How to Remain on the Earth
How to Remain on the Earth is a 2023 broadsheet newsprint work made by Nika Kaiser with the print's verso containing an excerpt from the poem Nomads of the Body to Come by Colombian poet k. kodama. The work was created with inspiration from and in support of the movement to defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, Georgia, the current struggle to protect the land in south Atlanta from being developed into a police training facility and commercial film studio. All proceeds of the print went directly to support of forest defenders and its exhibition was enacted at events across the US pertaining to this environmental struggle.
The broadsheet style is an homage to the tradition of political posters and wheatpasting created to rapidly proliferate urgent matters to the public, often in an anonymous fashion.
In the photograph, a figure appears as a subtle extension of a wooded snowy space; an insistence that even in harsh conditions, we might still hold the fervent presence of defending a forest. The abstraction of the figure also suggests its being a part of it, the tree, a limb, a branch.
When we imagine the work it requires to be in relation with the rest of the natural world and also in struggle against destructive capitalist militarized forces, it means we must be discreet as we conspire and imagine another world while also standing tall, present, and embodying qualities of a tree.
On the verso is an excerpt of the Poem Nomads of the Body to Come. The spiral layout suggests symbolism of cyclical time and interconnection while also forcing one to engage with their body in movement while they read it. The verso exists as an offering, with the leaves arranged like an altar to the possibilities given by the poet.
2023
35 lb. newsprint
22.75 x 33 inches
Edition of 1000