I am always where I am

France, September 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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‘Bloodvessel of the Earth’

France, September 2010

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Harvest of Wild Brambles

Harvest of Yellow Poppy

France, August 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Interlude

‘Owning land’ - a commonly accepted concept that the earth is private property of human beings

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Principles of Earth Democracy

…4. All beings have a natural right to sustenance.
All members of the earth community, including all humans, have the right to sustenance — to food and water, to a safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. Resources vital to sustenance must stay in the commons. The right to sustenance is a natural right because it is the right to life. These rights are not given by states or corporations, nor can they be extinguished by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right to erode or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain life.

Excerpt from
Earth Democracy : Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
By Vandana Shiva

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In the Okanagan, our understanding of the land is that it’s not just that we’re part of the land, it’s not just that we’re part of the vast system that operates the land, but that the land is us. In our language, the word for our bodies contains the word for land, so when I say that word, it means that not only is my ability to think and to dream present in that word but the last part of that word also means ‘the land’.

Jeanette Armstrong
found in ‘Original Instructions - Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future’, edited by Melissa K. Nelson

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Does the land belong to you, or do you belong to the land?

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France, August 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Thoughts, rocks - do they not have the same source?
When there are no thoughts, where are the rocks?

August 2010

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France, August 2010

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I am movement and stillness at the same time

August 2010

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France, August 2010

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Pirineos
Encounter with Xavier, Shepherd
Spanish Pyrenees, July 2010

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Spain, July 2010

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If everything happens only now,
which it obviously does,
and if I am only now,
which I obviously am,
am I then not everything?

And is this everything not nothing at the same time?
And isn’t it then so, that nothing ever happens?

July 2010

—

Photostream on flickr
July 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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The cry of a buzzard
Again

July 2010

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What a pleasure to wake up next to a field or the woods!
What a pleasure to have your meals outside,
to be with wind, animals, clouds, stars…

July 2010

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Isn’t that ‘thing’ I call cloud really a process, a constant transformation?
Isn’t that ‘thing’ we call human being really the same as a cloud?
Is not everything we name, sense, think, experience - even the earth herself, even the universe, just as this body, just as this thought -
not the same as a cloud?
When does all appear? Where does all appear?

Does evolution really exist?

Clouds
France, July 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

North Sea near Amrum Island / Germany, January 2010

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Click here to view the embedded video.

North Sea, January 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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near Drome Valley, France, March 2010

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Natural Dance / Natural Talk

from stillness
to movement
to stillness
pervaded
by stillness
- the dance

from silence
to sound
to silence
pervaded
by silence
- the talk

the movement
the word
is the phenomenon
the universe
creating itself
out of nothing

nobody dances
nobody talks

(that is why it is impossible to improve the world)

March 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Conversation with North Sea
Amrum Island / Germany, January 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

Conversation with Clearing
Drome Valley / France, March 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

Click here to view the embedded video.

Conversation with Forest Trail in Winter
Drome Valley / France, March 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Blanket for the Soil
Drome Valley / France, March 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Au vent
Lac Salagou / France, April 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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As long as you see me
- A spark
When I am gone
- Yourself

April 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Spaces n’ Places

Photostream on flickr
May 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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First Natural Circus Garden Project
using Permaculture and Natural Farming Methods:
Les Arbods / France

May 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Rochers des Combes / France, May 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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‘How many shades of green can you name?
Where do they come from?’
May 2010

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Vercors / France, May 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Unforseeable
Drome Valley / France, May 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

What if there would be no difference between ‘my life’ and ‘this field’?
Am I not being moved? Do I breathe willingly? Who is this ‘I’ that claims to be acting?

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On the road…, France, June 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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‘The Natural Circus is what happens when there is noone who thinks’

June 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

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Vercors / France, June 2010 // www.passiveactivism.net

You feel quite satisfied with this new occupation. Everyday you wake up at 7 o’clock in the morning and take the goats to the mountains. There they just spread around and start to eat. As far as you’re concerned you spend most of time looking at the landscape. From time to time some of them get into a fight and you have to call for a bit of calm but on the whole they are quite peaceful. Later you show the direction of the valley and they all follow you down except the brown one with the white stains who as always is making some trouble but when you bring most of the herd in one direction she ends up following the movement.

As you reach the valley it’s time for your lunch break. You unwrap a slice of black bread and a piece of cheese made with the milk of those same goats you’re taking care of 8 hours a day. And when you bite in it, it taste as they smell, and in this precise moment it almost fells as if this whole thing would make sense after all; life, death, the solar system, the universe… After lunch everyone is tired and lay in the meadow. You play for a while with the little ones but then they fall asleep, so you simply go on chilling down there in the grass, looking at the sky, thousand kilometres away from the city, from this earlier existence where goat cheese just appeared nicely packed, pasteurized and labelled in the aisles of the supermarkets. At one point they all stand up without notice and go on eating everything they find on their way: grass, fat plants, small trees. The afternoon generally flows like this, relatively uneventful. Around 17h you bring them back to the barn and you go back to your little caravan, exhausted and sun-drunk. You open the door, crash on your bed, fall in the depth of the first shade of the day.

When you wake up night has fallen. In the middle of the garden someone has made a huge fire of pine branch and eucalyptus leaves. You join the people gathered there. Everyone is looking into the fire without saying a word. So you just start doing the thing, you let yourself hypnotised by the flames and by the memories of the last days, you think about the goats, you imagine them a few hundred meters out there in the dark, sleeping in their barn, laying next to each other on the straw, making little goat dreams.

(One day you borrowed a little digital camera from a girl of the farm. You wanted to make a film about the goats but as the hours passed you noticed that they were getting nervous. It seemed that they were not specially happy about the fact that you were filming them. Suddenly they all started to run in random directions so from this moment you decided to switch off the camera and concentrate on your job. It took you more than an hour to gather them and calm them down. Ironically enough a few days later you’ll loose all the video material that you shot on this day. However you won’t feel so upset about this loss, you will even think it’s probably better like this, what’s the point of making film anyway? Maybe the goats would have preferred it this way. So there will be no images left of those days, no traces, just the memory of you and the goats all day long under the blazing sun.)

Olivier Hannoun: http://vimeo.com/ohannoun

Song of Uvanuk, an Inuit woman shaman

Wehrbellin See

Growing Waters

Images © Martina von Holn

http://www.martinavonholn.com/

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Click here to view the embedded video.

L’enfant, DV, b/w, 2009

niik
http://www.myspace.com/niikick

Click here to view the embedded video.

Laurent, S-8, b/w, 3:32min, 1998

Lars Schmidt
www.passiveactivism.net

español, français, português, italiano, deutsch, svenska, chinese, catalan, euskera

This is an open experiment.
A putting in words of what is already in the air.
The more this declaration is being read, thought or spoken out, the more its energy will manifest in our world and in our society.
If what is written here resonates with you, make it your statement.
Find ways to read it, share it and put it into action.

DECLARATION OF CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARIES 2009

Cultural revolutionaries in 2009…

_live, act, work with and not against nature
_know that life is too complex to understand it intellectually
_build and support local, self-governed economies
_value and safe-guard diversity of all kind
_value interdependence, since they know that nothing is separate
_regard themselves as equal to all life forms
_protect and support life
_love and support children unconditionally
_work on themselves towards greater awareness
_know about ecological principles and integrate them into their lifes
_see music and dance as an integral part of their expression and communication
_live on an animate earth and regard it as sacred
_know how to grow their own food
_appreciate their sensory awareness
_celebrate life
_cooperate
_make the shift from thinking ‘either, or’ to thinking ‘as well, as’
_share their knowledge
_understand and integrate process as a way of being
_are not identified with their body, thoughts or emotions
_see the mind as a tool
_realize that there is no right or wrong
_are not identified with any social tag, their past or their future
_are aware that the very essence of who they are is life itself
_take responsibility for their emotions
_are aware of and value their relationships to their living and seemingly non-living surroundings
_value and integrate the wisdom of women
_value and integrate the wisdom of indigenous cultures
_value generalist knowledge
_are aware of change as one of the core principles of evolution
_work towards diversification and decentralization
_engage in and create bonds to the place where they live
_turn from dependent consumers to responsible producers
_are looking for ways so that their interests and talents may unfold
_have the courage to resist and disobey laws that render self-rule, self-provisioning, and self-sustenance illegal
_are informed about the current money system and identify it as a contemporary form of enslavement
_identify and boycott biological, cultural, social and philosophical monocultures
_boycott monopolies of any kind
_question everyone who promotes one solution
_value environmental and human ethics over profit maximization
_boycott corporations and banks operating for profit maximization
_reclaim land and forests as common good
_reclaim water as common good
_reclaim biodiversity and knowledge as common good
_are aware that they participate in the process of co-creation at all time
_allow life to unfold through them

Berlin, 03/2009

www.culturalrevolutionaries.org

Image © LS