{"id":2983,"date":"2011-03-21T08:08:45","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T13:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=2983"},"modified":"2011-05-27T07:54:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T12:54:50","slug":"artmonks-children-of-thoreau-whitehead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/21\/artmonks-children-of-thoreau-whitehead\/","title":{"rendered":"Artmonks: children of Thoreau & Whitehead"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Thoreau’s quest to “live deliberately […] and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” were cross-bred with A. N. Whitehead’s insight that creativity<\/a> is the driving core of all things in the universe, the “universal of universals,” then today’s “artmonks” are children not of Marx and Coca-Cola (as Godard once labeled<\/a> the activists of the 1960s and Xiaoping Lin more recently<\/a> called the Chinese artistic avant-garde), but children of Thoreau and Whitehead.<\/p>\n

The monastic ideal has always been about living deliberately. And in a world that is rapidly outgrowing the secular-religious divide — becoming simultaneously post-secular<\/a>, for those outgrowing the constraints<\/a> of secularism, and post-religious, or at least post-traditional, for those no longer in obeisance to inherited religion — monasticism today is reinventing itself in interesting and creative ways. “Artmonks” are those who bring a mindful deliberation and dedication to the creative process, following it wherever it leads them. They are the monks of immanence, post-traditional devotees synthesizing the vita contemplativa<\/em> with the vita activa <\/em>in an age of Burning Man and the internet.<\/p>\n

The Art Monastery Project<\/a> is “an international community of artists dedicated to applying the disciplined, contemplative, sustainable monastic way of living to the creative process.” Local chapters of the International Otherhood of Artmonks<\/a>, which describes itself as a “secular (dis)order of creative, contemplative activists,” now number in the hundreds of members. As Nathan Rosquist<\/a> defines them, artmonks live “at the intersection of three worlds”: spirit (contemplation), ethics (activism), and art (creativity).*<\/p>\n

Rosquist asks “Can you name any” artmonks<\/a>, and then lists Theophane the Monk<\/a> and Leonard Cohen (okay, Zen Buddhist) alongside Charles Baudelaire, Gary Snyder, and Sunn o))) (at which point the list has gotten really eclectic!).<\/p>\n

Some others who’ve pursued their creative visions down whatever spiritual rabbitholes they led them include Joseph Beuys,<\/a> Yves Klein, Marina Abramovi\u0107<\/a>, Stan Brakhage, Genesis P. Orridge<\/a>, David Tibet<\/a>, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Derek Jarman<\/a>, Carolee Schneemann, John Cage, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison<\/a>, Richard Long, Betsy Damon<\/a>, Mary Beth Edelson, Vito Acconci, outsider artists like Henry Darger<\/a> and Ferdinand Cheval<\/a>, and on and on and on.<\/p>\n

(*If it were up to me, I would spin Rosquist’s triad only slightly differently, so as to follow a Peircian understanding of the “normative sciences” of aesthetics<\/em>, a “first,” which pursues beauty, or the “admirable in itself”; ethics<\/em>, a “second,” which pursues right action and conduct in relation to others, therefore activism; and logic<\/em>, or ecologic<\/a>, a “third,” which pursues habits of thought by which an understanding develops of how things fit together. Each flows out of, and depends on, its previous — logic on the ethical, ethics on the aesthetic, with the aesthetic grounding them all, and all three in action constituting creativity<\/em>. Come to think of it, some philosophers ought to qualify as well, Peirce<\/a> among them.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Thoreau’s quest to “live deliberately […] and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” were cross-bred with A. N. Whitehead’s insight that creativity is the driving core of all things in the universe, the “universal of universals,” then today’s “artmonks” are children not of Marx and Coca-Cola (as Godard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691847,689354],"tags":[5431,17840,17838,16870,17839,423],"class_list":["post-2983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-spirituality","category-image_nation","tag-art","tag-artmonks","tag-monasticism","tag-peirce","tag-thoreau","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-M7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10041,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/01\/28\/process-and-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":2983,"position":0},"title":"Process and Reality","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been trying to convince acclaimed northeast Vermont brewer Shaun Hill to add Whitehead's Process and Reality to his Philosophical Series\u00a0of ales, stouts, lambics, and porters, on the pretext that it was written down the road from the brewery. But also because Nietzsche, Foucault, Emerson, Thoreau, and Deleuze would appreciate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/01\/a3292134263_10-275x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2589,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/08\/whitehead-media-theory\/","url_meta":{"origin":2983,"position":1},"title":"Whitehead & media theory","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Jussi Parikka at Machinology is reporting on media theorist Mark Hansen's move from a focus on media objects to a Whiteheadian focus on media processes. A few quotes: \"Well known are the Whitehead writings of Massumi and Manning in Montreal, and of course the recent Whitehead writings of Steven Shaviro,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4103,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/23\/thinking-with-whitehead\/","url_meta":{"origin":2983,"position":2},"title":"Thinking with Whitehead","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Isabelle Stengers's Thinking With Whitehead arrived in the mail today. The publication of the English translation of this tome, a long nine years after the French original, is a genuine Event in the world of process-relational philosophy (or whatever you'd like to name the \"beatnik brotherhood,\" as Harman calls it,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/05\/9780674048034-180x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5737,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/04\/29\/whiteheads-return-ecologys-boon\/","url_meta":{"origin":2983,"position":3},"title":"Whitehead’s return, ecology’s boon","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Ultimately, the thinking of speculative pragmatism that is activist philosophy belongs to nature. Its aesthetico-politics compose a nature philosophy. The occurrent arts in which it exhibits itself are politics of nature. \"The one-word summary of its relational-qualitative goings on: ecology. Activist philosophy concerns the ecology of powers of existence. Becomings\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/04\/flock1-275x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8868,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/06\/whitehead-in-greensboro\/","url_meta":{"origin":2983,"position":4},"title":"Whitehead in Greensboro","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This post follows up on my\u00a0previous note\u00a0about Alfred North Whitehead's time\u00a0spent in Greensboro, Vermont. It was updated on July 7, 2016, thanks to information obtained from the Mitchells' descendants. I have\u00a0found out where the Whiteheads stayed when he was writing his philosophical magnum opus,\u00a0Process and Reality. It was in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"s-l1600","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/07\/s-l1600-275x182.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1331,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/09\/02\/realism-or-bust\/","url_meta":{"origin":2983,"position":5},"title":"realism, or bust","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael at Archive Fire just shared a good quote from Latour on Whitehead, \"king of the realists.\" Funny thing -- I just finished up some comments introducing Whitehead to my ecocinema students... The upshot of those comments is that, according to Whitehead's attempt to rewire the metaphysics of the western\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Whitehead\"","block_context":{"text":"Whitehead","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/whitehead\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2983"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4271,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983\/revisions\/4271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}