testsite 06.3: Beast-Footed Feathered Serpents
Jules Buck Jones & Caitlin Haskell
07.16.2006 - 08.27.2006
I. EARLY GOINGS: A Journal Entry from June 18, 2006
With a month remaining before Beast-Footed Feathered Serpents opens I am reminded of a sequence of events that happened at the time Jules and I began our collaboration.
In April, a visiting artist made a comment about the aggressive look of the birds in Austin and the scary noises they make. I couldn’t have agreed more. The dark purple birds here (grackles) are aggressive. They will snatch a chip from your fingers. They also sound extremely exotic to my New Hampshire ears. The caaw-caaw of northern crows seems positively civilized in comparison.
A week or two later, I was sitting in a park near campus eating a taco for lunch. There was too much chicken in my taco and the tortilla kept overflowing onto the picnic tabletop, but I refused to share the meat with the scavenging grackles. I am familiar with what happens when you start
giving food to seagulls, for example, and the results are rarely favorable. Then, there was a prehistoric cry. I couldn’t see the source of this primal squawk, but remarked to myself how similar it sounded to a Pterodactyl. Aggressive birds indeed.
A few hours later, or perhaps it was the next day, I began wondering how I knew what a Pterodactyl sounded like. I watch very few movies. I don’t read fiction. This couldn’t just be the work of Hollywood. And yet, I have a very clear picture of what a Pterodactyl looks like, what size it is, how it moves, the texture of its wings—even its sound. As I have thought about this more, I have tended to associate my understanding of dinosaurs with strongly held imaginations—imaginations so strong that, when I don’t consider how illogical all of this is—make me as confident in my ability to identify a Pterodactyl’s song as a chickadee’s.
Today a similar epistemological bind came up in Jules’s studio. We were talking about the color he uses in the washes over his Tyrannosaur drawings and I asked how he arrived at certain color pairings:
“How do you know what color to paint a Tyrannosaur?”
Jules nodded in recognition of my question, and said very earnestly:
“It’s tricky. If you Google ‘Tyrannosaur’ the images come up in every color of the rainbow. Red, purple, green…”
We thought about that for a while, until I spoke up again.
“So, how do you know which one to choose?”
II. THE OSTRICH"I don’t know. I guess yellow and aqua are just dear to me.”
When an ostrich buries his head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely takes the happiest course. It hides the danger, and then calmly says there is no danger; and, if it feels perfectly sure there is none, why should it raise its head to see? A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions, and if he … succeeds … I do not see what can be said against his doing so. It would be an egotistical impertinence to object that his procedure is irrational, for that only amounts to saying that his method of settling belief is not ours. He does not propose to himself to be rational, and, indeed, will often talk with scorn of man’s weak and illusive reason. So let him think as he pleases.
C. S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief”
Though it carries a stigma of ignorance, keeping one’s head in the sand seems no more reprehensible than keeping one’s head in a book, or in anything else, for that matter. Jules’ drawings of the fish of the Atlantic and the fish of the Pacific come from books and they contain as many fictions as they do facts. I am tempted to say that this happens despite the drawings’ basis in factual books, but many of these fictions arise because the drawings come from books. The Atlantic book (Peterson’s Field Guide to Atlantic Coast Fishes of North America), a rich source, contains many mackerel. The Pacific book, a less rich source from the same publisher, contains just two. I don’t hold this against Peterson’s—editing down the number of fish in an ocean is a reality of publishing. And yet, it is not a reality of the ocean. Jules’ project is true to the book, not to the ocean, so the Pacific pales.
When Jules and I first spoke about these drawings, it was in the context of a “turf war.” I couldn’t tell what I liked most: the drawings themselves, the idea of a massive fish battle or the fact that the fish battle was being called a “turf war.” The irony was too much.
Sometimes, when I look at these images I think, “Where is the water?” But the water doesn’t matter terribly. I am most interested in Jules’ depiction of the fishes’ collective psychology. Herein we find the benefit of the drawings scale—the tiny species and the expansive sheet of paper. One gets to see the relationship between the fish as an individual and the fish as a component in an ocean. Likewise, in the bird drawings we see specific beings—a stork, an eagle, a hawk—and we also see the birds as a contribution to a black swarm on a white page. Each contributes pigment and direction to a larger organism. You can’t get that from reading an entry in a book. You also can’t get that from direct observation. Indeed, truth to the larger organism, something approaching the complete phylum, would seem to be an under-practiced form of truth to nature. The one sure way to get it, though, is to stick one’s head in a book—the whole book—and refuse to take it out.
III. PARABLE OF THE BEAST
When Jules got back from Costa Rica I asked him whether he had seen any sharks on his trip. I don’t remember his answer, but I do remember the story he told about deciding to swim back to shore after a snorkeling expedition. His boat had already passed out of sight when he realized that it was going to be a harder swim than he had anticipated. The flippers he was wearing helped, but he was tired and it was a long distance to shore. Having covered little territory, he began to think about the sharks that may have been swimming beneath him. “I had to tell myself I wasn’t going to do this to myself. I wasn’t going to freak myself out. So I just dug in and started to swim.”
I asked Jules if he had planned a defense in the event that he encountered a shark. Such plans seem foolish on dry land, but, for better or for worse, a swimmer feels safer for having thought through the scenario. Jules didn’t have a strategy in place, so I shared mine: I remember learning, when I was about seven or eight years old, that sharks have very sensitive noses. They will become quite disoriented if you bash them on their snout or jab your fingers into their nostrils. Jules said that he was familiar with this method of aquatic self defense. But, when it came to his own defense system, he followed a model with a zoological precedent.
Bottlenose dolphins have been known to kill sharks by driving their sturdy, beak-like noses into the shark’s gills. This method demonstrates a great deal of understanding about the shark’s composition. A shark’s gills are the least protected area of its body. Everywhere else the aggressive fish’s razor-sharp skin would cut you with every blow. By striking the gills, however, one stands a chance at survival.
As Jules and I developed more elaborate defense strategies, it became clear that we were actually on the attack. We were the beasts in the feeding frenzy. Soon, the challenge we imagined was to thrust our hands through the shark’s gills and exhume the vicious beast’s heart. Both of us were sufficiently un-evolved to derive enjoyment from staging (and winning) these imaginary shark attacks. We would overcome the shark and drag our kill back to Austin. At testsite, we would display its limp, pummeled heart in a vitrine right in the middle of Laurence’s house. Having washed up, I would attend the opening in a smart, shark-skin skirt. Jules, undoubtedly, would arrive with its teeth on a string around his neck.
The antidote to our ecstatic savagery came with the realization that this would have been terrible art. Humbled, we retracted our arms from the shark’s gills.
We are, doubtless, in the main logical animals, but we are not perfectly so. Most of us, for example, are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to counteract our hopes and aspirations. Yet a lifetime of the application of this corrective does not usually eradicate our sanguine disposition. Where hope is unchecked by any experience, it is likely that our optimism is extravagant. Logicality in regard to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal can possess, and might, therefore, result from the action of natural selection; but outside of these it is probably of more advantage to the animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought.
C. S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief”
Sharing POWERfacts is a tradition that has grown out of Richmond, Virginia’s Animal Fact Crew. Those of us in Austin who have been introduced to POWERfacts have taken immediate pleasure from dealing in the nuggets of incredible information. In a 52-card pack of POWERfacts, there should be 52 moments of awe, 52 encouraging visions and 52 moments to question whether what has made you happy in any way reflects reality.
As our collaboration comes to a close, a good portion of my thoughts about Jules’ work deals with belief and its opposites; logic and its opposites. Putting together a dinosaur skeleton, for example, is an exercise in logic. Believing the scientists who present us with the forms of unseen beasts is a matter of conditioned trust. If our premise is that bone A is a Tyrannosaur leg, our conclusion follows that, if bone B fits into it, we have found the Tyranosaur’s hip. Whether these fossils are really so related is the crucial question. The bones may fit, but do they add up to bodies?
Jules has often discussed the works in Beast-Footed Feathered Serpents as an apocalyptic vision—a look forward to a time when dinosaurs and crocodiles recapture the earth. If these are encouraging visions, they are pleasing because they show the evolutionary triumph of a self-satisfied, sanguine disposition.
V. CALLS: A Selection of Bird Songs and Voice Messages
“Hey Caitlin, I think I can get us some alligators. $200. Call me back.”
Carib Grackle: tickita-tickita-tickita-ting
Hummingbird: zrrr jika jika jika jika jika
“Hey Caitlin, you’re not gonna believe this. I got us a walrus penis bone to go with the scrimshaw. This thing is like two-feet long. Call me.”
Double-crested Cormorant: yaaa yaa ya
Great Horned Owl: Ho hoo hoo hoododo hooooo hoo
“Hey Caitlin, Jules here. Hangin’out. I’m at work up at Foodheads. But, hey, I think I can get my hands on some fossilized dinosaur poop, which is like 34 million years old. Pretty sweet. We could put it on the table.”
Carolina Chickadee: Chikadeedeedeedeedee
Canada Goose: H-ronk
“Risa, what’s up? Jules. Chillin. Yo, good thing we’re not getting the plexiglas ‘cuz I think I can get my hands on some fucked-up dinosaur poop that’s like 34 million years old. So that’s gonna be the bomb. Anyway, just thought I’d tell you. Peace.”
Willow Ptarmigan: goBEK goBEK goBEK poDAYdo poDAYdo
Female Zebra Finch: [ ] (Females, as a rule, do not sing.)
“Hey Caitlin, Jules here. Back in the States. Um. I just talked to Risa so, yeah, gimme a call. Looks we’re gonna figure out what we can do to tie everything up.”
Chihuahuan Raven: graak
Common Pterodactyl: Urraaaaaak Huuraaaaaak
Artist Biographies:
Jules Buck Jones
Caitlin Haskell
Relevant Links:
Read Nikki Moore's review in The Austin Chronicle