The Ground is Kind, Black Butter
2023
00:17:30 min
djuna-emma
Film still from The Ground is Kind, Black Butter.
It is difficult to capture this feeling when you are walking in an environment that feels bigger, more significant and still, than oneself. I like to feel that the environment around me is gigantic, that I can lose myself in the energy it holds. The environment is felt within, in our spirits, and is a beautiful reminder to not focus so much on oneself.
The environment, as opposed to our physical bodies which have quite a linear development, functions as a cycle of repetitions and dependencies. The death of a system nurtures another, and ecosystems bloom due to a chain of consequences, from the geography, the stressors, the homogeneity or diversity of species, and so many other factors. Humans have rejected this cycle but still depend on it. As much as this civilisation aims to avoid all limitations of geography and access to resources, we seem to start realising that our spirits and wellbeing are connected to this moving environment around us. Our physical trace might not nurture a life cycle, but we should think that our spirit does, that we can nurture other living beings by detaching from our need to fit within our own bodily boundaries.
What I find so distressing about the rapidity at which the climate is changing, is how it disturbs all of these cycles and dependencies, nothing is reliable or predictable anymore. More intense rainfall and droughts have impacts on all of the chains of one ecosystem. There is actual proof that living organisms are experiencing more stress, certain deciduous trees do not ‘know’ when to grow new leaves due to warming, species that had been established in an ecosystem for centuries may have to change their behaviour due to changing rainfall and droughts.
What I feel that the work by Djuna O’Neill points out brilliantly is how much of a conflict there is between the extremely slow cycles of the environment that created finite resources such as fossil fuels and the values of the Anthropocene, the age of humans and endless resources. Humans will leave a geological trace, for hundreds of millions of years, just like the ancient species dying on the seabed gave us beautiful coastlines to marvel at. What will be our trace? Apparently, scientists think it will be a mix of chicken bones, industrial chemicals, and plastic.
Written by Emma Foliot,
Transactions associate in the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) sector, channelling funding for forest conservation