HS2 (2016)
Robert C. Beck
Gelatin silver contact print
5 x 7 inches
6:30 pm. studio Hydrostatic, Brooklyn, NY
Early August dusk settles in on the roof and there’s no film to be loaded as we are kicking back instead to, quite literally, enjoy the fruits of our labor with some peach mead Sarah just bottled. A mental note is made and the photograph is taken several weeks later with the help of some lighting and our 5×7 film camera.
Everything in the frame has been growing since this past winter and the biome is rich and wriggling with life. There’s a tangle of things thriving underneath the greenhouse dome. The big picture is mostly banana trees in your face next to a delicata squash vine we trained up to run all over the roof; hanging fruits are ideal. Spilling out of the doors, there’s a tiny eucalyptus tree that was a present from our friend Juliana. Behind her is a malabar spinach vine spiraling up around a bushy tomato (heirloom variety unknown). Below all that are some HOT hot peppers, a bunch of collards and a buxom eggplant there squatting in the shadow. And lit like one of Murnau’s monsters in the foreground is a rambly sweet cherry tomato that fruited right up until the winter got real and finally settled down on us. Closer in, there’s the suggestion of a coral jade bonsai -a forty year old heavyweight and another gift- one of Sarah’s most prized possessions, made its way indoors upon the first chill in the air and almost to snuggling between us at night.
Within this instant presented there are many ongoing experiments/observation systems next to the bones of projects that have passed on. It’s all good though; a friend once told us that everything is cumulative. We build success by understanding failure. Social conditioning may say otherwise but the process of life makes this point clear. Nothing is a waste really in a healthy and whole system.
The idea that each little piece of this picture is part of a much larger energy system dizzies thought. As we are drawn close into understanding it, the process of building forms that are alive becomes ever more clear. Water works within a network of soil organisms, gravity, light, air, respiration, replication and decay. This is the process which we are all part of and at what point do our actions outside of these basic functions work against this life support system? It turns out to be more often than you would think. But does it have to be that way?
So, we bring our own bags, compost, share surplus with neighbors, Sarah freegans with her friends at the farmer’s market and we switched out the plastic doggy poop bags for junk mail. We continue to experiment with biological media in our art that grows food from our urine in the process.
Our challenge is to better understand how our physical being is part of life’s pattern. Together we collectively define our global influence. Everything makes a difference and it feels good when we can close the gap between our life lived and culturing the substance of our dearly held values. We are learning, in other words, what it means to be probiotics.
Snuggle up with a plant, folks, it’s chilly out there now.
Robert C. Beck and Sarah Max Beck