Abstract art in a time of increasing surveillance

Map by Nelena Soro

One of the pleasures of curating You Are Here and Exploded View's residency at The Great Falls Discovery Center is getting to spend time with the art, pausing, returning, focusing and pursuing the unfocused gaze. 

Abstract art, both visual and musical (and here I am thinking about improvisational music and jazz, especially), is sometimes difficult or frustrating, sometimes it is considered foolish, a mess or a waste of time. 

American culture makes almost no room for it. I suspect this is because so much of our communication and working life is representational, or literal, and we are often punished or considered suspect for associative thinking or creative pursuit. Time is money, they say, are you wasting time?

With increasing saturation of surveillance technology, people may pay more attention, whether overtly or subconsciously, to what is expected of them.

And people may, increasingly, do only what is expected of them.

Can we even grasp the loss implied in this?

This is the subtext I hear when people say that surveillance technology provides a convenience and it is only a problem when people have something to hide.

Because it refuses to tell us immediately what it is, abstract art confronts people with the act of feeling and creating meaning on the spot. This is, perhaps, unsettling. It immediately violates the rules of a culture that wants you to do only what is expected of you, because no one can know what you will see or hear in such art. It requires you to respond.

For me, this unknown ability, this invisible organ – sensory nerves fueling muscles of the imagination – is the best thing about being alive. It is at the core of our ability to think, to solve problems, to make something new. 

And as we move toward an increasingly surveilled state of being, in a culture that has always been suspicious of art, I think it is even more precious and worth making. 

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To learn more about the artists in You Are Here, go to:
https://explodedviewma.blogspot.com/2020/01/you-are-here-in-personal-cartography.html

Antenna 1

An audio collage

https://soundcloud.com/user-345402517/antenna-1

This work is part of a larger project examining the mechanism and meaning of antennas.

It was prompted by the event: 413 says #CloseTheCamps, which was organized by Theatre Truck. This piece was first played in public at midnight on July 27, 2019 during that 24 hours of performance at The Shea Theater in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.

Run time is 27 minutes and 53 seconds.

A letter to the editor sent to The Recorder in Greenfield, Mass., on January 23, 2019 on the topic of the proposed library project.

Renters and the library

It is a myth often repeated that renters do not pay property taxes. 

In most cases, renters, through their monthly payments, cover taxes and the mortgage on the dwellings they rent. Renters also increase wealth for landowners. I would challenge anyone to look at the rents in Greenfield and consider what all that money could be paying for, if it isn’t also covering property taxes. It is difficult to find an apartment with one or two bedrooms in Greenfield for less than $1,000 per month. A house will be more.

Other strange myths about renters include that they aren’t committed to their communities, they won’t stay here for long, they don’t care about the local landscape, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with them for not getting the money together to buy a home. I have heard all of these opinions expressed in conversation. Take a look at average local wages and calculate how difficult it would be to save enough money for a down payment on a home while paying that rent and maintaining a vehicle. Now add student loans, a child, saving for retirement. 

Surely, some homeowners will be having trouble making ends meet, as will many renters.

And through all this, there is tremendous public support for the library project in Greenfield, across these sectors. 

A new and adequate library is an essential service. It is the starting point of continuing education for the entire population. The library is the community’s center, where members of the public exercise the First Amendment every day with access to news, information, arts and culture, and meeting spaces. We pay for this collectively through our taxes, local property and state income taxes. It’s a great idea. Let’s build a good library.

Samantha Wood

Greenfield

Light gets in

It is time to return to the laws of thermodynamics.

1- energy cannot be created or destroyed 

2- entropy always increases – something will be left behind

3-The entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero. 

What is light?

Merriam-Webster says:

“ electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength that travels in a vacuum with a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, specifically  : such radiation that is visible to the human eye”

Whose eye?

Light is measured in candelas and lumens.

A candela is a measure of intensity equal to the light of one candle.

The lumen is a measure of luminous flux.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but where does it go when it gets in your eye? 

What is light in the body and mind?

Does entropy pool in the feet, the knees?

Light gets in but where does it go? 

Energy always moves, unless we register a temperature of absolute zero-

We are faced with a question at this time of year: 

Can we live without light?

Can you even see down the road to get home?

The Doppler of inspiration coming at you and leaving,

are we meant to freeze in a perfect stillness?

Energy cannot be created 

or destroyed.

It gets in your eye.

For we are an imperfect instrument,

and light cannot stop.

Even the light of one dead star on the darkest night is moving at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second.

You can feel it when it hits you. 

I performed this poem at The Holiday Spectacular at The Shea Theatre in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, December 14 & 15, 2018.

You can read my letter to the editor in support of the Pioneer Valley NewsGuild here (it has been updated to include information about cuts at The Recorder and my work at The Berkshire Eagle):

A public letter to Aaron Julien, president of Newspapers of New England, and Mike Rifanburg, publisher

You should recognize the Pioneer Valley NewsGuild (the union recently formed by  employees at The Daily Hampshire Gazette and The Valley Advocate) immediately and bargain with its members in good faith.

These journalists know how to make your newspapers strong. 

Decisions made under your management in the last year to cut local news staff at all the region’s papers under NNE ownership have led to a blistering decline in reader support, and worsening conditions for the most dedicated journalists who remain. There has been a serious and noted drop in quality news coverage across topics, including local government and the arts.

Recent cuts at The Greenfield Recorder have done severe damage to that newsroom

and the local operations in Franklin County, including circulation and advertising. There is no longer a night desk there.

Your purchase of the Athol Daily News and slashing of that staff has imperiled another local newspaper necessary to the towns it serves.

This has been a long time coming. Employees approached management on numerous occasions, and worked long hours in good faith to try to make the best of horrible plans.

As so eloquently observed in the Declaration of Independence “all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

These journalists are fighting to save these papers, and they have learned they are not alone. 

Now they are offering you the opportunity to join them in that effort.

Supporting this union now will bring the most qualified people into the room. Western Massachusetts deserves good local news coverage. Every community does.

Show some respect and humility, and look to the people who know best how to do this work.

Sincerely,

Samantha Wood

former managing editor for news of The Berkshire Eagle, former managing editor of The Daily Hampshire Gazette, and former longtime editor on the night desk at The Greenfield Recorder

Jul 23, 2018

There’s an editorial in The Recorder calling for a change in the Greenfield laws to ban people sleeping in the rough on the town Common.
Perhaps the current editorial writer has forgotten the purpose of the New England town common, or has subscribed to the notion that a town’s branding is more important than the commonwealth of the people who live there.
It’s a punitive, fearful, discriminatory cry from a local company that has itself long felt at liberty to pay its employees so little they routinely qualify for public assistance and cannot afford the rising local rents.
Perhaps some actual cross-sector collaboration and energy pulled together on practical housing policy to imagine and create truly affordable apartments in the walkable and bikable downtown, would be a better idea.
This is Franklin County after all, a place known for the highest percentage of income of charitable giving in the state even as its residents live pretty close to the bone. This is a place where people create food co-ops and arts organizations and farm shares and a Garlic Festival, Conway throws a dessert potluck to study-up before its town meeting, Greenfield built a stellar music and balloon festival — all this happens because people are sometimes simply fearless enough to dream up good ideas and show up to help.
We make some wicked good beer, too.
A good editorial should offer vision and leadership. This is a shameful piece.
We can fix the housing crisis locally, by using our imaginations, our good will and taking care of each other. I bet there will even be a few fun potlucks along the way.

-Samantha Wood

Hauling Toward Home

An audio installation

I have come to a place in my life 

where I no longer know what "home" means.

Is it the place where I live?

Or is it the people I love?

Hauling Toward Home explores rowing across dark water to reach a familiar harbor. 

This project includes members of my family, separated by distances spanning the circumference of the planet, and friends from eras of my life so distinct from each other it is as though they occurred in separate dimensions.

But they are not separate. 

This installation launched at Eggtooth Productions' 

Full Disclosure Festival: Radical Interconnectedness

Turners Falls, Massachusetts

April 14, 2018

Listen in two parts.

Hauling Toward Home 1

Hauling Toward Home 2

Samantha Wood is an artist living in Western Massachusetts. She earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Hauling Toward Home is her third installation in Eggtooth Productions' Full Disclosure festivals. Previous works include The Uncertainty Cube and “Touching Myself,” a short play with Ayshia Stephenson.

Samantha Wood is a member of the art and performance group Exploded View. She works as the managing editor for news at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass. (April 2018)