The Seventh Lagoon The Ring of Fire, The Ring of Water
By 1980, we had been plugging away on the Lagoon Cycle for close to seven years. The Sixth Lagoon was finished, as was the First. We decided to push the metaphor and take a risk. In a morning conversation—a relieved morning conversation, as the Seventh Lagoon was reluctant to come forth—we completely yielded voice to the artist between us. That is to say, neither of us considered ourselves the artist anymore; by this time, both of us had come to believe, without any doubt, that a third entity cocreated by us was the real artist. Because this entity didn’t have hands, it could hardly sign anything; no one could see it. People thought it was whimsical of us, perhaps a little Dada or, as Dick Higgins said, “Fluxus-like,” to make the argument that an “invisible artist,” immaculately conceived by the pair of us, could possibly create this behemoth of a work all about lagoons and metaphors, with stories nested within stories.
After all our studying and art making, the artist between us made a prophecy and an intuitive leap that the earth would soon warm, and began to imagine what a warmed earth would be like, and to imagine how the Lagoonmaker and the Witness would respond were they to live long enough to experience the melting of ice and the rising of the waters. In that “now”, the real artist (with the two of us as assistants) spoke, saying: If the Pacific Ocean is understood as a vast, stretched estuarial lagoon, then all the rivers flowing into it nourish it by the outfall of the fresh water tongues enlarged or shrunk in response to the tide. The moon certainly had a big voice in this last estuarial lagoon, and the two characters re-clarified; the Lagoonmaker, seeing the Pacific as an estuarial lagoon framed by the ring of fire, and the Witness, dreaming in “stone space.” The characters move in a contradictory frame, operating simultaneously as grounded and as in a dream space. They debate the existence of the ego, arguing that the buffalo has efficiencies that the tractor that replaces it is completely obtuse to. The Witness takes, for a moment, the position that technology does not like that which is not itself.
Finally, the artist, who is neither of us and all three of us, goes to France and buys a large French map. All American maps have the North and South American continents in the middle, whereas the French map has the Pacific Ocean in the middle. The artist then decides to draw a line at the 100-meter level, imagining all ice has melted, the oceans have risen, civilization is under stress, and ecosystems are under stress. The artist asks: Will you help me when the ocean rises, while I help you when your lands, covered with water, can no longer produce? If we achieve this, then as the oceans rise gracefully we can withdraw with co-equal grace. So ends the Lagoon Cycle
After all our studying and art making, the artist between us made a prophecy and an intuitive leap that the earth would soon warm, and began to imagine what a warmed earth would be like, and to imagine how the Lagoonmaker and the Witness would respond were they to live long enough to experience the melting of ice and the rising of the waters. In that “now”, the real artist (with the two of us as assistants) spoke, saying: If the Pacific Ocean is understood as a vast, stretched estuarial lagoon, then all the rivers flowing into it nourish it by the outfall of the fresh water tongues enlarged or shrunk in response to the tide. The moon certainly had a big voice in this last estuarial lagoon, and the two characters re-clarified; the Lagoonmaker, seeing the Pacific as an estuarial lagoon framed by the ring of fire, and the Witness, dreaming in “stone space.” The characters move in a contradictory frame, operating simultaneously as grounded and as in a dream space. They debate the existence of the ego, arguing that the buffalo has efficiencies that the tractor that replaces it is completely obtuse to. The Witness takes, for a moment, the position that technology does not like that which is not itself.
Finally, the artist, who is neither of us and all three of us, goes to France and buys a large French map. All American maps have the North and South American continents in the middle, whereas the French map has the Pacific Ocean in the middle. The artist then decides to draw a line at the 100-meter level, imagining all ice has melted, the oceans have risen, civilization is under stress, and ecosystems are under stress. The artist asks: Will you help me when the ocean rises, while I help you when your lands, covered with water, can no longer produce? If we achieve this, then as the oceans rise gracefully we can withdraw with co-equal grace. So ends the Lagoon Cycle
