February 18, 2004
Stephen David Ross Interview#7
In the seventh part of the David Ross interview conducted by Rick over at Artrift a distinction is drawn between techne and poesis. To put it more plainly, between the modes of knowing associated with work and those with artistic creation. Or in the language of junk for code between instrumental reason and aesthetics.
Ross says:
"Nature in its enormity, monstrosity, terror, fearfulness, fearsomeness, nature in its plenitude, haunted by Dionysus’s revelries, obscured by Dionysian masks, calls to us as endless desire to pursue its truth, a truth hidden from techne, demanding the mad resources of poiesis."
You can see this aspect of nature in this painting:
Mandy Martin, Salvator Rosa Series 5, 2003 .
In Australia the upper part of Australia (south western Queensland and north western South Australia is flooded from the tropical rains, whilst southern Australia bakes under unrelenting heat and is crying out rain. The water will not reach southern Australia because Lake Eyre--the so-called dead heart of Settler Australia -- is a sink hole. This huge dry salt lake below the sea level is bursting into life from the flood waters flowing into it from Coopers Creek and the Diamintina River.
As Ross says " nature is abundant, plenitudinous, beautiful."
I woud add 'and destructive.' Floods destroy as well as create. Moreover Southern Australia is filled with dread from the possibilities of bush fires. We are lucky so far. But conditions are conducive to raging bush fires that are out of control. We live our every day lives with death from fire caused by a lightening strike.
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