Art

The work below assembles eight collages [each 10 x 8″] responding to reading The Charter of the Forest of 1217, which restored rights to land and resources to “free men,” land that had been enclosed by Kings. This  created lawful rights to what one needs for subsistence or survival, gradually defining a “commons.” This Charter accompanied the Magna Carta. It set the stage for more “abstract” rights, leading up to Human Rights and now environmental rights and laws. Arguably, to remember, to renew, to rethink this charter now is to reconsider what counts as a “commons” in the Anthropocene, an age of planetary disruption and climate change. How do we, as “Earthbounds” manage our relationship to a commons, i.e., the Earth on which our and other species depend for our collective survival?