River network: survey
The second chapter continues associations with the gentleman scientist’s journal but moves towards animistic science fiction, in which nature becomes sentient and fights back. This theme is one that runs through a number of moments in SF history as reflections of perceived threats to a particular culture, articulated literally or metaphorically.
Here the animistic tendency is linked to a move towards network theories. The linkages between the two are not arbitrary. Network theory moves away from analysing the life of independent entities into analysing life as a system, an ecology. And it implies that certain forms of behaviour that are attributed to intelligence may arise out of the interactions between objects within the network, not from evolution of an individual mind. E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology (1975) was a landmark within this science in its study of colonies of ants and its observation of traits in their collective behaviour previously put down to intelligent thought. We are now used to thinking of the colony as an organism, but the science of sociobiology is predated by authors such as Stansław Lem in Solaris (1961), in which a planet exhibiting desires follows a similar train of thought; namely, that the debunking of intelligent design in Darwinian evolution does not remove intelligence from the matrix of evolution. In fact, as much as genetic order emerges from random action so do social forms. What it does do is relocate much of thought into a social or ecological space rather than conscience.
Our protagonist in these first two sections frequently wonders about the underlying structures of nature. Wonder and curiosity pervade science and the fictions that it inspires. Among such experiments that have inspired both science and its fiction are Galvani’s discoveries in electro-chemical and biology. The legacy of Galvani’s experiments on bio-electrical effects in the late 1700s had led to the foundational text of science fiction at the juncture of Romantic and gothic sensibilities, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, in 1818. Galvani reanimated dissected frogs legs, making them twitch on contact with a current from his Galvanic cells, the earliest form of electro-chemical battery. At that moment he brought together the chemical, the electrical, and the biological, demonstrating an interrelatedness to all the departments of science through life. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was deeply influenced by the reports of Galvani’s experiments and their implications for being able to tinker with fundaments of nature, which is one of the grand narratives that SF portrays.
River network: landmarks
The scenario of a passage from the island’s coast to its interior is intended to convey the move to ‘introspection’ that is both the subtitle of Yu-Chen Wang’s exhibition and the process of moving beyond first impressions to becoming absorbed in a practice that is the nature of any encounter with an artist’s work. It also mirrors the installation itself, where one ‘lands’ in the open ‘coastline’ of the event space and enters a survey exhibition of works by the artist produced throughout her career to date, metaphorically travelling ‘upriver’ to its source.
In part the environment is inspired by Yu-Chen Wang's drawings, which feature tangles of objects, plants, machines, and body parts. Both forest and seaweed take this form. Her drawing work for the Taipei Biennial 2014, which took place in the same museum, has been described as a ‘quasi-scientific exploration [that] will envision a landscape in a newly founded Anthropocene, creating a moment of “pause” from the chaotic big stir. Wang’s greyscale pencil drawings capture things that are in suspension, frozen in time and space – a moment on the edge of collapse or in the process of transformation.’[1]
This is particularly manifest in Yu-Chen Wang’s installation in which the drawings on paper are surrounded by clumps of metal shavings. While these clumps are industrial waste, they also appear strangely organic. This transition from material to imaginary is founded in the artist’s work ‘The End’, a scenario or textual sketch that imagines a world where the atmosphere is saturated by clumps of unknown matter.
Here is a link to a parallel history of the natural sciences that has become termed ecosophy; this chapter touches on a number of images derived from the overlap of science and psychological or psychical spaces.
The rhizome is an obvious reference to Deleuze and Guattari and more widely to the use of natural organisms as metaphors for the way in which thought and world represent one another – as suggested by Guattari in The Three Ecologies. Notably, and developed over the different chapters of the narrative, they are characterised as nature, psychology, and social/political. Moreover, the three ecologies interact as a singular system. The river network is intended to represent the intermingling of all three into one system with different branches.
I have been unable to retrace this, but it dates from an article I read in the Guardian around 2001 that claimed Darwin had written a different introduction but had chosen to replace it with his now famous ‘Historical Sketch’. The impression of a more knotty, rather than linear, developmental path gives a very different, more entangled image of how Darwin imagined – that is, envisaged – the one to which we are accustomed.
The delirium is a nod towards the fate of Alfred Russel Wallace, and the often gung-ho nature of the gentlemen scientists. Wallace is now considered alongside Darwin as having developed evolutionary theory, but due to having written much of his treatise ‘while in a fit of delirium, in the space of a couple of hours between the onset of chills and their subsidence in a pool of sweat’[2] due to malarial infection from his expeditions, he failed to publish as widely or effectively as Darwin. In his early academic career he was also prone to using mesmerism as a way to creative thinking in what he called ‘psychical research’. This intersects with the ecological thinking of Guattari. Despite being an avowed agnostic and outspoken against the church, Wallace’s most significant (of many) disagreements with Darwin sprang from his insistence that a ‘higher power’ guided evolutionary development. Whether this was meant as a supernatural force or merely the reification of the emergence of complex forms from natural interactions remains debated.
[1] ‘Yu-Chen Wang’ <www.taipeibiennial.org:8080/index.php/en/artists/106-yu-chen-wang-en.html> [accessed 17 April 2017].
[2] Oren Harman, ‘The Evolution of a Naturalist’, American Scientist, September/October 2004 <http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-evolution-of-a-naturalist> [accessed 22 April 2017].
occasionally twitch, as if my fingers were frogs’ legs at the mercy of Galvani’s equipment. But the shock was more than bio-electromagnetic as an idea began to form in my mind. It was not the species that could be my discovery but the island as a whole; beasts and plants were each a cog in the machinery of a complex singular culture. I stared on, somewhat shocked about how this changed everything around us. I imagined a huge umbilical cord of copper connecting myself to the island. And from there another passing under the ocean and connecting this land to my own. And further still, the whole world pulsing from the pounding of a single beating heart.
But in trying to convey this to the others my words had become unintelligible. I, along with some of the greedier members of the crew, were escorted to the fireside and wrapped in blankets, as despite the heat I shivered and passed into a fever. It seemed that some of those fruit might have more than sweetness to offer.
The captain addressed me as a man of science, asking for an opinion on how long the journey inland to the island’s apex might take. Although the island was not large, from my estimations it could be a week to ten days trek to arrive and return if the forest grew as densely as I predicted. Without a pathway to lead us even the relatively shallow incline to the top might be hard going. And that was just the trail. There would be inevitable detours and explorations required en route, so we prepared for a fortnight’s excursion.
For my part, I had packed my equipment days ago in anticipation. My work was almost complete on the coast. The tangled unmanaged forests that could be seen all the way to the peak were where I hoped to make my real discoveries. So I bedded down for an early night to be fresh at first light when we planned to depart. On rising, breakfast was a light repast hurriedly eaten. As a gesture of goodwill, I shared a small pot of marmalade with those who were staying behind. It was eaten with the rough bread that had been baked on the firestones overnight. This was an everyday luxury for me; however, for the crew it was a bittersweet novelty. In return they shared coffee stronger than any I was used to, leaving me jittery as much from caffeine as from excitement as we set off.
out and made a dash for the river. Blushes rushed to my cheeks that were already rosy from the heat. But looking down I noticed a blue green filament in the hole. Where my nails had scratched it, copper gleaned from beneath a layer of turquoise oxide. It seemed to sprout out of the rhizome itself, a part of its network, yet wholly inorganic. I pointed this out in a state of excitement that caused some of the crew to mutter audibly that I was mad. But the captain came over to see what had fascinated me so. Seeing the strand of metal poking out, he commented that this was a good sign. Only then did I realise that this expedition was not in search of hidden treasures of the romantic kind, but more likely funded by a mining company. At this the crew almost salivated at the thought of any percentage they might be owed, quickly forgetting the hunger in their bellies. What no one seemed to grasp, as I did, was that this was not merely about the metal itself. It was not natural; it could not be natural, at least not in the geological sense. Copper did not grow; it had to be refined and shaped. Wire had to be spun. Either it was the work of some species of beetle like the one I had just followed, which might in theory be possible, working the metal from the earth to coat its shell. Or we were not the first to set foot here? Of the two, the
carpets in between, and sight lines emerge through to the open sky even in the depths of the Germanic Black Forest. Here, things grew on top of others. Roots and branches both flayed out in curves and angles. Layers of vegetation piled up making it difficult to distinguish one species from another.
It bought to mind a report I had read regarding Darwin’s The Origin of the Species. Reportedly he excised a passage before publication that had described nature not as a linear development but as a more furtive one, constantly modifying itself in reaction to every other thing around it. He likened it to the life of a hedgerow, not a tree. The reason for why he had removed that introduction was now lost on me. But perhaps it was for fear of exciting even greater protests from those that called him godless for suggesting we were not granted our freedom, not designed, but simply developed. At least apes appear intelligent and honourable. If he was suggesting all our culture was little more than colonies of ants or bees going about our business mindlessly among the undergrowth, even the rational gentlemen of the Royal Institution may have seen him burned as a heretic. There were no reports of Darwin on the Galapagos experiencing a jungle such as those on Monstrado. But I wondered
whether he had experienced this same sense of diminishment that had come over me. Following the river, we were not exactly lost, but I no longer had a sense of scale, and could be walking as an insect, a frog, a man, or an elephant.
A pebbled flat afforded us a chance for a midday break from the trek. Tired as I was, I simply sat on my small piece of rug while the men pulled out rations and lit a small fire to cook them. As the flames took hold of damp wood there was an acrid smell that mingled with the odour of loam. I followed the progress of a beetle clambering over leaves and earth and broken twigs. Its mantle was iridescent blue, glinting as it moved. After a yard or so it disappeared into a burrow. Half amused and half curious, I dug my fingers into the earth to root it out and found it gripping hold of a rhizome for shelter. The root structure spread in all directions and the more I dug the deeper the beetle shimmied away, always just far enough to evade my grasp. I carried on excavating a pit large enough to take my whole hand and still I kept groping no longer able to see where my fingers probed. Suddenly they came upon a slimy soft patch that made me jump up and yelp. The entire party stopped and then burst out in laughter as a toad hopped
latter seemed the only plausible answer. Only one further question remained, are they still here?
Despite my words of caution, we set off again in haste. I had pulled a section of the rhizome from the earth as a specimen, but had to cut the copper wire with my secateurs as it spread too far into the earth for me to tear it up. Still hungry, as we went we picked various fruits from the trees around us, enjoying the sweet and sometimes meaty juices that burst forth as the skins broke. Those juices made our beards sticky and matted, but we didn’t worry. The small river turned to a narrow stream, and we continued on a steady incline until the sun set. As the sky turned red, suddenly all the sounds of the forest shifted from a heady swirling buzz of activity of the day to the night’s throbbing, itchy beat of cicadas with occasional bass notes of toads. As the sun shed its final orange light through the gaps of the trees, beams seemed to bend around trunks as if we were stood within a giant lantern. And all around, for a few brief moments, I saw glints of orange reflected from rocks and leaves and bark alike. I peered at one of these spots, and saw that the copper thread ran through the rocks as well as the earth. Scratching away, it made my hand tingle and
Chapter two: river network
After a week exploring the shoreline the whole crew itched to move further inland. On my part, I had discovered little of note, not one species that was wildly distinct from those already documented in the bestiaries or catalogues of fauna that I had brought with me for reference. The odd crab with a particularly large claw, herons with especially yellow markings beneath their wings, or lilies that veered from the traditional spectrum into rose, pink, and purple were all worthy side notes, but did not qualify as new species to which I could proudly apply my name.
The forest was not far off and its lush, dark interior seemed to beckon us towards it. But the captain had forbade us all from roaming beyond the edge of the grassland, instilling order to ensure that the coastline was well surveyed, charted, and explored before moving onwards. Finally, while sitting around the campfire on the tenth day he announced it was time to move on. A party of four would remain on the beach and maintain the camp in rotation with the skeleton crew still aboard the Saudade. The rest of us were to pack up in the morning and form the exploration team.
We chose to follow the fresh water river upstream thereby avoiding the choking tangle of the forest proper. It ran in a relatively straight line, which made our progress inward more rapid than expected. We had all grown used to the constant smashing of the waves in our ears. But this was quickly muffled and replaced by the low buzz of insects, groans of frogs, and chatter of birds. It was not an unfamiliar sound, reminiscent of Europe’s own natural symphonies. Yet it was an orchestra retuned, almost atonal. In response we instinctively spoke in hushed voices as if in the theatre. Treading over rocks and on soft damp earth by the stream all the jovial antics of the beach were quietened to introspection. If that first introduction to Monstrado (as we now all called the island) held relief then trepidation now set in, claustrophobia even. And in response we relied on our memories and thoughts to keep us company.
My own reveries had a feverish nature to them lent by the sticky humid air. No matter how much I loosened my collar, blood pounded in my ears. Visions repeatedly interrupted my concentration as I tried to examine the overall nature of things. The temperate woodlands of Europe, even at their wildest, have a sense of order compared with Monstrado’s forests. Trees grow upwards, grasses, and mosses lie in even
River network: field notes
Lilly is the name of Yu-Chen Wang's daughter. The context of familial relations is among the undercurrents of Yu-Chen Wang's work, and this is one instance where the personal is inflected in the narrative as part of the ecology of her work.
The endeavour of a scientist to make his or her name through discovery and the frustration of not finding anything truly ‘original’ has a metaphorical association with the situation of contemporary artists, where such notions have become somewhat extinct.
The estimated time it will take to reach the apex of the island is the same as the remaining running time of the exhibition.
The hushed tones are reflective in museums, although this is a relatively new phenomena. In the period in which this is set, galleries were busy and noisy at the weekend as they were opened to the general public – with many directors seeking to exclude as they were a disturbing influence on the civility of the museum. Yu-Chen Wang's exhibition did disrupt the usual workings of the museum by introducing a busy background chatter of events, and, in some ways, intermittently using the exhibition space as a studio throughout the show.
The marmalade is also taken directly from Wang’s work. It was presented as an object in an archival display until a British Breakfast conversation event took place as part of the exhibition. Sharing food as a means of social interaction and, at the same time, as a carrier of cultural difference was one of a number of devices used by Wang in her exhibition to create spaces of dialogue around her work.
As discussed in the previous chapter’s notes, islands cause evolution to affect the size of animals to fit niches in the environment. Concerning Flores, an Indonesian island, there is debate about the apparent miniaturisation of humans named Homo floresiensis or, more commonly, hobbits. On the same island there is evidence that rats grew to a metre or more. Shifts of scale as a dislocating effect, and as a reflection of the self-similar nature of emergent patterns in nature, is introduced here and continued in later chapters. Further to this, the frogs’ legs appear in a drawing by the artist, and another installation is named ‘Elephant Heart’.
This image is based on another of Yu-Chen Wang’s drawings, which features a lantern with light streaming through it at a peculiar angle. It is an archaic lamp that is reminiscent of William Holman Hunt’s Light of the World, a painting produced in the same period as Darwin's publication of Origin of the Species.
