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Riitta Ikonen: Meet our friend Bob.
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We met on a wintery night
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in the company of the members
of the New York Indoor Gardening Society.
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And one of the regulars
was this charismatic gentleman
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studying the wonders
of carnivorous plants.
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We were there
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looking for collaborators
for an art project
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looking at modern humans'
belonging to nature.
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Karoline Hjorth: We couldn't resist
slipping a little note in Bob's pocket
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to say we'd love to hear from him.
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And the next day, he called us
and excitedly proclaimed how,
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"This is not a time in my life
when I want to lay around in bed."
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And the next week,
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we were all sitting on a J train
to Forest Park in Queens.
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RI: Bob has worked for decades
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in New York's fashion
photography industry,
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and he had to be replaced by three people
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when he eventually chose
to move on to new adventures.
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Bob agreed to collaborate with us
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on the condition that we wouldn't
mess with the style
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that he had taken many decades to perfect.
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So we promised to do just that,
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and only added a few pine needles.
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You might be wondering
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why the two of us were trimming
Bob's pine needle beret in the park
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in the first place.
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We met a few years prior,
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when I was investigating on the internet,
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looking for a collaborator
for an art project
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looking at modern humans'
relationship to nature.
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So I do what people do,
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I go to Google and I type in three words:
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"Norway,"
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"grannies" and "photographer."
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And I click on the number one
search result,
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which was Karoline Hjorth here.
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(Laughter)
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KH: I had just put out a book
about Norwegian grandmothers.
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And initially, we teamed up
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to look at how natural phenomena
were explained through human form.
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And we started investigating folktales
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in a small coastal city in Norway.
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RI: We reasoned that the older
the local interviewee,
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the closer we would be
to these talking rocks of these stories.
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KH: Agnes, for example,
is Norway's oldest parachuting granny.
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Her latest jump was at 91.
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And this portrait is an homage
to the fabled north wind
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often featured in Nordic folk tales.
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We met another fabled character
called Lyktemann,
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on a bog just outside of Oslo.
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Lyktemann's presence as mysterious lights
has been recorded for centuries
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in many different cultures
under as many different names,
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like Joan the wad, will-o'-the-wisp,
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or the man of the lantern.
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The contemporary view
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or the contemporary
explanation to these lights
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is that they are the product
of ignited marsh gas.
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The more adventurous view
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is that a character appears
when the fog hangs low,
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and there are unwary travelers about
who have lost their path.
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RI: He is known for being
quite a mischievous character,
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never quite revealing the true nature
of his intentions.
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KH: And as Bengt is an expert
in astronavigation,
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an ex-submarine captain,
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and the previous chief mate
on board the tall ship Christian Radich,
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Bengt was the perfect
personification of Lyktemann.
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RI: In our initial quest
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of looking into the contemporary
role of folklore,
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we were quickly pooh-poohed
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for looking into something seen
as childish children's bedtime stories.
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Even saying the word "folklore"
got people looking really puzzled.
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KH: And it wasn't just the accent.
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(Laughter)
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RI: We even had an eighth-generation
local potter state
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that people from this region
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have come up with some
of this nation's best inventions,
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and they don't have time to turn rocks
and wonder what is under.
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This rejection was exactly what we needed
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to keep poking further into this subject.
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(Laughter)
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KH: We continued to interview people
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about their relationship
with their surroundings,
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and started wondering
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what's happening
with people's imagination.
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Can our relationship to nature
really be explained so pragmatically,
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so entirely boringly,
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so that a rock is just
a good old straightforward rock,
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and a lake is just a basic wet place,
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entirely separate from us?
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Can our surroundings really be explained
to such a dull degree of rationality?
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RI: The name of our project,
"Eyes as Big as Plates,"
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is borrowed from a folk tale.
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And there's one with a dog
that's living beneath a bridge
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and another version,
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where there is a troll
doing the same thing.
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And this open-eyed
and potentially risky approach
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to seeing the world around you
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has become an emblem of the curiosity
that guides our interactions.
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KH: Serendipity is our project manager.
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And ideally, we meet our collaborators
through random chance.
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In the opposite lane in the swimming pool,
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at the choir practice,
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in a noodle bar,
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or in a Senegalese fishing harbor,
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as you do.
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Each image starts with a conversation,
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much like a casual interview.
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RI: And we never call
these collaborators "models,"
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as there are three authors to each image,
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all equally crucial
to the realization of their portrait.
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There is no age limit,
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absolutely anybody
with an interesting lived life
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is more than qualified to join.
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KH: This is Boubou.
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His son-in-law happened to be
in this harbor
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when we came looking for locations.
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And one impromptu house visit
and fish market shopping spree later,
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Boubou and his family
all waded in a low tide with us.
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RI: A wearable sculpture is born
from the conversation
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with each collaborator
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and is made from materials
found in the surroundings.
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About one third of Senegal's arable land
is devoted to millet,
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an incredibly itchy to wear,
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nutritious and hardy staple
with deep cultural roots.
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This is Mane,
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one of the grand grandmothers
of the Ndos village,
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a tornado of vigor and energy.
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And she applauded to our invitation
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to portray her in her personal
favorite crop,
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with which she works every day.
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KH: It's important
that participation is voluntary.
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(Laughter)
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If you have doubts in the beginning,
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you will definitely regret it
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by the time Riitta is stuffing
cold, wet bull kelp up your nose.
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(Laughter)
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Working with an analog camera
means the process can be slow
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and physically challenging.
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The person in front of the camera
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might be kneeling for three hours
in a freezing sleet,
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be bombarded by mosquitoes,
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or actually, they can also be allergic
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to the local flora
they've just been coated in.
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RI: And many other things.
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(Laughter)
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And then, there's,
of course, the elements.
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Unpredictability
is one of the main drivers
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that keeps this process interesting.
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For example, in Iceland,
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we were in operation mode,
shooting for two weeks,
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without knowing that the camera
was not functioning properly.
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Ooh, right?
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KH: And because we work
with analog cameras
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with actual film rolls,
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the excitement
from the shoots keeps giving
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until we pick up
the negatives from the lab.
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RI: Luckily, Edda, pictured here,
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was one of the few that was captured
on film in Iceland.
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Pictured here amid bubbling,
steaming hot springs
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between two tectonic plates.
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Supposedly, there are these little
hot spring birds
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that dive into these bubbles,
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and according to the legend,
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these little birds represent
the souls of the dead.
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We have the honor
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of working with some of the toughest
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and bravest and coolest people around,
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and thoroughly enjoy
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how some of our works and portraits
stomp on stereotypes about age,
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gender and nationality.
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KH: To us, much of Western society
is unnecessarily confused
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when it comes to the usefulness
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of this absolutely
rock-and-roll demographic.
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(Laughter)
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RI: Attitude, life experience and stamina
are some of the main traits
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we have found amongst
all our collaborators,
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as well as a formidable curiosity
for new experiences.
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KH: We have noticed
how the solitary figures in our images
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are increasingly viewed as representations
of the age of loneliness,
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known as the Eremocene.
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RI: We are trying to encourage
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a new way of participating in
and communicating with our surroundings.
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KH: There is the assumption
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that humans have created
a new geological epoch,
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and we need to learn how to see
what our role is in it.
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RI: We'll be working with farmers,
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cosmologists, geo-ecologists,
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ethnomusicologists and marine biologists
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to see how art can change
the way we think, act and live.
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KH: It's not clear who or what
is the protagonist in our work,
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whether it's the human figure
or the nature around them,
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and we like it that way.
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Ten years and 15 countries
into the project,
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we are not sure how, if,
or when this project will end.
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RI: We have vowed to continue
as long as it's fun,
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and we'll keep making new images
and more books that explore --
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KH: How to balance life amongst
the effects of the climate crisis.
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The writer Roy Scranton
beautifully summarized
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how our project can be approached.
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"We need to learn to see,
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not just with Western eyes,
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but with Islamic eyes and Inuit eyes,
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not just with human eyes
but with golden-cheeked warbler eyes,
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coho salmon eyes
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and polar bear eyes,
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and not even just with eyes at all,
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but with the wild, barely articulate
being of clouds and seas
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and seas and rocks and trees and stars."
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RI: Perhaps if we start seeing ourselves
through coho salmon eyes,
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we might begin to synchronize better
with our fellow flora, fauna and funga.
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To do this requires
both imagination and empathy.
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And curiosity is at the root of both.
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KH: As Halvar, one of our first
collaborators, said nearly 10 years ago,
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"If you stop being curious,
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you might as well be dead."
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(Both) Thank you.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)