Perfectly Ordinary Stones, Carried for 1,300 Years (2014)
ishimochi.com
ishimochi.com
I am taking one photo per season of one particular tree in my commune's forest.
This woman has been taking self portraits once a year for 17 years, with last year's photo in this year's: https://www.ignant.com/2019/01/21/the-mother-as-creator-a-ph...
We need more long, slow art projects.
I find it quaint the idea that where will be a concept of "Japanese" and "non-Japanese" in 1300 years from now.
If you assume the rate of progress is fixed (which it isn't, as we know, it accelerates), you can get some sense of how farfetched this idea is. 1300 years ago was the year 721 CE. There was no unified Japan then[1] (nor likely even a concept of "Japanese" identity as most imperial practices were modeled from China), nor was there a "Europe," a "Mexico," or a "South Africa." There certainly wasn't the notion of national identity in the modern sense, as such concepts would have been alien to village-dwellers living under feudal lords.
After many cycles of political consolidation and fracturing, it is unlikely in 1300 years there will be a unified Japan; but, more likely, the entire pan-Asian sphere will have been unified (probably under China), if not under the purview of a world government. Sino-Japanese languages will probably mix Australasian language groups, borrowing heavily from English, creating a dialect that would sound as alien to us as Chaucer does now[2].
In 1300 years, global warming will render a good portion of the planet uninhabitable without artificial climate controls, and new parts of the planet never before populated will experience a flourishing of new development. Major cities will develop in hitherto uninhabited land in Siberia, Canada and elsewhere, probably creating new power centers we can't even begin to contemplate. New nations will rise and challenge dominant superpowers for position. There will be at least one more major global war in the next millennium, which could result in a complete shift of power, or nuclear winter or annihilation of a good % of humanity.
And they think some stones are going to survive.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nara_period [2]https://mypoeticside.com/poets/geoffrey-chaucer-poems
And your observation about the long term effects of our actions (which themselves are accelerating in frequency and impact) on climate, the world in general and human structures and concepts is spot on, it is a special kind of delusional that declaring a couple of stones special will have a long term effect on those particular stones. At the same time, it did lead to some interesting insights so in a way the value has already been delivered, even if the stones are lost tomorrow.
The way things are going, that is looking like less than 100 years. The increasing pollution and degradation of the biosphere, rising sea levels and more will drastically change civilization.
And even if those things don't take us out, the robot uprising / Singularity / whatever is highly likely to completely destroy civilization, and in the best-case scenario, replace it with something better.
The rate of progress can decrease, and even go negative!
Consider the concepts of empire and identity from 700 years before your year 721 CE that were entirely replaced by smaller, less-advanced ones.
Though I would also be surprised if anything like Japan, China, the US, or Europe as we know them today are recognizable in 1300 years, whether because of advance or collapse (or both!).
But some traditions I expect to survive. They'd just be identified as part of whatever the new resulting cultures are that inherited them.
Even predicting 20 years ahead is almost impossible. 1300 is just fiction.
Closest was probably the concept of Christendom, the part of the world unified by the Christian religion. Remember both the Catholic/Orthodox and Catholic/Protestant splits were well in the future.
The idea of predicting the effects of global warming 1000 years in the future is really absurd. You are understating your point here, at our current rate of consumption, our fossil fuels will last for 200 years at (a highly inflated) maximum. Global warming as we know it is meaningless after that time period. Odds are there will be some crisis about too much consumption of atmospheric CO2 before that.
Perhaps the point is to foster long-term thinking, a bit like the ideas of "The Long Now" foundation
Why?
Because things that do not have intrinsic value tend to get lost at a very high rate and things that do have intrinsic value tend to get stolen, and then are lost.
If it happened to 99.99% of all the works of humanity from 1300 years ago, including some very precious ones it will almost definitely end the same way for these none-precious stones.
This is a study in provenance, especially because there isn't anything special about the stones other than being 'the ones', and I like the project as such but the cynic in me can't help but look around and fail to see even a single object from that long ago that didn't have a whole religious order dedicated to keeping it protected through centuries of upheaval and turmoil.
That said, I wish the stone keepers the best of luck and I do hope that it will work, but the value for me is in thinking about the project and its consequences, not so much in the execution.
What I would think is that some, if not all, of the ordinary stones will indeed by lost, but then surreptitiously replaced by others (after all, they have no identifiable properties).
1300 years from now, there will be stones, but the not the original ones. I think it fits the purpose perfectly, just like purported official Christian relics.
While not ideal, even that may be OK to some extent -- perhaps the valuable thing is the soul of what you are carrying. I think of it like a University or a specific house of worship. Yes, there are physical assets, but the real assets (the people) come, contribute, leave but the soul of the organization lasts for hundreds of years.
Yes, I liked it too. I normally dislike any kind of "messing with" my scroll, but here it seemed quite appropriate, if confusing at first.
Reading this I had a flicker of desire to steal "Lily of the valley", and likewise this desire to take hold of such a rare coveted object will grow in the hearts of man over the centuries. What gives something value is not always its intrinsic worth, but also how it takes hold in the public consciousness. Just look at worthless NFTs.
And so starts the secret brotherhood of stone-keepers who will fend off the evil advances of those who would break the sacred lineage. Or, liars will introduce new stones to inflate the supply and claim to be sacred stone-keepers. So let's put a blockchain around this thing and be done with it.
Umberto Eco and Pynchon would be proud.