.com/jclopezec/art-and-microbes-ldz56p9o0nog3m60

Robbie

Question: Can enthusiasm for the industrial machinery of AI be regarded as a massive controlling fantasy, a titanic solar consciousness working contra natura, against lunar principles? There is no symbiosis in making tools that reinforce a privileged class’s appetites, with options available for artificial wombs ‘creating’ server humans. Is this push just another reactivity, designed to subjugate the animate instincts and generative relational senses, especially those inhering in the female body/mind?

yes the graft is being sold, but who is the bait
AI has no capacity or unconscious lack of animate instinct, soul, for metaphor. An attempt to control bodily perception including
an assault on generative principles.