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.

I recently visited an exhibition of the work of Sanna Kannisto and bought the recently published book about her work. The work of this young Finnish artist is fascinating. It questions how, in order to understand and describe, science has to simplify and can never hope to capture the true complexity of life.

The body of work that Sanna has accumulated reproduces the methods of field scientists. She takes items – birds, plants, other animals – out of where they normally live and uses a makeshift field studio to photograph them. Her photographs are designed to emphasize the fact that these creatures have been isolated, their existence simplified, so that we can observe and study them – and attempt to understand something about them.

In Sanna’s images, the artificiality of the setting in which these animals and plants are “studied” is striking.  It serves to highlight the artificiality that we construct when studying nature. Even as science pretends that it is transmitting some form of reality, these images highlight that science, like all else we do, is a human-constructed, cultural framework that simply represents one way of seeing the world.

Simple additions like a ruler or some other human method of observation and measurement serve to highlight the objectification of these creatures as objects of scientific study.

The images avoid, in many cases, any attempt to be aesthetically pleasing – they are supposed to be “scientific” examinations not romantic imagery. Many of the images are then simply labeled with the scientific names of the animal or plant that is photographed – a statement that seems to stamp the supposed scientific authority of “truth” and “knowledge” on to the image. It is as though, in clearly labeling a natural object with a scientific name, someone is saying, with the force of an authority that cannot be challenged, “this is what this is – we understand it and know everything about it”.

Images of her field studio further highlight the artifice of the method of “study”.

Contrasting these images of simplified (and maybe simplistic) artifice, are some images (below) that attempt to show the impenetrable complexity of the tropical rain forest. The messy, confusing, incomprehensible nature of the “immense disorder” of whole forest is juxtaposed with the clinical, artificial simplification of the individual studied objects.

Steve Baker in his essay introducing the monograph of Kannisto’s work summarizes the project as being intended  “..to represent – and, simultaneously, to acknowledge the impossibility of representing in any conventional manner – the baffling complexity of the tropical rainforest”.

It is clear from this work, that it is not only science which has to simplify in an attempt to comprehend. We end up much more drawn to clean simplicity of the images of the isolated bird or plant than the chaotic image of the unadulterated forest. Imagery – and all the arts – also simplify in an attempt to allow us to comprehend. The complexity of nature that is all around us is impossible for us humans to understand. We need to chop it up, simplify it and create limited, artificial models and languages of description in an attempt to gain some sort of comprehension. We create limited, though useful, ways of seeing.  The danger comes when the scientist, the artist, the economist, the anthropologist, the historian or anyone else starts to believe that his particular way of seeing represents the unassailable “truth”. Sanna Kannisto’s work gives the lie to any such self-delusion.

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.

Fidelman is a rock climber and he describes his series as “A photographic project that captures the essence of the climbing spirit”.  But to me these images speak more broadly than just telling a story about climbing.

To my eyes these images speak of a harmony between Man and Nature in a way that very few images manage to achieve nowadays. So much of our visual imagery is focused on Man’s destructive effect on Nature that we seem to have forgotten that there is also a positive harmony to be enjoyed observed and appreciated.

In most of these images the human figure is dwarfed by the majesty of the raw natural landscape.  Yet both elements have their own aesthetic – a different and contrasting beauty – and Fidelman manages to create a feeling of harmony rather than one of violation.

Fidelman’s images are reminiscent of those Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s ‘self-portraits’ in a natural environment.  However, while Minkkinen’s images create a feeling of human intrusion and molestation, Fidelman’s do not.  Looking through Stone Nudes I am left with a sense of peace and the hopeful feeling that some kind of harmonious relationship with nature is, maybe, possible.

Fidelman does not set out to make a point beyond his celebration of the climbing spirit. Yet, in celebrating both the human form and the natural world in the context of non-damaging human recreation, he has created an inspirational series of images that could show the way for a new visual language for those interested in taking a positive view of environmental issues.

David Buckland: The Great White Sale. These images are made in a short window of time when the power of the video projector matches the light of dawn, when there is both message and ice. This fleeting moment of human excess is so short, two hundred years, but for the glacier it is barely a single breath taken.

Cape Farewell has already organized a number of art exhibitions as a result of the works created during the expeditions. The latest traveling exhibit – u-n-f-o-l-d opens in Chicago on March 16th. According to David Buckland, “We intend to communicate through art works our understanding of the changing climate on a human scale, so that our individual lives can have meaning in what is a global problem.”

This blog has reviewed the work of a number of artists that have collaborated with Cape Farewell. These include Lemn Sissay, Iain McEwan, and Lucy + Jorge Orta. Buckland also curated the highly successful EARTH exhibit at the Royal Academy in 2009.

Adriane Colburn: Forest for the Trees is a meditation on the complex relationship between nature and industry; sustained land vs. commodified land; matter on the surface of the earth vs. the matter below ground; the morphing of the forest into an industrial landscape; and the fine lines between use and exploitation.

Cape Farewell is probably the most important undertaking to date that, in an organized and concerted way, engages the arts in issues of climate change and the environment.

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.

In ‘From Art to Politics’, Murray Edelman argues: “Together art, the mind and the situations in which they are applied construct and transform beliefs about the social world.  …  But for the most part they do so in a masked fashion, leaving the impression that these beliefs are based upon observation.”

Contrary to the didactic nature of scientific or ‘factual’ communication, the most effective art is that which is ambiguous, allowing the viewer his own interpretation.  It is this ‘free-learning’ combination of the artwork and its open interpretation that makes art such a persuasive and culturally powerful force for change.

Effective art does not attempt to provide answers.  Rather its role is to raise questions, launching a journey of the mind that finds its own answers.

Many questions swirl around the issue of how humans can live successfully without destroying the world around them.  Many artists are producing work that provokes debate and discussion by challenging conventional thinking in a way that engages audiences.  Art that goes beyond the narrow confines of conservation and environmentalism to the broader debate around sustainability.

“It is widely acknowledged that the shaping and reshaping of the social world is accomplished in large part by cultural representations – those depictions, illustrations, likenesses, icons, pictures and portraits that are produced by a culture.” (Linda Kalof: Looking at Animals in Human History)