INSTITUTE FOR DOCTORAL STUDIES
IN THE VISUAL ARTS
by Crystal Brown, Cohort ’23
Compost is the nutrient-rich soil intentionally made from plant material, food scraps, and manure. All too often, we think of these components as “waste” or by-products, and if not composted, the environmental impact will negatively affect the world we live in, releasing carbon emissions and exacerbating the climate catastrophe. Postulating that compost is a way of thinking about our collective life and death cycle, as a species and a planet, is a necessary and healthy response to the world. While on residency in Mexico City, the life and death cycle was evident in many of the anthropological sites we visited, the traditional indigenous ceremonies and performances we watched, and through the traditional crafts that are practiced by contemporary artists and craft persons in the city today. The philosopher Donna Haraway establishes and reiterates the echoes of Mexican culture through her thinking of compost. “We are compost, not posthuman” (Haraway, 97).
Watching Los Voladores de Papantla (flying men of Papantla) outside the Museo Nacional de Antropología presents an overwhelming embrace of life and death through deeply rooted tradition while confronting the fine line between life and death. The ceremony is performed by several ethnic groups in Mexico and Central America, especially the Totonac people in the eastern state of Veracruz. According to UNESCO, the ritual expresses respect for and harmony with the natural and spiritual worlds. Five performers climb a ninety-eight-foot pole, incorporating dance and music through flute and drums—a performance on a semi-permanent structure. Traditionally, the performers cut a tree “with forgiveness of the mountain god” (para 1, Tahin), reiterating this spiritual significance of the endeavor. Four men climb the pole as the fifth man plays the flute and the drums and ascends to the top of the pole. Four men representing the four winds or cardinal directions secure a foot to a rope while that music plays. Then, they are fastened to a twisted rope at the top of the pole to enable them to spin, and they dive into the void with sublimity. Slowly spinning down towards the Earth, “bringing to life the myth of the birth of the universe” (para1, Tahin), the men appear to enter into a trance-like state connecting them to the cosmos and themselves in a deeply rooted and entangled way. The overwhelming connection to the universe and the life/death cycle is palpable. The cultural and community values mimic a compost theory connecting the present's richness with the cosmos, representing what life is born from, rather than discarded and forgotten.
Every archeological site visited had deep connections to the cosmos, the land, the spiritual, and non-human entities. Death as necessary for life is expressed teleologically through the embrace of living on terra as a continuum when looking closely at the artifacts found at Templo Mayor. The temple is thought to have been rebuilt seven times, suggesting the importance of the site but reiterating the conium in a perpetual rebuilding or “becoming.” This “becoming” is felt culturally today and has endured conquistadors and harsh critique from Western culture. At the site are two temples, one dedicated to the Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli, where myth says the deity was born to the god of rain, Tlaloc. When considering the duality of the gods, one is confronted with Huitzilopochtli as representing death and Tlaloc representing life or rebirth. Water/rain continues to be sacred as a necessary component, enabling the cyclical exchange of life and death. Even today, rain holds cultural significance as a predictor of a successful growing season. If it rains during the winter months when rain is rare, the growing season will be productive; if no rain, the prediction for a good growing season becomes negative. The elevated environment brings one closer to the heavens while tying one closer to death and the spiritual world. Rain brings reprieve and flourishing of life exhibited through plants, animals, and humans, reminding the inhabitants of the importance of embracing both. Embracing the life-death cycle is to relinquish control while being mindful of the significance of building compost through deep connections with culture and community, enabling the embrace of a world that is deeply connected to natural cycles.
The echo and the perpetuation of Haraway’s use of the term compost is felt deeply as an alternative to the Western capitalist understanding of death. This society actively tries to avoid the idea of death altogether. The perpetuation of products and ideas that will increase the longevity of life at the expense of the other (human, animal, and terra). Compost is made of the richness of life, the myths, the thinking, the imaging, and the rebirthing. Re-evaluating our relationship to death and life will hopefully allow for an embrace of compost as a necessary component to our collective continuum of “becoming” by establishing a healthy response to life on our planet through what Donna Haraway calls response-ability.
Works Cited
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Tajin, Cumbre. “Unesco - Ritual Ceremony of the Voladores.” Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2018, ich.unesco.org/en/RL/ritual-ceremony-of-the-voladores-00175.