“None of us can ever retrieve that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew (or thought one knew) what it did.
From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art. We can only quarrel with one or another means of defense.”
– Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
“…writing can’t be a way of life – the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.” ― Doris Lessing
In June of 2012, Exit Strata Editor Lynne DeSilva-Johnson introduced and invited the community to participate in a new series-experiment, “FIELD NOTES,” which has been steadily growing ever since. A brief excerpt from that introduction follows, along with subsequent Editorials in which the shifting scope is explored in response to participant-oriented evolution… as well as, in EXIT STRATA IS A VERB, the role of the series in facilitating this platform’s intentions for creative social change.
Wherefore this series, then, and what does it seek to do?
Well, it’s deceptively simple.
The Exit Strata FIELD NOTES series seeks to expose the innards of its participants. To be a look behind the curtain. To recognize and celebrate process, and not only of work we deem “creative,” but as a life lived and interpreted by those who respond creatively.
Whether you are fishing, teaching, writing copy, or working in a pickle factory, your choice to write or draw or make music or take photos or otherwise document this experience through the lens of mind and eye that is yours and yours alone is what makes you a CREATOR — moreso than the finished projects that we are already familiar with.
The following three editorials begin to give a grounding in the intentions of this project to not only document but provide operable models for mindful creation across all disciplines.
EDITORIAL :: SERIES ANNOUCEMENT : FIELD NOTES
EDITORIAL :: FIELD NOTES and THE RHIZOME : THE SERIES GROWS WILD AND FREE
EDITORIAL :: EXIT STRATA IS A VERB : EVOLVE YOUR EXPECTATIONS
This page is frequently updated to reflect the robust selection of ongoing series and independent guest-posts encompassed in Field Notes, which are listed below in some semblance of an order:
CHLÖE BASS :: NOTES FROM THE BUREAU OF SELF-RECOGNITION
Part 1 : Series Introduction
Part 2 : Consultations: David Andersson
Part 3 : Consultations: Dave Thrasher
SOUNDCLOUD FELLOW KENNEDY KARATE PRESENTS : NOTES FROM NIGHTBUS RADIO
Episode 1: Now Playing on Nomadic Nightbus Radio : Jack Kennedy Karate Wants YOU (Series Intro)
Episode 2: Dreamcatching in Asheville
Episode 3: Chicago’s Witching Hour
Episode 4: New Orleans Dixieland Disaster
Episode 5: Keep Austin Weird
Episode 6: Tripping on the Gulfstream : Santa Fe
JACOB PERKINS : FROM THE CANNERY
Part 1: Brooklyn
Part 2: Kodiak
Part 3: Exxon Oil Spill
Part 4: Lost and Found
Part 5: The Long Haul
Part 6 : Return of a Fast Food Drifter
(UN)SETTLING DOWN : LESTER FEDER and ERIC HARBERSON
Part 1 : Buenos Aires
BENJAMIN WIESSNER and DANNY MADDEN :: WHAT WE ECHO:
Part 1: Animating in Mississippi
Part 2: Perpetual Creation: Collaborative Momentum
MARTIN BYRNE : ARCHITECTURAL UNCANNY
Part 1: Poetics and the Built Environment
Part 2 : Moments of Environmental Opportunity
Part 3, Take 1 :: To and From San Francisco, or; In-between Indeterminate Inebriate Islands
ART: NO INSTRUCTIONS for ASSEMBLY: Kameelah Rasheed’s Photographic Memory
POETRY : FROM INDRA’S NET :: And Pretty Soon, There’s My Arm! with Donna Fleischer
LANGUAGE : INTERROGATING TRUTH: Poetics and Journalism with Andre Bagoo in Trinidad and Tobago
