Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Sep 22, 2024

September


"Because it is always tempting to over emphasize autonomy and independence, these helpless creatures are here to remind us that no one is, in the end, 'self-made'; we are all heavily in someone's debt. We realize that life depends - quite literally - on the capacity for love. (...) All this she will later forget and they will be unable or unwilling to convey to her." Alain de Botton (2017). The Course of Love. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). September 6, 2024.

Jun 20, 2024

Solstice


I've been discovering more affordances for the materials that nature (and people) offer me. At this time of the year there is an abundance of colours, textures, forms, and smells to choose from. They open up many possibilities for creation. Marking the Solstice, I finished the weaving of the last tapestry, prepared the loom weft and started the initial selection of natural materials for the next work. 

Suzane Simard's book Finding the Mother Tree as been traveling with me. In it, I just discover that if you cut the leader shoot "the pines won't know how to grow toward the sky". 

Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) June 20,  2024.

May 16, 2024

Biodiversity

«Biodiversity is the driver of the farm. If I'm asked "What do you grow?", I say "Biodiversity". The vegetables are a by-product. (...) What I'm trying to do here is to copy the forest." To make farming work, "we need to restore a forest soil ecology, aligning farming with the original ecosystem. (...) Small farmers around the world are seeking such solutions, and have come together to build a global agroecology movement." George Monbiot (2023). Regenesis: Feeding the World without devouring the Planet. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) May 12, 2024.

Apr 7, 2024

April

"When you tape into the arts to foster a meditative state, the places in your brain responsible for judgment and personal criticism are quieted in your prefrontal cortex, and you can assess a more generous, perspective-taking point of view." Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross (2023). Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Obra de Cruz-Filipe. Exposição Modo de Ver na Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. 

Jul 18, 2023

July


"When you can see yourself from outside, you contemplate existence with more humility and perceptiveness than when (...) you imagined yourself as the best self, your city as the best city, and what you called life as the only conceivable life." Rafael Argullol cited by Irene Vallejo (2022). Papyrus: the invention of books in the ancient world. Photo by Monica Pinheiro, free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Oct 28, 2022

October

"There are certain fundamental rules that all ecosystems must follow. Energy, usually harnessed in from sunlight or, rarely, from the breakdown of minerals, must flow into the ecosystem to replace what is lost through activity and decay. The organisms that can access this energy are the producers, and those that cannot are the consumers, feeding on other living things in order to survive.” Thomas Halliday (2022). Otherlands: A World in the Making. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Oct 5, 2022

September

"Cloth can come from plants (cotton, linen), animals (sheep, silkworm), and, since the nineteenth century, from synthetic material and processes, namely plant-derived celulose liquefied and then extruded into strands (rayon) and various chemical recombinations of petroleum (nylon, spandex, polyester)." Sofi Thanhauser (2022). Worn: A People's History of Clothing. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Sep 23, 2022

September

"Because digital minimalists spend so much less time connected than their peers, its easy to think of their lifestyles as extreme, but the minimalists would argue that this perception is backward: what's extreme is how much time everyone else spends staring at their screens." Cal Newport (2020). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Jul 18, 2022

The last layer


"Whereas labour involves care and sustenance, work is the domain of creation and creativity. It calls on craft and skill and vision. It is about the dreaming of dreams and the making of things." Tim Jackson (2021). Post Growth: Life After Capitalism. Tapestry (July 2022). 

Photo of tapestry (80 x 102 cm) by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Jul 14, 2022

July


"Is art resistance? Can you plant a garden to stop a war? It depends how you think about time. It depends what you think a seed does, if it’s tossed into fertile soil. But it seems to me that whatever else you do, it’s worth tending to paradise, however you define it and wherever it arises." Olivia Laing cited in Maria Popova «Gardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise». Makes me want to read the book Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (2021). Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use it if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

May 27, 2022

May

"Uma imagem, pintada, esculpida, fotografada, construída e emoldurada, é igualmente um palco, o local para uma encenação. O que o artista põe nesse local e o que o espectador vê encenado nele, empresta à imagem uma qualidade dramática, como se fosse capaz de prolongar a existência através de uma história cujo início o espectador perdeu e cujo final o artista desconhece." Alberto Manguel (2020). Ler Imagens: em que pensamos quando olhamos para arte.

Photo by Monica Pinheiro (STP20220527). License CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Apr 10, 2022

April

"The spaces in which we can enjoy privacy have shrunk. We need consciously to create privacy zones in order to claw back some areas in which creativity and freedom can take flight unimpeded.” Carissa Véliz (2020). Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data. Picture taken Abril 3, 2022, by Monica Pinheiro. You are free to use it if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Apr 9, 2022

April

"Some big tech became big by plundering our data without asking for permission (…) we were told that it was necessary for our gadgets to keep on working as they do (…).” Although “[w]e know that it is possible to have cutting-edge tech gadgets without privacy invasions.” Carissa Véliz (2020). Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data. Photo taken Abril 3, 2022, by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

April

"The history of rights is, to a large extent, the history of progressively recognizing that human beings are not resources to exploit, but individuals to respect." Carissa Véliz (2020). Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data. Image: «Forest in the City», Abril 8, 2022, by Monica Pinheiro. You are free to use it if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Mar 24, 2022

March

 

"The cunning of uncertainty suspends routine. (…) It prepares one for surprises that come with increasing order of complexity in which non-linear dynamics reign." It "sends one back to consider context, the framing that holds but also constraints." Helga Nowotony (2016). The Cunning of Uncertainty. 

Photo os tapestry (78 x 98 cm) by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Mar 12, 2022

March

 

"Turning points in a life that seemed set on a predictable path suddendly emerge. (...) a reality check sets in. Once past certainties have collapsed, one begins to look at the world with different eyes. Emotions change. (...) The cunning of uncertainty lets in the unexpected. It makes room for the new, even if the new is often made from clever and unexpected recombinations of already existing elements. Poised on the threshold between the present and the unknowable future, it invites us to join the dance." Helga Nowotony (2016). The Cunning of Uncertainty. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Feb 20, 2022

February

"(...) I can think of no better form of personal involvement than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden (...) organically, is improving a piece of the world. (...) A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set [her or] his mind decisively against what is wrong with us." Wendell Berry (2021). What I Stand for Is What I Stand On. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Dec 31, 2021

Assemblages

 
«Assemblages are open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them. They show us potential histories in the making. (…) Assemblages don’t just gather lifeways; they make them. Thinking through assemblages urges us to ask: How do gatherings sometimes become “happenings,” that is, greater than the sum of their parts? If history without progress is indeterminate and multidimensional, might assemblages show us it’s possibilities?» Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

December

"Humans, pines, and fungi make living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others: multispecies worlds."  Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. 
 
20220103 note: pinus pinaster and pinus pinea descriptions in European Atlas of Forest Tree Species (2016): https://ies-ows.jrc.ec.europa.eu/efdac/download/Atlas/pdf/Pinus_pinaster.pdf; https://ies-ows.jrc.ec.europa.eu/efdac/download/Atlas/pdf/Pinus_pinea.pdf .

Dec 30, 2021

December

"Patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather. (...) This turns out to be a method that might revitalize political economies inside them, and not just for humans. Assemblages cannot hide from capital and the state; they are sites for watching how political economy works." Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).