dibáá’ nishłį́ (“my mind is full of a desire – the kind associated with thirst.”)
< distil
the picture into
painting.
they only need
to know about
colour
and
speed.
they don’t get everything
they’re thirsty for;
< like Sun
making glowing
shapes on
sacred
Rocks.
they don’t
get to
look up.
only
at
the
pavement
and
fences
and
plastic.
< the ground’s
presence
is only
because
she is
ineluctable.
we
don’t
deserve
him here
but
that is the
generosity
we get
Anyway.
< Now they only see darkness, they might call the screen black, empty. They might say I see nothing. It is night. The machine cannot know night time. (how does the pencil?) Neither can they, from inside. (what side?) The screen is black and many things are happening, according to the score. A small group of coyote people are under the stars; they are naming constellations. The sky is invisibly, apparently close to them. Or I guess the ground is really high. The security man with the flashlight startles the viewers, but not the group in the parking lot. They are more scared when the light turns away and are touched by the darkness. As in water, the darkness is a thickened medium–to be submerged in which makes evident the non-difference between a body here and a body there.
< Next morning. One car follows the other follows the other (they are getting a tour), rain begins to fall on the front windshield. From the back seat, the speed makes the rocks and plants and irrigation hoses blurs of colour. The drops of rain do not touch the windows on the side of the car, and the way they touch the plants and the ground is so thin it is– at this speed– imperceptible. For the girls sitting in the back, it is as if this world never rained.
< The way the air is here is so electric that sometimes the clouds come and rain starts to come down but before reaching the ground she decides to go back up again. They think they can hold water.
< The recording is comprised mainly of the microphone bashing against Wind. They can mostly hear the mechanical stutter of being blown out, but editing makes voices clearer. Steve says don’t drop it in there ! contaminate the water. . His tank is full, he smiles for a photograph, he drives off in the blue truck. The pump drips in the pool, which ripples, then stills.
< what does it mean to be on indigenous land when you’re not indigenous that’s this project that’s columbia that’s the encampment, frankly there are better and terrible ways to be on indigenous land. spraying pesticides obsessively is worse than laying down on a blanket < the fact of your body, of black bodies of brown bodies being in a place is perceived as dangerous–dangerous to the property, somehow my standing on the grass is scary to < there was a columbia professor last week who said that in his class he was lecturing on john cage’s 4:33 and told his class we can’t listen to 4:33 today because you won’t hear the sounds of nature the way cage intended, you’ll only hear “infuriated chanting” when are voices unnatural when are voices <
drawing for a reading of a land [kéyah] and its [bi] people [Diné], its compromised and -ising records, and an archive of its disposal
enter from below and look up at the ground and the water and the sky
print photographs taken from a satellite and, without a grasp on matters of scale, wonder if the canyons are rivers
draw and draw again and again the static, surveyed edge that is always moving of washes, creeks, rivers,
consider what is a desert if not a lack; a lack of water, a lack of the fertility desired by the common european man, for whom to be barren is a reason to be abandoned of care and subjectivity.
fill the paper with the landscape that was disposed of (the waste land, etc.) dispose of, throw it all out or in,
all of the plants and the fish, the knowledge of the sacred, out or in
from : disposer to place in order, or, to order a place
draw a horizontal line dividing the upper and lower states of the colorado basin and owe each of them 7.5 million acre-feet of paper water per year.
draw a level horizontal line and have so much concrete poured that you parch a river from the rest of its body
if you do this a hundred more times, you will have dammed a people
to a hovering tape recorder, wes oshley said “these people say that the water is to be paid for... . that is why there is no rain....”
this project was made in collaboration with anoushka mariwala and zackary bryson, and with the generous teachings of chris cornelius (oneida) of studio:indigenous, kayla jackson (diné), and the community of round rock, navajo nation. on june 22, 2024, in violation of an 1868 peace treaty, the supreme court of the government of the united states denied their accountability for the water rights it holds in trust for the Navajo Nation.