What is a somatic earth artist?
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I’d like to share a bit about how I came to this identity as a somatic earth artist since it’s in the title of my forth-coming book, EarthBodyBoat: Queer Journey Of A Somatic Earth Artist [more here].
I was seeking a way to describe what I do, I’m not just a dancer, or just a visual artist, what about the performative art and embodied practice I do in nature, where does the writing I do fit into describing my work?
My work is both deeply rooted and yet flexible in its forms of expression. The combination of words–somatic, earth, artist, hold all of this for me–the practice of embodiment, spiritual communion with nature, and the artmaking itself.
The word somatic, in simplest terms, is another word for body. But more broadly, it’s an understanding that the body is a living organism. In a somatic practice, we explore bringing our awareness to moving from inside our body rather than how our body looks to others or regarding the body as an object to be used as a machine.
When I do somatic practices in nature, I can’t help but discover the sensations of interconnectedness with the organism of earth and all of nature. Moving simultaneously from inner impulses while allowing the energies of the place and elementals to also move through with me or I with them, I becoming we and then I again. In this regard embodiment can be psychedelic meaning that everything feels connected and kaleidoscopic, endlessly morphing. There are worlds within, both beautiful and devastated, both wild and domesticated. One moment I’m walking upright and civilized the next I’m on my back, feet in the sky and I’ve become a blade of grass. The next I’m the whole forest shimmering and singing with the choir. The vibration of the singing stirs emotions of devotion and stories of separation and my arms and fists needing to do an anger dance. Then I’m feeling an impulse to collect tiny sticks and pile them under a rock while making clicking squirrel noises. I discover then the presence of an old man in my hands and the shape of my spine. He came with stories without words; instead, he offers purpose to my activity of gathering sticks. Then I rest on the ground for some time just breathing and find myself absorbed in the consciousness that lives in my pelvis with all of its stories and sensations. There’s a continuous moving between myself as Ahjo and being a body part of whatever landscape I happen to be in.
It’s been helpful for me to validate and ground these so-called non-ordinary spiritual experiences by translating them into other art mediums of poetry, prose and composite photography–a kind of photography where I can layer many images, allowing for the visualization of these experiences of shifting identity. My book, EarthBodyBoat is designed in its layout to reflect this–words and images and multiple voices of identity interact in the same way I actually experience life.
The practice of being fluid with nature has deeply touched my sense of being a creature beyond gender and helped me to come into my non binariness or more accurately, my plurality. EarthBodyBoat: Queer Journey of a Somatic Earth Artist shows the roots of my changing identity, the journey itself rather queer.
(to find out more about my InBodyNature practice go here)
