For

Immediate Release From: College of the Atlantic Contact: sokeeffe@coa.edu, 3823094 Date: April 1, 2013 On April 18th at 4:10 pm in College of the Atlantics Gates Auditorium Susie OKeeffe will present the Art of Reciprocity: Rekindling the Exchange of Wild Affection. Susie holds a Masters with Distinction from Oxford University in Environmental Change and Management. She has worked in environmental protection for 23 years. As a COA Research Associate she is exploring contemplative inquiry and aesthetic perception as a form of field study. Through poetry and prose, images, and music the audience will accompany Susie as she travels by train, then boat and plane to spend a month in solitary contemplation in the Tongass National Forest on Admiralty Island. Located in Southeast Alaska, Admiralty is known as The Fortress of the Bearsa translation of the native Tlingit wordKootznoowoo. The Tongass is one of the last temperate rain forests on Earth. The salmon still surge through its waters, the brown bear population is dense, and much of the ancient growth remains.

US Forest Service Windfall Harbor, Admiralty Island,AK

Susie explains that the Art of Reciprocity pivots on a practice of deep self-awareness, and embraces the methods artists and contemplatives use to meet the world. I draw from a very wide range of traditions and individuals, Susie explains, but my work doesnt employ the scientific method. It is a way of knowing through unique, individual experiences that cant be reproduced, repeated, or imposed. It requires the development of our intuitive, imaginal, emotional, instinctual and bodily intelligences, as well as the cognitive. This project stems from Susies conviction that the ecological crisis is ultimately one of human consciousness. Modernity functions on a very thin slip of awareness. Our capacities for broader consciousness have profoundly atrophied. This deterioration allows us to do terrible damage. Susie considers the expansion of consciousness to be as important as the accumulation of knowledge. It is indispensable to the future vitality, possibly the survival, of this planet. The Art of Reciprocity follows her effort to revive these ways of knowing for herself. A quote I use in the presentation conveys the Art of Reciprocity. It is from Emersons, The Poet: The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them? A spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcendency of their own naturehim they will suffer. In other words, Susie explains, there is a John Mitchell realm that reveals itself through the imagination. It takes form when we offer our affection, and Mother and Cub, Photo Courtesy of John Mitchell transcend the delusion of separation. It is fluid, and moves through everything. Participating in this exchange is the art of reciprocity. This enigmatic realm is incredibly palpable in places like Admiralty, Susie says. I doubt we can end our destructive ways unless we rouse our affection for this wild fecundity within and without. I think this is what Thoreau meant in his famous line, in Wildness is the preservation of the world. It would be a very different world, She concludes. It requires a way of being, learning and perceiving that is entirely new for most of us.