Parting Thoughts II

Kim Beck’s (2013) temporary art installation of a clustering of signs in designed natural landscapes are meant to juxtapose the serenity of nature preservation and the nonsensical obstruction of signs that “deliberately perplex, misdirect, and even contradict”. As they invoke each of these states of cognition through a performance of hyper-informativity, they also draw attention to nature. But despite the signage gesturing and directing, we as humans are still principally, primarily centered. Why do we still see ourselves even when we see nature? Can we look at nature in a different way? And in doing so, can we look at ourselves differently? Despite the information overload throughout this installation, we still do not see. What we take on for our second parting thoughts is what is it we do not see. Mowatt: We all hold indigeneity to some land, somewhere in the world. However, the collective sequential forces of feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism have long since ruptured our identities in proximity to those lands. Populations have been brutally dispossessed, and territories have been mercilessly extracted. We are now in an age of accumulation for the sake of accumulation. Those that hold on dearly to the lessons of their indigeneity and the lands from whence they came choose to call climate change more appropriately “climate colonialism.” Climate colonialism better situates the actual reasons for climate change by removing the banality inherent in “change.” As if change is what is happening, an unfortunate experience that needs redirection (Mahony & Endfield, 2018). Climate colonialism better draws our attention to the ways that the previously stated collective sequential forces actually did/ does their work and the impacts that have been rendered over these centuries. As if we can remove from our mindset that we live in colonial and imperial worlds that have long been produced and still remain (Driesen, 2007). Climate colonialism also reminds us that solutions may in fact repeat the same power relations as impacts, because those solutions often derive from the same seats of colonial and imperial power and will ultimately take the form of a Green Colonialism. As if we can evade the spatial and temporal production of wealth that is fixed within our structures (Young & T a ıw o, 2021). It is climate colonialism that make us, humans, as invasive to ourselves, others, and the natural world that we have built our own trap upon. Harmon: It’s never long into my day before I notice the destructive and egotistical nature of humans. Whether it’s trash covertly dumped in a park, the clearing of a forest