Vascular rhythms: Embryonic bird/embolism structure

These vasculature rhizomes of the lung and tree are – initially – nourishing and generative to both the corporeal and earth body. The entwined tree/lung vasculature presents us with a system in which individual points can be connected to one another in a non-hierarchical manner, having the capacity to foster transversal connections and communications. As Autumn pops its buds, tendrils and tinges of green curl out from the outmost reaches of the most tender branch tips. A bundle of twigs, soon to be hidden in full summer foliage, stand out from the juncture of the tree’s vasculature. A sizeable bird’s nest, abandoned over winter, will soon be reoccupied to bring forth this year’s chicks. This cluster of twigs, lodged firm amidst an intersection of branches, holds space from which new life comes forth. The embolism in the lung – a bundle of matter collecting in the tiny space where it was not intended, pushes out into chaos, rendering its body incompatible with life. The vasculature of the tree and lung reveal to us through their rhizomatic arrangement, an implication of foreign bodies; two tight clusters of equal and opposite significance – one harbouring life, the other death. Our tree/lung rhizome embodies a principle of connectivity, assisting how we might perceive resonance between seemingly conflicting inside and outside bodies. These lung/tree rhizomes are innately creative in their capacity to enact visual aesthetic harmonies and synthesis, compelling us to de-stratify ways of thinking. What a curiously paradoxical aesthetic – the winding vasculature of the lung with its embolism having aggressively disrupted life’s rhythm to bring death. The tree’s branches, ever reaching, cleansing, nourishing; just as the once healthy lung vasculature had done. The bird’s clotted construction of twigs holding fast through the seasons cradles and brings forth new life. An aesthetic anomaly emerges, drawing together something synergistic yet clearly incompatible to render an inter-relationship between inside and outside, the verifiable and intangible, consumption and consequence, life and death. Deleuze, G. (1995). Control and becoming. Negotiations: 1972–1990, 169-76. Lafrenière, D., Hurlimann, T., Menuz, V., & Godard, B. (2012). Health research: Ethics and the use of arts-based methods in knowledge translation processes. International Journal of the Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice, 11(1). Liamputtong, P., & Rumbold, J. (2008). Knowing differently: Arts-based and collaborative research methods. Nova Publishers.