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This body of work is based on a book by John L. Riley “The Once and Future Great Lakes Country: An Ecological History” (GLC). One phrase in particular connected with my research into how we perceive change. That being the “shifting baseline syndrome” (SBS) which states that our perception of what a healthy ecosystem baseline looks like changes with time, "a diminished resource is passed on to a new generation for whom it becomes, in turn, their original state." . For me personally this hits home walking in the ravines which seem to be full of life in comparison to the city but in truth have a very low percentage of bio-diversity, high percentage of invasives species, and none of the trees come remotely close in size of the trees that ware here less than 200 years ago. The question of how do we (society) choose to impact the biosphere in the coming decade (i.e. which energy source to pursue, what do we conserve and what do we develop, do we continue to follow the  dogma of a predatory capitalistic system, etc.) is a pivotal one. In this context SBS is important to consider so as to understand what was lost, what was gained, what can be recovered? The passages in the book which I ended collecting in my notes fall into 10 categories: 1)Native people 2)Bounty 3)Shifting Baseline Syndrome 4)Invasives 5)Climate Change 6)City State 7)Nation building 8)Paradigm shift 9)Long view 10)Conservation. While @owlridgeacres I took passages which spoke, primarily of the Bounty of the Great Lakes Region: Passenger Pigeon, Prairie/Savannah, Old Growth Forest, Fish, Beaver, Goose, and used them as medium to create artwork which is self-referential. I'm really happy in what I was able to accomplish so far and I'm looking forward to creating more pieces like this in the future. . . . #natureaspaceofflows #nature #change #shiftingbaselinesyndrome #bounty #greatlakesregion #oldgrowth #passengerpigeon #wip #wipart #experimentalprintmaking #art #polskiartysta #torontoartist #torontoart #ideasmatter #conservation #artresidency #textart #typewriter #typewritten #conceptualart #literal

A post shared by Andrzej Tarasiuk (@split_into_one) on Jan 14, 2020 at 9:40am PST

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