WISHING DEAD TREES BACK TO LIFE
Wishing Dead Trees Back to Life
By Travis Clarke
The first thing I thought was: This is what it must be like to be old. When you are completely still, when you just lie down for nine hours, the world changes. You notice things you’ve never noticed before. Geese flying above New York City, the color of the sky, shadows.
The first person to notice me was a woman who was in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s car driving by. She had him back up and got of the car. Then she started tapping on the glass window with her fingernails. “Are you okay?” I knew she meant something to the effect of ‘Have you been shot?’ or ‘Are you sick?’ but I literally thought (slowly) to myself: Am I okay? Thinking about my day-to-day life in general, I wanted to tell her everything that I thought was wrong with my life, but instead I just nodded yes.
It is funny and interesting to find out about people and sometimes dangerous. Heklina, a San Francisco drag queen, said in the documentary Filthy Gorgeous something to the effect that she had learned a lot about the human creature by their reactions to what she does for a living. That thought has stuck with me. I learned a lot about the human creature from sleeping next to a dead tree, trying to wish it back to life for a week.
I decided after that first woman that I was no longer going to make contact with the people walking by. I thought that it would somehow take away from the integrity of the project if I started talking to people or somehow tried to communicate with them. Instead I would try to focus on the task at hand; falling asleep. There are four holes in the glass wall to the outside approximately 3/4” in diameter, about three feet up from the ground, that let air into the approximately 6’ x 8’ window area/room where I slept. Because of these holes, I could generally hear everything that was going on outside. Whenever people would stop and talk, whether they hated or loved the piece, I got their immediate reaction. What if a painting heard everything someone said about it in front of it while they were looking at it? This is how I felt. And this is what thought: all of the people who see it come from completely different backgrounds. They are of different economic statuses, different races, and different educations.
Paintings are fortunate.
The four 3/4” holes also let in the outside world to me. Surprisingly. I did not take this into account at all before beginning the piece and didn’t even take it into account during the piece, until a group of kids walking by lit a thick firecracker and pushed it into the room. I heard them light it up, so I had about three seconds to prepare myself. When it exploded I did not flinch. The kids were surprised. I was surprised the next day when the same group came back, but this time I had somehow won them over, they were amazed that I was still there, that I had come back for more. A girl from the group came over and read the entire announcement out loud to the rest of them.
I have realized that when it comes to contemplating others I spend much of my time thinking the same thought over and over: “You would do that?” The only thing that changes is the emphasis; either complete admiration or complete disgust. One night, a few nights into it, I awoke to two girls singing the song “You Can Close Your Eyes” to me with my back to them. I can only imagine why they decided to do this. I have no idea who they were or even what they looked like. Imagine being awoke in your bed by strangers singing to you. It is difficult for me to communicate how unbelievably powerful and beautiful and kind this was. I was completely impressed by humans and their generosity this night. I think this was one of the most potent and surreal experiences I have ever had.
That same night a few hours later a guy walked by and said how unbelievable it was what people do for love.
On the last night, after about an hour of being in the gallery, a different group of kids came by. They started spitting through the holes in the glass and after not getting a reaction they decided to piss on me. I still did not react. I only had one thought go through my head: You would do that? Eventually, they left after someone else came up. Then a tear fell from my eye.
It’s funny, I didn’t realize, also, how much this performance was about vulnerability. Making oneself vulnerable to anyone who happened to be walking by. I always felt safe because of the glass, even with the firecracker and the occasional banging, but sleeping or attempting to sleep with someone(thing), and in this case, the general public, is very intimate. The experience of making myself vulnerable to strangers in this way has taught me a lot about what humans are capable of.
I try to make art that walks a line of ambiguity and is able to be projected upon by the viewer because it is also my intention for the viewer to be responsible for their own thoughts about a piece. It is as if I am asking them to contribute. I try to provide imagery that that I think is 1. beautiful, and 2. a reflection/metaphor of contemporary society. For me, this is what the performance was about: It was about attempting to do something that is "impossible."
The dead tree is a statement about our environment, but simultaneously the dead tree was intended to be a metaphor for dead relationships and uneasy politics. To me, the piece is more about the later, relationships and politics. The condition of the environment is a symptom of something else. Sleeping with someone, whether it is a lover or with someone at the hospital, is one of the most intimate things that I know of. The sleep was intended to represent intimacy, compassion and commitment.
I turned 30 today. And so this is how I came to awake on my 30th birthday, covered in someone else’s piss and singing the song “You Can Close Your Eyes.”