Kirsten Aaboe

Resilience. Can we come together and apply our growing awareness and understanding to what is the – literally – earth-shattering situation we humans have created? What’s Next For Earth has provided an exquisitely needed outlet for me to express an array of focused visualizations. Based on a solid education of the causes and the effects of the Anthropocene’s dominance, I’ve been gently and generously given space to articulate (articulation: a location where two or more bones meet).
Thank you.

The power within our grasp?

Digital photomontage

I was cracked open some time ago to hear the native perspective of thinking ahead seven generations when making decisions. How to provide, teach, build, and support the strength and resilience to meet the insurmountable and survive is our responsibility for those generations here and to come.

“Resilience will therefore require engagement of all of the individual’s multiple intelligences (linguistic, spatial, mathematical, bodily, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, and naturalistic). Neuroscience research into learning suggests that activities that move beyond linguistic and numeric drills—beyond classrooms and computers and into nature—may be especially effective at engaging the whole person.”
2023
  • Kirsten Aaboe

We are All Inside Out

Pastel on paper
18” x 24”

Divide and Conquer: not a winning strategy in the long run. The rich and powerful are getting farther and farther out onto branches of a tree that’s losing hold of the ground in the Commons. People and life as a whole are reduced to bits and bytes when resources are hoarded and parsed out by corporate interests, determined by market theories and algorithms.

The beauty of thinking globally and acting locally is that community and responsibility are intertwined. One isn’t divorced from the other. We are connected, in truth, however disconnected we might feel.

To achieve social justice: “…To gain a historical and systemic perspective, it’s helpful to think about wealth inequality in terms of what’s known as the commons—the cultural and natural resources that are accessible to all members of a society, and not privately owned. In most pre-industrial economies, the commons included sources of food as well as natural materials for making tools and building shelters. Everyone who used the commons had a stake in preserving it for the next generation. During and especially after the Middle Ages in Britain and then Europe, common lands were gradually enclosed with fences and claimed as private property by people who were wealthy and powerful enough to be able to defend this appropriation by law and force of arms. During the past century the trend toward privatization has spread to encompass practically the whole world. The result is that people who would otherwise have been able to subsist on common resources now must buy or rent access to basic necessities. Again, the rich get richer, while the poor fall further behind….” Think Resilience, Chap. 18 excerpt
2023
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Horizontal and Vertical / Contained and Dispersed

Digital photo mashup
Left: an online image of a ghost ship from a travel ad on Instagram. The photo was originally taken in 1900. Right: cityscape photographed by me in January 2023 from 35k feet up in the midwestern United States

The strong trend toward globalization that has characterized the world economy since the 1970s has had a lot to do with three technological developments: container ships, computerized monitoring of inventories, and global satellite communications. But it also resulted from (1) the relentless pursuit of profits and efficiency, (2) increasing international investment (often facilitated by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund), (3) the lifting of trade restrictions and protective tariffs, (4) the expansion of trade agreements through the efforts of the World Trade Organization, and (5) the increased financialization of the economy and pressures on corporations to ensure quarterly profits.”

“In this time of over-globalization, one alternative—re-localization—offers substantial benefits. It creates local jobs, increases the diversity of local occupations and skill sets, and thereby increases social capital—the richness of the relationships between people who live within a region. In the next video, #17, we’ll look at how re-localization can contribute to regional economic development and build community resilience.”
2023
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Going With the Flow. It’s the name of the game.

digital collage

“….Sustainability helps us understand, in a more general sense, our extremely complex relationship with the natural world, and the consequences of getting that relationship wrong. Where resilience is process-oriented and, in ways, value-neutral, sustainability forces us to confront deep questions and uncomfortable potential futures…”
2022
  • Kirsten Aaboe

A reservoir in Southern California

Photograph
2022

Resilience is possible if the supporting and interrelated systems are strong enough to allow adaptation to heal from the damage, shock, or disruption.
2022
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Our Future? Together? The Long View

Charcoal and ink on paper

The old people, our elders, animals, plants, and all living things, are in a community, connected, physically and spiritually. Rushing headlong for the precipice, consuming, discarding, never looking at the trail of refuse behind us, won’t be possible much longer, since the circle is being closed. Life is to cherish.
2022
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Free Fall at a Cost

digital photo collage

Free Fall is the state I’m in these days, sometimes, though I try to deny it. My neural pathways, geared toward achieving pleasure, escaping pain or suffering, guaranteeing reward are in need of constant reorientation.

Community, shared support, empathy and compassion help me reorient, come back to earth, live in awareness of what I use, and try not to abuse. I remember when chasing the next thing - filling the hole in my psyche with stuff - revealed itself to be the wrong way to get “there,” but riding that wave, buying that house, being applauded, and holding onto the means to keep those things is all so hard to reverse. Quiet helps.
2022
  • Kirsten Aaboe

A Tiny Ascension

digital photomontage

What happened to this little bird was completely beyond my control. How I see my role as caretaker of what is in my world requires gentleness, understanding, kinship, and awareness beyond my own immediate desires. How I connect with my world requires the application of the determination to cherish life in all its forms.
2021
  • Kirsten Aaboe

We Are Part of the Earth?

Multimedia: photographs photoshopped digitally

Those opposable thumbs, relatively big brains, and hairless vulnerability have produced a voracious predator, wreaking havoc on the intricate, interwoven, exquisitely interlaced web of the natural world, formerly untrammeled by human boots. This blind egoism is unsustainable and will drive itself into the ground - literally. The piece is a visualization of the phasing out of humans, along with only some of the other affected animals. The earth will survive, and will regenerate, since life springs from cracks in the concrete.
2021
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Untitled

Manipulated digital photograph

My understanding of my complicity, due to ignorance of the connectedness of my actions and their consequences, as well as my desire for convenience, my laziness, privilege, and self-importance, has grown over time.

I made this piece after wandering in the wonderful surroundings, the wonderfields, of 29 Palms at the Desert Dairy while at an artist residency there. I took many photographs while it was cool in the mornings, and when it was too hot to be outside in the 100+ degree heat, I worked on manipulating the photos. This is a digital photo, existing in my iCloud, and may not be printed – I’m not sure about doing that.

I am convinced, as a great many artists are, that our efforts must be more fervently directed to seeing both upstream (before we take action, especially to consume resources) and downstream (what happens after we do take those actions; what do we discard, leave behind)….seeing but also developing work with this awareness.
2021
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Hold Everything

Multimedia digital photo collage

The headlong pursuit I’ve been stuck in, of acquiring, using, and then discarding, in an endless cycle, reinforces my mono-directional thinking and assumptions based on individual rights to the exclusion of how my actions fit into the whole systems we’re all part of. If I ratchet back my actions, take hard looks at my ‘needs’ and ‘desires,’ I find there is exquisite beauty all around me.

Hold Everything is a portrait of a very small moth I found on my studio floor. Cherishing means I won’t destroy as much.
2021
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Fading into the Mist? Really?

Oil and carbon ink on pellon
18”x20”

This image depicts a confused-looking man, sitting on an insubstantial cloud, looking backward, flummoxed, and unaware of the precarious position he is in.
2020
  • Kirsten Aaboe

Join The List

Want to hear from us occasionally? Subscribe to our newsletter

Join The List

Want to hear from us occasionally? Subscribe to our newsletter