Binding/Repair

By Amy Catherine Hulshoff & Adele Ardent Eden

Rio Grande Headwaters, CO

September 1, 2017

AAE: It is clear how much we are reliant on a chain of civilization to survive in these “wild” landscapes, even in those that are being used as playgrounds for city-living humans to go “out” and “get away from it all.” We have to bring our technologies with us to survive, our mass-produced food, shelter, and tools. A human hand on the landscape is never a singular hand; we are touching the land through the hands of others who have made our presence possible.

Still from “Binding/Repair” collaborative project by Amy Catherine Hulshoff & Adele Ardent Eden.

In my previous work, I’ve wanted to explore the complex systems that arise between individuals in relationship, and the ways that we balance a need for connection against a need for control. In this collaborative work with Amy Catherine Hulshoff, we explored a relationship between two humans and the ice formation that encloses and contributes to the stream that shapes Cunningham Gulch. We found ourselves working with similar materials, such as needle and red thread, but diverged in our goals and actions: She was looking at ways to repair the deteriorating ice, while I was looking for ways to break into it...

Still from “Binding/Repair” collaborative project by Amy Catherine Hulshoff & Adele Ardent Eden.

As we sewed ourselves together, and to the ice, for me, this became about the challenges of finding points of connection to the landscape and to my new community that were strong, without being too destructive, or too binding.

ACH: Working with Adele opened up a new channel of communication for my work, not only between myself and another person, but between myself and our materials. Working to cope with the surroundings at the headwaters worked best if I attempted to essentialize my arena. However, in pulling bits and pieces from the landscape I found myself left with mostly broken pieces of a much bigger system- specifically here in this work we had what was left of a small glacier like tract of snow bridging the stream near our campground. I felt the need then to attempt to "repair" or stitch back together the winter's detritus of snow, sticks, and stones. With Adele, sewing our hands together, and into the ice, showed me one of the many possible way to insert myself back into this system, rather than impose myself upon it. This small performance of repair and communion echoes a much larger attempt to form an equitable relationship with the environment. I think this begins with a type of communication that exists more in material and less within an understood notion of "language".