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.

The Prix Pictet is one of the most prestigious photography contests. This year’s theme was Growth and it is interesting that most of the photographers chosen as finalists chose to portray Growth in negative terms – the pursuit of Growth as something that is damaging our planet. How long is this attitude sustainable? How long can the environmental movement keep portraying itself as the enemy of growth and development and still maintain enough public support.  My suggestion is – not for long. It is time that the environmental movement went beyond the politics on “NO” to a less conflicting and more constructive future.

Edward Burtynsky and Chris Jordan – also previously reviewed in this blog – were finalists in this year’s Prix Pictet.

The video below is very funny – but the reality of the message is enough to make you despair.  Enjoy – it only lasts 7 minutes.

Watching this sort of thing, it is easy to sit back smugly and blame incompetent, lying politicians for all the issues.  The reality is that the environmental movement, whose mission it is to encourage us all to move forward, has also spectacularly failed to fulfill its mission.  Last year I was in a climate change summit where, after 3 days or pretty ineffectual hot air, one delegate got up and said “We’ve been saying the same thing for 25 years.  Now it’s really urgent and we have to say it louder.” Does that make you laugh or make you cry?

“I had been hired to photograph a town in the process of being erased. The American Electric Power Company had paid residents of Cheshire a lump sum to leave, never come back and never complain in the media or in court if they became sick from environmental contaminates spewed out by the AEP plant. The company was buying itself a lawsuit-free future.”

Having completed the project, Epstein could not get Cheshire out of his mind and embarked on a project called American Power. “I wanted to photograph the relationship between American society and the American landscape, and energy was the lynchpin.”

The result of the project is a set of images of the creation and consumption of power in America. The images starkly show how both energy production and its consumption are inextricably intertwined with everyday life in America.

Some of the images serve as somber reminders of the perverse ways in which America uses its power and its cultural relationship to these uses. One such photograph is that of a now disused electric chair affectionately known as ‘Old Sparky’.

Other images show the huge and irreversible impact that power generation has had on the landscape.

Just as revealing as the photographs themselves are the difficulties that Epstein encountered as he toured the country creating these images. He describes ‘systematic harassment’ as he tried to photograph power plants and other installations: “Law enforcement officials more than once ran me out of town when I had done nothing remotely criminal. The result was that from 2003-2008 – a span that coincided with the Bush era – most of where I went in the United States to work I went in fear.”

And, in case harassment was insufficient, here is a description of one incident when he was stopped for questioning: “..an unmarked car arrived. A middle aged man in a suit and tie stepped out and flashed his ID : FBI. “You know,” he said, “if you were a Muslim, you’d be cuffed and taken in for questioning.” Long live the land of the free!

The project is now the subject of an interactive web site that aims to collect people’s views and start an online discussion around the question – What is American Power?