Open Letter to @extinctsymbol

Today I sent a letter to x@extinctionsymbol.info, the email address for extinctionsymbol.info and @extinctsymbol on twitter with subject heading: "join forces? breakthrough in my project because of symbol!!"

Hello!

I'm so excited about the extinction symbol, which I only learned about the other day after reading Daniel Smith's review of Elizabeth Kolbert's book in Harper's.

Thank you for reposting my tweets.

I'm writing because the extinction symbol is exactly the breakthrough I feel the Human Body Project needs! 

I've been doing the Human Body Project (humanbodyproject.org) for more than 8 years. 

In a nutshell: To share and create a space for vulnerability, I show up naked and unscripted in performance+on the street+writing/showing up authentically in blog, social media. 

Vulnerable body=vulnerable planet=solidarity with world's most vulnerable=how do you not get that we're all in the same boat?! 

Yesterday's vigil was my 29th monthly Vulnerability Vigil.

The Human Body Project is non-violent direct action/be the change meets street performance/performance art meets cultural antidotal therapy/healing meets decolonization meets more interdisciplinary hooha.

I have long thought that the Vulnerability Vigils should and will become a movement. So far the HBP has been a small, fringey, but powerful thing. But the extinction symbol is exactly the non-verbal link/movement kicker-in-the-butt the project needs. Naked body(ies) + extinction symbol = totally sums it up!!

A little more background: in performance, I am totally naked and unscripted. On the street, in a gesture of gentleness to those affronted by nudity, I hold a sign. The sign in the past has had one word meant to evoke understanding of our mutual vulnerability. I really have wrestled with using even one word because the ethos of the project has also been that experience is the point not separation with words. Hence my excitement with the extinction symbol!!

I'm not sure whom I'm addressing, but how might we join forces? I am planning to use the symbol in future vigils.

Much much gratitude, Tasha

p.s. I'm gonna post this on my blog as an open letter.

-- 

Tasha Diamant, M.Ed.

Creator of humanbodyproject.org

Follow me on twitter @HumanBodyProj

"Like" the Human Body Project Facebook page

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." A. Einstein

"The medium is the message." M. McLuhan

Reflections on Extinction: Or what does standing naked on the street have to do with Earth Day?

"And there you have it...: consume, screw, kill. The Homo sapiens way." 

This is Daniel Smith in the May 2014 Harper's magazine summing up the key problem in Elizabeth Kolbert's book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. 

In my own way, I have also diagnosed this problem, hence my non-violent direct action/social media/performance project.

Consume, Screw, Kill: The origins of today's mass extinction is a great article that is, unfortunately, only available to subscribers. I haven't read Kolbert's book but I regularly follow her work covering the "ecological-degradation beat" (Smith) in the New Yorker. 

As Smith puts it, "five times in prehistory things went truly pear-shaped for the living." E.g., in "explain it to me like I'm a six-year-old" language: when the dinosaurs all died, that kind of thing. The five past mass extinctions took place over tens of thousands of years. The sixth extinction refers to the one we're creating right now. Apparently it'll only take us a few hundred years to finish up.

Smith: "The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based organization that monitors the conservation status of more than 71,000 species lists nearly 30 per cent of them as threatened... The widely agreed upon benchmark for a mass-extinction event is a loss of 75 per cent of the planet's bio-mass... if the IUCN's assessment can be taken as a guide to the future—and few doubt that it can, unless extraordinary political and economic measures are taken—the Big Five could become the Big Six as early as 2400 AD."

Through Smith, I also learned of the twitter feed @extinctsymbol: "This symbol represents the extinction crisis. Please create it wherever you can to raise awareness of the rapidly accelerating collapse of global biodiversity." 

Here's a selection from today's feed:

Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is completely out of control

The Ridgway's hawk is a endangered species. Island of Hispaniola. 

Human life expectancy linked to extinctions 

Extinction crisis: rising sea levels will submerge thousands of islands

I also learned about a Swedish geneticist, Svante Pääbo, who is working to identify a "madness gene." Writes Smith, "Kolbert takes great pains to point out there is something innately immoderate about Homo sapiens."

I don't disagree but I feel the need to add: a) there exist many innately gentle people; b) "indigenous" "matriarchal" societies have existed (some still do) whose people live much more in tune with nature and cause minimal damage; and c) there also exist people, like me, the @extinctsymbol people and many others, who are purposefully working against this immoderation.

I read an article like Smith's and I look at the world surrounding me and I do see insanity. How do people care so very much about getting rid of their muffin tops or what's going on with the Real Housewives when, um, more important things are going on? Why are people confused about why I'm compelled to do what I do? 

My own understanding, though, is that people aren't so much insane as repressed/oppressed and desirous of comfort. 

Currently the most harmful people on the planet, North Americans, are, by and large, non-violent, law-abiding and tolerant. They are also relatively well-informed (most are, on some level, aware of the basic dire facts) and, still, mostly uninterested in going beyond how they have been trained to behave. The disconnection between knowledge and taking responsibility exists because of what I think of as tribal forces. I.e., my take on tribal behaviour=repressed/oppressed+desirous of comfort.

The whole law-abiding, non-violent, tolerant thing has its points, for sure. But it is based on a trust of/deference to a not-to-be-too-closely-examined-or-questioned "them," which unconsciously becomes a this-is-how-we-do-things (as opposed to we-do-this-because-otherwise-we'd-probably-get-fired-and/or-ostracized), aligned with a handy access to private property (unless, of course, you're homeless or poor, which, needless to say, means you're invisible to the tribe) where one can shut the door on most intrusions. (The fact that so many, once inside, are stuck in their own addictions and/or family dysfunction is related, but another story.)

For me, the absolutely most painful and difficult part of doing the Human Body Project is the feeling of going against my tribe. Without going into detail, I have experienced painful ostracism and I know I also self-ostracize a lot of the time to avoid re-experiencing it. Going against my tribe is why I feel so desperately nervous every time I post a blog or show up on the street for a vigil. I'm writing this the day before I will be doing a vigil and I am feeling very alone.

I've said this before but if I could do what I really want to do (fucking bliss schmiss), I'd be running around naked throwing eggs at everything except kids and trees. I'd start with my own fucking split-level suburban "glass house" and my gas-guzzling Honda Odyssey. I'm as complicit and corrupt as every other adult person in this culture. But, dang, my own kids live in that house and drive in that vehicle. Holy fucking paradoxical stuckness! No wonder my egg-throwing project hasn't started yet.

So when Smith refers to "extraordinary political and economic measures" I do not feel very hopeful. Because extraordinary measures require extraordinary behaviours and extraordinary behaviours tend to be taboo and the clever consumer tribe is not only behaving very much as it should, they have set it up so perfectly that even if a member intentionally misbehaves and wants out, it's quite possible she still has to live in a bank-mortgaged, electrical-heated, split-level, suburban house and drive a gas-guzzling Honda Odyssey (and send out desperate messages on social media from an iMac...)

Invitation: tomorrow's Earth Day Vulnerability Vigil is from 5-6 pm on Blanshard St between Finlayson and Tolmie across from the Mayfair Mall. I'm always grateful when people join me. 

Earth Day 2014 Vulnerability Vigil

Earth Day Human Body Project Vulnerability Vigil

Naked Earth by an anonymous Human Body Project participant/artist.

When: Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 5-6 pm

Where: Blanshard/Patricia Bay Hwy. between Finlayson and Tolmie across from Mayfair Mall, Victoria

What: In the Human Body Project, by showing up naked and unscripted, I share an experience of authenticity and vulnerability with audiences.

• Once a month I hold a Vulnerability Vigil in a public space; anyone is welcome to join me.
• In keeping with the Human Body Project ethos, I show up naked; people who join me can be as dressed as they want to be.
• We hold a sign in front of us as a gesture of gentleness to those who may be affronted by public nudity.
• The sign is one word chosen to evoke understanding of our mutual vulnerability.

Why: My husband recently wrote this about my work, which is as good an explanation as any. (There are a lot of explanations.)

"I think of those stories of individuals (native Americans, Africans, whatever) who, in the 18th or 19th century, who were abducted. I feel as though that happened to you - at some time, when you were too young to really remember what happened, you were taken out of your culture and, while you remember it and desperately want to return, you don't know how to get back home.
So you do the vigils as a way of sending out a signal to home, to see if any response comes back. Or, they're like a search for compassionate life in the universe, like the signals astronomers have broadcast, hoping that any life form that finds them might recognize them as originating from another intelligent form of life."

More: Here is a recent blog post entitled "What Doing a Vulnerability Vigil is Like"
http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2014/03/what-doing-vulnerability-vigil-is-like.html

Here is the link to the event on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/227007504163688/