Losing Facebook: A Journey of Letting go, reflection and Reconnection

In December last year, when I opened my Facebook account to indulge in a bit of mindless scrolling, a message popped up from the administrators: apparently I had breached the ‘code of conduct’ and needed to provide a reason if my account was to continue. It looked legitimate. I panicked, clicked the link (I know, I know…), answered the questions and—just like that—my account was gone. When I realized what I’d done, I scrambled to recover it, but the hackers had installed two-factor authentication, trapping me in an endless loop. After months of frustration, I decided to emotionally step away.

When I returned, refreshed and energized from my travels, I thought that maybe I should to set up a new account. However, my email address triggered the same two-factor authentication roadblock. So, I tried again, making two small tweaks—a different gender and birthdate—to slip past the machine. For a short time, it worked. Then this morning, I clicked on a message from Facebook and—once again—my account was disabled. The algorithm decided I was a phony.

The irony isn’t lost on me. The faceless entity that failed to protect my original identity was swift in shutting down the only way I had left to reconnect. And so, I was coming to terms with the reality: I had to let it go.

The Illusion of Permanence

For over a decade, Facebook was a space where I quietly built a digital home. It held my friendships, my artistic journey, and a collection of pages and communities that aligned with my interests. While I can nobly declare that it was a place of connection and reflection, if I’m honest, it was also a habit, and when it was gone the withdrawal symptoms felt like grief. As I sat with my feelings of loss, anger, denial, something else began to surface—a recognition that perhaps this was a necessary change.

Social media gives us the illusion of permanence. We build profiles, accumulate content, nurture connections, and assume they will always be there. But as with so many things in our digital and physical world, nothing is truly stable. Facebook, like the larger systems of late capitalism, operates with a fragile and extractive logic—it exists to keep us engaged, to shape our interactions, to sell our attention. But it does not belong to us. And now, neither do the spaces we build within it.

It is fitting, in a way, that I have been thinking so much about collapse—about how systems, institutions, and ways of life unravel. The loss of my Facebook account is not on the scale of global environmental and societal crises, but it exists within the same landscape of impermanence. This experience has forced me to ask: What do I truly need to stay connected? What spaces are worth investing in? How do I want to engage with the world moving forward?

Art Without Algorithms

As an artist, Facebook was a place where I shared my work, found opportunities, and stayed visible. Losing that space could feel like erasure—but I can choose to see it differently. Instead of relying on a platform that dictates what is seen and by whom, perhaps the aim is to build something more intentional, more direct, and less dependent on an external force that can disappear overnight.

This moment has prompted me to rethink how I share my work and ideas, and how I spend my time. What does it mean to be an artist without a Facebook presence? If I am not on Facebook, do I, can I exist as an artist? And what does it mean to be me without the distraction? Perhaps it means bucking a trend in a good way. Perhaps it means refusing to participate in a system that reduces art to content, presence to engagement metrics.

I know I am not alone in feeling that the world is shifting quickly—that the old ways of being, working, and connecting are unraveling. I have been exploring this through my art, and now I find myself living it directly. Maybe that’s the lesson: to let go, to adapt, to create new ways of being without clinging to what is already dissolving.

An Unexpected Turn

And then, just as I was coming to terms with leaving Facebook behind, the unexpected happened—Facebook let me back in. No explanation, no real acknowledgment of what had happened, just an open door to return. After all that, do I even want to?

Perhaps that’s the real question: What is worth returning to, and what is better left behind? Instead of picking up where I left off, I’ve decided to approach Facebook differently—curating my time there, limiting engagement, using it as a tool rather than a habit. Maybe that is the middle path: neither clinging to it nor abandoning it entirely, but choosing to be more intentional.

Rethinking Connection

So where does that leave me? And where does that leave us—those who have followed me, who are dear to me, who have engaged with my work, and who have connected through a shared history, shared ideas, ideals and visions?

Rather than rebuilding within the same system, perhaps it’s time to embrace a slower, more meaningful exchange. If we step away from the endless scrolling dictated by external algorithms—those systems that shape our attention more than we realize—what new possibilities open up?

This shift invites me to share on my own terms, to engage more directly, and to explore new ways of connecting beyond the constraints of a platform designed to keep us endlessly engaged rather than deeply connected.

Authentic connection—rather than passive consumption—feels more vital than ever. If we were connected on my old Facebook page—whether as friends or as someone who followed my work—I would love to stay connected, but perhaps in a way that feels more intentional, more real.

This is not just about Facebook. It’s about rethinking how we show up in the world, how we build and sustain relationships, and how we create art and meaning in times of change.

Perhaps this is not a loss, but an evolution into a different consciousness.

Let’s see where it leads.

*Image: A Forest is a Dream, Bronwyn Berman 2025. Burning tool with pen and Ink on 650gsm unpressed paper.

Rethinking Art in the time of Collapse

2 Mar, 2024.

I have just returned from three weeks in Vietnam. More than ten years ago, after learning that air travel accounts for over 2.5% of global emissions I decided to fly only if absolutely necessary. But my partner wanted to go. His brother had lived in Vietnam for twenty-five years before passing away last year, and he wanted to make a pilgrimage—to see where his brother had lived, to understand why he stayed so long. Despite my misgivings, it felt like a valid reason. So we went.

We’re home now and friends are asking me, “How was it?” In so many ways, it was great. The people are kind and welcoming. The food is inexpensive, delicious, and healthy, we had the break from life that we needed to reset. But as always, the real takeaways from travel are found between the lines—in what lingers after one returns home.

Vietnam: A Country in Crisis

I’m not here to criticise Vietnam—it’s a country with so much to offer but my overwhelming sense of Vietnam is that it is a land whose health is in decline. The rivers are choked with plastic and polystyrene. The air is so thick with pollution that many people have persistent coughs. A surreal example of late-stage capitalism: the resort where we stayed for part of our trip was an oasis of luxury, but it is surrounded by eighteen abandoned mega-resorts and twenty hectares of razed beachfront—development frozen mid-construction. And yet, this same region has the highest homelessness rate in Vietnam.

But the thing that hit me hardest? There were no birds.

At first, I noticed their absence at the beach—there were no seagulls. Then I realized that apart from a few lonely sparrows, I hadn’t seen birds anywhere. It felt like a silent warning—like the canary in the coal mine, but on a national scale.

Loss at the Edge of the World

The most moving part of our trip was in Sapa, a mountain town in northern Vietnam. We stayed in a traditional eco-lodge, and a local guide took us down into the valley, through a collection of hill-tribe villages.

She told us how quickly things were changing, with tourism developments mushrooming and visitors choking services. How, last September, the heaviest rains the elders had ever seen caused multiple landslides and many deaths. “I know that change is good,” she said wistfully, “but it’s happening so fast.”

And then she told me about the bats.

We had just been invited into a traditional home—three simple rooms on a concrete slab, with a central fire. It was dark inside. The mother of the house squatted on the damp floor skeining strands of hemp for weaving. Our guide told me about her own childhood in a house just like this, but higher up in the mountains. At night, when they lit the fire for warmth and an oil lamp for light, little bats would fly in, settling on the rafters. “We loved them,” she laughed. “They were so funny.”

Then her face changed.

“But they don’t come anymore. I think they don’t like us anymore. Maybe they will change their minds and come back.”

I don’t know why, but of all the climate-related tragedies I’ve read about, this one brought the dire situation we are facing into visceral reality. I wanted to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t.

What is the Role of the Artist Now?

Returning to my studio gallery, the way I’ve been making art for the past couple of years feels meaningless. One of the key findings from my Ph.D. study where I looked at the ecovillage movement as an art movement, was that art making in ecovillages isn’t about fame or fortune—it’s about integrating creativity into everyday life. There’s no emphasis on quality or success—only on participation. It’s not about what you do, but that you do it.

Yet, when I finished my study, instead of exploring how these ideas can translate into the mainstream, I jumped headfirst back into the capital ‘A’ Art world. Making work for sale, entering prizes, looking for commercial gallery representation, then opening my own gallery, and wrestling with the exhausting necessity of social media. And while there have definitely been successes, the relentless cycle of rejections from prize committees and commercial galleries has left me feeling drained.

Vietnam forced me to rethink how I should proceed as an artist. If the air is fouled and the rivers choked, if there are no birds, and the bats aren’t coming back and if, according to all of the scholarship I read during my research, the reality is that there is no area in which the situation is improving, what is the point? What is the point of putting myself up for prizes, jostling with the myriad of other voices for a place in the collectors market or making commericially focused work for an increasingly overcrowded market? As serendipity would have it, a friend sent me a link to the work of Dr. Jem Bendell, a professor from Glasgow University. His thesis? We are no longer in a position to mitigate social and environmental collapse—we are living through the early stages of it.

So I find myself asking: What is the role of the artist in a time of collapse? What is it that art can do?

Where to From Here?

To be honest with you, I don’t really know. Of course I will chase up opportunities that will provide me with income but I can feel myself pivoting into a new way of working. I am committed to communicating my thoughts via this blog, where I will explore the possibilities of how to work as an artist in this time of endings, to discover what, if any, are the new beginnings. Maybe artists are valuable in reshaping reality, helping communities to imagine and embody new ways of living. Maybe it’s about creating spaces for people to process grief and/or despair. Maybe art is a tool for experimenting with new forms of community, such as the ecovillage communties that I studied. Maybe a book needs to be written, or maybe this blog will do what needs to be done. Or maybe it’s a matter of dreaming into new myths, stories and rituals that may help us foster connection and meaning in a fragmenting world. Whatever shape it forms, I invite you to come along for the ride. Because I know now, there is no turning back.

EDIT PAGE

Making Home: Life as a Work of Eco-Art

Over the six years it took to complete, my Ph.D completely changed the way I think about life and art. Most importantly, it showed me that there is a a different way that we can live on and with our planet.

To live differently we need to think differently

My degree was motivated by the realisation that the dire state of our environment cannot be simply attributed to the failings of government or technology, but rather it is the result of a failure in the way that we think. To live differently we need to think differently, and my hypothesis was, for this change in thinking to happen, art is the key.  

For my thesis I investigated the intentionally sustainable settlements known as ecovillages. Rather than subscribing wholesale to capitalist values, ecovillage dwellers willingly choosing to live more simply with less. Their intentionally low carbon lifestyles are focused on connection with nature and to each other. Instead of looking at these groups through the lens of social science I looked at how art is produced in these spaces as a way to think about them as works of eco-art in and of themselves. To think differently about ecovillages, I used the conceptual thinking tools devised by French post structuralist philosophers Gilles Deleuze (1925 - 1995) and Felix Guattari (1930 - 1992). To give you an overview of my thesis, here is an edited version of a talk that I gave for Earth Day 2023 in conjunction with the University of New South Wales.

Thinking eco-spaces as works of eco-art

There is no doubt that life on earth is being threatened by human existence. If our species is to survive and thrive, it is becoming clear that a business-as-usual attitude which promises that we can maintain our current levels of consumption with technological solutions and sustainability guidelines is simply not viable. Moving towards a sustainable society requires a collective change in thinking. The question is, with the marketing forces of the capitalist system urging us to consume ever-more, how does such a cultural shift happen? I suggest that art is critical to our transformation, but not in the form that we currently know, art itself also must be rethought.

While indigenous peoples of the world hold knowledge of ways in which humans can most sympathetically coexist with their environment, for my Ph.D. I explored the ecovillage as a western culture example of communities who aspire to inhabit the earth in ways that don’t necessarily subscribe wholesale to capitalist values. I found that in these inherently artful environments the social structures, built environments and the people themselves are all artfully created in such a way that the ecovillage itself can be thought of as a work of eco-art.

What is Eco-Art?

Mainstream Eco-art is an expanded form of environmental art which began in the 1970s. According to arts academic Sacha Kagan, eco-artists pay attention to things such as: the interrelationships between ecological systems; they reclaim, restore and remediate damaged environments; they inform the public about ecological relationships and the problems we face; and re-envision ecological relationships, creatively proposing new possibilities for co-existence, sustainability and healing. Eco-art is typically authored by an eco-artist whose name is attached to the work and the realised work is intended to be understood as eco-art. The goals of the Global Ecovillage Network are strikingly similar to those of the eco-art movement. They are articulated as: sharing the best practices and experiences of sustainable communities and serving as a think tank for projects that expediate the shift to sustainable lifestyles; making advances in human rights; sharing conflict resolution and reconciliation skills; promoting a culture of mutual acceptance and respect for humans and non-humans alike, to influence policy makers and advance community participation in local decision making and to nourish and repair the environments in which they find themselves.

What is the difference between eco-art and eco-villages?

Even though ecovillages are often initiated by groups of artists, the settlements are not necessarily intended as works of eco-art. The desire is, rather, for a place that provides sustainable, low-cost accommodation which will enable them to practice their various art forms amongst like-minded people. In this case, the ecovillage functions as self-generating systems that operates through experimentation. I am not suggesting that the mainstream eco-art movement is not a valid art form, nor am I arguing that eco-artists have not been able to change thinking about our relationship with the earth. Rather, my research indicates that an expanded understanding of eco-art can be considered.

Using different thinking tools to reimagine the ecovillage as a work of eco-art

To reimagine the ecovillage and art, I used the thinking of French post structuralist philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. For Deleuze and Guattari, thought happens in three modes. Philosophy is responsible for the creation of concepts, science for the creation of material reality, and art, for them, is responsible for the creation of new thinking. Deleuze and Guattari are not interested in defining or describing what art is, they are more interested in what art can do. What good art does, is it produces consciousness changing experiences. In the case of my study, I was interested in how the ecovillage, understood as a work of art, can change thinking about our relationship with the earth and the way we live.

In 1989, Guattari published a short essay titled The Three Ecologies in which he proposes an expanded version of eco-art. He talks about eco-art as a way of living life itself as art by the artistic creation and amalgamation of three key areas or ecologies. These are the social, the environmental and the mental. Looking for the ways in which art functions to support the sustainability aims of the ecovillage dwellers, I initially focused on these three areas, looking at how art works to create the social body and the physical environment of the ecovillages and the subjectivities of the ecovillage dwellers. Secondly, examining the ecovillage itself as a work of eco-art enabled me to explore how the ecovillage functions to counter the excessively consumptive values of the capitalist lifestyle, and the ways in which it orients the communities towards a different relationship with each other and with the natural world.

Most ecovillage dwellers live in ecovillages because of their desire for a clean, low carbon lifestyle and community connection. However, all my interviewees told me about some form of art practice that is part of their lives. What is important for both trained artists and non-artists, is being engaged in creative practice, be it a solo pursuit or a collective endeavour. As well as the more widely accepted art forms such as painting, sculpture, music, poetry, the idea of what constitutes art is expanded in the ecovillage to include things such as the building of a house, the tending of a garden or a shared community meal. Rather than judging the various art forms and practices by their aesthetic or market values, there is an emphasis on participation which is seen in things like music events, jam sessions, community art exhibitions and in group events such as choirs, dance groups, drumming groups, music ensembles and visual art groups such as painting and weaving groups. These groups and events serve to connect the ecovillagers to each other and to different aspects of social life. In other words, art provides a blueprint for all elements of ecovillage life. Entwined with the idea of living a socially and ecologically sustainable life, art is seen as an elemental necessity that is available to all. Art is the ground from which the ecovillage communities grow and the glue that holds them together.

Art practice as a healing tool

Art practice in the ecovillage is often undertaken with a desire of healing, which encompasses the healing of the self, the community, and the natural world. There is a general attitude that an art practice is also a spiritual practice. This is not understood in a religious sense, but rather it is the desire of a spiritual connection with the earth which is expressed in language such as wanting to feel a ‘one-ness with the earth’ or viewing ‘nature as my temple’.  This type of spirituality, which is expressed by ecovillage author William Metcalf as an eco-spirituality, selects from different belief systems such as Buddhism, Taoism, earth dreaming, Gaia, to express the essential need for a deeper connection to the earth.

Social life as eco-art

The ways in which art informs the social structures of the ecovillage simultaneously manifests the built environment. Expressing the eco-spiritual desire for connection to nature, homes and community spaces are decorated using eco-spiritual symbols and imagery including cosmic or ‘new age’ imagery as well as natural themes and materials, and the use of colour in the clothing of the ecovillagers and in the landscape in things such as flags and mosaic work. These elements form the ecovillage style if you like, which values experimental low-tech technologies and construction methods, which can also be thought of as a form of art. In my field study I saw cement and sawdust buildings, the use of wobbly boards, rammed earth, mud brick and straw bale constructions. All of these experimental techniques, which were pioneered in the ecovillage environment are now becoming more commonly seen in the mainstream.

If everyone’s an artist, what about actual artists?

As an artist, I was confused as to whether there is a place for those of us who make a living making art in this type of community where everyone is considered to be an artist. However, I discovered that while there is not necessarily a large cohort of trained and practicing artists in any of these spaces, that the art and craft forms endemic in a particular village often reflect the practice of artists who reside there. For example, Crystal Waters has a theme of leadlight windows which is the results of workshops and skills share events run by resident painter and leadlight artist Regine Ruppert. In Aldinga Arts Ecovillage, mosaic artist Linda Caldwell has similarly created a culture of mosaic work through her open workshops. At Billen Cliffs there is a strong musical culture that stems from the fact that the founding members were all musicians, even though many of these artists have since moved on.

Making ourselves works of eco-art

The third of Guattaris ecologies is the mental. For Guattari, this is the most crucial element of the change we need to make if we are to survive and thrive on our planet. Put simply, the mental ecology is what goes on inside our heads. Our mental ecology creates who we are and our ways of being in the world, it is the way we think about ourselves and our relationships with others. In other words, it is the formation of our subjectivities. The ideas of the individual coalesce in the group. Consciously or not, our thinking influences the thinking of those around us. On the one hand, one can carry on with life without thinking too much about it, or one can undertake a certain fashioning of the self. Deleuze and Guattari talk about this as creating life itself as a work of art.

Self-development comes with the ecovillage territory, and the positive culture around practices such as meditation and yoga, or therapies such as psychotherapy or massage encourages the people of the community to engage. Self development can also be an art practice. When I asked community members about their relationship with art making, most often the response was that they found creative work therapeutic.

The Ethics of sustiainbility

It can be argued that the idea of living life as a work of art is simply a hedonistic pursuit. Guattaris proposal of an eco-art involves not only paying attention to your environment in terms of aesthetics, but also to the ethical framework within which this aesthetic production takes place. I found that the ecovillage spaces operate in adherence to a distinct set of ethical principles, often based on the principles of permaculture which are; care of the earth, care of humans and fair share. At its heart, permaculture principles are designed to aid the development of positive actions rather than destructive ones by cultivating beneficial relationships not only between humans, but also between humans, non-humans, and the natural world. The design principles that support permaculture ethics produces an aesthetic that reflects the system. Indeed, Robin Clayfield a permaculture educator at Crystal Waters firmly believes that creating a permaculture environment is an art.

Conceptualising the ecovillage as art challenges established systems of judging and categorising art, instead embracing an expansive idea of art that includes its ability to generate ecologically oriented social systems, lived environments and subjectivities. Art in the ecovillage, then, is way of life and a whole of life practice.

As I have indicated, environmental scholars worldwide are in agreement that a change in thinking is crucial for life on the planet. I am arguing that art in the ecovillage is signposting this change. Ecovillage dwellers are engaged in the very real and sometimes messy pursuits of growing communities who are committed to experimenting with a life geared against consumerism and towards the possibility of long-term survival. Reimagining the ecovillage as a work of art opens the possibility that the human relationship with the environment can be thought of as an artistic process of co-creation.

Every life can be eco-art, every village can be an eco-village

Reimagining the ecovillage as a work of eco-art does not suggest that everyone needs to uproot and move into an ecovillage. Instead, it suggests an opening of the possibility that all lives can be reimagined as eco-art which would involve, as Guattari might say, composing our lives as an artist would compose colours on a palette. Being concerned with an ethics of sustainability, such an art practice fused with life, would open creative engagements that hold the potential for transformation not only of the self but of the whole earth community. It does not mean, either, that trained and practising artists must cease to operate in their practice. Instead, the artist becomes involved in a mutual enrichment of community life. In this sense, reimagining the ecovillage as a work of eco-art would stand as an affirmation; engaging in life as an artistic endeavour is not a threat to the current mainstream ways of being in the world, nor is it a threat to the lives and occupations of trained and practising artists. In contrast, an art-as-life thinking style, such as is found in the ecovillage, fosters an opening into new ways of thinking. Reimagining art, and reimagining the ecovillage as a work of art, thus illuminates the potential for the transformative processes that are inherent in our lives, our lived spaces and our communities to be oriented towards a regenerating earth and a different thinking people.

For the full transcript of my thesis: A Deleuzian Reimaging of Art and the Ecovillage, please click the link on the ‘study’ page on my web site.