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14 where he is supposed to be on the lookout for arsonists. The only other person he encounters is a mute Arab farmer whose tongue was cut out by Israeli forces in the 1948 war and who, by the end of the story, starts a fire. The student decides not to intervene and instead watches as the forest burns to the ground and reveals the ruins of the Arab village it had concealed. The genius of the show, however, was the way Rosen and her students were able to uncover similar sorts of tree deployments by artists working all over the world. Thus, for example, Ken Gonzales-Day’s gorgeously composed, Ansel Adams-like color photographs of magnificent solitary tree stands from all over the United States. These turn out to have been the actual trees from famous earlier lynching incidents and their resultant souvenir photographs − an especially effective way of solving the problem of alluding to those photographs without engaging in the ethically suspect activity of displaying the actual dead body. Elsewhere in the show, Rosen and her students displayed the video of a truly haunting 16mm film by the Israeli artist Ori Gershi. Taken in the Moskalovka forest in the Kosov region of Ukraine, one of the last great primeval forests in Europe, the film describes how Jews had hidden out there from the outset of the Holocaust until 1942. That year, 2,000 of them were discovered in the forest and murdered. In the film, the engrossingly serene beauty of the present-day forest is repeatedly sundered by the sound and sight of slicing, crashing trees. The South African photographer, David Goldblatt, was represented by his photograph called, “Remnant of a hedge planted in 1660 to keep the indigenous Khoi out of the first European settlement in South Africa,” an image of a hedge which has in the meantime been transplanted to and flourishes in one of South Africa’s most renowned botanical gardens in Capetown, at the The genius of the show was the way Rosen and her students were able to uncover similar sorts of tree deployments by artists working all around the world. LINES Andreas Rutkauskas’ “Stanstead Project” documents the “Cutline,” a clearcut space that demarcates the boundary between the United States and Canada. Andreas Rutkauskas photos FALL 2015
foot of Table Mountain (talk about the pastorally oblivious). Borders and barcodes The Canadian photographer, Andreas Rutkauskas, trains his lens on the bizarre “Cutline,” a clean slash of cleared-out forest that now, in the wake of 9/11, runs the entire length of the US-Canadian border, often to quite surreal effect; while the Brit, Philippa Lawrence, in her photographs, shows trees swathed with the very barcodes of the lumber for which they are industrially destined. Other instances got referenced in the show and its catalog as well, everywhere from Afghanistan to the demilitarized zone − or DMZ − separating North and South Korea. There, in 1976, a joint US and South Korean mission, code-named Paul Bunyan, broached the DMZ in an attempt to “assassinate” a poplar tree that was blocking the view from an observation post, a mission which resulted in the death of two US soldiers. But arguably the most affecting piece − and here we come full circle − was a videotape documenting the Israeli artist Ariane Littman’s intervention on the Palestinian side of the separation wall. Starting at dawn, the artist approached the stunted remains of a once-thriving olive tree in the middle of a traffic roundabout and proceeded to wrap it in surgical bandages, an achingly caring and evocative process which lasted until evening. The next morning, the catalog informs us, the bandages had all been stripped away. Rosen’s essay invokes “Unchopping a Tree,” W.S. Merwin’s remarkable prose poem from 1970, the year of the first Earth Day. In it the poet begins the “unchopping” process by suggesting we “Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall;” he goes on with truly haunting rigor to lay out all the steps, one after the next, that would prove necessary if we were to succeed in righting the felled arbor. All manner of fixatives and heavy machinery are adduced across three pages of densely imagined prose, until finally the moment arrives when the last sustaining piece is removed and TREEAGE Ariane Littman wraps an ancient specimen at the Hizme checkpoint located at the northeastern entrance of Jerusalem in her performance called “The Olive Tree.” Rina Castelnuevo photo the tree stands again on its own. It is as though its weight for a moment stood on your heart. You listen for a thud of settlement, a warning creak deep in the intricate joinery. You cannot believe it will hold. How like something dreamed it is, standing there all by itself. How long will it stand there now? The first breeze that touches its dead leaves all seems to flow into your mouth. You are afraid the motion of the clouds will be enough to push to over. What more can you do? What more can you do? But there is nothing more you can do. Others are waiting. Everything is going to have to be put back. Put back indeed. Or at the very least toured: it would be nice if someone would find a way to travel the University of Illinois students’ remarkable little exhibit. It deserved a far wider and longer place in the sun than it got. n ARTHOPOX POLLENUS 15
Page 1 and 2: LAWRENCE WESCHLER Tree nuptials, st
Page 3 and 4: g a l l e r y VOHN GALLERY serves a
Page 5 and 6: INFECTIOUS MUSEUMUCUS From the Foun
Page 7 and 8: Contributors • David Adler | Mr.
Page 9 and 10: By Lawrence Weschler Tales of contr
Page 11 and 12: LAWRENCE WESCHLER, right, speaks du
Page 13: ism. But when he finally heard abou
Page 17 and 18: IMAGINE growing up in a culture of
Page 19 and 20: tion? Absolutely nothing. Now, 13 y
Page 21 and 22: Scene IN KEEPING WITH my commitment
Page 23 and 24: Art, a Higher Hat My quest for the
Page 25 and 26: As the silk plush 9 covering decaye
Page 27 and 28: The Associated Press Despite or bec
Page 29 and 30: Although it has no comics collectio
Page 31 and 32: Sunset semiotics These abstracted,
Page 33 and 34: semiotic fault lines in hybrid text
Page 35 and 36: will summarize succinctly the infor
Page 37 and 38: collaborators, many of them his stu
Page 39 and 40: younger brother when he failed to f
Page 41 and 42: BABY GRAND The author, as a toddler
Page 43 and 44: perceived dualism, light and dark,
Page 45 and 46: GOING NORMATIVE Creating a statisti
Page 47 and 48: ONE YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A Non-conce
Page 49 and 50: cold and miserable. But I clench my
Page 51 and 52: starved and exhausted. Ms. Cunst to
Page 53 and 54: and not come back. “Why wouldn’
Page 55 and 56: Poem On angels and ladders Rome, pi
Page 57 and 58: L’Uomo Vogue: The writings of Kar
Page 59 and 60: A Day in the Life: On Kawara By Ale
Page 61 and 62: AIR OF IMPORTANCE ARTETYPES By Anon
Page 63: Closer Untitled By Nick Wadley 63 S

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