See what happened at this powerful human coming-together of (em)power-full people, Case Pyhäjoki. Should’a been there. Instead, half a world away on the Uncompaghre Plateau keeping an eye on the sky, actually, two eyes (sometimes with artificial attenuation). Getting to show some old friends around this particular region. At least, I find this place fascinating — given the similarity to Echo Park in some structural senses. Four of us old engineering-school house-mates have a very fine hike yesterday to a WWII strategic minerals (mica) mine. Into that Pre-cambrian basement rock. Mica crystals still bursting out of the cavity wall: some crystal complexes many square feet in area with the strange laminate layered crystals that can be split down to absolutely transparent sheets as thin as any paper. The crystalline lattice bonds generating laminar sheets of strongly connected atoms with weak ties between adjacent layers. Occasionally interspersed with sprays of black tourmaline up to 2 cm in diameter and 10 cm long. And the pink feldspar and cloudy white quartz matrix, pegmatitic. Quite dramatic. It’s hot in the canyon, but there are heavy clumps of cloud that keep ebbing and flowing shadows that cool the ground. Down-canyon there is a layer of > 2 cm chips of (shattered) white quartz that has come from some industrial mining process of crushing and sizing the chunks of stuff from the blast-face of the mine. They definitely had a full-on industrial process going on. And, as a strategic mineral reserve, did they even have some security/military presence, that’s one question I would have for the historians. Among others.
It is a pleasant outing into this intense landscape, environment. With three other quite intense people. Each in a particular way. That’s what’s nice about Mari Keski-Korsu’s collaborative art/activist project also, the one that just took place at a nuclear development site on the upper-mid-western Baltic coast of Finland. She has a talent for bringing intense people around her. It’s a powerful and important talent! Wished I coulda made it. There were two of my US students who claimed interest in going but neither ended up even putting in applications — apparently none of them understood this way of getting funding to experiment with their own creative practices in juxtaposition to some equally curious others — although I tried my best to open their eyes to this process. The rest of the students were absolutely deaf to the idea/offer that they participate in collaborative projects throughout the spring semester. As well as being hostile to the process of collaboration in general. (Or were hostile to the person who put them in the position of having to face the issues of active collaboration and collaborative thinking, sheesh, off-putting!)
Case Pyhäjoki looks good, as I had no doubts it would after talking with Mari in May at Pixelache. Great work!