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Dancing For Conservation at iLAND

19 February 2010, 3:35 pm

The idea of dancing our way to a sustainable future is instantly appealing.

Jennifer Monson describes herself as an ‘experimental dance artist’.  Her interest is in exploring the use of the human body to explore the dynamic relationship between humans, art, nature and the environment.

In order to take her vision further and to support her own work, she founded iLAND – Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance. The aim is to investigate the power of dance, in collaboration with other fields, to explore issues of environmental sustainability as it relates to art and the urban context.  The organization cultivates cross-disciplinary research among artists, environmentalists, scientists, urban designers and other fields.

In her first project, BIRDBRAIN, Jennifer followed the migratory pathways of birds and other animals while exploring their relationship to humans as world travelers and navigators. The project consisted of free, site-specific outdoor performances, workshops for students and the public, panel discussions on migration, navigation, and conservation, and a website that tracked the migrating birds and dancers participating in the project.

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Subsequent projects have included collaborations that address the urban environment and issues of urban migration, human interventions in natural spaces and the dependence of local communities on local aquifers.

timessquare

The idea of incorporating dance into multidisciplinary projects addressing environmental issues is no doubt effective in getting public engagement through free, public performances. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all dance our way into a rosy future.

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Sculptures of Living Processes – Jackie Brookner

4 February 2010, 7:23 am

Jackie Brookner makes “Biosculptures”.

She describes these as ‘living sculptures…plant based systems that clean polluted water, integrating ecological revitalization with the conceptual, metaphorical and aesthetic capacities of sculpture.”

One such project is called “The Gift of Water”.  The town of Grossenhain, near Dresden in Germany, built a new public swimming complex in which the water used is filtered entirely by wetland plants without the use of chlorine or any other chemical.  Brookner’s sculpture features various mosses on a pair of large cupped hands.  The mosses purify the water of the fountain thereby reproducing the whole technical concept of the swimming complex installation while the sculpture itself represents the precious nature of the water that we use.

The Gift of Water

The Gift of Water

Some of her sculptures are more directly functional.

The Roosevelt Community Center in San Jose is a LEED gold certified building and re-cycles storm water runoff from the roof.  Two of Brookner’s installations do this filtering. In one of them (below) water is channeled into a basin-like sculpture that aerates the water as it drops into the basin below where it is filtered and re-cycled.

Picture 3

Her second installation in the same site brings to the surface a process that usually happens underground.  An amber glass and stainless steel rock filter system mimics the water filtration that happens naturally in the nearby Coyote Creek watershed.  A map of the creek is etched on to the sculpture.

Picture 4
Jackie Brookner’s work brings to life natural processes that are important to the sustainability of our environment.  Her sculptures no doubt manage to engage viewers in a way that no amount of detailed technical explanation of these processes ever could.

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Damien Hirst and Sustainability – What?

23 January 2010, 4:10 pm

Damien Hirst – love him or hate him – is probably today’s wealthiest artist. Some say that he is a symbol of bad art and senseless consumption.  To my mind, he has probably done more than any other single artist to mock the very art world itself, turn its pretentions to his own personal advantage and, through the success of his career, lampoon the culture of endless, pointless and unsustainable consumption.

Starting out as one of the now infamous YBA’s (Young British Artists), Hirst started to become well-off when he found that he could produce and sell in endless numbers paintings that were nothing more than a series of colored spots on canvas.

LSD

LSD

These paintings gave the first hint of Hirst’s skill at mocking the art world while still making money out of it.  He titled the paintings LSD and made clear that he only ever painted five of them himself the rest being done by assistants, particularly Rachel Howard.  “The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel” he famously said.  Yet the collectors kept buying them and his assistants kept churning them out.

Sponsored by Charles Saatchi, Hirst went on to bigger things. He was claimed to have developed an obsession with death and started producing large works like his now famous dead shark in formaldehyde titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”.
Picture 5
To me it seems less of an obsession with death but rather an incredible skill to create enough hype and outrage surrounding his work to enable him and his agents use the mechanisms of the art market to make a lot of money.  Hirst developed this skill so well that he could produce anything and it would sell for large amounts in what had become an uncontrolled consumption mania.  For instance, “Lullaby Spring”,  a 3 metre (10 ft) wide steel cabinet with 6,136 pills sold for $19.2 million to the Emir of Qatar in 2007.

This approach culminated in his production of a diamond encrusted skull that he aptly titled “For The Love of God”.  I can just hear him chuckle – “For the love of God, how much can I get them to part with for this do you think?” The answer was $100 million – though that price was paid by a consortium that included Hirst himself.

For The Love Of God

For The Love Of God

In one final ironic act in September 2008, Hirst mounted, through Sotheby’s, an auction of his own work, bypassing his agents.  The auction was appropriately entitled “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” (by which I assume he means the checks he was going to collect) and included one piece that could not have been a more in-your-face mockery of the worship of the false god of consumption than a dead calf with gold hooves in a gold and glass tank of formaldehyde.  Titled “The Golden Calf”, the piece sold for $18.6 million.

The Golden Calf

The Golden Calf

If he could have orchestrated it himself, it would probably have been the finest work of art of his whole career.  But he didn’t.  It happened by chance.  The week that Hirst raised $200 million from his solo auction, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the whole financial system came crashing down.

To my mind, Damien Hirst’s career epitomizes our culture of utter waste and pointless consumption.  The world events surrounding his final auction were the perfect dénouement to illustrate the unsustainability of it all.  Hirst is one of the cleverest artists to exploit our blind consumption culture all the way to the bank and, in my opinion, he has always done it consciously and with a mockery that was barely veiled.

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Lemn Sissay at the Royal Academy in London

10 January 2010, 10:03 pm

Lemn Sissay’s performance video of his poem WHAT IF? was, for me, one of the highlights of the Royal Academy’s current exhibit entitled EARTH – Art of a Changing World.

The exhibit “sets out to consider the impact of climate change, and our transition to a new world, on the practice of a broad range of contemporary artists, working in a wide-variety of media.”  It is encouraging that an institution like the Royal Academy has chosen to address environmental issues in a major exhibit and that it has showcased the work of so many contemporary artists addressing these issues. Chris Jordan and Edward Burtynsky were two of the artists featured in the exhibit.

However, for me, Lemn Sissay’s poem performed on video was one of the more powerful works in the exhibit.

You can view the video here and the text of the poem is reproduced below.

A lost number in the equation
A simple, understandable miscalculation
And what if on the basis of that
The world as we know it changed its matter of fact

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?
What if we found in the ground a file of proof?
What if the foundations missed a vital truth?
What if the industrial dream sold us out from within?
What if our unpunishable defense sealed us in?
What if our wanted more was making less?
And what if all of this wasn’t progress?

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?
What if our wanting more was making less?
And what if all of this wasn’t progress?
What if the disappearing rivers of Eritrea,
the rising tides and encroaching fear
What if the tear inside the protective skin
of Earth was trying to tell us something?

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?
What if the message carried in the wind was saying something?
From butterfly wings to the hurricane
It’s the small things that make great change
In the question towards the end of the leases
no longer the origin but the end of species

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if the message carried in the wind was saying something?

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Clever or Effective? The Work of Chris Jordan

3 January 2010, 5:44 pm

Chris Jordan’s art examines the massiveness of our consumption and its effects.  In his artist’s statement he says “The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences.”

Of his various series, two stand out.

The first is called “Running The Numbers – a portrait of consumer mass culture“.  In these two series, Jordan takes a specific number of items – a number with meaning – constructs an image with these items then photographs the image.

For instance, Shark Teeth is a collection of 270,000 fossilized shark teeth put together to construct an image of two sharks.  270,000 represents the estimated number of sharks that are killed every day around the world for their fins.

"Shark Teeth" - Full Image

"Shark Teeth" - Full Image

Detail of fossilized shark's teeth that make up the previous image

Detail of fossilized shark's teeth that make up the previous image

“Midway” is a series of photographs that is emotionally much more striking than Running the Numbers.  Jordan describes this series as follows:

“These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.”

From Series "Midway"

From Series "Midway"

From Series "Midway"

From Series "Midway"

I find the contrast between these two series interesting.  Running the Numbers is essentially an intellectual exercise based on shocking statistics and converted into cleverly constructed images.  Midway appeals to our raw emotions. It is a simpler series that depicts terrible consequences of our consumption. Because it’s clever, Running the Numbers is probably more likely to appeal to the art establishment.  In fact, one piece was recently included in an exhibit at the Royal Academy in London about human impact on the planet.  But, if the objective of this art were not to appeal to the artistic elite but to convince people that these issues are important and that some action is needed, which of these two series is likely to be the more effective?  I know where I’d be putting my money.

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The Guardian Shows Why We May Continue To Fail

26 December 2009, 7:08 pm

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen – shame about the climate change art.

In a recent column with the above title in Britain’s newspaper ‘The Guardian’, environmental writer Bibi van der Zee gives her views on whether the art works that surrounded the Copenhagen Climate Change conference would do any good at all.  Written before the summit finished in spectacular failure, here, in brief, were her conclusions:

  • the art was generally good and much of it was very moving
  • she could not believe that any of it would do any good and would make a blind bit of difference to the outcome in Copenhagen

I believe that both her conclusions are right.  But her whole article somewhat misses the point.

Producing artwork surrounding a summit like Copenhagen hoping that it will make a difference to the final negotiations is silly.  But to conclude therefore that art focused on environmental issues cannot have an impact is even sillier.

Let us start with Copenhagen. Over the past 20 years, we have had plenty of science, plenty of data, plenty of reasoned arguments, plenty of learned reports, plenty of demonstrations, plenty of NGOs making their points and telling the world about climate change, plenty of carbon heavy miles spent in endless multilateral negotiations – and it all ended in spectacular failure in Copenhagen. While it is easy to point the finger at politicians, the reality is that we have all failed.

On the other hand, there has been precious little art devoted to these issues over the past 20 years. Art is a powerful element that shapes the cultural environment in which decisions are made.  The art itself does not necessarily influence those decisions directly but it does shape the social substrate that drives the direction of those decisions.  Copenhagen did not fail because of lack of science.  Copenhagen failed because, as a society, we are culturally unprepared to take the decisions that need to be taken. Going forward, art and its popular application can make a significant difference in re-shaping that culture so that, next time round, we might stand a chance.

Ms van der Zee should realize that what we need is more artistic involvement not less.  The science/data/learned report route has, on its own, led us to nothing short of a spectacular failure.

Oh, and if anyone wants an alternative view of why the summit failed, read this article and its rebuttal.

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After Copenhagen – Should the human race be destroyed?

19 December 2009, 6:27 pm

The Copenhagen summit has just ended. A few politicians are putting a positive spin on the outcome saying that much progress has been achieved and this is a good first step.  But the emerging consensus seems to be that this was a flop – a summit that oscillated between tragedy and farce and has achieved very little that is meaningful.  However you judge the summit and its outcome, one fundamental question remains: will the human race be able to grapple with the fact that it is destroying its own planet and take meaningful steps to change course?

This is the question that is addressed in a recent Hollywood movie entitled “The Day The Earth Stood Still”.

Given Hollywood’s power to shape our culture, it is regrettable that Hollywood seems to be dragging its heels about engaging meaningfully with environmental issues.  This in spite of actors, directors, producers and sundry other claiming to be concerned and committed to environmental issues.

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“The Day The Earth Stood Still” (a 2008 remake of a 1951 movie of the same name) does take environmental issues head on.  Here is a brief synopsis:

Beings from another planet land on Earth, sending Klaatu – one of their own in human form (in fact in the form of Keanu Reeves) – to speak to world leaders about the need to stop destroying the planet.  Needless to say, Klaatu doesn’t get a civilized invite to the White House but, instead, is met by bullets, capture, interrogation and other well known welcome methods that humans have adopted for centuries towards anything, or anyone, that is not considered of their own kind.

Finally Klaatu reveals that his mission is to destroy the human race and all that it has created as the only option left to save the planet.  “If you live, the Earth dies.  If you die, the Earth lives”.  There is no other option.

A cloud of tiny robots (nanobots) is released and the destruction begins.  Until the attractive Dr Benson (Jennifer Connelly), persuades him otherwise.  Witnessing the strength of a mother’s love for her son, Klaatu is persuaded that the human race has some merit after all.  He believes that, once we see the edge of the precipice, we will do something about it and mend our ways.  The destruction is halted.

Did Klaatu get it right?

I have to admit, that watching this movie, I wondered about the outcome.  I wondered whether destruction of the human race and all our intrusions on the planet would have been a preferable ending.  I did not really believe that we were capable of turning back at the brink. Would the world be better off without us?

After Copenhagen, what do you believe?  Did Klaatu make the right call or was he had?  Leave a comment with your verdict.

This movie is not the most gripping or best acted movie ever made but it’s a reasonable story line, it is one movie that addresses environmental issues head on and the special effects are great.  You can view a short trailer here.

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ext Inked – Tattooes for Life

5 December 2009, 1:37 pm

How much do people care about the extinction of species?  It turns out that a significant number of people care enough to become ‘permanent ambassadors’ of an endangered species.

In a unique activist, social work of art, The Ultimate Holding Company, a co-operative based in Manchester, England, has just completed a project entitled ext Inked.  They created a set of drawings individually illustrating one hundred of the most endangered species in the British Isles.  They then asked for for 100 volunteers each to have one of these drawings tattooed on their skin thereby becoming ‘permanent ambassadors’ of that species.

Ink Drawn Images of 100 Endangered Species

Ink Drawn Images of 100 Endangered Species

It turns out that the organizers received large numbers of applications from volunteers of which they could only select 100. Many of these applications contained heartfelt messages expressing a wish to get involved in a lifelong conservation campaign.

The selected volunteers were all tattooed in November this year – the bicentennial year of Charles Darwin’s birthday.

Volunteer being tattoed

Volunteer being tattoed

Not only was this a bold and highly ambitious undertaking but some may be surprised by the large number of volunteers who demonstrated a passion for conserving the biodiversity of their country.  For many, the extinction of species and the inexorable destruction of biodiversity are abstract concepts of little relevance in their everyday lives. This successful experiment shows that there are many who care about this issue with a lifelong passion.

A 'Permanent Ambassador' is created

A 'Permanent Ambassador' is created

The Ultimate Holding Company describes itself as “a co-operative exploring the modern city through critical cross disciplinary art and design practice. We specialise in turning artist-led concepts into ethical design solutions, exclusively for organisations driven by their values not their profits.” They have undertaken a significant number of projects with many clients and partners.

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Long Live This Wounded Planet

30 November 2009, 12:11 am

Poetry as a literary art form is once again gaining popularity.  There is no shortage of poems addressing nature and Man’s interaction with it. I find this piece by Adrian Mitchell inspiring:

William Blake says: Everything that Lives is Holy

Long live the Child
Long live the Mother and Father
Long live the People

Long live this wounded Planet
Long live the good milk of the Air

Long live the spawning Rivers and the
Mothering Oceans
Long live the juice of the Grass
And all the determined greenery of the Globe

Long live the Elephants and the Sea Horses,
the Humming-Birds and the Gorillas,
the Dogs and cats and Field-Mice –
all the surviving Animals
our innocent Sisters and Brothers

long live the Earth, deeper than all our thinking

we have done enough killing

Long live the Man
Long live the Woman
Who use both courage and compassion
Long live their Children

Adrian Mitchell


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Minkkinnen’s Body And The Natural Environment

21 November 2009, 11:14 pm

Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s photographs make a powerful visual statement about Man’s interaction with the natural environment – even though that was not his intent when he created this fascinating body of work.

Minkkinen is a Finnish photographer who created ’self-portraits’ of a different kind. He set himself the task of creating a set of photographs of his own body, or parts of his body, unclothed and generally in some sort of natural environment. The result is a set of potent, elegant and often surprising images.

Self Portrait

Self Portrait

Minkinnen’s focus was the exploration of process and the creation of clean, elegant and visually powerful imagery.  Re-interpreting his work today, in a world occupied with environmental concerns, the images become a powerful statement on Man’s relationship with the natural environment.
Tree
Looking at these images I am left with the feeling that Man’s relationship with nature has been reduced to that of an intruder; an unwelcome presence that no longer belongs in a natural environment.  All sorts of questions spring to mind. Will our handiwork continue to smother all that is around us?  How long will it take us to snuff out the light and everything that gives life to this world?
compositeAs polar ice caps continue to melt, world leaders head to Copenhagen in December for yet more talk, talk, talk as a substitute for any meaningful action.  When they emerge, in which direction will we be headed?

Left, Right, Business as Usual?

Left, Right, Business as Usual?

Maybe one of Minkkinnen’s most powerful images is the one below. He titled it simply – ‘Self-Portrait, Narrangansett’. What I see is a desperate scream at the point where the Man-made meets what’s left of the natural world.
Scream
It has been said that artists do not own the interpretation of their art.  Once an artist puts his art work ‘out there’ it becomes public property, subject to different opinions and interpretations.  It may end up with a meaning that is quite different from what the artist intended.  Focused on the modernist concerns of line and aesthetic, Minkinnen never intended his work to be a commentary on environmental issues. Yet, in today’s postmodern world, it is difficult to see it as anything else.

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