Pondering the Printer Tree (Was: Endnode Week 7)

At 9:29 AM -0800 11/18/02, Mark River wrote:
>Boy/Beuys and Mom. Yeah, I guess the main problem with
>him is the romantic/utopic version of the world,
>nature and gender that he sets up looks a bit like the
>old german view of the world, nature and gender that
>he was "born out of". At least we have no claim that
>the printer tree has any spiritual vaule and I'm glad
>you think of the tree as "she".


It's funny but, when I wrote that I meant to say that I do not think
that everything is art and that motherhood (or parenting) is
certainly not art. I do now people who believe they have complete
authorship/authority over their children but, heck, whatever –wait
till the kids turn 16. The thing is, that I do not think parenting is
breeding either. Humans do not have to breed anymore. Parenting is
something else –I do not what it is but it is neither art nor
breeding.

Which takes me to the printer tree.

Not being able to walk away from the "what does it means?", I've been
thinking a lot about not only that tree but trees in general. Because
that tree is neither a tree nor a printer.

Trees are synonymous to humanity because we have used them to image
humanity –the body, the family, knowledge, government … When I
first saw the printer tree I was taken aback by what I immediately
felt, which was at first whimsy but then melancholy. Here is a tree,
made out of pressed wood, loosing leaves made of printed paper. It
seems a funny, odd ode to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. With the
smell of the freshly cut wood, the whirr of the hardware and those
cables constricting the trunk as if they were cyborg vines, it seems
more like an eulogy to the millennia humans have spent imaging
reality.

I do not know much about conceptual art but what I love about this
work is its devious simplicity. It is like an epigram –a jam-packed
statement that explodes with meaning and insight every time you read
it. Given that you claim no spiritual value, I say, bravo because the
will of the tree wins and not yours. It is alive!

Before y'all dismantle it, you should have an wake —would
definitely seem fitting. Make it an Irish one with lots of beer :-)

Cheers,
Liza