Environmentally aware art, poetry, music and spirituality : lifelines

Abstract

Lifelines (Mann et al. 2006) is the originating text of a holistic work of environmental art. Poems by Chris Mann based on encounters with forty animals, ranging from the aardvark and bees to the peregrine falcon and zebra, are embedded in images by Julia Skeen on each right-hand page of the book. The poems are informed by recent discoveries in science, while the images evoke the animals in their habitat with frequent references to fossil and cosmic time. On the left-hand page is a ghost image of the animals and scientific notes about each by Adrian Craig, a zoologist. A bibliography lists some books and articles concerning astronomy, biology, cosmology, palaeontology, physics and zoology as well as research into the behaviour of individual animals, while a list of further reading is available on request. Other cultural artefacts accompany the book: an installation launched at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2007, a DVD of the music and images from the installation, a CD of the songs and a multimedia show. There have been over eighty performances of the last mentioned to date, at universities, schools, churches, literary and science festivals and conferences. The performances can be interpreted as a form of oral literature, an influence evident in Mann’s work from early in his career. Texts from the book are embedded in a sequence of digital images. These are projected onto a large screen behind the poet who introduces the poems, reads them aloud and performs original songs. The songs draw on the musical and literarytraditions of the ballad, mbqanga (a Zulu musical genre), folk-rock, jazz and plain-chant. The performance of Lifelines at the Eco-Literature colloquium held at the Twinstreams Education Centre, Mtunzini, KwaZulu-Natal, on 6 October 2007, led to an invitation from the organisers to participants to submit an article to this journal. The performance on which this interview is based took place in the Senate Hall of the University of South Africa, Pretoria, City of Tshwane, on 4 March 2008. We (interviewer and poet) share similar views regarding the value of a holistic approach to human existence which allows room not only for the material, in the environment especially, but also the spiritual. However, both of us felt it would be worthwhile to discuss and interrogate these assumptions.