“I once asked a man at Anaktuvuk Pass what he did when he visited a new, unknown place. ‘I listen,’ he replied. And that is all: listening to what the land is telling us. Wandering through the landscape, with my senses alert to what it has to say to me—long before I have uttered a single word myself. If one enters with such respect, one can believe that…
Tag: Ludek Certik
Luděk Čertík: Just listen
Unless we suffer from a congenital or genetic defect, or have suffered a serious injury in our lives that would have taken away our hearing, we all hear – albeit with different levels of sensitivity, of course – all the time. Unlike our eyes, we cannot close our ears. And in truth, sound cannot be escaped even if our hearing aids are not working for us: we can, because…
Luděk Čertík: Don't let the monkey and the tiger die
Your whole life, whales have been racing around somewhere every second Are you still afraid? Ondřej Tuček, Waterfowl were chirping very loudly all night At the end of 2022, on the recommendation of the American writer Rebecca Solnit, who shared it on her Facebook account, I came across the book The Nutmeg's Curse (Kletba muškátového oříšku, 2021) by Bengali writer Amitav Ghosh.…
Luděk Čertík: Distant and near
The following text was created as an accompaniment to the exhibition LIFE(T) IN STILL LIFE, the culmination of the project of the same name, which, through field trips and participatory events, seeks to revive the long-neglected site of Zátiší in Vodňany, South Bohemia. We are publishing the text here due to its more general validity – the ideas contained in it can be applied to any place on Earth. Over the years of studying birds, I have learned a lot, but the…
Luděk Čertík: I listen, I bow
Most of us listen to music at least sometimes, rarely – like in confession – do we listen to each other. The listening I want to talk about here, listening to the world, goes beyond the framework of human culture, interpersonal relationships. When I talk about listening to the world, I mean not only all the pleasant and unpleasant sounds produced by human activities (on a scale from an opera aria to a deafening…
Luděk Čertík: Before We Were People, We Were Land (On the Poetry of the First North American Peoples)
Now make room in your mouth grassgrassgrass Layli Long Soldier The First Nations of North America practiced poetry long before the arrival of white settlers. Their languages, in the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz (Mohawk), represent “the foundation of the American poetic lexicon.” But what is the role of indigenous poets today? And what exactly do we mean by the generalization of the poetry of the first or original…
Luděk Čertík: The Last Wild Embrace (poems)
An example from the upcoming collection by Luďek Čertík, The Last Wild Embrace. * the parrots were on edge since morning; they knew that a strong storm and storm would come from the coast, that is wind and rain, that is lightning and thunder and sometimes hail and falling branches, trees and something more, always something more that doesn't fit into…
Luděk Čertík: Don't judge a city by its concrete
I open the window and place a tripod with a stereo microphone on the balcony below it. I run the microphone cable through the adjacent fan, plug in the connectors for the left and right channels, close the window quietly, and sit down on the edge of the made-up bed with the recorder on my lap and headphones on. I slightly increase the sensitivity on both inputs and press the record button. And then…
Luděk Čertík: The Gift of Listening
The art of ecological or broad listening is nothing new. All natural peoples knew that those who do not listen attentively to the world around them are doomed to destruction. It is simple: acoustic sensations convey to us the message about changes in our immediate surroundings, and therefore also about impending danger. We will have to reevaluate our role in the great planetary orchestra, become more in tune with it and respect individual…
He Feels Everything: On the Erotic Ecology of Andreas Weber
Here we bring the text of the lecture by Luďek ČERTÍK, which he delivered at the fifth seminar of the Traveling University of Nature "Everything around me lives, feels, as I do - paths to a regenerative culture" at the Rychleby Ecocenter on August 12, 2020. In it, he presents the ideas of the leading contemporary German biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber, his concept of revival, or rather erotic ecology, which he places in the broader context of the development of biological thinking and...