The Thing

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Paragon of Piety

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Yam Chew Oh

In my sculptures, I employ the physicality and metaphorical potential of found or used materials to tell personal and familial stories.

My late father was a karung guni man, the Singapore equivalent of the rag-and-bone or junk man. [1] Growing up helping him with his trade had a deep impact on my love for ordinary and humble materials.

My mother had a hard life. She left Malaysia at 14 to work in Singapore so that she could help to support my grandparents, who were so poor they had to sell and give some of their 13 children up for adoption, and let a few of them die because they could not afford medication.

The Vow, acrylic paint on Post-it, anniversary bouquet ribbon, used grocery packaging, found wooden stick and metal mesh, and pin. Approx. 40 x 13 x 2 1/2 inches, 2018.

Mom is illiterate because my Grandpa felt that education was wasted on girls. But, my Grandma wanted Mom to “at least know how to write [her] own name,” so she sent her to a village tutor. Sadly, Mom gave up after a few lessons because she could not bear to see Grandma fending off lewd advances from lecherous village men the many nights she walked miles (with an oil lamp strapped to her forehead for light) to pick Mom up after class.

At 28, Mom married Dad, then a bread seller. We lived in an attap house [2] with my cousins and their four families. Mom bore Dad seven children and, even though she was trained as a seamstress, took on for years the bulk of the child-rearing duties while helping him with his odd jobs, as well as the back-breaking responsibilities for the family's pigs and poultry. When Dad had his first stroke, Mom was his sole caregiver for years. Nineteen years after he died from his third attack, Mom remains Dad's loyal widow—to remarry is unthinkable for someone who was raised to abide by age-old traditions; to question them would be sacrilegious. Mom is the exemplary "twenty-four paragons of filial piety wife” (二十四孝妻子), steadfast and unwavering in her duties as wife and mother. She wants her children to speak her late husband’s dialect (Hokkien) instead of hers (Teochew) because we must honor Dad - the patriarchal line - even though he is no longer with us.

The laundry handicap, used laundromat hangers and foam protective packaging, found bike bottle cage, dimensions variable, 2018.

I wish Mom could relax and enjoy her golden years, but to chill out and put her feet up are alien concepts to someone who has lived an arduous life bound by selfless duty to her family, and trapped under the weight of tradition, superstition, loyalty, and honor. She is helplessly preoccupied with the banal chores of daily living, such as laundry. I am still trying to comprehend why she could not just “let go” and not be consumed by housework and perpetual worries for her seven children, their six partners, and her four grandchildren. Even though Mom is incredibly resilient for her age and slight build, I worry for her when I think about how much more she could tolerate in her grueling life. Thankfully, she is beginning to understand the importance of self-care; the pandemic has impressed upon her a sense of urgency.

I have nothing but profound admiration and love for this amazing woman—without the privilege of an education, how she has managed to navigate this world for the last 76 years, with seven children in tow, is a miracle to me.

The widow’s lot, used cardboard photo frame corners, found mirror backing and scrap wood, 32 1/8 x 21 2/8 x 3 1/8 inches, 2018.

[1] The karung guni man is the Singapore equivalent of the 19th century rag-and-bone man in the UK, who scavenged unwanted rags, bones, metal, and other waste from the towns and cities where they lived and sold them to merchants. In America, they are called junk men, and in many developing countries, waste pickers. Karung guni are the Malay words for gunny/burlap sack, which was used in the past by Singapore karung guni men to hold the used newspaper they collected for resale. 

[2] The attap house is a traditional dwelling named after the attap palm (commonly known as the nipa or mangrove palm), which provides the wattle for the walls, and the leaves with which their roofs are thatched (the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation).

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Milada Horáková: A Czechoslovak Hero With Exceptional Courage

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Mark Isaac & Gabriela Bulisova

One of the large banners currently hanging in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Picturing Czechoslovak hero Milada Horáková, the banner reads, “Murdered by Communists.” The banners were installed to mark the 70th anniversary of her executio…

One of the large banners currently hanging in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Picturing Czechoslovak hero Milada Horáková, the banner reads, “Murdered by Communists.” The banners were installed to mark the 70th anniversary of her execution.

History is being written now, and it has rendered a verdict. This age calls on all of us to defend basic human rights and human dignity.

The signals are all around us, so numerous and prominent that they cannot be ignored. The continued brutal murders of people of color by law enforcement in the United States. The manner in which the coronavirus crisis impacts the poor and people of color much more than the privileged. The decline of democracy and the rise of increasingly autocratic rule in places like Hong Kong, Hungary, Brazil, the Philippines, the United States and elsewhere. The second economic recovery plan in just 12 years that very obviously prioritizes corporations and the rich over average people. 

But it’s not easy to know the best way to respond...or the lengths we are willing to go to make a stand for our principles. In the last few months, protesters in the United States risked arrest, brutality, and coronavirus by marching to fight racism. In the last few days, protesters in Hong Kong risked imprisonment and cruelty in the wake of the new Chinese security law that forcefully breaks China’s commitment to keep Hong Kong independent through 2047.

With these events in our minds, we arrived in the city of Prague, immediately noticing that the city was full of banners in red and black, all with the photograph of a woman, Milada Horáková, who has a very special place in Czechoslovak history.

Trained as a lawyer, she focused extensively on campaigning for social justice and for women’s rights. She first came to national prominence as a member of the resistance against Nazism during World War II. As a result of her resistance activities, she was tried by a German court, convicted, and held in concentration camps in Czechoslovakia and Germany until the war’s end, when she was liberated by American forces. She then returned to Czechoslovakia to continue her fight for freedom and democratic principles. 

In the years following the war, Czechoslovakia was in political turmoil, with Communists pressing for power. They tried first by democratic means but weren’t able to win a majority. So, in February 1948, with Soviet backing, the Communists took control of the government in a coup d’etat. By then a member of the Czechoslovak parliament, Horakova resigned in protest. And rather than leave the country, she continued to speak out in favor of political freedom for all. After extensive, unsuccessful efforts to persuade her to cooperate, the Communists eventually arrested her in 1949 and put her on trial for conspiracy to overthrow the regime.

Despite being physically and psychologically tortured in prison, Horáková refused for an extended period of time to confess to crimes she didn’t commit. Eventually, under extreme pressure, she did sign a confession and in a Stalinist show trial held in 1950, was sentenced to death along with several other “co-conspirators.” Although many notable figures from around the world, such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, appealed for mercy on her behalf, Communist leader Klement Gottwald upheld her death sentence and Horáková was hung on June 27, 1950. Among her last words were these incredible sentences: “The birds are already waking up -- it is starting to dawn. I am going with my head held high.” As is the case with many executions, historically and in the present moment, the hanging was exceptionally brutal and continued for at least 13 minutes before Horáková died.

Although she confessed after being tortured, Horáková spoke eloquently at her trial, defending fundamental democratic principles. And so it was, a few days ago, that loudspeakers around Prague honored her memory by replaying critical moments in the trial. Without warning, on the morning of the 27th, the voice of the prosecutor could be heard across the entire city, accusing her of treason. And then Horáková’s voice rang out in all of Prague’s neighborhoods, strong and proud, declaring among other things, that “no one in this country has to be made to die or be imprisoned for their beliefs.”

Milada Horákova’s photographs from the time of her arrest in 1949, when she was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Communist regime.

Milada Horákova’s photographs from the time of her arrest in 1949, when she was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Communist regime.

Mark didn’t understand Horáková’s precise words or those of the other trial participants, but it really wasn’t necessary to grasp her exact meaning. When she spoke, her fundamental decency, her courage, and her impassioned plea for freedom were universally recognizable, deeply moving, and awe-inspiring.

Milada Horáková was one of the rarest breed of people -- those who are willing to die to uphold their fundamental beliefs. As the world retreats from democracy, from treating people fairly, and from keeping people healthy, it is increasingly apparent that we must be a part of the resistance. Although most of us can never have as much courage as Milada Horáková had, we can strive to do a little more than we thought possible. And that will be a fitting way to honor her memory and the memory of other heros who have also lost their lives for reasons of conscience.



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Exquisite Corps: Atlantika Edition

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About Exquisite Corps: This is the Atlantika Collective edition of the original “Exquisite Corpse.”  Invented by surrealists, it is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. More here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse.

Six people involved with Atlantika Collective have participated in Exquisite Corps in the following order: Billy Friebele, Gabriela Bulisova, Michelle Frankfurter, Jessica Zychowicz, Mark Isaac, Yam Chew Oh, and Todd Forsgren. The following text has also been created organically by the participants to accompany the piece.


A game began 100 years ago 

Players creating generative collaborative compositions



who are they?

what about their stories?


every bit,

E very bit,

e  v  e  r   y      b   i   t,


ponde r

pondr

rednop

.

.

.

.

Open close

The door swings on its hinges

                   closer in and then out.

They are all alone together again.

Just sitting there, smoking in the rain. 

Red sky at morning.“Sing a song of sixpence.”

The sparrow pecks at the windowpane.

Not this again.

Magnifying glasses for spectacles,The doctor pulls the numbers up like weeds in a field of wheat.

“A pocket full of rye.”

angle yourself really close

pinch the glove 

because that is  

down the hand 

how you can look 

important thing

perform hand hygiene

some distance away 

use soft boxes 

with interlaced fingers

absolutely the way

perform hand hygiene

from the skin 

without touching the skin 

slide the fingers

between the glove

of the forearm

perform hand hygiene

moment in time

find the perfect

turn inside out

skin of the wrist

perform hand hygiene

start things off 

allowing it to

bag or bin

and natural light

perform hand hygiene

away from the hand thus

folding it over the first 

lit from underneath

medicines and food 

palm to palm

perform hand hygiene

a big window

and vice versa

remove the second

mindful of that

in the gloved hand 

perform hand hygiene

hands with water

hold the removed 

folding it over 

light is to go

tips for doing

perform hand hygiene

here’s something 

wearing technique

opposing palms 

do the magic

rotational rubbing

perform hand hygiene

you’re not alone

separate bathrooms

fingers interlaced

fingers interlocked

always really happy

perform hand hygiene

turn off faucet

helpful for me 

find good lighting

find my magic spot

you’ll be like, wow

your hands are now safe

Staring at the screen, 

Pacing around the apartment,

Looking at the horizon,

One moment I’m overwhelmed,

The next I’m bored to death.

Flip flop flip flop flip flop repeat.

But strangely, the silver lining,

Is that some relationship flourish,

From a medium distance.

:)

Slow

Down

…

I n — h a l e

E x — h a l e

…

Beautiful corps

…

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now….

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Japan's 市民農園 (Shimin Noen)

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This post is part of a series by Todd Forsgren on his project Post-industrial Edens — photographs of urban and community gardens worldwide, which has been ongoing since 2004.

Ten thousand years ago the stability created by the gardening and agriculture of the Neolithic Revolution allowed for the first cities to be built. Since then, subsistence agriculture has been practiced by most every culture and in extremely diverse climates, from the tropics to the arctic. The methodology used and the produce cultivated vary widely depending on the culture and climate; this ties these spaces to the landscape they are found in and the people that cultivate them. This connection between land used for growing and people and places is what defines a garden.

My interest in Japanese gardens goes back to high school when I began growing bonsai trees; this interest in bonsai led to an interest in Japanese gardens, particular those in Kyoto. During a short visit to Japan in 2008, I started to photograph urban gardens. This has been greatly expanded over the past seven years since my wife’s family lives in Japan.

Japan has a long and rich tradition of urban gardening. For example, the esoteric gardens created in Kyoto’s Buddhist temples, dating back to the eighth century, make exceptional use of the small spaces on temple grounds, seemingly expanding them to vast landscape vistas. More functional and colloquial urban gardens all but disappeared throughout much of Japan’s rapid postwar urbanization. Recent years have seen a resurgence of urban gardening (shimin noen, 市民農園, or kumin noen,区民農園, in Japanese) across the country. The people of this densely-populated island nation are especially aware of limited available land and have faced unique landscape disasters, such as the tsunami and nuclear disaster of 3/11.

During the 1980s, changes in legislation created a legal framework that promoted the use of urban and suburban margins and abandoned lots for vegetable gardening. The response was remarkable, and these gardens have become extremely popular, especially considering that Japan has one of the highest rates of urbanization on the planet with over 90% of its citizens living in cities.

The benefits of this gardening movement have gone beyond the individual satisfaction and improved nutrition that urbanites gain from the gardens. Inhabitants of the depopulated rural areas of Japan have seen revitalization of many villages and found help in maintaining Japanese farmland. Rural farmers can increase income and improve their land by renting small parcels, often complete with villas, to urban eco-tourists seeking to reconnect with their agrarian heritage. In this way, the gardening movement of Japan has simultaneously improved health in the country’s cities and helped to maintain Japan’s traditional countryside lifestyle.

The pressures created by Japan’s rapid urbanization and limited space are by no means entirely unique, but they are particularly intense due to the country’s high population density and island geography. The solutions adopted in Japan will serve as a model for many countries as the entire world begins to feel the pressures of globalization, urbanization, and development more acutely.

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Music and Erotica of Iron Stairs

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Evgeny Masloboev

Photo-preferred.jpg

“Music and Erotica of Iron Stairs,” is part of the project “Architecture of Sound, As a Kiss of Meaning.” It was recorded March 19, 2020 using iron stairs at the Orbit Palace of Culture and at other facilities under construction in Irkutsk, Russia.

To create this piece, Masloboev used innovative sound production and the Japanese technique of erotic binding known as “shibari.” The stairs were entangled and connected with strings and ropes. The sound was extracted with a violin bow and with chopsticks and clappers for percussion.

According to Masloboev, “This action focuses the attention of consumers of culture on the details of everyday life in terms of aesthetic experience.”

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Tombolo: The Thin Strip that Binds Us Together

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Until a few days ago, we were exiled in Montenegro. It’s a place where astonishing, mountainous cliffs tumble into the sea, interrupted by a string of pink, pebbly beaches that face Italy across the Adriatic Sea. The sunsets kept on giving.

We ended up there because Mark’s bid for a longer-term stay in Slovakia is wrapped up in bureaucratic delays that forced us to leave the Schengen area for 90 days. Montenegro beckoned, with its lower prices and relatively warm winter, a sharp contrast to last year in Siberia. And all of a sudden we were again distant from our friends in Central and Eastern Europe, in the U.S., in Siberia, and elsewhere. Getting work done but feeling alone.

And it got us thinking about staying connected. The last few years have taken us in so many unexpected directions. We sold our house in the U.S. and lived one year each in Ukraine and Siberia. We spent significant time in Slovakia and Central Europe, and now we’re unexpectedly experiencing Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our work also took turns in new directions, including more writing, more abstraction, more video, and original music from scientific data. It was simultaneously stimulating and intriguing, but also disruptive and lonely.

And now comes a new twist: we are compelled to distance ourselves from others because of the serious health threat that is sweeping across the world.

Of course it’s not as hard as in the past to stay connected, given the ability to work online and video chats. But connecting that way is not only second best, it somehow becomes more difficult as distance increases. And I need not go in depth here on the flaws in our maddeningly frustrating, exploitative and immoral social media platforms. 

In our opening blog post for our new website, we used the metaphor of wolves howling in the night as a way of thinking about the urgency of the moment and the need for people to join and react vocally. Of course howling is not enough. The howling of wolves is an incitement to group action. And that’s what we need – stronger communities that join together in a movement for change and revitalization.

There are many examples of people who are entrepreneurially leading the way, with meaningful projects and outstanding outcomes – people who deserve our support and encouragement. But even if we’re committing ourselves to socially beneficial outcomes at this time of oversized threats to democracy, the environment, and human dignity, it often feels like we’re each marooned on our own islands without a true connection to others at a time when we desperately need one. 

That’s when we saw it. Along the Montenegrin coast, rocky formations alternate with serene beaches and innumerable small islands. But there’s one exception – Sveti Stefan, a tiny “tied island” connected to the mainland. We recently learned (or re-learned, I’m not sure) the meaning of the word “tombolo,” which is a sand bar connecting an island to the mainland or to another island. Sveti Stefan is connected to the world by a tombolo.

We hope our new website will go well beyond a simple presentation of what we’ve created so others can “enjoy” it. Through the Tombolo Blog, with its ability to create dialogue and reach out to others directly, we’re hoping to initiate an authentic conversation – and build ties between people that will help us bridge through an increasingly bleak period of U.S. and world history. 

On some level, we recently realized, our newest projects are all about loss or the threat of loss, whether it’s the environment, our loved ones, or of memory itself (see Featured Projects). And those are the threats that all of us are facing at this moment in time: loss of life, of love, of truth, of the belief in a better future. 

So fundamentally, this is a time when we need meaningful connections with others, even if it is just a thin strip of sand. It is a time when the voices of artists and their allies, speaking the truth, need to be joined together into something larger. It’s a time when the individual ego needs to be kept in check so that the good of the community will take priority.

Even in this exceptionally strange moment of “social distancing,” let’s build a bridge to each other. Let’s build something larger than ourselves. Let’s build a tombolo.

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Embers and Effluents: New Video About Lake Baikal’s Emerging Threats

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

During our sojourn in Siberia, one of the most important tools we used to depict Lake Baikal was multi-channel video. The Second Fire, which was screened in Irkutsk’s Bronshteyn Gallery in late Summer, is a three channel video that focuses on the impact of climate change and pollution on the Lake. A Russian student described it as “truly frightening.” If it scares her and her classmates into action, we will take it as a compliment.

The Second Fire is inspired by a native Buryat legend about Lake Baikal. According to this origin myth, there was an enormous earthquake, fire came out of the earth, and native people cried “Bai, Gal!” or “Fire, stop!” in the Buryat language. The fire stopped, and water filled the crevice, creating the Sacred Sea. Now, the Baikal region is one of the areas experiencing the most rapid increases in temperature in the world. The video suggests that the warming of Baikal is a “Second Fire” that threatens the Lake and the people who rely on it.

Now, we’ve produced a sequel...another three-channel video, called Embers and Effluents. This video goes beyond the most obvious challenges that Baikal faces to depict emerging threats that have the capacity to create a “feedback effect,” rapidly accelerating warming and environmental damage. Scientists know that these threats are approaching a tipping point more quickly than current climate modeling anticipates.

Vast territories of previously frozen permafrost are melting, discharging enormous quantities of carbon dioxide and methane. Rampant summer wildfires are causing dramatic loss of forested area. Widespread legal and illegal logging is also contributing to rapid deforestation. And as temperatures increase, the flow of the Lake’s tributaries is dwindling, reducing water quality and releasing additional methane.

We were inspired greatly by the “environmental ethics” of Baikal’s first environmental stewards, native Buryats and Evenks. They lived in harmony with nature, taking only what they needed to survive. These indigenous people lived their lives in deep concert with the natural world long before the environmental movement developed in the West. Now, despite the serious threats that Baikal faces, the Siberian tradition of sustainability offers a reminder that we can restore balance in our relationship to the natural world.  

We witnessed and filmed multiple ceremonies of native Buryat shamans appealing to the gods for harmony and healing in the natural world. The shamans correctly insist that the Sacred Sea is powerful and resilient. But is this enough to turn things around? True hope will only emerge if the world is able to embrace transformational change, avoiding the feedback effect and the worst impacts of climate change and pollution.

Like The Second Fire, our new video features original electronic music composed from scientific data about the impact of climate change on Lake Baikal. In particular, we used studies of the impact of temperature changes on some of Baikal’s smallest and most important organisms: tiny amphipods that inhabit the shallow banks, the deepest crevasses, and everywhere in between. The amphipods are heavily affected by temperature changes, and the film’s music gives them a voice that they wouldn’t otherwise have. As temperature data rises, the notes also rise and become more shrill, as if the amphipods are crying out for help. 

During our year in Siberia, we had almost daily encounters with the power and majesty of Baikal’s crystalline water, the looming white-capped mountain peaks that tower over its banks, and the endless forests that surround it. But we also witnessed endless trucks and trains hauling away the taiga’s precious trees. We breathed in the smoke from raging forest fires and witnessed the charred remnants of past fires. We photographed piles of rotting algae on the beaches, and we documented the shriveled banks of tributary rivers, running dry from the heat.

That is our choice now: reverse course and care for Baikal sustainably -- or resign ourselves to a future of embers and effluents. 

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A few important acknowledgements: The music in Embers and Effluents was composed from data about climate change collected by scientists at Irkutsk State University. The music was enhanced in collaboration with Evgeny Masloboev, a highly innovative Irkutsk-based composer and musician. The video also includes footage of underwater life courtesy of the Baikal Museum’s live web-cams and native bird calls captured by Professor B.N. Veprintsev. 

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Surface Tension / Water Samples

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Todd R. Forsgren

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” goes the famed line in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge was inspired by the voyages of discovery that were occurring during the era, such as those of James Cook, Thomas James, and George Shelvocke (and similar to later expeditions like the U.S Exploring Expedition or Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle). It is a poem full of all the twists and turns characteristic of a quintessential epic.

Inspired by that poem, and the breadth of emotional responses that it elicits, I set about to make this series. I aim to create a similar emotional range through the photographic exploration of the surface of water. Water, which so unassumingly covers approximately 71% of the earth’s surface.

I have sought out some of these bodies of water that are unique in their purity and clarity, or for their incredibly high levels of toxins and pollutants. Other images mine the history of photographic technology and the ways that it can alter the appearance of water’s surface. For most of the history of photography, it has been a wet process, and I seek to connect that with these images, as I’ve likely spent as much time staring into darkroom trays as I have spent looking at the sea.

I want to push that connection between photographic material and liquid surfaces. This involves delving into early techniques use to make color photographs as well as obscure photographic materials, such as color infrared film. The results can be sublime as well as grotesque. I seek to show how infinitely varied and monotonous similar this familiar subject matter can be. An easily overlooked material that is as mundane as it is precious and essential.

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Cyberian Dispatch 20: A Swift Departure

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Pacific swifts that spend the summer in Siberia migrated in August to their winter home in Australia and Indonesia.

Pacific swifts that spend the summer in Siberia migrated in August to their winter home in Australia and Indonesia.

The swifts lived in the roof above our apartment. They often woke us in a cacophony of sound at about 6:00 a.m. They swooped and cavorted and dive-bombed in the treetops just outside our windows. But the Siberian summer is warm, exquisite, and brief, like a sun-ripened fruit. And its time had already passed. As temperatures also swooped lower, we woke to find that the birds had vanished...already traveling an exceptional distance to winter in Australia or Indonesia. And it was time for us to take flight also, leaving behind a very unexpected and welcoming homeland in the Far East (see Cyberian Dispatch 19). 

As we left, the complications of climate change were at play around the globe. Unprecedented wildfires in Brazil and the Arctic captured headlines around the world and were a topic among heads of state. A major hurricane, rated among the most powerful in the North Atlantic of all time, decimated part of the Bahamas and raked the coastal United States and Canada. Alaska’s sea ice melted completely for the first time in history. Iceland’s Prime Minister officiated at a memorial for a lost glacier.

Unfortunately, Siberia and Lake Baikal are in the vanguard of these changes, with temperatures increasing two times faster than other parts of the globe. In our final weeks, multiple challenges punctuated the news, emphasizing Siberia’s leading role in climate change. Wildfires in Siberia, accelerated by high temperatures and extremely dry conditions, consumed an area larger than the nation of Belgium, sometimes sending thick blankets of smoke into Irkutsk and raising air quality alerts to the urgent level. Also, areas north of Irkutsk -- especially Tulun -- suffered severe floods in which dozens lost their lives, and Greenpeace Russia attributed the catastrophe to climate change. Scientists once again reported that Baikal’s precious small organisms are vulnerable to rising temperatures and will suffer, disrupting the Lake’s entire ecosystem, if water temperatures continue to rise.

Our parting weeks were filled with nostalgia for the mystery, power and enormity of Baikal, not just as a body of water, but as a living being, a space where spirits rule, a territory where the power of the natural world pervades all the human senses. We said goodbyes to the Angara River, Baikal’s only outlet and the site of exquisite encounters with winter “tuman” or fog (see Cyberian Dispatch 9). We traveled again to Olkhon Island, witnessed a very special ritual in which more than 40 shamans prayed for rain to extinguish wildfires, and paused to reflect in one of Baikal’s most sacred sites (see Cyberian Dispatch 3). 

If the spirits of Baikal had the only say, all would be well. Unfortunately, greed, folly, and indifference also hold sway. Our year in Siberia has given us ample understanding of the main threats facing the world’s most important lake: climate change and various forms of pollution that have already damaged shallow areas and now threaten the entire Lake. But the final weeks of our stay also revealed the extent of new, emerging hazards that threaten an exponential increase in harm. These new concerns have unique attributes that reinforce each other and have the potential to rapidly accelerate warming in a “feedback effect.” For example:

  • Melting Permafrost: Temperatures in Siberia are increasing twice as rapidly than other parts of the world. As a result, vast territories of previously frozen permafrost are melting, discharging enormous quantities of carbon dioxide and methane -- enough to result in “catastrophic” warming.

  • Spreading Forest Fires: According to prominent scientists, the growing number and intensity of forest fires is causing “dramatic loss of forested area,” further accelerating climate change. 

  • Excessive Logging: Widespread legal and illegal logging is also contributing to rapid deforestation that accelerates warming; and

  • Deteriorating Rivers: As temperatures increase, evaporation intensifies and the flow of the Lake’s tributaries is reduced. Dwindling water levels reduce pressure at the Lake’s bottom, releasing additional methane and harming sensitive species. 

Many of our most memorable moments at Baikal involved sound or music (see Cyberian Dispatch 10). Evgeny Masloboev, an Irkutsk-based experimental composer and musician, can elicit music out of almost anything, including coat hangars, plastic bags, or the leaves of plants. He favors improvisation, and before we left, he very memorably asked us to pull out our phones, hold them near each other, and create music from...a feedback effect. 

Scientists know that these emerging threats can quickly approach a tipping point that accelerates environmental degradation much more quickly than current climate modeling anticipates. Artists like Evgeny Masloboev sense it and intuitively find a way to express it. The natural landscape already signals distress: people choke on smoke from mega-fires and die when their homes are inundated by flash floods. But in Russia and around the world, many people are not fully aware of how serious the problem is, and policymakers are in denial, immobilized or unsure of how to act on a scale large enough to be consequential. 

The swifts departed suddenly one August day, darting into the sky because they knew the environment will soon not be hospitable. Following a small visa snafu, we also took flight to Central Europe on very short notice, uprooting ourselves from our Far Eastern homeland and finding a roost near the Danube River, another threatened body of water. 

Time is precious now. How can we speed the pace of change on ending the use of fossil fuels and embracing clean energy? How can we embrace the use of alternative energy sources -- ones that are in ample supply in Siberia and many other places around the globe? How can we turn the corner on simple changes like ending the use of phosphates in detergents or stopping the endless stream of bottles that clog our waterways? 

Our year long Fulbright experience proves that we can build alliances across cultures and among diverse stakeholders who share common values and goals. It was an exceptionally meaningful, moving and beautiful experience, and we are forever grateful to our warm, welcoming, and kind Russian hosts, who selflessly ensured the project’s success. 

But can those of good faith and good mind work together quickly enough to safeguard Baikal? Can we chart a new course as swiftly as the swifts?

 







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Cyberian Dispatch 19: Why We're at Home in Siberia

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Frigid and forbidding. Remote and desolate. Brutal and punitive. All can traditionally be synonyms for “Siberian.” But after almost a year, we venture to call it “home.”

Why are we at home in Siberia? Well, for one, it contains the most important lake in the world -- the incomparable Baikal, which continues to change and reveal itself every season and every day. And when you find yourself in one of Baikal’s “powerful spots,” where beauty is overwhelming and spirits hold sway, you can understand that it is a sort of home for all of us -- and one that we must respect and protect.

Gabriela was originally drawn to Baikal because her grandfather had traveled here, describing the Trans-Siberian railroad and Baikal’s crystal clear ice, and bringing her presents from the far East. So her inspiration always included a familial link. But it’s time for us to mention the many ways in which Siberia revealed a multitude of connections to our ancestors, making our stay here an authentic -- if very unexpected -- homecoming.

The Czechoslovak Connection

Gabriela was born in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the historical figures in Irkutsk is Yaroslav Hasek (or in Russian, Gashek), a Czech writer who came to Siberia as part of the Czechoslovak Legion that fought on the side of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. In fact, our apartment is on the street that is named after him, and he lived in a building across the street. Hasek managed to switch sides, joining the victorious Red Army, which is why the street is named for him. He stayed in this region for four years, writing extensively and even starting the first Buryat language magazine. 

But Hasek is only part of the astonishing story of the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia. At a time before Czechoslovakia became a nation, more than 100,000 fighters came thousands of kilometers from their diminutive homeland to help demonstrate to the allies that they should support Czechoslovak statehood. They fought skillfully, and at one point in the war managed to control most of Siberia, an area larger than the United States and Europe combined. 

It was at Lake Baikal that the Czechoslovak Legion fought the only naval battle in the history of their landlocked soon-to-be nation. And they won. After seizing several warships from the Red Army, on August 15, 1918, the Legion surprised Red forces at the port of Mysovaya in a heavy fog, sinking the gigantic icebreaker “Baikal,” shelling the train station, and destroying Red Army headquarters. 

Czechoslovak soldiers are also alleged by many to have stolen a massive cache of gold that was being protected by Admiral Kolchak, leader of the White Army. When the Red Army captured Russia’s gold reserves from retreating White forces, a significant portion of it was missing. Some believe the gold was smuggled out of Siberia to Czechoslovakia, while others believe it fell from rail cars into Lake Baikal and is still laying in its depths. More than 10 years ago, scientists and historians aboard small submarines carrying none other than Vladimir Putin claim to have located some of the gold deep under the Lake’s surface, but were unable to recover any of it.

In the summer of 1919, the first international soccer matches in the history of Siberia took place in the Baikal region. The matches were contested by the Czechoslovak Legion and representatives of the small cadre of U.S. forces that also fought during the Russian Civil War. During their time in Siberia, the Americans excelled at harassing women and behaving atrociously, while the Czechs and Slovaks put more energy into the games and emerged as victors. 

The Origins of the Hungarian People

Gabriela’s mother, Olga, is Hungarian. And Hungarians migrated long ago from Western Siberia. This is one reason their language, in the Finno-Ugric language group, is so different from neighboring countries and so difficult to master. Today, scholarship is widening the understanding of links between Hungarian and Siberian culture, including common elements in their folklore. But there’s no question that the Hungarian nation was born in Siberia.

The Surprising DNA Test

Just before leaving for Siberia, for somewhat murky reasons, Mark was interested to have a DNA test conducted. The results arrived about a month into our stay in the Baikal region. Generally, they were as expected -- he’s almost entirely of Eastern European Jewish origin, and his family lived in areas of Galicia that are now in Poland and Ukraine. But there was one surprise -- a finding that 0.1 percent of his origins are “Siberian.” And by Siberian, meaning East Asian, not Russian. At first, some family members bristled at this finding or dismissed it as likely erroneous. But shortly afterwards, another relative reported the same result, confirming the existence of a small amount of Siberian blood in his family.

The Paris of the East Reemerges

When the Tsars and the Communists were busy exiling people to Siberia, they placed a heavy emphasis on those who were educated and active. As a result, Irkutsk always had an outsized share of artists and intellectuals -- so much so that it was called “the Paris of the East” for its many talented artists and its diverse cultural offerings. Over time, some of that cultural advantage became institutionalized and ossified, but now Irkutsk is staging a youthful cultural renaissance, with alternative spaces, innovative events, contemporary ethnic art, micro-concerts in intimate settings, and experimental musicians who are willing to try almost everything. This emerging cultural scene also made Irkutsk feel like home -- and inspired us to include original music, composed entirely from data in scientific studies about Lake Baikal, in our project. (For more on this subject, please read Siberian Dispatch 10.)

Our Trusted Russian Friends

And finally, we are compelled to mention the local people who went out of their way to welcome us. They didn’t have to share resources, make connections, encourage us, or help us exhibit our work. But they did, and they played a critical role in the project’s success. These generous friends -- each of whom will be remembered very personally and with utmost appreciation -- emphatically made Irkutsk our home. And this in turn, provides strong validation for the Fulbright Program, built on the idea that war can be overcome by making connections between Americans and cultures all over the world. Our experience in Russia proves emphatically that, one-on-one, Russians and Americans can bond and build a future of trust and cooperation.

Unless we live to be more than 100, each year is more than 1 percent of our lives. So we’ve done something neither of us ever expected -- spent a significant percentage of our lives in Siberia. And when we leave this home, painfully soon, we will ache longingly both for Baikal and the people who love it.



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How is Lake Baikal Threatened?

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Especially in its depths, Lake Baikal is still relatively clean. But extensive research by Russian and international scientists shows that it is severely challenged by two pressing threats: rapid climate change that is disrupting its complex ecosystem, and pollution from ever-expanding tourism and development. Also of concern are specific development or regulatory proposals that could accelerate damage to the Lake. While several recent threats have been successfully thwarted, new ones are always emerging, and it is unclear whether activists can stop them all. 

A Rapidly Changing Climate

Scientists have ample evidence that the Baikal region is one of the most affected by climate change in the world. One study demonstrates that summer surface water temperatures increased 2.0 degrees Celsius between 1977 and 2003 (Izmesteva et. al. 2016). There is also strong evidence that winter ice cover has decreased in duration and thickness compared with a century ago (Shimaraev et. al. 2002). 

Changes in the transparency and yearly duration of ice as a result of warming have the potential to affect Baikal’s entire food chain. A recent study reveals that small native diatoms (or single-celled algae) that are critical to the food chain are already declining in the southern basin of the Lake (Roberts, et. al., 2018). These organisms provide much of the food for the tiny copepod, Epischura baikalensis, that filters Baikal’s water. Moreover, there is considerable data showing that Baikal’s magnificent amphipods (small crustaceans that are a food source for fish species) are susceptible to severe stress in warming conditions (Axenov-Gribanov et. al., 2016). At the top of the food chain, changes in the ice cover have the potential to harm the world’s only true freshwater seal by negatively impacting fertility and subjecting the young to predators. Moreover, changes in wind speed and direction have the potential to alter the process by which the Lake’s deep waters receive oxygen, with consequences for the entire ecosystem (Moore et. al., 2009).

Growing Levels of Pollution

Pollution is Baikal’s other great threat, creating a range of problems, especially in populated areas and those that draw the most tourists. A variety of pollution sources are already creating  negative impacts on sponges, snails, amphipods, and other Lake creatures.

Nutrient inputs are contributing to massive blooms of non-native algae in the coastal areas of the Lake. These blooms choke out endemic species and pose a risk to humans, wildlife, and livestock. There is also a growing epidemic of sickness and death of endemic Baikal sponges and a mass mortality of snails in some areas of the Lake. (Timoshkin et. al., 2016). 

Studies show that these problems result primarily from sewage and detergent waste that flows into the Lake from hotels, houses, and tourist destinations. Wastewater treatment in populated areas around the Lake is either lacking or outdated. Moreover, many small homes and businesses rely on unlined pits rather than lined septic tanks, allowing human waste to leach through the soil into the Lake. (Timoshkin et. al., 2018).

A variety of chemical pollutants are also entering the lake, including pesticides (Tsydenova, et. al. 2003) and PCBs (Mamontov, et. al., 2000). Some reach Baikal by air from nearby industrial facilities, but there are also significant discharges of petrochemicals from boats, and dangerous pollutants entered the water when rail cars were washed in Severobaikalsk. 

There are inadequate means of disposing of garbage in the Lake Baikal area, and accumulating solid waste is a growing problem in areas around the Lake. Also, tourists are responsible for erosion, damage to trails and campsites, and negative impacts on local flora and fauna. Some of this damage results from inappropriate transportation such as ATVs, which have been banned in some parks. 

Synergy Between Climate Change and Pollution

An unfortunate synergy between climate change and other anthropogenic changes poses special challenges the Lake’s future. For example, scientists believe that melting permafrost in the Baikal watershed is a possible source of increased phosphorus and nitrogen in Lake Baikal, contributing to algal blooms. Increased melting of permafrost from climate change may also increase the release of dangerous industrial pollutants such as PCBs into the Lake (Moore et. al., 2009). 

Forest fires have also increased in numbers and intensity in the areas surrounding the Lake. Most fires are caused by careless conduct or arson, but they are worsened by a warmer climate. The ash and soot from these fires is likely contributing to blooms of algae in the Lake. In general, a warming climate is likely to exacerbate threats from increased tourism and development, erosion, and other factors. 

Damaging Projects and Proposals

Environmentalists have successfully blocked some of the most damaging proposals to exploit Baikal or pollute its waters. In 2008, environmentalists convinced President Putin to re-route an oil pipeline originally planned to come dangerously close to Baikal’s shores. In 2013, one of the most dangerous polluters, the Baikalsk Paper Mill, closed its doors forever, but left behind huge pools of dangerous sludge that are leaking into the groundwater and in serious danger from flooding or earthquake.

A Chinese-owned water bottling plant was recently built on the southern shore of the Lake in Kultuk, in an important wetlands for migratory birds. After protests across the Baikal region and Russia, the plant was blocked from opening because its environmental impact had not been properly studied. 

Mongolia has proposed to build up to 8 hydroelectric dams on the Selenga River and its tributaries, the source of 50 percent of Lake Baikal’s surface water. Fortunately, these plans are currently on hold in light of concerns expressed by the World Bank and UNESCO, but Mongolia is intent on achieving more energy independence. There are also proposals to divert water from Baikal to China by way of a massive pipeline. If approved, these projects would lower water levels in the Lake, damage precious flora and fauna, and block migration routes. 

But the most important threats facing Baikal at the moment are regulatory ones. In 2018, the water protection zone for Lake Baikal was substantially reduced, allowing considerably more development to occur in protected areas. Now, under the guise of “modernizing” the rules about discharges into the Lake, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is proposing that allowable releases of dangerous pollutants into the Lake can be increased by as much as 32 times the prior limits. Scientists at the local Limnological Institute and their allies have weighed in with ample evidence that the change would be catastrophic, but no final decision has been made. 

Further, some locals bitterly complain that rules about building new structures and boundaries of protected zones are unclear or conflict at different levels of government, so their efforts to create businesses or homes that benefit their families are endlessly blocked or mired in confusion. Rules to protect the Lake must be consistent, strong and fair.  

Mobilization Needed to Save Baikal

The combined threats of climate change, pollution, and proposals for harmful developments and regulatory changes not only threaten the health of the lake, but also represent serious risks to future economic activity and human health. A major mobilization is needed to save Lake Baikal, including urgent action by scientists, NGOs, government, and citizens. Here are some action steps that make eminent sense right now:

  • Regressive regulatory changes must be blocked and instead replaced with clear prohibitions against damaging discharges into the Lake. Also, policies regarding building in sensitive areas must be clarified so that they can be easily understood and implemented. 

  • Trash collection in the Baikal region must be dramatically improved, and major education campaigns should be initiated to reduce litter in coastal zones.

  • Strong steps should be taken to enhance eco-tourism opportunities, to provide support for businesses that adopt environmental principles, and to create standards that will help consumers validate their claims. A push toward eco-tourism should include expanded education about best practices for the use of the Lake and its surrounding trails and recreation areas.

  • The moratorium on dam building in Mongolia should be made permanent, preventing tragic harm to the Selenga River and Baikal.

  • Strong steps must be taken to prevent widespread illegal logging and forest fires, both of which are widespread. 

  • Action is required to prevent the worst effects of climate change by adopting worldwide policies to reduce carbon emissions and limit the rise in temperatures. Individuals can assist by limiting their energy use and pushing for rapid expansion of alternative energy sources such as solar and wind energy.

  • Additional study is urgently needed about anthropogenic changes in the Lake and the impact of climate change, including careful monitoring of coastal and deeper waters. It is essential that Russian and international researchers have ample resources to continue monitoring a wide variety of concerns. It is also urgent that scientific findings be communicated to policymakers and the public in a form that is easily understandable.

Right now we face critical tests of our commitment to preserve the world’s most important lake for future generations. It will be impossible to save Baikal overnight, but an alliance including scientists, environmentalists, artists, and concerned citizens can help make a real difference in safeguarding what Vladimir Rasputin called “the eternity and perfection” of the Sacred Sea. 




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Why Care About Lake Baikal?

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Why should people all over the world care about Lake Baikal? 

A lot of superlatives are attached to the crescent-shaped marvel in remote, southeastern Siberia. Oldest. Deepest. Largest by volume. The richest in endemic species. Among the clearest. But we propose a new one: most important.

Other lakes are larger in surface area, but Baikal surpasses them all in depth, with a lake floor, formed as a rift valley 25 to 30 million years ago, that’s 1642 meters (5387 feet) below the surface. All of that depth means that Baikal is deceivingly monstrous, containing more than 20 percent of the entire world’s supply of unfrozen fresh water. And unlike most deep lakes, Baikal is heavily oxygenated even near the bottom because the Lake’s water, which flows in from as many as 330 surrounding rivers, mixes thoroughly from top to bottom. 

Baikal’s enormous water supply supports thousands of plants and animals -- as many as 80 percent of them unique species living nowhere else in the world. This includes everything from the tiniest single-celled algae, to tiny organisms that filter the Lake’s water, to bright green sponges. It also includes spectacular crustaceans, unique fish species, and the world’s only true freshwater seal, or nerpa. There are more than 236 species of birds in the region, and the surrounding forests and dense taiga, much of it protected parkland, are home to bears, wolves, foxes, and dozens of other animals. 

But Baikal is not only special because of its size and its rich and diverse ecosystem. Its importance also stems from its cultural and spiritual significance. Baikal is called the “Sacred Sea” by native populations of Buryats and Evenks, who consider it a living being that must be afforded the utmost respect. These native peoples, practicing Shamanism and Buddhism or both, lived their lives in deep concert with the natural world long before the environmental movement developed in the West. And they carry out ceremonies to this day in tribute to the spirits that inhabit the Lake and its surroundings.

Whether they believe in these spirits or not, local residents and visitors respect them because they can feel Baikal’s special power, its majesty, and its ability to change from moment to moment. Its different winds are so powerful that they have their own distinct names. Its fog sweeps in and out in moments, obliterating and then revealing the landscape. Its waves can rise 4 meters during stormy conditions. Its small creatures, each one a masterpiece of creation, float and wriggle and dance hundreds of meters below the surface. Its ice forms endless patterns and textures that are miraculously complex -- and sounds of cracking that range from sublime to terrifying.  

These ineffable qualities are why Baikal is a cultural phenomenon for all of Russia and beyond. The classic ecologist and novelist Valentin Rasputin drew a connection between the “eternity and perfection” of the Sacred Sea and the vitality of rural village life. Contemporary Moscow-based composer Marina Shmotova is inspired by Baikal’s history and magnificence, and Irkutsk-based experimental musician Evgeny Masloboev creates unexpectedly beautiful music from its water and ice.

Baikal is exceptionally deep, both literally and figuratively. It is hard to imagine another waterway that inspires such reverence and awe from those who encounter it. 

It is, indeed, the Sacred Sea. And we must (re)learn how to treat it that way. 









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Cyberian Disapatch 18: Rituals by the Riverbanks

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

As the summer days grow longer and warmer, Siberians of all ages are drawn to the water -- to cool off, relax, and sometimes, perform ancient rituals. And so we found ourselves repeatedly on the banks of the Irkut River, encountering age-old rituals with decidedly contemporary implications.

Among the many peoples who emigrated or were exiled to Siberia, Poles and Belorussians are very prominent. We sadly missed the Polish celebration of Ivana Kupala Night, a pagan fertility celebration associated with the summer solstice. But we were relieved to be invited to the Belorussian version, reputed to be more mysterious and even shocking.

When we arrived along the banks of the river in the suburbs of Irkutsk, women of all ages were already gathering wildflowers and making them into garlands. A huge pile of wood promised a massive bonfire, and elaborate picnics on blankets and in makeshift tents made it eminently clear that many participants would stay until dawn, despite the promised heavy rainfall.

As darkness fell, the rituals got underway. Women crowned with elaborate wreaths of wildflowers formed a massive circle from which men were excluded. As the bonfire was lit, their faces flushed with color, and riotous dancing ensued. Next came games in which men chased women and tried to capture them. As the night wore on, drizzle escalated into rain and rain intensified into a downpour that soaked completely through clothes and shoes. The bonfire leapt ever higher, scattering sparks in all directions, and everyone bathed in the water, light and heat. 

Traditionally, it is a night for couples to test their bravery and faith to each other by leaping over the roaring fire. It is a time for women to float their wreaths on the river, and for men to catch them, winning their affections. It is also a time when women enter the forest, followed by men, to seek flowering ferns -- and the possibility of a new relationship. (If a flowering fern is found, it is a truly magical event, since ferns are not flowering plants.) In short, Ivana Kupala is an ancient fertility rite -- connected closely to nature and the seasons. And as our Siberian Belorussians proved, it still resonates very strongly today.

There are two Russian language films we can recommend that touch on Ivana Kupala. For a psychedelic, Soviet-era take on this holiday, try Vechir na Ivana Kupala, created in 1968 by Ukrainian director Yuri Ilyenko. He based his film on a classic story by Nikolai Gogol (which may have also inspired Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”). 

For more of a sense of what Ivana Kupala may have historically meant, there is a scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, Andrei Rublev, in which the painter monk Rublev stumbles upon this pagan ritual, complete with furtive nighttime coupling, in the year 1408. The scene suggests the manner in which pagan worshippers resisted Christianity for generations after it was imposed on Slavic lands from the 8th to the 13th century. For example, some icons of the Virgin Mary were disguised representations of “Damp Mother Earth,” a pagan deity adorned with distinctive six-petaled roses characteristic of pre-Christian faiths. Slavic folk religions, particularly as a synthesis of Russian Orthodox and pagan beliefs, persist to this day, and there is a revival of Slavic native faiths underway in Russia.

Only a few days later, we found ourselves at the spot where the Irkut empties into the mighty Angara -- a sacred spot for Buryats that is used by local shamans to perform their rituals. More than 15 shamans gathered for a very important task. Severe flooding had occurred in the northern part of Irkutsk Oblast, killing approximately 25 people and displacing thousands. The shamans gathered with the purpose of asking the gods to stop any more flooding and to safeguard local people from the rising waters.

During Ivana Kupala, faces flashed in the night with bright colors, vividly bringing the ritual to life. Here the shamans donned traditional vestments, also in dramatic colors, that help them enter into a trance state in which they can communicate directly with the gods, intervening on behalf of local residents. The shamans prepared offerings of tea, milk, vodka, cookies, and the meat of a sacrificial sheep. They lit special herbs and infused the area with their scent. Arrayed in a long line, they beat on ceremonial drums and chanted special prayers. And one by one, assisted by helpers, they entered into trances, hopping up and down and speaking in voices.  

The rituals of Ivana Kupala and those of the Buryat shamans are both closely linked to nature, to the seasons, to the natural rhythms of life. They also rely heavily on the forces of fire and water. 

When nature is in balance, fire and water help create fertility. The rain feeds wildflowers, couples leap over bonfires to underscore their bonds, and women’s garlands float in the current. But when nature is not in balance, the results are not the same. Right now, in northern Siberia (and other Arctic regions such as Greenland and Alaska), massive wildfires are raging unimpeded across the landscape, burning huge forests to the ground. In Southern Siberia, endless rainfall -- likely accentuated by excessive logging -- is posing a mortal threat, collapsing roads and bridges, and dumping raw sewage directly into Lake Baikal.

The traditional ecological knowledge of long-ago traditions, Slavic and Buryat, teach us to find peace with nature, feel its rhythms, and apply them to our lives. Buryat traditions in particular urge us to take only what is needed and to respect all living things around us as sacred and precious to future generations. 

The banks of the Irkut are a fine place for the “good humor mischiefs” of Ivana Kupala. But they are also a welcome spot to relearn the lessons of traditional culture and commit ourselves to basic principles that were never questioned in the past: to live in harmony with Damp Mother Earth and to preserve her fertile treasures for our children.

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Cyberian Dispatch 17: Warming Northern Baikal

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Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

At the far north of Lake Baikal, where few venture, an alliance of small tourism businesses created a slogan designed to lure more visitors: “Warm Northern Baikal.” It was a small stroke of genius, since the north is, at least in terms of temperature, noticeably colder than the south. While the ice melted long ago in the south, it’s still visible now at the northern tip of the Lake. And people are fond of joking, “We have two months of cold, and 10 months of real cold.”

The slogan works on several levels. First, it’s meant to convey that you will be welcomed warmly by the local populace, who bring a homey and personal approach to their dealings with visitors that’s different from what you will encounter in bigger cities. Second, the area is home to numerous hot springs that create oases of comfort, even when it’s -50 Celsius outside. And in July and August, the shallow edges of the Lake actually heat up, creating ideal conditions for swimming and kayaking.

But the inaction of the world to the reality of climate change is lending the slogan yet another, unintended meaning: despite its isolation and low population, northern Baikal has indisputable environmental problems associated with warming temperatures and pollution.

On the one hand, the region is eager to take the lead on turning Warm Northern Baikal into an exemplar of environmental protection, in part because they hope that will help draw more tourism. In Severobaikalsk, the largest northern city with a population of 25,000, activists hope that an emphasis on ecology will help the region stand out as a destination. They are cleaning up garbage and creating disposal stations for used plastic and batteries. The young mayor is fighting the abundant growth of spirogyra by seeking an end to the use of phosphates in detergents, a key factor in its spread in recent years.

Some innovative local residents also saved 17 hectares of land and prevented the mass development of houses by creating large plots for a small number of eco-friendly dwellings, many of which use composting toilets, water purification, solar energy, and recycled materials for insulation. The project was difficult to get approved, but the instigators hope their model will inspire others to join a new movement toward eco-friendly living.

And environmental activist Yevgeny Mariasov is leading an effort to expand the Great Baikal Trail, a network of paths that will eventually allow hikers to circumnavigate the entire Lake. The next step is creating a new, 24 kilometer section that will connect existing trails north and south of the city. His dream, along with other locals, is that the GBT will expand low-impact eco-tourism while safeguarding the Lake. The leadership of Buryatia approves of the plan and may devote funding.

At a city meeting on this subject, there were no dissenters, and work will begin this summer on the new section of the trail. But some residents complained that critical environmental topics are being overlooked. There is considerable new construction in Severobaikalsk, all connected to the city’s aging and inadequate wastewater treatment system, meaning much of the waste ends up in the Lake, contributing to the spirogyra outbreaks. One of the chief builders of Severobaikalsk vocally insisted that this is the most significant environmental threat, but it is receiving scant attention. And there was no mention of the role of the BAM, or the Baikal-Amursky Magistral Railway, in polluting the River Tyya, which flows directly into Baikal. A taxi driver told us that years ago, “only a lazy man couldn’t pull a fish out of the Tyya.” But now, he noted wistfully, there are no fish at all.

And the owner of a local guest house insisted he doesn’t need to see monitoring results to know that the water is warmer than before, contributing to the spread of spirogyra, which in recent years turned lush, sandy beaches (“We have your Thailand,” one local billboard reads) into carpets of odiferous, decaying sludge. Although scientists have warned that removal of the algae is important, there is not always enough money to do that, and it may take as much as 40 years for affected areas to recover.

Further north, in the small village of Nizhneangarsk, the local Evenk population also has warnings for the future of Baikal. Like Buryats, the native Evenk people lived nomadic lives of hunting and reindeer herding in extremely close concert with the natural world. But now, of 330 Evenks in the town, only 10 speak the native language. And with the language, the culture of respect for the natural world is also threatened. A small center for the preservation of Evenk culture struggles to teach the language to a new generation of young people, but it is a quixotic effort.

Artist Valery Kondakov, a longtime resident of Nizhneangarsk, whose father was Evenk, enumerates a long list of environmental problems facing the region: new construction of three-story apartment buildings that drain untreated wastewater into the Lake; reduced and diseased populations of omul fish in Baikal; and more frequent forest fires. But he saves his harshest words for the “barbaric cutting of trees only 100 meters from the Lake.” All around Baikal, trees are falling at an alarming rate, legally and illegally, with incalculable costs to the ecosystem. “This all happens fundamentally because of people’s indifference,” he laments.

Kondakov’s art responds to these modern problems through the lens of long-ago history. Hieroglyphs along the northern coast of Baikal prove that this region has been inhabited since at least the Stone Age, and Evenks have conducted holy rituals along its shores, on hills and in caves, for countless generations. Evoking the spirits of his ancestors, Kondakov carved a sculpture from a piece of a fallen “holy tree,” or one that was used as a sacred burial place for deceased Evenks in times gone by. He doesn’t usually paint or sculpt Baikal itself, since he’s more interested in the people who have lived and died by its shores. But one intricate sculpture, adorned with multiple time pieces, is meant to convey Baikal’s situation now, after generation upon generation of environmental equilibrium. In this piece, clocks are ticking for the Lake’s future...or worse still, have they stopped?

“Evenks have profound feelings for everything alive,” Kondakov notes. Everything has its own spirit, and everything is animate, including the fragment of a holy tree that has been transformed into an art object. As we stand with him, in the tiny village where few understand the import of his work, we recognize that the wood is not only alive, but it is speaking to us. Long-ago ancestors are speaking to us through the natural world, and the message is not comforting.

We end our trip in the far north village of Dzelinda, the location of one of the region’s hot springs. The natural spring is risky to patronize because of the prevalence of disease-carrying ticks and hungry bears, so we visit the man-made pools for a long and relaxing soak. There are three basins to choose from...lukewarm, warm, and scalding hot.

A man who drove more than 2000 kilometers from Novosibirsk bravely enters the hottest pool. He emerges smiling, but with beet red legs that were burnt by the intense heat. Then he urges his son, about 7 years old, to go in also. We cringe, hoping the small boy won’t be injured, but the father insists, “We didn’t drive all this way to avoid the hot water!”

We are reminded of the man, in the city meeting in Severobaikalsk, who insisted on enlisting young people in a patriotic effort to declare the city the cleanest around all of Baikal. It was a noble idea, but we looked around and noticed that very few young people were in attendance. We know that some, like Yevgeny Mariosov’s son Simon, have returned to the city to create innovative and eco-friendly businesses, like Simon’s coffeeshop, “Geography.” The future may indeed lie with this cadre of young people, willing to commit to the future of tiny, distant but environmentally critical locations around Baikal.

So far, Warm Northern Baikal has resisted construction of massive hotels and other outsized developments for large numbers of visitors, but it is said that the governor of this region is interested in allying with China to build a landing strip for jets, along with large hotels to accommodate a major new influx of tourists.

At the hot spring, the father pushed his son toward the scalding water, and the young boy looked at the father quizzically, as if to say, “Why would you want me to burn myself?” And he pulled away repeatedly, resisting his father’s entreaties.

In Warm Northern Baikal, environmental activists like Yevgeny Mariasov have pointed the region in the right direction, but the next generation will ultimately make the most important decisions.

At the Dzelinda hot spring, each pool represented a possible future. Who are the young people who will choose that future? And which pool will they choose?




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Old Pictures from Paradise

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Todd Forsgren

I recently made a limited-edition artist book about that is a sustained consideration of what the first camera obscura images ever observed by prehistoric man might have looked like.  I call the series Old Pictures from Paradise. My paradise is a tropical rainforest. A jungle full of dazzling biodiversity and impenetrable biomass—thick foliage, tangled vines, gnarled tree trunks. All of this life evokes an Edenic, primordial world where early humans first roamed (though scientific evidence is more complex, and certainly other environments, such as savannas, were also vital in human evolution).

I found myself in just such a place on a recent trip to a Central American rainforest. After I finished making the pictures I’d come for, I had a few sheets of 4x5 film left, so I pulled out my pinhole camera and used the film to photograph the leaves and branches of the jungle. It was so dense that only a sliver of sky could be seen (in a typical rainforest canopy, less than 5% of the sun’s light makes it to the forest’s floor). In this dark damp space and with the tiny aperture, the exposures took fifteen minutes.

As the film exposed, I found my thoughts drifting to human origins, and I wondered about the very first time someone saw a photographic image. Photography began with the camera obscura, literally a “dark room” with a small hole on one wall which light passes through to create an image on the opposite wall. It was first described in writing about 2500 years ago, but this photographic phenomenon was certainly observed even earlier. A tiny hole in a prehistoric hut might have created an image similar to the one I was exposing. It must have seemed like magic.

My photographs were soft and lush, capturing the rainforest without taking away that elusive feeling I found so compelling. The pictures showed a landscape between known and unknown. I dreamed of traveling to jungles around the world to make a series of photographs like this. But as I showed the images to a few friends and colleagues, again and again another artist’s name came up—Thomas Struth. His series New Pictures from Paradise featured screens of green and tangled growth remarkably similar to my own compositions.

To make his photographs, Struth visited jungles around the world. Unlike my soft pinhole images, though, his are amazingly sharp and detailed (and printed at almost life-size). This scale and clarity, two hall- marks of the work of Struth’s cohort of photographers from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, push the bounds of photography’s potential as an analytic tool. Yet Struth sites incredibly varied influences to make this series—from what he saw as the Maya relationship to the jungle and “Der Deutsche Wald” (The German Forest) to Japanese gardens and even his practice of Tai Chi—all while striving to make images that he has called ahistorical and with a non-hierarchical structure.“I wanted to make photographs in which everything was so complex and detailed that you could look at them forever and never see everything,” Struth claims.

Yet while I was standing in a gallery surrounded by his impeccable and monumental prints, I could only think of photography’s failure: all this clarity, and still just a mere shadow of the feeling one gets in an actual rainforest. Seeing the white walls beyond in combination with the
dry climate-controlled air of the gallery, I found the stillness of Struth’s images jolting. His odd blend of precise measurement and vague mysticism left me feeling befuddled. I was struck by how hard it is to find wilderness on a planet full of over seven billion humans (and interestingly, most of Struth’s images aren’t of pristine old growth forest, but secondary growth likely the result of human impact on the landscape).

Rather than ignore Struth’s remarkable series, I chose to use it for my own series. I re-photographed all thirty-six of his New Pictures from Paradise with a pinhole camera onto fast medium-format film (which calls attention to the photographic emulsion). This appropriation takes what Struth made so precise and monumental and reimagines it as intimate and mysterious. The blurring simplifies the forest’s complexity, yet this simplification makes the images even more inscrutable. Beyond Struth and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, this technique of appropriation deliberately engages another critical photographic context of the last forty years: the Pictures Generation.

Photographers of the Pictures Generation, reflecting on a postmodern world saturated by mass media, are known for their use of appropriation to challenge notions of authorship and cultural tropes. For example, in her series After Walker Evans, Sherrie Levine re-photographed an iconic catalog of Evans’s work, and in so doing, presented a commentary on the commodification of the art object. Similarly, Richard Prince reclaimed the iconic landscapes of the American West from Marlboro cigarettes by appropriating their advertisements. My use of another artist’s work serves to blur my own authorship as I try to return these images to the unknown prehistoric human who first observed photography. My gesture is an attempt to “unclaim” paradise or “uncommodify” wilderness, while recognizing this as an impossibility.

This series is a reflection on the elusiveness of the unknown in today’s hyper-documented world. Certainly, my shift from sharp to soft photographs is not new. It has been playing out throughout the history of photography. This back-and-forth seems at odds with the preoccupation for innovation in the medium, whether through changes in technology or in the ways we think about photographic images (and evidenced by the cultural obsession with progress seen in the countless exhibitions and series that, like Struth’s, continue to claim “new” in their titles). Yet our use of the camera is also ever more nostalgic: a tool to express longing and desire as well as to create mementos of the past. It is within this tension that these images dwell. I am trying to conjure a mystery and magic that toggles between past and future while traversing the tightrope of both the analytic and expressive potential of the medium.