Friday, October 17, 2008

Composting as collective offensive (for Hamish Morgan)

The following flick is an eyepiece for aerobic composting, where the aeration of the body is contiguous with the world. It's a short flick cut to a short track called Fall by the band called The Thing (now Dirtbird). It's a how-to-do-words-with-things film that emits little methane, recalling "All things fall and are built again" (W B Yeats, 1939), together with "Once upon a time the world was round, and you could go on it round and round" (Gertrude Stein, also 1939).

Carbon is fixed in the soil if the compost is damp and aerated. If the compost is too wet and not turned (not aerated), the organic matter rots, giving off methane. Carbon is the gaseous nutrient. It's transformation, into a greenhouse gas, is CO2. But carbon is organic matter in the soil, if treated well there is less gaseous transformation, less reduction of humus and therefore less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

All things fall and are built again in a closed-cycle ecology – NO WASTE – and those that build them again are microbial and joyous. Our economics and our ecology can now come home – Oikos – together. To give up on gaseous transformation – aspiration/celebrity – is to act as a collective offensive, or in mutual self defence.

So take your pitchfork and give some air to your body. The movement exclusive of industrial agriculture – supermarkets, refrigerants and Monsanto – is in full swing!

2 comments:

hamish morgan said...

I like it. Air, soil, body and action not becoming one but transforming and translating the other into something else, something dynamic and alive. Compost on the offensive as it turns bits and pieces into food growing potential. The human on the offensive as it jumps and throws itself towards life; being transformed by and transforming elements into something like life, over and over again, it tumbles, breathes and sweetens.

Permapoesis said...

air compost as mr O likes to say! Thanks Hamish.

air airO

airO airair O

air air air O airair
O airair O air O

air O air