RITUAL OF RETURN

RITUAL OF RETURN
CLASS PROJECT FOR DESMA 160-3:
INTRO TO ECOLOGICAL + JUSTICE

Ritual of Return
Curatorial Statement by Erin Cooney, Instructor of
DESMA 160-3: Introduction to Ecological Arts + Justice
The dominant ideology of the previous century rested
on the fundamental but erroneous belief that humans
are separate from and exist apart from the natural world.
This ideology shaped complex systems and practices
like agriculture and trade and embedded itself within
our economic and legal systems, resulting in a built
environment shaped almost exclusively for human use.
The Anthropocene is the name given to our present era,
which began around 1950, when traces of human activity
could be read into the geologic record. These markings
include nuclear and chemical traces, the emitting of carbon,
and the vast destruction of wilderness previously inhabited
by the non-human world to make way for agriculture
and livestock. Thinkers such as Rachel Carson rang out
a clarion call against the ideology of human separation
mid century when she warned against the overuse of
toxic chemicals in efforts to target pests which result in
disruption to the whole ecologies they are meant to
preserve. Her thinking reflects the many Indigenous
knowledge systems which assert that to despoil our
environments is to despoil ourselves. The ecological crisis
we live with today, as well as the environmental injustices
entwined within it, are in many ways traceable to this
primary epistemological fallacy that understands humans
living outside of and beyond nature.
Ritual of Return is a multimedia installation that creates
a space for epistemological transformation, one that
reincorporates a human sense of kinship with our fellow
creatures and seeks to re-mediate the deep psychic
alienation caused by our self-imposed separation from
the natural world. Using immersive video of leaves,
insects, and earth overlaid with live video of the viewers
themselves, Ritual of Return offers viewers the opportunity
to experience themselves as embedded within the ecologies
and environments they inhabit. In this way, the installation
seeks to complicate the relationship between subject and
object, human and non-human, and culture and nature. A
penetrative soundscape of stretched sonic material prompts
transformation, while the interior voids of bold
chrysalis-like sculptures hanging from the gallery ceiling
hold space for potential metamorphosis.
The artwork created in Ritual of Return was made
collaboratively in the Fall of 2021 by the eleven UCLA
students enrolled in DESMA 160-3: Introduction to
Ecological Arts + Justice, a course whose central proposition
is that to address the urgent issues of ecological crisis
and environmental injustice, it is required to engage in
collective thought and action from a myriad of disciplines
and perspectives. Students hailing from Design Media Arts,
Environmental Science, Biology, and Public Policy worked in
collaborative fashion to produce Ritual of Return in an effort
to train in collaborative practice. The artwork the students
created is based on extensive scientific and artistic research.
During this course, we embarked in an experimental fashion,
with a goal of working collaboratively to create an artwork
whose scale is beyond what any of us could have created
individually. While challenging, we chose to act in this way
because such collective work is what is required to meet the
challenges of climate crisis and environmental injustice.

EGG
The first stage of a butterfly’s life is a very small
oval, round, or cylindrical egg.
Female butterflies lay eggs on plants that will
eventually become the food for the caterpillars
that will hatch
STAGE
Some butterflies lay eggs singularly, while others lay
them in clusters. Each egg has a yolk that provides
nourishment for the developing larva.
It takes about 3 to 7 days for eggs to hatch.

Class Readings
-Racism Derails Climate Efforts
Author: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
-How a California Climate Program
Lets Companies Pollute
Author: Evan Halper
-Racism is Killing the Planet
Author: Hop Hopkins
-Heat Is the Human-Rights Issue of
the 21st Century
Author: Van R. Newkirk II
-The Trouble with Wilderness: Or,
Getting Back to the Wrong Nature
Author: William Cronon
-The Persistence of Vision
Author: Donna Haraway
-Welcome to the Athropocene
Author: T.J. Demos
-The Teaching of Grass
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
-Learning the Grammar of Aminacy
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
-Sky Woman Falling,
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
-Agro Ethnic Landscapes of
Los Angeles
Author: Natala Zappia
-Key Concepts Informing Early
Conversation Thought
Author: D.E. Taylor

subject to such profound and sustained degradation?
Paradoxically enough, in order to understand the ideology
that gives allowance to environmental debasement,
you have to investigate the very origins of the Western
concept of nature itself. In “The Trouble with Wilderness”,
William Cronon, an environmental historian, examines the
development of our modern idea of wilderness. When you
think of nature, it’s likely that images of forests, mountains,
and untouched landscapes will enter your mind. What most
people don’t realize is how artificial this conception of
wilderness, of nature itself, is.
“Welcome to the Anthropocene.” This is just one of the
many texts we read as a class to begin to unpack and
synthesize the social, ecological, and economic crises of our
time. The issues of environmental decline, institutionalized
racism, and exploitative capitalism on the surface can seem
like disparate issues, but upon further inspection become
inextricably linked within a larger historical context.
In June of 2020, as a reaction to the murder of George
Floyd, The Sierra Club, an environmental nonprofit
founded by John Miur, published an article titled “Racism
is Killing the Planet” that beings to unpack this tangled
web. The author, Hop Hopkins, makes the poignant
statement that the climate crisis will never be solved if
we do not simultaneously dismantle white supremacy and
its insidious systems of exploitation and oppression. A
complex declaration made very clear by his central claim
“You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and
you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people,
and you can’t have disposable people without racism.”
(Hopkins). The degradation of the environment for the
sake of economic gain can only happen when you are able
to rationalize certain parts of the earth and its inhabitants,
both human and nonhuman, as disposable.
When a place and its people become conceptually
disposable to titans of industry, it is easy to rationalize
behavior that results in water becoming poisoned, the air
becoming noxious, and land uninhabitable. “If we valued
everyone’s lives equally, if we placed the public health and
well-being of the many above the profits of a few, there
wouldn’t be a climate crisis. There would be nowhere to
put a coal plant, because no one would accept the risks of
living near such a monster if they had the power to choose.”
(Hopkins). It leaves us to question, how does this even
happen? What allows for entire populations, entire swaths
of the earth, to become so conceptually other that they are
“Wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place
on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly
a human creation. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last
remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature
can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the
taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization, and
could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made.
Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more
beguiling because it seems so natural.” (Cronon).
To Cronon, the history of Western wilderness ideology
evolves from being a place that evoked feelings of fear and
wrathful awe to “more and more tourists [seeking] out the
wilderness as a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its
great beauty” (Cronon). Herein lies the root of our major
misconceptions of nature. That nature is something
separate from humanity altogether. A place you merely visit
as opposed to a complex web of reciprocal networks you are
woven within. Cronon elaborates:
The myth of wilderness as “virgin”, uninhabited land had always
been especially cruel when seen from the perspective of the Indians
who had once called that land home. The removal of Indians to
create an “uninhabited wilderness”-- uninhabited as never before in
the human history of the place-- reminds us just how invented, just
how constructed, the American wilderness really is. There is nothing
natural about the concept of wilderness.
The wholesome and awe inspiring image of nature held
in our collective consciousness is a false conception
inseparable from the history of racism and white supremacy.
The Grand Canyon, Zion, Mount Rainier, Yellowstone; they
were all once the sacred lands of indigenous populations,
now playgrounds for those with the luxury of disposable
time and income. What we are left with as a society is a
complicated relationship with the natural world. Not only
does this shallow conception of nature rest on the backs of
decimated Indigenous populations, but results in a “dualism
that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles” (Cronon).
A dualism that reduces the nonhuman world to something
that is ours to dominate, control, and exploit for profit.

This reality is especially cruel when taking into account
the Indigenous perspective on the natural world. Braiding
Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the
Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer outlines the sacred,
sophisticated, and biologically grounded conceptions
of nature held by many Indigenous populations. Kimmerer
explains these more nuanced and integrated ideations of
nature in the chapter, “The Grammar of Animacy.” The
grammar of animacy is the study of Indigenous language and
how the language is structured to account for inherent dignity
and respect for non-human life forms. Kimmerer offers
this anecdote:
“Imagine seeing your grandmother standing at the stove in her apron
and then saying to her ‘Look, it is making soup. It has gray hair’. We
might snicker at such a mistake, but we also recoil from it. In English
we never refer to a member of our family, or indeed to any person,
as it. That would be a profound act of disrespect. It robs a person of
self-hood and kinship, reducing a person to a mere thing. So it is that
in Potawatomi and most other indigenous languages, we use the same
words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because
they are our family.”
From an Indigenous perspective, the earth is dynamic, alive,
and relies on reciprocal systems. “Reciprocity is a matter of
keeping the gift in motion through self-perpetuating cycles
of giving and receiving.” Embedded in their language is a
deep wisdom that acknowledges the interconnectedness and
interdependence of all systems. Living and nonliving, human
and nonhuman.
Contrasted with English and the Western Tradition, “the
only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral
concern, is to be human.” The implicit ideology of the
English language reduces the earth and its dynamic processes
to a dead rock ripe for exploitation. The hierarchy of man
over the natural world is the misunderstanding that allows
humanity to grow so malignantly. In order to heal this rift
of perception, we must begin to stitch back together our
fractured vision. Humans are not separate from the natural
world, but deeply connected to all that exists. “Our
challenge is to stop thinking of such things according to
a set of bipolar moral scales in which the human and the
nonhuman, the unnatural and the natural, the fallen and the
unfallen, serve as our conceptual map for understanding and
valuing the world.” (Cronon).

LARVAE
The first thing a caterpillar eats is its eggshell.
It then spends the rest of this stage of its life
cycle eating the leaves of the host plant.
Butterfly larvae are called caterpillars.
STAGE
4
The caterpillar can grow 100 times its original size4.
The caterpillar outgrows its exoskeleton as it grows,
so it molts (sheds its exoskeleton) around 4 to 5
times during this stage.

Ideation Process
We had to let it all melt down. Combine and recombine. Our individual ideas, our individualism
itself. Conceptions of our moment in time, our strengths and aptitudes. We had
to argue. We had to speak our minds. We had to endure the uncomfortable silence when
no one knew where to go. Learning to swim wearing blindfolds, all stranded in a nameless
ocean, this is no task for the faint of heart. Science and art. We had to band together to
find the land, reconnect with her. Listen intently to waves crashing on a distant shore.
The destination spoke in tongues with which we weren’t trained to listen. But they were
reminiscent of songs we’d heard before. There was a soft rhythm and somehow we knew
the score. We began to hum. Not one of us could tell you how memory endures, but there
we were. Humming pure. A low, steady, continuous sound. Like that of a bee, synchronizing
frequencies. The water began to vibrate all around us, responding to our cymatics. Our
bodies relaxed, the struggle to swim was dissipating. We gave way to wave phenomena.
It was easy to forget we were stranded in the ocean, even easier to remember how to get
back to the land. Our bodies faced the sky, arms stretched wide, with interlocking pattern.
Buoyed. Not by our efforts, not by our intellect, but something else. That thing that
has no words, only structures of feeling.

Once the class completed the seminar portion of the course, we embarked
on ideation for our joint class art project, in which students were
tasked with proposing project concepts to their peers. Several ideas
emerged, but we finally settled on a very specific idea that centered on
the butterfly as a metaphor for transformation and embedding the viewer
into the video installation. With a working title of Ritual of Return, the
installation uses immersive video of leaves, insects, and earth overlaid
with live video of the viewers themselves in order to provide viewers the
opportunity to experience themselves as embedded within the ecologies
and environments they inhabit. A walking performer wearing a GoPro
camera moves through the gallery space, gathering live footage of viewers
which is superimposed onto the nature videos. At the same time, a
penetrative soundscape of stretched sonic material permeates the space
and body, while the interior voids of bold chrysalis-like sculptures hanging
from the gallery ceiling hold space for potential metamorphosis. These
sculptures are large and reach the viewer at eye level. They emit light and
contain fabric material.
In order to produce a show of this scale, we split ourselves into three
groups. One group tackled videography, editing, and sound production.
Another group took on sculpture creation, and the third was tasked with
designing our process book. The videography team was led by Leslie Foster,
our Teaching Assistant who is a visual artist and filmmaker.
At first, the idea was to create a central sculpture that resembled a specimen,
which would hold milkweed, the plants butterflies need to survive.
After beginning work on creating butterflies with paper,

PUPA
The caterpillar hangs upside down and
during its final molt, the caterpillar
increases production of an enzyme called
ecdysone while also lowering the amount
of juvenile hormone, which triggers the
chrysalis production.
After the chrysalis forms, the body
releases enzymes called caspases,
which break down most of the tissues
and cells. What remains are disc-shaped
cells, called imaginal cells, and a protein-rich
liquid.
STAGE
The imaginal cells use these
proteins to fuel rapid cell division
that will eventually form into the
features of a butterfly. The imaginal
cells increase from 50 to more than
50,000 during this time.
This metamorphosis process
takes around 2 weeks, though
some species may stay in the
chrysalis stage throughout the
winter.

The caterpillar, when it goes into its chrysalis, becomes a mass of goo.
Over five weeks it dissolves, but not completely. Martha Weiss, Associate
Professor of Biology at Georgetown University was interested in
studying the function of memory and the brain in the transformation
of caterpillars to butterflies. In her study she had two groups of caterpillars.
One was a control and the other was conditioned to have
an aversion to a specific scent by exposing them to the scent, followed
immediately by an electric shock. She watched and waited as they went
through their process of transformation. When they finally emerged,
she found that the control group had no aversion to the scent, while the
test subjects hated the smell. This means memory sustained through the
cataclysmic change they had just endured. A memory made it through
the mess.
Meaning right now, in this moment of massive change, there exists the
skeleton of the new world. Hidden somewhere in the goo of our collapsing
society, resides a memory. The memory of systems, the memory of
our belonging, the structures of reciprocity and the inherent dignity in
the animacy of the nonhuman world.
All we have to do is remember.

We decided to capture our perspectives as we went through this
process by keeping journals. Each member had their structure of
writing, and some of them included pics, drawings, and inspirations
that go along with their journal entry.
Journal by Chloe, a member of Videography Team
Thursday, 10/28
I went to the botanical garden on Monday to get
some test shots before we actually started production. It
just happened to be raining, giving me amazing lighting
and visuals of water droplets. Today, we returned to the
garden to find that it was still very green after the rain,
leaving us with a lot of color in our video, which I honestly
enjoy the most. I got really cool shots of water rippling in
the creek along with visuals of the garden’s dense bamboo
forest. I am imagining our vision for these shots to be
almost from the perspective of a butterfly, with up-close
angles of leaves and flowers. We borrowed Canon cameras
from the DESMA department, so I used one of those to
achieve higher quality video.
Tuesday, 11/2
We returned to the botanical garden today, and
this time I brought my camera from home. I have a macro
lens that I used to get really neat zoomed in shots. It was
truly a beautiful day to capture the light hitting the dense
leaves of the trees. All of the weird textures you wouldn’t
see from afar were illuminated in such a cool way. Leslie
called it “texture hunting” which I thought was a really
fun way to determine whether something was going to
look good from up close or not. We also got to look at the
Black Magic camera, which is very expensive but the most
amazing quality! I’m excited to see how those shots turned
out, especially because we can play with the color so much
on those visuals.
Thursday, 11/4
Today we wrapped up production and went to
check out the EDA, which is where our installation will be
taking place. We mainly discussed what we thought would
look good on the projectors, and tested out the GoPros
to see how we could incorporate the human form into the
space somehow. Afterwards, we went and sat outside to
discuss our trajectory for the project and how our process
is coming along. We decided that the video team would
now be going into our post-production phase, and what
roles needed to be filled in the coming weeks.
Tuesday, 11/9
Today we divided up what work everyone on the
video team would be doing, and I was designated the
primary video editor. I’m super excited to see what I can
do to really make our space come alive with the stunning
visuals we got last week! We went over a bunch of tips for
editing in Premiere Pro with Leslie, as well as a tutorial
of the best techniques for color-grading the footage.
For the remainder of class, I began organizing the clips
that we each selected as our favorites in Premiere, and
visualizing how I would condense them down to fit the
audio. At the very end of class, I took some
behind-the-scenes photos of the booklet design team.
They were photographing some of the completed
chrysalises to include in the book you are
currently reading!
Tuesday, 11/16
This weekend, I worked on editing the rough
cut of our video. I wasn’t really sure what to go for,
especially because I felt weird deciding which clips
should go in the video all on my own. Once I brought
it to class and showed it to the video team, it was much
more clear to me what direction we want to go in. We
visited the EDA again to view it, and decided that it
would look much better slowed down a lot, since the
big screens really amplify every tiny motion. It helped a
ton to see it projected; we also realized we want to
include more colorful shots since blacks and whites
don’t tend to achieve the same cool effects and
visibility when used with the GoPros. Since the audio
is very ethereal and almost mesmerizing, we want the
footage to match the gradual builds of that. I will
continue to work on the editing for next week.
Thursday, 11/18
Today some of us went on a field trip to the
Pipilotti Rist show at the MOCA Geffen in Little
Tokyo. We learned about Rist awhile ago, in the weeks
prior to our creation process, and discussed how her
work embodies the perspectives of the natural world.
I drove with Amy and her friend Jamie, and we met
up with Joanne and Paige at the exhibition. It inspired
me in so many ways, but I couldn’t help being drawn
to the video elements of the exhibit the entire time.
After seeing all the weird angles and overlays she used
to portray feelings through her work, I felt like I had to
incorporate some of it into our video editing. I know
that we wanted to keep our projections simple and
natural, but I think that Rist was still able to
successfully achieve those things in her own unique,
avant-garde way. I’m going to try experimenting with
new visuals this weekend and hopefully help us gain a
clearer vision of our own style of video composition.
Drawings by Chloe

Journal by Leslie, Teacher Assistant
Thursday, 11/10
There’s something that is so meditative about
filming in nature. The process is deeply embodied. I
can feel the weight of my camera, the soreness in my
shoulders from carrying it, the focus in my fingertips
as I work to keep a panning shot smooth while I also
squint, making sure the flowers I’m filming stay in
focus. Every part of me is engaged as I hear the sounds
of the creek running behind me and the smell of wet
dirt, leaves, and bark.
Thursday, 11/18
Something I appreciate the most about
being in the midst of collaborative work–in a healthy
environment–is the feeling of safety and even warmth.
You look around at the people creating with you and
despite the challenges you face and the problems for
which you still have no solutions and realize that you
get to figure this out together, that you’re not alone in
your explorations and creation.
I hope that’s the experience people are having in this
course. I’ve loved seeing ideas emerge, mutate, shift
through conversation, healthy debate, and exploration.
It feels appropriate that the space of creation,
especially in the context of this class, feels fluid while
still functioning within a set of parameters, reflecting a
similar dynamic within nature.
Journal by Erin, Instructor
Thursday, 11/10
We are deep in our creative process. So much
is going on during class, it’s really exciting! I am loving
what each team is producing. The chrysalis sculptures
are dramatic and imposing, and I adore how students
are making them their own through how they go
about assembling them. Ogechi is doing something
very interesting by using rope. Rope is one of our
most ancient and vital technologies. It is woven from
fibers, which are braided or twisted together to form a
material that can bind and tie materials together. But
Ogechi is deconstructing the rope she brought to class,
unraveling it string by string, fiber by fiber, and then
knitting it into a web-like pattern to cover her chrysalis
sculpture. Not only is it ingenious and beautiful, but
conceptually, it is intriguing. For the deconstruction
speaks to the unlearning many of us need to undertake
if we are to learn new sustainable practices. We need
to unlearn faulty ideas, including the notion that
the earth’s resources are somehow infinite and will
never run out, or that our mark on the land could
never impact whole ecosystems and wipe out species.
Ultimately, we need to unlearn the faulty notion that
the human is separate from nature, and in its place,
we need to re-weave the notion that we are embedded
in the very ecologies we inhabit. That’s what Ogechi’s
unraveled rope from which she weaves new networks
of connections speaks to. It was unexpected, but
so fabulous!

Butterfly Sculpture by Ogechi
Butterfly Sculpture by Ogechi
Journal by Ogechi
Thursday, 11/4
Today took a pivotal and essential trip down to the EDA, where we tested out what we have so far. We got to see
what the video team shot and we heard the sound that we are going to use and we got to make a little mini exhibit to see
what we’d like to work on. We brought the chrysalis we made as well to see how we are going to hang them without them
disrupting the video too much. We also got to use the go pros and we tried to put one inside the cocoon but it was kind
of small so we decided to scale up some of the cocoons. At first, I wasn’t sure how all these different elements would mesh
together, but when everything was put up on the screens, I got an exhilarating rush because I think I finally understood the
vision and i’m very excited with the route we were going. It’s visually interesting, the audio is able to transport you if you
focus enough on it, and I think us coming together as a class after working separately for a while solidified our
bond/morale that much more.
Tuesday, 11/16
In class today we continued working on building the bones (inner wire structure) of more chrysalis. We were not
sure if we were going to have enough time to build 13, but we made the structures for like 11 of them so we made a lot of
progress. We already had a couple super big ones so we decided to focus more on medium sized ones. I didn’t want all of the
chrysalis to have the same shape, as there’s natural variance in nature, so I made one chrysalis inspired by the chrysalis of
the swallowtail butterfly. It has a bulbous rounded hood that slopes down and gets narrower towards the end. I also made
one that has a wide round center with elongated pinched ends and it almost reminds me of spiral snail shells. While there is
an evident crunch for time, I feel like our team is really pulling it together. Some of us went to the EDA again to do another
check, but I didn’t join, as working on the chrysalis was more pressing because we have to finish all 13 in only a few weeks
time. It’s crazy to look back on this quarter and see how far we’ve come, but it makes me that much more excited to see
where we end up. There’s also going to be an article written about us in the daily bruin so that sounds promising, I hope it’ll
entice people to come see our work.

Journal by Jenn, a member for the Sound and
Writing Team
Eventually, when structures of feeling crystalized into
form, we rediscovered language. Words were imbued
with new, dynamic, compound meanings. The way we
understood the world warped our sense of self. Our
brains now resembled mobius strips, held together by a
twist, inside and out becoming twins. We were destined
to ever fold in on ourselves. Our cells, these systems,
the earth and her rhythms.
Stock notions and habits became the spell of the
sensuous. Time itself dilated. We knew not whether
seven days or seven seconds had passed, but our
collective, this raft, finally felt the kelp below tickling
our limbs.
We’d made it—of that we were sure. However, by old
conceptions of reality, we had no idea where we were.
To our surprise, it didn’t matter. Our sense of space
altered to such a degree that we knew intimately, to
belong anywhere is to belong everywhere. I suppose
that’s at what, not where we arrived. A sentient
belonging that had been atrophied by our previous way
of life, as distant now as the night that attempted to
swallow us whole.
Taking off our blindfolds once we reached the shore,
we commenced unraveling each fiber of the fabric that
kept us in the dark and wove a net of blur. Stories and
hymns poured out of us from who knows where, who
knew when. As we sat there, remembering, the passage
of days winked until we were complete. In the end, we
knew we had to let it all go.
Lifting the veil, a sheet to the sky, we saw for what felt
like the very first time.

Journal by Pagie, a member of Object Team

CLIMAX
When the butterfly is fully developed, it
emerges from the now-transparent
chrysalis. It pumps blood into its wings
and learns to fly within 4 hours.
The butterfly feeds off of nectar through
its proboscis (mouth) rather than leaves,
as it did as a caterpillar. The butterfly
spends the rest of its life trying to find a
mate and reproduce. Butterflies usually
live for about 2 to 3 weeks, but this can
vary greatly among different species.
STAGE
Females lay 100 to 300 eggs on average
throughout her lifetime. Butterflies will lay
eggs on the appropriate host plant, and
the cycle will start again for the
new generation.

Instructor
Teacher Assistant
Erin Cooney
Leslie Foster
PUBLICATION
Book Design Team
Writing
Demi Osaki
Magnolia Casey
Jennifer Hotes
INSTALLATION
Videography Team
Sound
Object / Sculptural Team
Performance
Amy Stanfield
Chloe Belinsky
Guo Chen
Hannah Oh
Jennifer Hotes
Joanne Kwak
Jasmine Son
Ogechi Hubert
Paige Brunson
Amy Stanfield

R I T U A L OF RETURN
R I T U A L OF RETURN