Three Modes of Attention— Plants, Rocks, and Smoke

Oct 9th - 23rd, 2024

In this course, we'll think about and practice radical attention in relation to plants, rocks, and smoke, exploring these three modes of more-than-human attention both in material terms and as metaphor. We’ll look into the history of poetry and prose on such subjects, and we’ll seek to form and reform our own understanding of attention by exploring the relation of this human faculty to the more-than-human world.

Session one: plants. Arturo D. Hernandez refers to densely intertwined plant life as “civilized collectives.” It’s been suggested that plants have up to eighteen senses and remarkable powers of prognostication. In the face of widespread social disorientation and haste, we’ll see what we can learn from such models of exquisite slowness and balanced concentration. 

Session two: rocks. Diamond cutters are sensitive to the sound a stone’s carbon lattice makes when it’s held against a polishing scaif—called the stone’s song, which is what gives it life. The thirteenth-century Andalusian writer Ibn ‘Arabi claims Everything wet or dry hears the sound of the muezzin. How do we imagine rocks responding to the call to prayer?

Session three: smoke. Smoke finds cracks and crannies, fills rooms, passes through tiny openings with great elegance. What can that teach us about sensitivity, the smallest movements, subtle understandings? Smoke kills, disinfects, disguises, offers protection. Our minds could do worse than advance like smoke.

Combining roundtable discussion, hands-on activities, and readings from the likes of Arthur Sze, Madhu Kaza, Ibn ‘Arabi, Hugh Raffles, Cesar Calvo, and Arturo D. Hernandez.

Taught by Brad Fox, author of The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths.