You and Me Camp | Place as Object

By Laura DeAngelis

Day One of You and Me Camp | April 1, 2014

How does a “place” or "built environment” accrue meaning as an object? Where can value be derived from? As I ponder these questions, I take a moment to pause for a short practice of noticing my surroundings. I am sitting outside on a deck made out of pallets, listening to the various sounds of the surrounding redwood forest. There are birds chirping both near and far, singing amidst the quiet hum of leaves rustling in the breeze. Mowgli, my basset hound, is sound asleep under the awning on the front porch of our small trailer. As I sit here in this place, I feel overwhelmed with emotions. This is a nostalgic place that was built out of necessity in order to have a “home” to live in, a home that now functions as an inhabitable art project and homesteading practice. It is a place that is immersed in nature and layered with the historical lineage of the surrounding land. As an object, it holds endless hours of physical labor and contemplation in its construction. This place, You and Me Camp, is an object that transforms through social engagement and functions as both a refuge and gathering place for others. It is through this lens that I will attempt to discern the value of You and Me Camp as an object and carrier of greater meaning.

In the essay “Objects as Instruments, Objects as Signs,” Maquet describes how in reading objects as instruments,  the “observer considers the object and draws inferences from its design and its situation in the social and physical environment.”^[1] When I think about You and Me Camp, I think about it as a place that was built out of the necessity for a home. Hand-built into the hillside of a redwood forest, it is an instrument that functions as a basic shelter and site for living. The construction and design were born out of the need to adapt to natural elements and provide simple comforts for ease of access and navigation. The idea of living in the woods was very much influenced by Henry David Thoreau’s novel Walden, and his practice of simple living and self-reliance through total immersion in nature as a way to better understand society. In the essay, “Thoreau and the Land,” landscape architect Charles Gorley speaks to Thoreau’s thoughts on beauty by saying “in order that a house and grounds may be beautiful and interesting, he said that they must suggest “the idea of necessity, proving the devotion of the builder, not luxury.””^[2] When I think about how the construction of You and Me Camp has been built primarily out of basic needs, I become keenly aware of the value that necessity carries. The coastal redwoods are beautiful and daunting at once and environmental awareness and intentional labor are necessary for building in cooperation with the elements and surrounding landscape. In many ways, nature acts as a guide to how things can be constructed and sustained. As Thoreau reflects in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”^[3] I return to this sentiment often as the natural elements tend to challenge my mental capacity and desire to remain living this way. In overcoming these challenges, I emerge a stronger person equipped with valuable lessons that serve a deeply personal quest for authenticity and meaning in life.

What does nature have to teach us and can the elements of the natural world serve as our spiritual directors? We have spent six years of place-making at You and Me Camp, though we never anticipated we would live here this long. In our first years of shaking hands with the area it became very clear that there would be challenges to living in this environment. The winter months bring a great deal of rain, where landslides and fallen trees are normal occurrences. The roads to get up here are narrow and windy, often closing during the winter due to natural disasters. Every aspect of living in the elements requires patience and intention, in addition to both physical and emotional effort. As a means to endure, living and place-making have very much become a spiritual practice and way of existing in reciprocity with the land. In Merton’s essay, “Place-Making as Contemplative Practice,” he notes that “in gazing upon and reflecting upon a particular place, we are compelled to reckon with the place as it presents itself, in all its concreteness and specificity, not as we imagine it or wish it to be.”^[4] This reflection about place feels akin to my own thinking about You and Me Camp in the first few months it came into being. While the idea of the place felt full of potential and possibility, being there felt more like an existential crisis and took time and endless contemplation to accept the challenge of making it a place for living. After several years of place-making, I see and experience You and Me Camp very differently, as if it is sacred. I am no longer frightened by the things I once was. Merton makes another interesting point in his essay when it comes to place-making as contemplative work by saying:

“We see more. I want to note and hold onto that tantalizing phrase for I think it points to what is perhaps the central feature of place-making when understood as a contemplative work. It is a way of seeing the world, a way of being in the world that allows us to cherish it with all the feelings we are capable of. It is a way of seeing that enables us to gauge the true significance of what we gaze upon.”^[5]

In seeing this way, it feels possible that one could achieve a sense of belonging to a place. Perhaps through this sense of belonging, one is also sensing the aura or spirit of the place itself; an extraordinary feeling from the ordinary and discovery of its inherent value.

        What is needed to live? I remember the day we moved to You and Me Camp vividly. It was raining and we were preparing our belongings to move outside, realizing we had so much to relocate with very little space for storage. It appears to be a trend that when people move out, they finally realize how unnecessary it is to own so many things. Why do we wait for moments like this to re-evaluate what is necessary to live? It seems to be a lesson that is learned and relearned endlessly over a lifetime, thanks to consumer culture. In this particular case, we were moving outside on a rainy day and it felt inevitable that most of our belongings would go unused or become damaged by weather. And to be honest, most things did. By releasing objects of excess over the years, we have been able to simplify our lifestyle and rethink what is necessary to live comfortably and well. I believe the psychological impact of clearing clutter is incredibly beneficial to one’s mental wellness and functions as a form of healing and renewal. Working from a clear slate, it became important to reconsider the materials we used for construction and to improvise with both found and natural resources. The forest provides natural borders and other elements that can function as pre-existing architectural features and we were keen on weaving the land into the construction and design. Through material improvisation and land integration, You and Me Camp has become a playful site for experimental living.

        To live in nature is to live with nature. In the beginning, I was scared to live in a small trailer in the woods. The landscape frightened me and I didn’t want to be outside with the spiders. The sounds of wildlife at night scared me and the threat of large branches or trees falling on us felt very real...and still does to this day. However, my fear has dissipated over the years and I attribute that to lived experience and immersion in nature. In Lucy Lippards book Lure of the Local, she writes that “British geographer Denis Cosgrove describes landscape as “the external world mediated through human subjective experience.” I’d define place that way. A lived-in landscape becomes a place, which implies intimacy; a once-lived-in landscape can be a place, if explored, or remain a landscape, if simply observed.”^[6] I have always been drawn towards challenging life experiences and feel this desire is very much rooted in the process of becoming and overcoming. By existing with nature, in this place, I have gained a better understanding of what it means to live in reciprocity with the land. If I care for the forest, it will care for me. While the construction and maintenance of our dwelling space at camp feels like it is always a work in progress, land stewardship has become of equal priority. Years of observation and caretaking have led to a greater knowledge of native plants, wildlife and understanding of natural cycles and patterns. With the body in motion directly in the landscape, one is able to experience it kinesthetically and allow an opening to experience its history. While there is still so much to learn about the history of the land at You and Me Camp, new layers of memory are embedded into this place with each new day. As Lippard describes in Lure of the Local, “Space defines landscape, where space combined with memory defines place.”^[7] Caring for this place is a labor of love, a form of protection for the land and the memories that it once held and now holds.

        Can homesteading be an art practice? If there is a line to be drawn between art and life, I like to think of it as one that is blurred. There are many artists and thinkers who have influenced me in this way of thinking. When I learned about the practice of artist Andrea Zittel, I was fascinated by her investigative focus around structures for living and objects from daily life. In an article about Zittel’s practice, there is a quote from the artist that states “I think a lot of damage can be done by allowing one’s identity to be shaped by other people. Sometimes it’s better to have a low profile and have control over it.”^[8] The notion that environmental conditions can shape human behavior was introduced to me early on by B.F. Skinner’s utopian novel Walden Two. I think about this often as it relates to how I practice art through lived experience as it relates to place. You and Me Camp is a constructed environment that functions as an inhabitable art project and experiment for living. If we have the ability to choose how our identities are shaped, why not reconstruct how we live and what we live with? My feeling about how one can approach this is very much like Zittel’s, who decided this early in her art practice: “I was going to focus on using myself as the guinea pig for my experiments.”^[9]

        When we started living at You and Me Camp, I was surprised by how often we were approached by other people to come and camp with us. In many ways, the demand of visitors has shaped what camp is and how it functions for others when they come here. Social engagement allows for the creative exchange of knowledge and ideas and often leads to collaboration, which in turn embeds the spirits of other people into the history of this place. You and Me Camp is activated and transformed through the presence of others and remains a container full of possibility. In addition to visitors, there exists a small community of neighbors who have open doors and a wealth of knowledge and ideas. It wasn’t until I started living here that I realized what it means to be a “good neighbor,” which circulates back to acts of reciprocity. To live in a place and feel supported by a community is quite the reward.

        Certain places have a way of drawing people in. For me personally, I am very much attracted to places that others I admire have been before me. To experience a place that another person has constructed and invested time, thought and emotional energy into can be very moving. A few places I have visited that come to mind are Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Museum and East Jesus in Slab City. In Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippard speaks to place as it relates to people quite eloquently by saying, “Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person’s life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there.“^[10] The temporal quality of You and Me Camp is certain and we know that one day we will be looking back with fondness, remembering this place as a distant memory. It exists as an object, a place and a home that has come into being  and will undergo many phases of objecthood until it’s inevitable end. However, because this is a meaningful place, an object that holds great value, I trust that it will continue to live on and take new forms.

You and Me Camp | March 22, 2020

Project Proposal | @youandmecamp

        In thinking about the making portion of this research, I’ve decided to create an instagram account for You and Me Camp. The purpose of this project is to provide documentation that covers all aspects of place as outlined above. I see this account as the beginning of what could evolve into something much more sophisticated, like a website that includes a gallery, camp updates, workshops and contact information for future visitors. We are currently in the process of creating individual campsites behind our main living quarters and hope to one day offer an Artist in Residence program where we would host at least an artist every summer to stay and work for a few weeks to a month's time.  The instagram account will also be experimental and improvisational in form and will function as a living archive that demonstrates how the accrual of meaning can occur.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burton-Christie, Douglas. "Place-Making as Contemplative Practice." Anglican Theological Review 91, no. 3 (Summer, 2009): 347-371. https://login.intra.mills.edu:2443/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.intra.mills.edu:2443/docview/215256218?accountid=2525.

Gorely, Charles P. "Thoreau and the Land" Landscape Architecture 24, no. 3 (1934): 147-52. Accessed April 13, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/44661201.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. United States: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1910.

Lippard, Lucy R. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: New Press, 1997.

Ruiz, Christina. “ Dream-building in the American West: Andrae Zittel.” The Gentlewoman, Issue no.11 (Spring & Summer, 2015): 178-199. Accessed, April 13, 2020. https://thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/andrea-zittel.

Maquet, Jacques. “Objects as Instruments, Objects as Signs.” History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. New York and Washtington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993, 30-40.