Planning Drawings for "Over The River"

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are possibly the best known among those artists who work outside of the gallery in urban and rural environments. Many of their projects involve wrapping stuff in fabric – be it the Reichstag in Berlin, the Kunsthalle in Bern, a medieval tower in Spoleto, etc. Their latest project titled “Over The River” is a plan to suspend 5.9 miles of silvery fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado. Nearing launch, the project has been thrown into some disarray by a the filing of a lawsuit to stop the project. A group named “Rags Over Arkansas River” (ROAR) claim that the project will cause significant environmental damage and that the Environmental Impact Assessment of the proposed project was flawed.

This lawsuit crystallizes a conflict I have always felt about the idea of ‘land art’ or so-called ‘environmental art’ – is it art that calls our attention to environmental issues or is it vandalism – damaging the environment that it purports to be trying to protect. The answer is, as always, not straightforward. Christo and Jean-Claude care about the environment. They say of this project: “The artists bring to Over The River a documented and unwavering commitment to conservation and are dedicated to avoiding or minimizing all potential impacts related to noise, vegetation, air quality and water quality during the construction and removal phases, as well as during the two-week viewing period. In fact, the artists altered their artistic design, installation schedule and the viewing period to be sensitive to wildlife and the environment.” Supporters will quote this as evidence of their commitment. Cynics will compare this statement to almost identical statements made by large corporations involved in mining, drilling and other natural resource intensive industries.

For me, the questions here are different – What is this for? and What does it say about our relationship to the Land?

The project has significant local support primarily because “the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) projected that Over The River will bring a total of 416,000 visitors to the Arkansas River Valley, including 344,000 visitors during the two week exhibition period and 72,000 visitors during installation and removal combined.  The BLM also estimates that Over The River will generate more than $121 million in total economic output throughout Colorado.” In this context, what do projects such as this end up telling us about our relationship to the Land? Do they lead us to respect the land and our environment and feel a closer connection to it in some way – the purpose, I would argue, of any art that purports to label itself ‘environmental’? Or do they further embed the idea of the land as ‘exploitable product’ – now wrapped up nicely so that it becomes an ephemeral tourist attraction generating economic activity? And if it’s the latter, then are the temporary and relatively gentle environmental disturbances and uplifting sensations of works of art such as these not a better way of ‘exploiting the land’ than other alternatives?

For most of their work, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have limited themselves to urban environments where there is little or no potential for environmental damage. However, when they venture on to rural or relatively “unspoilt” landscapes such as their work to surround islands in Biscayne Bay (below) and others, then this takes us into the ambiguous territory of land art. Here we run into the debate as to whether any form of environmental damage is reasonable for artists who claim to have an interest in protecting the environment. But then, which artist – whatever the medium and whether in the gallery or elsewhere – can create art without using resources and therefore, in some way, exploiting the natural environment?

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has mounted 1200 bicycles in a magnificent floor to ceiling installation as part of a solo exhibition in Taipei.

The artist likely has no environmental statement to make with this installation, but these days it is hard to look at so many bicycles without being put in mind of the energy and transport questions that so many people are working to resolve. Can we really build a successful energy policy on a huge installation of renewables just like this huge installation of bicycles? Or is the mountain to high to climb and talk about moving to a solely renewable energy policy simply the pipe dream of impractical idealists?

Ai Weiwei has gained global fame for his dissident attitude to Chinese authorities. This has earned him persecution by the authorities, destruction of his studios, charges of owing multimillion dollars to the Chinese tax authorities and recurrent arrests and periods of disappearance. The bicycle installation led me to look for any of the artist’s works that addressed environmental issues directly.

An installation entitled “Trees” & “Rocks” (image below) has been interpreted by some to be an allusion to the environmental damage being caused by China’s rapid rate of development. Others, have interpreted the work as the simple recreation of a meditative space.

In his winning entry for this year’s Turner Prize, Martin Boyce brings an autumnal park indoors and re-interprets it in classical modernist/constructivist terms.

A large room, re-designed in every detail. White columns from which flows a designed ceiling of white shapes – “trees” with “leaves” and branches. The centrepiece is a table covered in graffiti and with a hanging mobile gently swaying.  All in stark geometric shapes yet oozing a certain romanticism. On the floor lie brown leaves made out of cut paper. The ‘park’ is complete with garbage cans re-designed into unusual modernist shapes.

This installation has its supporters and its critics. It is a space that is clearly inspired by “Nature” yet re-interpreted in classical modernist language. Boyce’s skill is in taking the brutish language of constructivist art and creating something that, through angular shapes created in synthetic, man-made materials, still manages to reproduce the softness and emotional engagement that is felt when we are in contact with ‘real nature’ (whatever that might be).

Boyce is quick to point out that his work is not political but largely driven by his emotion (see video below) but I wonder where this sort of work can take us in terms of thinking about the relationship between nature and the modern world. If Boyce can reproduce the gentleness and serenity of nature in an indoor installation made out of angular, modern materials, is the conflict between nature and the modern world real or is it something that we have created in our minds? Do we have to keep presenting nature and our modern development as enemies or can work like that of Martin Boyce inspire us to break out of our entrenched positions and see more complementarity? Are we even able to consider thinking differently?

“Each walk followed my own unique, formal route, for an original reason, which was different from other categories of walking, like travelling. Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking – as art – provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination.”

Long’s work has a strong evocative power. In particular, his ‘textworks’ are often short statements that capture a particular essence of a walk. In their short but powerful form their effect resembles that of haiku verses.

Long engages with the land in a highly personal way. His work is not the type of landscape or nature art that produces generic images that fetishize and romanticize nature while lacking any personal connection. Rather, in Long’s work one can feel the intimate connection that, through his long, solitary walks, the artist has achieved with the landscape. This sort of art creates a strong impact and is more likely to stimulate us to seek our own personal connections and meanings in nature and landscape than are simple, generic images that purport to show “the beauty of nature”.

Even when exhibited in the gallery, Long’s works contain a strong, organic feel that reflect the artist’s connection with the landscapes that provide the raw materials for his gallery works.

I spent my days enjoying some wonderful art, being astonished by art that was bland or crass – or both – and looking for art that engaged in the issues related to our environment. There was none that I could find. In this major art event where contemporary artists engage with the issues of the day, art engaged with environmental issues simply did not exist. Why?

Maybe we should just face the facts – we are being supremely unsuccessful in getting people engaged in environmental issues beyond the level where they politely acknowledge that there seems to be an issue and then swiftly move on to what, for them, are more pressing issues. All research confirms that environmental issues are low down on the list of people’s concerns and shrinking in relevance.

The most impressive installation in the Biennale was, by far, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Crystal of Resistance for the Swiss pavilion. The artist has created a web site about the installation.  If you are so inclined (and, in my desperation, I was), you can interpret part of Hirschhorn’s installation as containing an environmental message.

For the pavilion, the artist created a massive and almost overwhelming installation. Masses of discarded objects – TV sets, mobile telephones, plastic chairs, and so forth were covered in masking tape and assembled, seemingly haphazardly, throughout the pavilion. Other spaces contained other paraphernalia of modern life – magazines, car tyres, mannequins, discarded drinks cans and so forth.  There were even  taxidermied animals seemingly surrounded by the detritus of modern living.

Finally, there were arrays of photographs of what we may call ‘modern life’. Among these some of the most shocking images of war, oppression and human devastation.

The installation was tightly packed and visually overwhelming. One had to carefully walk through for fear of knocking something over. The experience felt similar to being in an overstocked and totally disorganized junk shop with no clues or guidance as to how one should proceed, what to look at in what order and what to make of it all.

This is the cleverness of the installation. Hirschhorn’s idea is that we are, today, surrounded by visual, auditory and material stimuli that are almost overwhelming. What do we actually ‘see’ when we go about our daily business? Maybe all we see is that which confirms our own world view. We ignore or act as mere spectators for most of what goes on around us – including the pictures of horror that the artist strung up in his installation and which most people looked at, no doubt found disturbing to various degrees but then just moved on to the next visual stimulus and got on with their lives.

For me, desperate to find some semblance of environmental engagement in the whole of the Biennale experience, Hirshhorn’s installation made powerful statements about our consumption, our unsustainable way of life, even the threat to other forms of life. But I saw all that because I wanted to. I was looking for it and therefore I saw it. The artist did not show it to me.

Of the millions who visited the installation, how many saw and took away an environmental message? How many even noticed or lingered next to the taxidermied marmot or eagle? If the research about environmental concerns is right, then it will be very, very few. There are many things that one can see and read into Hirschhorn’s installation and the reality is that very few people are attuned to seeing an environmental message. And even for those who did, they no doubt reflected briefly and then moved on to the nearest, chic Venetian restaurant where they ordered the deliciously grilled fish of the day – most likely a highly endangered species.

For the first time ever, 20 foot trees from the Royal Estate were, at the request of the Royal couple, brought inside Westminster Abbey to line the ceremonial passage – particularly appropriate in this International Year of the Forests. The importance of Nature also made it into the Bishop’s address.

There is maybe nothing that expresses the culture constructed by humanity as much as the pageantry of a British royal wedding. It is heartening that, on this occasion and, maybe, in line with the thoughts and feelings of a new generation, Nature has, for the first time, become an invited guest.

The trees softened the Abbey’s severe, if grand, gothic vaults with the softness of nature and a celebration of spring. In somewhat of a post-modern twist, the Bishop of London in his address called for a shift from the modernist pursuit of knowledge and technology to a focus on wisdom and respect for nature – and each other.

“We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely the power that has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.”

When nature gets invited to a Royal Wedding, maybe environmental and conservation values are truly becoming embedded in our society – at least among the newer generation. Time for celebration indeed.

WHAT IS MISSING?

What Is Missing? is the title of what has been labeled as Maya Lin’s last memorial. The aim is to draw attention to the environmental issues that are facing us all today – from global warming to the sixth mass extinction of species that is currently ongoing.

The Listening Cone. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco

In trying to bring attention to environmental issues, Lin is also re-defining the meaning of ‘Monument’.  Rather than a single structure in a single place, Lin is re-defining a monument to be a series of permanent or ephemeral structures or installations spanning the globe and linked by a common mission and a common message.

The Listening Cone (above) was one of the first installations.  A giant cone allows visitors to look into the wide end and see a series of looped videos accompanied by sounds of the marine environment – the natural sounds of the oceans.  It allows me “to create a scene that makes people realize how loud the ocean is for any sonar-dependent marine animal,” says Lin.

The Empty Room is a traveling installation that allows visitors to catch and hold projected images in their hands, each image saying something about endangered species and environmental degradation. 

Lin is planning many projects using many different media in different locations – and even virtual installations.  Future projects include ‘a sound-only sculpture’, video billboards, a peeking wall that allows us to peek through holes at video installations and even virtual media that can be downloaded onto mobile devices. To get an overview of this ambitious project visit the project’s web site.

Maya Lin has embarked on a large and ambitious vision intended to bring environmental issues to as many people as possible using modern media and formats that capture our imagination while constituting a call to action.  What Is Missing? is a work of contemporary art that, in true post-modern tradition, challenges established norms while working to change our outlook.

Let us hope that it is only some of her installations that prove ephemeral  rather than the species and ecosystems that she is trying to help protect.

How and why would one create an underwater scutpture park?

Sculptor and scuba diver Jason de Caires Taylor has, so far, created a total of 65 underwater sculptural installations in Mexico and across the Caribbean. While seeming somewhat surreal, these sculptures have a very practical purpose. They are intended to ‘spread the load’ currently borne by endangered local coral reefs by attracting divers to view these sculptural installations instead.  In additions, over time they form artificial reefs – new habitats where new coral can grow to form new coral reefs with their attendant value in supporting underwater life around them.

A video (below) shows the installation of the latest work in Cancun, Mexico.

Jason’s work may be an ideal example of how art can help conservation efforts.  His art not only draws attention to the issues but makes a very practical and tangible contribution both to conservation and coral reef restoration efforts and to the local tourist economy.  If only we could come up with more examples of this type of art.

Amazonia is an exhibit of work commissioned by the museum and shown as part of the Year of Biodiversity – 2010. The artists, Lucy + Jorge Orta have put together an eclectic collection of work based on a trip to the Amazon organized by Cape Farewell.  The exhibit contains sculpture, photography, video and installation.

For me, the most interesting pieces were some of the sculptures and the video.  The sculptures used bones and an extinct ‘elephant bird’ egg to prepare casts in iridescent aluminium (above) and Limoges porcelain (below). Viewing the decorated porcelain sculptures in particular, I wondered what they might say about our relationship with nature.  Is this a reflection of natural beauty cast in a material that we also consider culturally beautiful?  Or do they highlight our ‘use’ of nature – our appreciation of nature only in so much as we can turn it into a fetish object, a mere decoration or amusement? Do we appreciate nature for its own sake or only for its utility – one utility being its transformation into to a beautiful cultural artifact?

The twin, large scale video screens were also mesmerizing. The videos themselves were atmospheric, a feeling enhanced by the poetic narrative of Mario Petrucci (see short extract of the video here). It’s a shame that the video could not seem to avoid lapsing occasionally into spewing facts and figures and into the idolization of science.

The exhibit was an ambitious project.  It’s breadth was such that it is would put strain on any one pair of artists to deliver the expected span of content across many media. In my opinion, this strain started to show in some of the pieces. The photographs of amazonian plants, were well executed and brought a glossy juxtaposition to the coarser feel generated by the plant ‘sculptures’ rendered in sewn cloth. But the photographs did not really bring us an approach that we have not seen before in many, many photographs of exotic plants. The Madre de Dios ark (below) was, for my taste, a little too obvious. A Noah’s Ark of animals with life preservers piled underneath does not leave much to the imagination. The use of plastic animal models in the ark tended to give it all a bit of a down market, toy-like feel. But maybe my reaction was conditioned by comparison to some work by Félix Reyes that I have recently seen and that, while also using the idea of massed figures, had a quality of execution that left you breathless.

Madre de Dios

Amazonia is an ambitious project well-executed.  The artists successfully managed to produce a large scale exhibit that spanned many media and that brought to life the varied wonders of the amazon. They did so in an eclectic form that is far from usual and that represents a refreshing change from yet another nature documentary (yawn). The museum must be congratulated on commissioning this work and on having the vision to create a contemporary arts programme to sit alongside its more didactic, scientific work. I hope that other museums of natural history might take a lead from this programme and start something similar – though I suspect that we may have to wait for improved economic conditions to see that happening.

I have long been an admirer of the art produced by British street artist Banksy. And for many reasons.  His art is clever and witty and his method of delivery (mainly as graffiti) is wonderfully anti-establishment. Nobody (well, probably not quite nobody) knows his true identity.

I have been looking for some time for examples of his art that address environmental issues.  Finally I found some examples on his web site.

The image above is at once funny and so sad in the truth that it depicts. The image below is witty and amusing.

I had never seen any ‘installations’ by Banksy – just graffiti and paintings.  The installation below is entitled “Reconditioned dolphin ride with crude oil and tuna net” and, I guess, must be relatively recent.

If you can find it at a theatre near you or (in the UK only) are able to purchase or download the movie, I suggest that watching Banksy’s film “Exit Through The Gift Shop” (watch trailer) is worthwhile.  A light-hearted and clever look at the life and art of graffiti artists.

Finally, one last image as a reminder that the now almost inevitable disappearance, through pollution and over-fishing, of life in our waterways and oceans will affect us all – not just the bears.