The Path Toward "A Tree for the Forest"

The installation of A Tree for the Forest, the new exhibition by Atlantika Collective members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac, has now begun at the Municipal Gallery at Ibrahim’s Khan in Pafos, Cyprus. It was an occasion for exhilaration, nervousness, hard work and considerable coffee consumption. It was also a moment to fully acknowledge the creative vision of curator Yiannis Sakellis, whose strategy for hanging the exhibition proved to be an excellent one. 

In this exhibition, the artists focus on the role of trees in the climate crisis. The work is simultaneously despairing and hopeful. It zeroes in on the tragic loss of forested areas to wildfires in recent years, but it also takes careful note of the new scientific discovery that trees communicate extensively with each other in underground networks, sending nutrients and warning of danger. “Mother trees” also provide essential support for younger trees in their vicinity. This discovery offers the promise that we can better protect our forests, which have the potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. 

The main photographs by both artists are wide panoramas. Gabriela’s works are all more than 4.5 meters in length (that’s almost 15 feet stateside), and one reaches to 4.7 meters, or almost 15.5 feet. This easily surpasses the widest print that either artist has ever made. And the artists are interested in inquiring of other photographers who may see this post whether they have ever printed this wide, or know of someone who has? Mark’s works are not shabby in the length department either, reaching beyond 2.5 meters despite their origins on cell phones. 

Curator Yiannis Sakellis devised an ingenious method of hanging the works that involves panels of board joined together in one long strip. The long scrolls are then clipped to the panels and hoisted onto the walls of the gallery. A total of three large works were hung today, with the rest of the 10 images slated for hanging tomorrow. 

The exhibition also includes a multi-channel video installation, titled Mother Trees, that will be presented in a novel manner. Several video monitors will be placed flat on a table and will be viewed from above. The video includes images of trees that were captured in Prague and Paphos. It also includes original music and found sounds of communication, including sounds that were recorded as part of the Conet Project. The Conet Project is a famous set of recordings of shortwave radio broadcasts that contain instructions to espionage operatives around the world. 

Finally, the exhibition will include an installation of objects found at the scene of wildfires in the vicinity of Paphos, including Tala, Lemona, and Psathi. The found objects include almonds, olives, pomegranates and tree branches that were burned in the fires. It also includes tree sap that oozed out of trees when they were exposed to high temperatures.

In their statement to accompany the exhibition, the artists note that Cyprus is a hotspot in the accelerating climate crisis. It is among the parts of the world that are increasing most rapidly in temperature, and it experienced the worst wildfire in its history this year. 

They also explain that the title of the exhibition, A Tree for the Forest, is intended to emphasize the agency of each individual in responding to the crisis. In fact, the artists call on each person who encounters the exhibition to think of one additional action they can take to mitigate the climate crisis. “We can all stand tall, like a mother tree, connected to those around us, providing essential support for healthy forests and a healthy planet,” Bulisova and Isaac wrote. 

Social Justice, BLM, and Atlantika: Who Speaks for Me?

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“Before I learned to speak the grown-ups in my world stole my language, my right to speak. My mind has always been jumbled with images of Satan and God and my first memory is of fog and images no one else could see. I stopped looking in the mirror when I was 11, until I went into foster care in high school, because my mother told me I had 'seven plus one demons' in me and I could see them so I stopped looking at myself. Can you see that demon to the right? Mocking me. When I turned 13 I started having migraines that felt like if I opened my eyes someone, one of those demons, was stabbing me in my skull all the way down to my eyes. I had no words; just fear, pain and demons reminding me I was damaged. Not even God could love me.” — Taylar Nuevelle

Social Justice, BLM, and Atlantika is a series of posts by Atlantika members that focus on the critical issues of race and social justice. The year 2020 has tragically brought together a pandemic with outsized impacts on communities of color and ongoing protests against the murder of George Floyd and the many others who have lost their lives as a result of racist violence. As our mission statement makes clear, Atlantika members have always valued “social responsibility, community, and nurturing a contemporary humanism through art.” However, in the wake of recent events, which are critical to the future of the nation and the world, Atlantika has renewed its commitment to make racial and social justice a lasting focal point -- and to do our part to bring about a powerful movement for change.

Atlantika Collective members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac have done extensive work on issues related to mass incarceration, the racist policy that inordinately targets people of color, subjecting them to lengthy prison sentences, often for nonviolent crimes. Their work has included in-depth and intimate accounts of people’s encounters with the criminal justice system, the difficulties faced by returning citizens trying to reintegrate into society, and a special focus on the impact of mass incarceration on children. In this project, titled Who Speaks for Me, the duo collaborated with Taylar Nuevelle, a Black activist who served four-and-a-half years in prison and now advocates to end the “trauma to prison pipeline” for justice-involved women with mental illness.

Please be certain to read the other posts in this series thus far:

• Bill Crandall: Minding the Traces

• Billy Friebele and Yam Chew Oh: Social Justice, BLM, and Atlantika

Gabriela Bulisova, Mark Isaac and Taylar Nuevelle

One of the most shocking injustices associated with mass incarceration is the fact that our prisons have become a dumping ground for people who have experienced severe trauma, resulting in mental health issues. Instead of receiving the needed treatment, they are subjected to additional abuse and mistreatment. This project is a collaboration with Taylar Nuevelle, who served four-and-a-half years after she was charged with breaking and entering the house of a former girlfriend and attempting to commit suicide. Taylar was diagnosed with PTSD, trauma, and severe anxiety disorder, and a pre-sentence report recommended that she be treated rather than sent to prison, but the judge overruled this recommendation. In prison, rather than receiving treatment, she was raped, locked in solitary confinement and placed on suicide watch.

We adopted a novel visual and storytelling strategy that allowed Taylar to personally represent her experiences. First, we photographed her and created digital negatives. Taylar then took the negatives and distressed them to represent her abuse. For example, she used bleach as a means of depicting the times her mother scrubbed her skin with a metal brush and bleach. We passed the images back and forth, working on them until we fully represented her pain. Some of the photographs also incorporate text from her writings and diaries. The final images expose the manner in which our criminal justice system has dehumanized those with mental health issues. By sharing her deeply traumatic and painful experiences with us, Taylar is opening the door for others to find their voices, challenge societal stigma and bring about much-needed reforms. She now leads a non-profit named Who Speaks for Me? that is devoted to ending the “trauma to prison pipeline” for women with mental health issues.

“I’m not afraid to stare down the demons. I’m getting ready. The head is born first then the rest comes. The fog will lift and one day I will walk free and clear. I am giving life to myself and will bury that child born into demon-laced fog and pain.” — Taylar Nuevelle“

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“There is not one day that goes by that I do not look at my neck and those small specks of discoloration from birth and not remember. I stand in the mirror fixing my hair, brushing my teeth and saving the jewelry for last because then I have to look and remember. Ajax, S.O.S. steel wool pads and my siblings watching as my mother scrubbed my neck raw down to the white meat. Blood and white and no pain, because she saw dirt where there was just a skin discoloration. 'You always filthy. Now this tha color your neck ‘sposed ta be.' Blood, white meat and no tears--a mother who scrubbed me clean.” — Taylar Nuevelle

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See my eye? How many times did Ma make my eyes swell shut? I lost count by age 10. Life for black women and girls is very hard. I can see, not clearly, but I can see I never stood a chance. And I cannot make anyone love me or hurt me.”—Taylar Nuevelle

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“I laugh because I am lost and I see the fog demons. Look closer, I am not laughing I am grinding my teeth something I started doing at age two. The grinding focuses my mind and so I am not lost completely to the demons that grow from the fog of violence I was created by and hatred I was born in to.” — Taylar Nuevelle

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“I love butterflies. Always, but especially after my son Kalil was born and ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ was our favorite book. See the butterflies above me? I am becoming that beautiful butterfly because I am learning to nourish myself and transform.” — Taylar Nuevelle

“Sepia creeps in because my mind and body were bruised beyond their actual years. I have lived many lives and the aged me is inside of my cracked mind and soul that will never know youth. Sepia creeps in so you can see where I’ve been — never young; never a child. Made a woman before I knew what being a child was all about.” — Taylar Nuevelle

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"This is my chest and it bleeds from the inside out. My disability is not apparent, yet it has been present and acute since childhood. As a child I remember when I first started self-harming—I was in the second grade. I used to take straight pins and stick them through the flesh in my chest, cover myself in a shirt and go about my day as the pins tore into my skin. This was nothing compared to the physical violence I endured almost every day from my mother and/or stepfather. The straight pins turned to razors and scissors, and I found release from slicing and cutting other parts of my body. Sometimes life is too painful to carry, and I feel like I might explode and slice here and cut there, and the pain inside will be transformed. I don’t use pins, knives, razors or scissors on myself anymore. I had to stop because I take a blood thinner for a hereditary clotting disorder. My ability to self-harm has been snatched from me, but not the desire. The ache of life’s traumas is etched in my memory and carved in my skin—there will never be relief." — Taylar Nuevelle

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"Mug shot of what would be seen of my trauma-to-prison pipeline. Outside the nurse’s office, when I was in elementary school, was a poster titled, ‘Children Learn What They Live.’ I saw this poster often from kindergarten until fourth grade because I became nauseous and vomited often as a child. As I waited outside the office I would read the poster and stop after line seven. Then I would think, ‘There are no good things in my life.’ I knew this by age five. Over the years I have thought about that poster often and then I was given a copy one day while in prison. If mug shots could speak mine would tell you how much I understood as a child about being abused and how often people looked away at the obvious signs that I was living a nightmare. I believed I did not deserve goodness, kindness or gentle touches—Love." — Taylar Nuevelle

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"Most scars are easily hidden, but not from the mind—not from my memory. My mother used to burn me with hot combs. These are iron combs placed in fire to straighten the hair and sometimes she burned me with curling irons. Then I went to prison, and there was a woman that worked in the hair salon and one day she burned me on purpose with a flat iron right next to the spot my mother had burned me as a child. This woman in prison laughed and told the other inmates she did it because she did not like my voice and all the hair I had on my head. My mother used to burn me saying, 'All this hair‘n you got a nerve ta be tenda headed. Didn’t git all this hair from my family it’s from yo’ fatha’s side.' Abusers despise me for things I cannot control. I can hide many of my scars, but not from my mind, and it cracks over and over because my memory burns." — Taylar Nuevelle

"The abuse in my family is generational. My great- nephew was born, while I was incarcerated, to my niece who is my older sister’s daughter. When my niece was born, I was in foster care, but I went to the hospital the day she was born and I whispered in her ear, “I will never let anyone hurt you." — Taylar Nuevelle

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"After prison, people who you have loved a lifetime have no idea of how trauma before prison merges with prison trauma, and they act and do things accordingly. Twenty-two years of friendship and love. Goodbyes hurt but are also freeing. My beautiful lips (yes, they are beautiful to me) show I’m determined. I can let go. I deserve people in my life as lovely as my lips that ask, 'Who Speaks for Me?'" — Taylar Nuevelle

"I am just learning that it doesn’t get any better just because the sun shines and the rainbows appear. Rainbows and sunshine are not love if they come after you’ve been raped, beaten and told you are worthless—unlovable. Rainbows can be deceitful like abusers." — Taylar Nuevelle

Exquisite Corps: Atlantika Edition

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….

Cyberian Dispatch 6: 114 Gigabytes of Ice

Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

Most people who have never visited Siberia imagine it as a vast territory locked in permafrost. In fact, it was far from that when we arrived in September. We often walked about Irkutsk in shirtsleeves admiring the flowers and enjoying the warm breezes. Temps slowly diminished over time, but were still very tolerable into early November.

When we traveled to Buryatia last week, a remote area on the east side of Lake Baikal, we came prepared for the worst. New thermal boots, thick hats, extra layers, mittens the size of boxing gloves. But most of that was for nothing, since the weather was still cooperating. The temps were relatively balmy for this time of year, hovering between -10 Celsius in the night and +7 during the day (between 14 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit). We left the mittens at our guest house, shed layers, and even removed our coats during hikes.

But...it’s still Siberia, and that means the appearance of ice. Ice is now omnipresent along the coast of Baikal. Its small bays are crystalline. Its nearby wetlands are glazed. Memorable icicles dangle from shrubs, trees, and wiry debris. The undulating grasses of its tributaries are viewable through a transparent screen. And along its shores, the frozen spray forms a winter-long record of the Lake’s waves and the wakes of passing boats.

Unless you’ve been confined to the tropics, everyone is familiar with ice. You know its color, its texture, the threat to safety it can pose. But Baikal’s ice is distinctive, an experience unto itself. A natural artwork that manages to outdo any possible human exploit.

It’s clear, white, gray, black, sometimes in rainbow colors. It’s in crystals, patterns, outlines, layers. It grips plant life, bubbles, and rocks in an unyielding, graceful headlock.

What’s more, it’s already often thick enough to walk on. We hesitantly stepped onto the frozen shallows of wetlands, fearful of falling even a few inches. But locals, knowing its strength from experience, plunged without any qualm into the middle of deep pools.

In art school, learning video, Mark’s class had an assignment to use as many video filters as possible in one short film. The goal was to get it out of the students’ systems once and for all and get back to the basics of shooting.

Maybe that’s what our week in Buryatia was all about, at least in part. For a full week, we celebrated the unparalleled allure of frozen water. We photographed it morning, noon and eve. We have at least 114 gigabytes of Buryatia’s ice frozen on our hard drives.

Is it out of our system now? That is extremely unlikely.

Where The Rivers Come Together

Zhanna Oganesyan

By Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac

As part of their series titled “Race and Postcolonialism in Ukraine and North America,” the journal Krytyka, an intellectual monthly magazine focused on contemporary thought regarding Ukraine and the region, has published an article and photographs by Atlantika Collective members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac. The project, created as part of their Fulbright grant in 2017-18, focuses on the unexpected diversity in the Southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.

https://krytyka.com/en/race-and-postcolonialism-ukraine-and-north-america/articles/where-rivers-come-together