Sulfur Piles, Chicagoland
The concept of “metabolic rift” speaks of estrangement from the living world. It’s about the gap between city and country, between nature and humanity – and the products that circulate in between. Across the earth, organic cycles have been stretched, distorted and broken by industrialism. The city has become a digital predator stalking distant hinterlands. We can feel the damage in our daily lives, and in our own bodies. But to speak of estrangement is to evoke the possibilities of reconciliation and healing. Can we close certain gaps, even restore a cycle? Can society reconcile itself to being part of nature?
Watershed Art & Ecology is organizing a collaborative exhibition about the metabolic rift, to be held in Fall 2025. We hope to engage in a generative process, sharing ideas, feelings, places and creations among a fluctuating group. The project has four overlapping parts:
— A reading group devoted to three books: The Ages of Gaia, by James Lovelock; Symbiotic Planet, by Lynn Margulis; and Marx’s Ecology, by John Bellamy Foster. The reading group will be hybrid (at Watershed and on Zoom), and will likely lead on to further texts.
— A series of public walks led by individuals or groups who want to engage with the entanglement of nature and culture in a specific place in or around Chicago.
— A retreat at Pachamanka, Nance Klehm’s land in Northwest Illinois.
— An exhibition at Watershed, to be co-curated by the group in forms that will emerge from the collaborative process.
A library of readings can be found on the next page. The password is the first word of the project title: metabolic.
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The reading group is open to all, as are the walks. It is not necessary to attend every session. But we are dreaming of a community of practice. Come make it real, and we will all find out what that means.
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