Karstic-Action: VOTE 2024!

Karstic-Action: VOTE 2024!

Voting in November 2024 is of the utmost importance. With Pierre Joris, we are steadfast in our mission to mobilize voters. In 2020 we did a series of Karstic-Actions and decided to reiterate the experience this year. This is what we have been doing so far.

From August 17-31, 2024 we had an exhibition: Karstic-Action: Vote 2024! at Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn, Bayridge (Press Release). On display was the full documentation (paintings, videos, texts, photos) of our Karstic-Action 2020! (details here). Also on display a series of paintings I started in August titled: Birds Can’t Vote, But You Can!


Also on display the Karstic-Action : Vote 24! painting I did during the reading/performance opening (see videos below). We have also started a series of t.shirts, hoody & bags available here.



Full video with readings by Jeannine Bardo & Pierre Joris et a performance by Nicole Peyrafitte
Time lapse video performance Nicole Peyrafitte (60 seconds)

Extracts of the Karstic-Action: Vote 2020!

Karstic-Action: Resist-Persist-Assist 11/2020

Stand4 Gallery and Community Art Center
414 78th Street
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn New York 11209
GOOGLE MAP

More info on the exhibitions below:

Gerrit Lansing (1928-2018): CRYSTALS OF TIME

Gerrit Lansing (1928-2018): CRYSTALS OF TIME
GERRIT LANSING : CRYSTALS of TIME 

A film by:
Nicole Peyrafitte
Pierre Joris & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte
Runtime: 33″07′
2024 Version (footage from November 2012 & June 2013)

In 2012 Pierre Joris & I had the idea of making a short film about Gerrit Lansing & his work. We went up to Gloucester that November 2012 to visit Gerrit who welcomed the idea. We started documenting. Then in June 2013 we came back with much better equipment & with our son Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, who was then a film student at Bard College. We put together an early draft of the film, but realized there wasn’t enough material to make a feature documentary. We would need to come back to shoot more.

Gerrit saw a rough cut and he thought it wasn’t crazy enough! So there was more filming & thinking to do. But we were never able to get around to it as life scattered the three of us in many directions …Then Gerrit’s passed in 2018 & the project went dormant until we decided to come & spend some time in Gloucester this May (2024). We had not returned to Gloucester since Gerrit’s memorial. 

Because this place and its people always gave so much to us, we didn’t want to come back empty-handed. It was time to share what we had.  Though we realize the footage we have is not adequate to make a proper documentary, we think these recordings will be valuable to Gerrit’s friends, to scholars, & to poetry aficionados.

The footage above, Crystals of Times, is all from 2012 & 2013 & contains mostly readings by Gerrit of his poetry.
 It was shot at a number of his favorite places in & around Gloucester and includes footage of a reading he gave while visiting Thorpe Feidt in his studio, with some fascinating banter between Thorpe & Gerrit.

While in Gloucester we decided to screen the footage I had reworked from the 2012/2013 visits, while also sharing  a few videos of memorabilia from 2001, a slide-show of photos of Gerrit’s house from 2012 & 13, and Pierre would read the opening of his essay on Gerrit. You will find all this material on this page.

We deeply thank Jim Dunn for organizing the first screening of Crystals of Time at Paul Cary Goldberg’s studio; we are very grateful to Jim & Paul for setting up this event so efficiently & generously. We thank all who came, both old friends & new aficionados whose reception was so heartwarming & confirmed that this material was worth sharing & circulating. We also thank John & Cecilia for welcoming us at their/Gerrit’s house, Caleb Murphy for opening the archives of Hammond Castle & David Rich for writing a beautiful obit on the Gloucester Times that we used as biographical info in the film.

Below are additional materials we showed at the screening, plus Pierre’s complete essay on Gerrit (he read only a short section that evening). This page will evolve as we process more material from our archives.

Gerrit Lansing’s spirit runs deep in all those he has touched in person or through his poetry. We will always sense his aura upon us. 

Footage shot when Pierre Joris & Nicole Peyrafitte came to visit Gerrit in the summer of 2001: Nicole had recently gotten a video camera, was still learning, so it is not very good quality but we think it has some sentimental value, as least for us! & also good info.
The 4 sections are:
1: Gloucester Beach
2: Plumb Island
3: Visit to Olson’s grave
4: Dogtown Commons with Joe Torra & Patrick Doud & a quick shot of the dinner with the same + Amanda & James Cook

Slide show of Gerrit’s house 2012

Screening at Paul Cary Goldberg’s studio.
Photographs Jim Dunn
Gloucester, MA, 05/22/2024

AOOA Farm Residency – Report

AOOA Farm Residency – Report

Unfortunately, the residency at All One One All Farm is ending. Sunday, September 21st was the opening of the Artists in Residence Exhibition. I will post more on that, but let’s start the 3-minute time-lapsed video of the 10-minute Karstic-Action AOOA Live Painting.
Thank you to everyone involved, specifically Alix Daguin & Ariane Daguin, for allowing me to play with all my artistic passions. Thank you to the staff at the farm who have been so gracious. Thank you to my fellow residents artist Eileen MacAvery Kane & Jenny Torino, who have been supportive & so much fun to hang out with & collaborate on setting up the exhibition. Thank you to all who came. Thank you to Rachel Hahn, whose assistance, conducting, filming and so many other steps they accomplished with the utmost seriousness and graciousness made it all possible & as always Pierre Joris who is always by my side! Enjoy the video as much as I did!


AOOA Farm Residency – Report #4

I will post more soon but here is the video of the Karstic-Action AOOA v

 

 

AOOA Farm Residency – Report #3


JULY

The produce is bountiful & the Friday night happy hour featuring tasty cocktails & menu is picking up some serious steam. On July 5,  I hosted the Open-mic and it was heart-warming to see the locals diving into the excitement. Check out the schedule as there is music every Friday from 5-7 PM.

On Saturday morning I went to visit team AOOA at the Goshen farmers market. On her way to the market, Alix saw a bird in distress but as she was in a rush to open the stand she couldn’t stop then so while I was there she asked me if we could go back together to see if the bird was there. She remembered well the location and we had no trouble finding the baby Red-tail hawk that must have fallen off the nest. He was a little feisty, but we scooped him gently & placed him in a box.  A Market vendor familiar with rescuing all sorts of animals brought it to a vet. The latest report I got is that the birdie was just in shock, he just needed to be fed before being released.

Taking photos by the pond was also another beautiful moment, It took me a minute to be able to capture the magnificent Blue dasher (pachydiplex longipenis), they move quite fast…but I think I got it.

Another intense moment occurred in a field very close to the farm. I first noticed a couple of Turkey Vultures. I stopped as they were very close to the road cleaning up a fresh deer carcass. The smell was very strong, and more birds were flying around, I quickly noticed the presence of a couple of Black Vultures joining in the feeding. That got me very excited to see them all taking turns cleaning the carcass. Vultures are weirdly beautiful but the Black ones are stunning with their sooty black plumage & their black head.
And later on that afternoon I encountered a stunning American Goldfinch. I enjoyed processing all the photos and drawing them.

AOOA Farm Residency – Report #2

JUNE

It was great fun teaching the emulsion workshop & all participants got to whip their own mayonnaise from scratch successfully! It was delicious & if you want to try to hand at it here is how to do it.

I also spent quite some time with the beautiful heritage roosters. After taking photos, & drawing one of them I wanted to know why the rooster ended up the “French emblem”. It all got recorded in my Leporello that will be on view at the AIR exhibition starting September 21st.

It is a funny idea, the rooster became the French emblem! This animal native to the forests of Southeast Asia was domesticated around 6000 years BC for the tasty flesh & eggs the hens provided. It would have been introduced into Europe – first in Greece and Italy – via Asia Minor around the 7th century BC. The rooster therefore does not have a single feather of Gallic origin!”
more pix here


AOOA Farm Residency – Report #1

 

 

It is a lot of fun to be artist one of the three artists in residence at AOOA farm in Goshen, N.Y. My colleagues are Eileen MacAvery and Jenny Torino. Our residencies will run through the summer. As for me, I will visit for 3 days every months. I was there in April for orientation day and just returned from my May visit. Before listing the fun I had here is the story and mission of AOOA: 

All For One One For All (AOOA) is a non-profit regenerative silvopasture farm, farm stand, distillery, and education center in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley.

Founded in 2021 by Ariane Daguin and her daughter Alix Daguin, the name of the farm is inspired by the famous proclamation in Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers (“All for one and one for all!”), which captures the heart of the project: to stand up for what is right and enrich the local community, together.

AOOA’s mission is to promote responsible agricultural and culinary practices as transformative tools for personal well-being, community prosperity, and global sustainability.

The Daguin & Peyrafitte families have a long history. We are all from Gascony; they are from the Pyrenean piedmont & we are from the high mountains region. Our fathers were close friends, colleagues, and truly formidable men. They both had many personal accomplishments but together they found an hotel chain in the 60’s (that was reabsorbed by Best Western in the 80’s) and they also promoted the cuisine of Southwest of France all over Europe. One a major event was to serve the first magret de canard to Paris diners! You can read the full story on my 2010 blog post Lou Magret goes to Paris but for one week they took over the the Eiffel tower fancy restaurant and served the terroir cuisine of the Southwest of France. So more anecdotes might be share later but for now here is the report of this 3 days. The link for the full photo gallery is here.

Thursday:— I set out for a walk around the farm to document birds & explore the grounds. I will post my ebird list in a few days
— Found Alix supervising half a dozen big task around the farm.
— Stop at the farm kitchen to find Ariane and working with the cooking staff (the farm staff has a gourmet café open Friday-Sunday) as they were prepping for the weekend menu. As my background is in food, I was happy to discuss (& taste) some recipe options with Ingrid & Sandra while Keith (farm stand manager) was busy setting up the new bar. Yes! Spirits & brandies are now hand-distilled in very small batches brewed by Ariane herself. I no longer imbibe but I can smell and they are fragrant. The list of cocktails is molto fun, and during the weekend people where raving about the Bloody mary made with the home brewed gin and the very surprising tomato water! Next time I will try a few as mocktails.— While walking around I met the gardeners Matt, farm Manager & Luke, regenerative farmer, they were carefully planting their seedlings.
— Continuing around there was Frank, a retiree who volunteers every week and helps where ever is needed. His wife joins him during the flower season. Today Frank was cleaning the bee hives meticulously. The bees put wax and propolis on everything so before reusing the boxes they need to be scraped then soak them with disinfectant to remove any mold or pathogens. Frank’s was very cordial & his life story compelling. He gave me permission to record him. I am planning to conduct interviews at every visit, but we will see how that progresses.

Friday:— Walked all around the property to document the birds. And spend time observing Tree-Swallows and House Wren that have adjacent nest boxes. (see photos)
— Meeting with Alix regarding the pricing & display of the limited print series I have created for the farm. Then we finalized the cooking/walk-shop I will offer on June 15.
— A good part of the afternoon was spent with Alix in company of the rams as they had to be moved to their summer pasture. That was quite a fun ordeal!
— Return to the farm for a delicious late lunch of eggs Benedict on bruschetta with a tarragon hollandaise & a crème caramel, all made on premises ça va sans dire!

Saturday:— Tour of the farm to document more birdies.
— It was a gourmand’s delight to document the chocolate workshop for kids by Maître Chocolatier Jacques Torrès assisted by his family. His spouse being also a Maître Chocolatier it was beautiful so watch the efficient flow on how they assisted each other; a very domopoetic action! I am not a chocolate crazy, but I must say these creations where delicious kids & parents had so much fun being walked thru making chocolate lollipops, pralines, mendiants. We had late lunch and I had the frittata, salad & a very decadent lemon-meringue pie with a mint jelly made by Ingrid the farm patissière.

— My last spin around the property was hanging out with the roosters as I plan to draw a roosters head as my next drawing project. This is a short recap and I will update. Below a few photos but here is the full album of my residency. 

Announcement:

The dates of my next residency will be June 14-17. Consider joining me on June 15th for:

A Nourishing Walk-Shop & Lunch

Reconnect with nature and take home resourceful tips for integrating simple, healthy recipes into your daily life. Lunch is included!

Join us for a healthy, replenishing walk and communal lunch. Reconnect with nature and take home resourceful tips for integrating simple, healthy recipes into your daily life.

We all aspire to restore our connection with nature and eat healthier food, but the speed and busyness of the daily grind seems to constantly interfere. Yet, there are always options to practice these deep connections, and this is what our time together will be about.

Our journey will start at the farm with a brief welcome, followed by a silent walk to tune, tone, and flow with the environment. Participants will immerse themselves fully in the present moment, capturing their impressions through photography, notes, drawings, and maybe spontaneous music.

We will return to the farm to prepare a simple, farm-fresh lunch of eggs mimosa (French deviled eggs), leafy green salad with AOOA rotisserie chicken, focaccia bread, berries and whipped cream, and an herbal libation.

You will even learn the secrets of making emulsions from scratch! We’ll make the mayonnaise for our deviled eggs, the vinaigrette for our salad, and the whipped cream for our dessert. 

We will allow time to regroup,  share our notes and observations, and set some small goals for ourselves.

Suggested materials and equipment to bring: Small notebook, something to write with, camera (your phone’s camera is acceptable), bag for collecting items, water bottle, bug repellent, and sunscreen.

Space is limited, please register in advance! 

About the Instructor: Nicole is a Pyrenean-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice is led by her passion for learning through immersion. Today her work focuses on Art’s Responsibility As Healing Practice. Whether through paintings, films, texts, nature photography, workshops, or cooking, her works serve to better understand the dynamic and symbiotic complexities of humans and other-than-humans. Nicole was an awarded chef as a young woman in France & taught cooking both at university & privately.

Register here

Looking forward to see you there!  & meanwhile splendid bird migration to you all!

Poetry Project : Domopoetics Karstic Actions/Works

Poetry Project : Domopoetics Karstic Actions/Works

February 28, 2024 event at the Poetry Project, NYC .

On 02/28/2024 Pierre & I had a wonderful time presenting Domopoetics: Karstic Action/Works at The Poetry Project. We weaved & braided our individual & shared travails. Domopoetics is the name we give to 34 years of daily practices in transforming & intertwining our lives & works, be it through writing, painting, video, physical conditioning, cooking & all other shared household activities. Karstic refers to the geological phenomena of dissolution & transformation at work in the formation of superficial or underground limestone topographies. Here it is taken literally & figuratively as nature & cave explorations are an important part of our process.

Featuring a guest introduction by Urayoán Noel —who was a tough act to follow. This is the best intro we could have had! Thank you dear Ura!

Thank you  Keir GoGwilt for your inspiring & soulful improvised music.

Thank you all for coming, we were overwhelmed by the crowed room filled with a great mix of old & younger friends. 
 
If you missed it below is the Livestream of the event:

Thank you: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, SiuLi & Chris GoGwilt for the photos.

Sympoietic Walk/Shop Report

Sympoietic Walk/Shop Report

On October 28 2023 I lead a Sympoietic Walk/shop thru Constitution Marsh. We were blessed by a sunny, warm, gorgeous fall day. I left Brooklyn at 7am and after a smooth ride among the fall foliage along Palisades Parkways I arrived early as I wanted to take in the marsh before the group gathered. I was greeted by a dozen wild turkeys, and shortly after by the lovely Lucy Oakes, the Educator-Naturalist of Constitution Marsh. Our group of participants gathered on time in the exhibition room, where a large screen showed my short slide-show introduction before walking up to the trail and embarking on our silent walk. Below is a summary of my presentation and my report of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presentation material & background:

I like to take the term Sympoiesis —or “making-with” — quite literally, so while researching how to present what I thought would be a meaningful land acknowledgment I came across a 1685 map that listed in detail the native tribes of the area.

I shared the map with poet Mary Newell, who lives in the area, had introduced me to Constitution Marsh & attended the walk. As we exchanged information around the area Mary shared the land acknowledgment suggested to her by Evan T. Pritchard, a Micmac scholar and author of the must-read book, Native New Yorkers : The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York.

“I acknowledge the former inhabitants of this land, the Nochpeem ( a “misty place” sachemdom (nation) of the Wappingers Confederacy, especially the Kestkistkonk people,  (prominent sun mountain / principle place near the mountains) who cared for the land around what is now Garrison. I honor their enduring presence and their descendants and emulate their ways of enacting a vital connection to the living earth”  

 

Geological Information:

Even though it was just a quick overview of the geological layout of the regionI wanted to convey a sense of how ancient this land formation is. Constitution Marsh is part of the Hudson Highlands State Park. The bedrock of the Highlands is part of the Reading Prong and more than a billion years old, formed during the Grenville Orogeny. It represents the very core of the Appalachian range, which has been formed by successive mountain-building events (orogenies). The Grenville orogeny was a long-lived Mesoproterozoic mountain-building event associated with the assembly of the supercontinent Rodinia. I have long been fascinated looking at formations that not only pre-date our current earth configuration, but three “shapings” before ours! Also shown on the map is the appearance of fauna & flora, including us in the upper right edge — and not to scale!

I concluded the short presentation with a few words about the Hudson River, basically reading the slide below. I will expand here on my relationship to the river: I have lived in New York State since 1992 and always close to the River. From 1992-2007 in Albany, N.Y.; then in 2007 I moved to Bayridge, 5 blocks from the Verrazano Narrows and now, since 2009, to a place looking directly at the Narrows. Looking at rivers is always potent and mesmerizing. I grew up at the foot of the highest Pyrenean mountain peaks, and as a child I was spellbound by the streams rushing  through my hometown. These loud, powerful streams came from all the way “up there,” i.e., the high mountains weighing down on us and rushing to the Ocean… To the sea! At that time the sea felt so faraway and the rivers’ journey triggered profound feelings of speed, motion and possibilities. Gazing intensely at currents pulled me in, but at the same time out of, what I felt was, a very claustrophobic upbringing & geography. When we would travel to the big town of Toulouse, by car or train, and would cross or drive along the river Garonne, I would ask my mother if it was the same river as “ours”, and  she would answer: “Yes! It is, but many tributaries feed it along the way.” To this day I still have vivid memories about carefully drawing all tributaries of the Garonne on my geography notebook in elementary school and grasping that “we” were at the beginning of its 529km (329 miles) journey gave me an insight that never left me. 

The goal of the walk was for everyone to grasp, receive and make-with this majestic environment, or in other words: to “apprehend” the more-than-human locale in the first etymological sense of the word which is “grasping with the senses or the mind”.

The Walk:

Off we went.  My response-ability as the group leader was severalfold. Firstto be mindful of the safety of the group. As I mentioned aboveour walk was going to be silent, unless there were emergencies. We were a small group and decided to stay together until we reached the boardwalk. Lucy walked out front and I closed the walk. We would point out birds or communicate by simple eye contact & facial expression. Once we reached the boardwalk some of us waded thru the marshes, while others stayed on benches and drew, painted, looked at samples of plants, took photos. I noticed everyone settled with some silent activities so I proceeded to make the full round of the boardwalk, knowing I would get wet. In some areas the water was halfway up my calves so I got wet but didn’t mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking slowly and mindfully through the flooded marshes during peak high tide brought a tranquil internal force. This potent sensation was generated by the Atlantic Ocean’s upstream influx and at the same time by the mighty stream coming down from the Adirondacks. As the tide is felt all the way to Troy NY, the Native names reveal these movements:  one Iroquois name is  Cahohatatea, “river that comes from the mountains”  — most likely above Troy; then it becomes Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk for the Mohicans, Shatemuc for the Lenape of Manhattan and both these names means “river that flows both ways.” 

So here I was walking  among alevins, varieties of fading and decaying vegetation, above and around crows, a great blue heron, a great egret, cormorants, and many other birds slicing thru the blue sky, all accompanied by the sound track of the gentle breeze thru the cattails and on occasion a very loud intrusion by the Amtrak train and, even more intrusivethe echo of West Point Academy testing out their mikes for whatever event was about to start. I practiced keeping the internal tranquil force, treating the “disturbances”as part of the sympoiesis of the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I returned to the group & before hiking back to the center I pulled out my traveling drum & oyster shells for a moment of tuning & toning together. I like bouncing the shell on the drum, I don’t know if it is an ancient custom or not but I started doing it when I played the drum for Betsy Damon’s performance a couple of years ago. Betsy, a very early eco-feminist activist, taught me a lot about water. Every collaboration or visit with her is a teaching moment. In her book Water Talks she writes: Creativity is an ever-flexible, expansive process available to everyone — not only all humans, but also the entire living universe.” And during lectures and conversation she often repeats: “listen to the water,” “water is our teacher.” So bouncing the shell on the drum becomes a very organic drumming experience, which I can’t really describe. All I know is that the experience integrates my body and my mind the way my Karstic-Actions do (see the Karstic-Action “Be Like Water here.) I passed the drum around and before we knew it we were all engaged in some drumming or, clapping, dancing in a round, deep breaths in, deep breaths out….all self generated organic movements. We then gathered and took the trail again, still mostly in silence.

Back:

Once we reached the Audubon Center, we regathered around the table after a little personal break and one after the others we shared our experiences.

I am encouraging the participants to write their own accounts (please send it if you want me to publish it or write in the comment box) as I certainly don’t want to speak for them. HoweverI have a sense from what came out of the conversations that the experience was positive. Remaining silent during the walk was mentioned and appreciated as a factor of switching the energy and allowing a different focus. It does, and it allows to make other sensorial connections that are by-passed by the constant use of language.  They also mentioned that they touched more.” By by-passing language, physical presence & gaze become different. May I suggest that they become literately more mindful? But this is for another essay and to be continued. 

 

I am very grateful to the Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary to have given me this opportunity. Thank you, Rebecca Schultz (director) and Lucy Oakes (Educator-Naturalist and our gracious hosts), Mary Newell who introduced me to the Marsh and last, but certainly not least, to the spirited participants. Their genuine, sympoietic engagement & contribution allowed us to becomewith and -through each other. 

Watching the tide rise

 

Art work and photos by participants

Caitlin’s drawing

Geri’s plain-air painting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucy’s Photos

 

 

 

 

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