This is an update of a post I wrote on 20 August 2013.

Found abandoned on the floor of Hollywood last weekend, two works of art…

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Update Summer 2016:

Fellow 9 Stone Artist Annabel Konig has developed a moving project about nests as a symbol for our many ideas about ‘home’. The work of photographed nests and her nest installations are part of the 10 year celebration of the 9 Stones Artists group exhibition, currently on display at VISUAL Carlow until the 16 October, 2016.

Annabel created a participatory art project and requested donations of nests and a short text to accompany our nest. We were also asked for an item that was personal and related to home which she was going to place in or alongside the nest.

After thinking about the nests above I gave Annabel the lower nest and included the following text:

“In my work, living in a forest and learning to tend the forest for the long term strongly fosters my sensitivity to and awareness of the interdependence between many diverse communities and life-forms, that both form and depend on the forest, including myself

… it makes me remember that Hollywood is a home to others.

The item I gave Annabel is the card below that connects my forest work to the memory of my late father who was fatally affected by his time in the Vietnam war. For those who have followed my work for some time you will know that the tragedy and ecocide of the Vietnam War and ongoing to this day – the devastation to Vietnam’s peoples and forests, also touched my family.

In my local eco-social art forest practice I strive to cultivate awareness of global eco-social forest concerns. To my mind, eco-social art practice needs to keep this glocal dynamic at play. In my case, I found I was compelled to bring ideas of the developing law against ecocide (championed by lawyer Polly Higgins and others who I have been fortunuate to meet) into the public domain. Looking for an avenue to publicise this idea, I lobbied and was successful in getting the Green Party of Ireland and Northern Ireland to unanimously support this developing international legislation that sets out to defend an ecosystem’s right to thrive. This legislation is critical as the necessary complement to developing Rights of Nature concepts developing in Aotearoa New Zealand and in Ecuador, which enshrines the understanding that all communities, human and nonhuman, thrive when ecosystems are protected for the long term.

Ecocide law works: this is the card I have that gives me access to specialists doctors as my late father served and was fatally affected by the slow violence of Monsanto/Dow companies Agent Orange in the Vietnam war. Ecocide is recognised, although not often addressed, as a crime in War situations.

I also make reference to my work for these ideas in my summary Silent Spring video that is on display at VISUAL Carlow.

If you are interested in my earlier ideas of ecocide, I produced this article below.

Thank you Annabel for another means to think about these ideas, from the small wrens who inhabit Hollywood, to lives connected to and dependent on forests in other parts of the world.