DEATH REMINDERS
Albert Camus said, “The day when I am no more than a writer, I shall cease to be a writer.” Those words sit solidly with me. I can really feel what he meant by saying this. I feel the same way. I think we should always strive for our work to be more than just what it is. Whatever medium we work in, we should go beyond the medium itself. Art should transcend the materials, in other words. That’s why the concepts are so important; they carry the work to a bigger and more important place.
If you follow my blog, you know that my project (“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”) is based on the human response to death anxiety. Specifically, what the European colonizers did to the indigenous people (Ute/Tabeguache) in the 19th century in Colorado. My photographs hold these places, plants, and objects as reminders of the behavior of the colonizers. The colonizers had a common worldview, or set of beliefs. This allowed for the justification of killing the Native Americans and stealing their land. You’ll read about Manifest Destiny in a couple of paragraphs. This is death anxiety and the denial of death played out and acted on in the worst way possible.
Ernest Becker’s theories are clear about why people do these kinds of things to “the other.” There are many reasons to feel threatened by people who are different. It can be as simple as physical appearance or as complex as what “god(s)” you believe in, or not. Or a combination of things.
Cultural worldviews drive these beliefs. Politics, socioeconomic status, and all kinds of cultural standards can provoke these threats. A person will feel secure in his/her/their environment if they’re sharing the same beliefs and acting on the same worldview—all shared experiences and beliefs. They find meaning and significance in common cultural activities. Look at the holidays—any of them. People find a great death anxiety buffer in participating in these kinds of things (see TMT below). If someone doesn’t participate or believe in the same kinds of things, this presents a problem. It’s a threat. When a person’s worldview is challenged, it provokes either conversion or confrontation. If the person that feels challenged can’t convince the “challenger” to come to their beliefs, bad things can happen. In the words of Sheldon Solomon, “My God is better than your God and I’ll kick your ass to prove it.” This is death anxiety acted out.
The colonizers thought that “God” had given them not only the right but had actually commanded them to take this land by force and kill the people here (“the other”). Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States was destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. That meant committing genocide on the Indigenous people here and stealing their land and resources. The Indigenous people that survived were moved to prisoner-of-war camps, also known as reservations.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s been going on since the beginning of humanity. And it’s not the most recent instance of this kind of behavior either. It happens all of the time, all over the world. It’s our human condition that drives us to commit these atrocities and to believe that we’re justified in doing so. It’s our denial of death, our death anxiety that’s at the root of it—the driver or motivator for it. We are so terrified of not existing, we make up stories, hide behind material stuff, try to gain status and money, we try anything and everything so that we can quell the anxiety of mortality salience—or the knowledge of our impending death.
Susan Sontag wrote in her book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” ”Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they?’-- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
I want my art to evoke these feelings in the viewer. I want to encourage them to consider their own existential crisis—their own death anxiety. This is the purpose of my work: to offer some “food for thought" on these concepts.
TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY (TMT)
Terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon) holds that people specifically feel threatened by their own mortality, so to allay their anxiety, they subscribe to meaningful worldviews that allow them to feel enduring self-worth. TMT is a dual-defense model that explains how people protect themselves against concerns about death (mortality salience). According to TMT, the specific manner in which people respond is dependent on whether the concerns are conscious or unconscious. Conscious concerns about death are combated by proximal defenses aimed at eliminating the threat from focal attention. Once this goal has been accomplished, distal defenses become the primary method of protection. Distal defenses diminish unconscious concerns about mortality via a sense of meaning (i.e., worldviews) and value (i.e., self-esteem). Such defenses are also activated when death concerns are primed outside of conscious awareness. (J.K. Thompson, ... S. Chait, in Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, 2012)
Plate #122-”Fringed Sage (Artemisia Frigida)” whole plate cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.