Connecting the disconnected

I love this sculpture by Naoko Ito.

She describes the inspiration for this piece, part of her Urban Nature series, saying “New York has a lot of parks but I feel like the park is fake nature. I started thinking about how, especially in the New York area, in urban areas, how people get along with nature. How they contain it.”[1] 

When I see this piece, part of Ito’s Urban Nature series, I see something else.  I see the way the modern world disconnects the connected, fragmenting our understanding of the whole.[2]  Imagine being assigned the task of understanding everything within one of the jars, but only one.  Economists call the information outside their point of focus “externalities” and they are trained to exclude them from consideration.  Architects often focus on their sites, leaving things beyond the property line unconsidered.  Doctors too often focus on a diseased organ, rather than its larger context—the whole person and her environment.  The world, it is said, has problems, while universities have departments.

Alternatively, imagine being asked to understand this limb by mentally eliminating its state of suspended disjunction.

How can we reconnect this whole?  Using Ito’s art as a reckoning object…would we break two jars at a time, fusing the whole together, piece by piece?  Would we break all the jars, then arrange the pieces as best we can, even though they will remain?  Is there a way to drive a thread of energy through each limb, reigniting the chain of chemistry and electricity that grew this limb from its inception?  Should it be freed of its glass containers, then allowed to decay naturally, recombining as stardust?

Even if Ito had not made this provocative demonstration, we would be observing a limb that has lost its life force.  What are its lessons for us?  How can we honor its legacy? 

See more of Naoko Ito’s work at http://naokoito.com/website2011-010.html.  Thanks to #WOMENSART for showcasing this piece, and the work of other under recognized artists.

[1]http://camraleigh.org/exhibitions/2011ito/

[2]I use the term “modern” expansively, to mean western thought from the Enlightenment forward.  Many would argue that the control of nature follows the same line of thinking that leads to the categorization of knowledge.