I was nominated for a couple of interesting art awards in September, one of which goes to Bay Area artists with a research focus, The Present Prize.
This is decided by public vote, which is very nervewracking.
I am one in a formidable bunch of fellow artists, so... If you want to see
more sublime, uncanny, culturally important work come out of OOwen Labs
in 2014 well then get thine mouses clicking, good people!
We need all the help we can get.
Pleasethankyou.
You can
vote often and until the end of day NOVEMBER 15th...
. . .
nothing got wild here, the west didn't get wild until the white man
got here. And then it got very wild. And so what we had was a clash of
values and perceptions. So when our Chiefs talked with these men,
these leaders, who we met from another hemisphere, their discussion
didn't mesh, they passed one another. They weren't talking about the
same thing. So when they sold the island of Manhattan,
or, shall we say, when the Dutch "bought" the island of Manhattan, the
Indian said, `I wonder why he's giving us all this, because it's free
anyway. But he's a nice fellow so we'll take it and we'll share this
with him too.' So the next year as the Indian came back to hunt and fish
in this great hunting ground Manhattan was. . . there was a fence and
they said `What's that?' They said, `Well that's the fence, I have just
bought this land.' And they said, `What do you mean, "bought"?'
And so began the conflict.
...This
conception of private ownership--of property, of the blood and sinew of
Mother Earth, of people, of life, of ideas--came from the euro-centric
world-mind. This kind of mentality is not only destructive, it is
devolutionary. It is NOT appropriate. The indigenous mind operates from the basis of "Is it appropriate?" The euro-centric mind has only ever asked
"Is it possible?" In our species' present collective memory, such a
world-mind did not exist here on Turtle Island as it did across the
Atlantic prior to 1492. What a truly radical "way of life" was
operative here as of 1492 compared to what had been happening on the
european continent for millenia. The descendants of those people and that "way of life"
still exist and endure here. They still struggle to live by their
ancient, sacred precepts and teachings. How MUCH people like myself
with a euro-centric upbringing can learn and come to understand and
appreciate by teaching ourselves all we can about this more balanced and
connective way of being and sharing. We must all begin to reconnect
with the practice--in a daily manner--of asking the question "Is is
appropriate?" This will open us up to and reconnect us with the
intelligence of the heart and will offer our species the most potent
healing opportunity to again be aligned in a positive, constructive
manner, with our infinite potential to transcend our own self-created
and self-learned limitations and boundedness. There are an infinitude
of dimensions of being beyond this physical time-space world we have
been taught to regard as being "all there is." The ability to conceive
and be aware of such dimensions comes through reconnection with the
intelligence of the heart.
~Oren Lyons, Los Angeles, October, 1990
Happy Columbus Day
