“The Art of Reciprocity: Exchange of Wild Affection,”

“Exchange of Wild Affection” December 2

Susie O’Keeffe will present “The Art of Reciprocity: Exchange of Wild Affection,” a multi-media slide talk based on her experiences in the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska, on Tuesday, December 2, 7:00 pm at the Camden Public Library. O’Keeffe is a Research Associate at the College of the Atlantic and holds a Master’s degree with distinction in Environmental Management from Oxford University. Through poetry, prose, images, and music, O’Keeffe tells the story of a month-long contemplative inquiry in Alaska. The presentation is part of her exploration into field practices where creative perception and expression are combined with consciousness and contemplative practices. It is part of O’Keeffe’s larger effort to understand, and help end, our destructive relationships with the larger life community.  Her presentation will be followed by discussion.

As a COA Research Associate O’Keeffe is investigating how the practices of contemplation, creative perception, and self-awareness can be combined with the arts and used to transform our relationship with the natural world. The Tongass is one of the last temperate rain forests on Earth. The salmon pulse through its waters, the brown bear population is dense, and much of the ancient growth remains. “It is amazing to be in a place still surging with so much life,” O’Keeffe says, “it makes you wonder what Maine was like when the forests were ancient and the rivers teemed with fish.” The Art of Reciprocity explores how consciousness is deepened through unique, individual experiences that can’t be reproduced, repeated, or imposed. “It is a way of knowing that depends on the development of our intuitive, emotional, imaginative, and bodily intelligences, as well as cognitive,” O’Keeffe says. The project stems from O’Keeffe’s conviction that the ecological crisis is ultimately one of limited human awareness.

“Modernity functions on a very thin slip of perception. Our capacity for broader consciousness has profoundly atrophied beneath our delusion of separation from nature, and the quest for materials and control.” O’Keeffe doubts we can end our destructive ways unless we rouse our affection for what is wild within and without. “I think this is what Thoreau meant in his famous line, ‘In Wildness is the preservation of the world.’ It would be a very different world,” she concludes. “It requires a way of being, learning, and perceiving that is entirely new to most of us.” The Art of Reciprocity is about learning this new way of being in the world.

photo: John Mitchell

Windfall Harbor, Admiralty Island, AK