Maja and Reuben Fowkes interviewed in Antennae Magazine – the whole issue can be downloaded from their site as a pdf

or you can just read the interview Pages from ANTENNAEinterview.doc

Since the last symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art held at CEU in February 2008, which took as its subject the Operaist dilemma of ‘Exit or Activism?’ and examined Paulo Virno’s idea of ‘exit’ as the ultimate form of resistance, the world has witnessed an intensifying fight for resources under the Arctic, the rocketing of food and oil prices, the Russian gas crisis, and the systemic failure of international financial institutions. These ‘hard realities’ have caused a switch from concerns of immaterial labour to recognition of the ‘new materiality’ of current circumstances.

This recent turn has been addressed by theorist Slavoj Žižek, who notes that while in the last decades it was ‘trendy to talk about the dominant role of intellectual labour in our post-industrial societies, today materiality appears in an almost vengeful way in all its aspects, from a future struggle for ever-diminishing resources (food, water, energy, minerals) to the degradation of the environment.’ The 2009 edition of Sustainability and Contemporary Art therefore brings together artists, theorists and environmental activists to investigate the implications of ‘hard realities’ and ‘new materiality’ for political action, artistic theory and practice, and sustainable living in the 21st century.

Hard Realities and the New Materiality

Speakers at the symposium included Slovenian artist-theorist Marina Grzinic, who together with her colleague Sebastjan Leban gave a forceful presentation examining the roots of ecological crisis in the capitalist system.  Their argument that the notion of ’sustainability’ was an invention of big business was a cause for some debate, with environmentalists pointing out its origins in ecological thought, as well as the UN Brundlandt Report of 1987, including Alan Watt from CEU, who himself gave a very precisely positioned paper about the stakes of sustainability today. The discussion did though suceed in drawing attention to the way in which the idea of sustainability have become increasingly associated with business-speak and risks losing its critical force if not distinguished from greenwash.

Tadzio Muller

A slightly different approach was taken by Tadzio Muller, a Berlin-based environmental theorist, editor of Turbulence-Ideas for Movement and activist, whose presentation was entitled ‘It’s economic growth, stupid! On climate change, mad-eyed moderates and realistic radicals’, and according to his bio text, ‘after many years of being a counterglobalist summit-groupie, in the emerging climate action movement’ he managed to ‘escape the clutches of (academic) wage labour.’ His charismatic talk seemed designed to get people to stand up and join the struggle, and very much conveyed the urgency of the situation, and clearly stating that since the Rio Summit of 92 nothing governments have done has reduced greenhouse emissions, which continue to rise.

Janek Simon

Polish artist Janek Simon explained ‘How to make a digital handwatch at home’, and talked about several of his works which although he doesn’t necessarily think about them in that way, certainly seemed to contribute to the discussion about sustainability and contemporary art, and the contribution of artistic knowledge.

Tamas StAuby

The other artist contribution was from Tamás St.Auby,  who agreed to talk about his ‘Subsistence Level Standard Project 1984 W.’, and ended up giving a provocative and interesting demonstration of the subversive possibilities of ‘E-Cumenism Tele-Education‘, which led a number of participants to leave the auditorium, perhaps missing the point of his conceptual intervention involving the the projection of a film of an earlier lecture on the same topic, which luckily was also recorded on video, potentially adding another layer to his highly relevant argument about the sustainability of international conferences and formal education as a whole.

Our presentation was on ‘The Environmental Impact of Contemporary Art’ and took the example of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall from the point of view of the impact of works of art on the environment and showed some of the problems involved in developing a model for analysing the environmental impact of contemporary art.

We also organised a tour of the exhibition Arctic Hysteria at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, and held an impromtu conversation with some of the speakers, that was recorded and will be available soon.

Janek, Marina, Maja and Tadzio

Full details of the symposium, including abstracts and biographies, can be found on Translocal.org

The recent symposium on Art and Radioactivity at the Royal Society of Arts proved an exception to the many generalised discussions around art and ecology, by focusing on the specific and timely issue of the relationship of all things nuclear to contemporary art. While the organisers, the RSA’s own Arts and Ecology team, together with Arts Catalyst, who specialise in the relationship between art and science, and another UK arts organisation SCAN, laid out their intention as to try to bridge the divide between the ‘pro and anti-nuke’ lobbies – conscious of the fierce debate around this issue in the environmental movement – the symposium ended up giving voice to a consensus of opposition to nuclear power from both artists and scientists.

The first speaker, American artist James Acord, presented his long term engagement with the decommissioned Hanford nuclear plant, which is the most radioactively contaminated site in the USA, with levels matching in some areas those in Chernobyl, and his desire to create a ‘Stonehenge for the nuclear age’, as a warning to future generations. He described his ‘greatest idea ever’ as to use a reactor to transform radioactive elements into harmless metals such as platinum, and a failed attempt to convince Imperial University London to let him use their experimental reactor for these purposes. While for Acord, such a ‘transformation of elemental substances’ was inately sculptoral, the chief scientist apparently refused to allow him to use the university reactor for artistic purposes, for fear of the potential negative publicity (as most people in London are blissfully unaware that there’s an experimental nuclear reactor at Imperial College).

Acord’s thoroughly conceptual understanding of artistic practice came through in his insistence that ‘art is not frivolous’ and that scientists shouldn’t have a monopoly of access to nuclear technology. His art came over as being primarily about his long term research and provocation of the nuclear establishment, such as by going through the very complicated legal process to gain a license for handling radioactive materials – and having the license number tatooed on his neck, rather than in the occasional (also appealing) art objects that he produced along the way. Having failed to convince the authorities to allow him carry out his ‘greatest idea ever’ using nuclear reactors, he resorted to DIY techniques involving the creative misuse of a smoke alarm and some orange uranium-coated dishes, which over a period of months he maintained would bring about the transformation of a small but registerable quantity of plutonium into a non-radioactive metal.

Two other presentations were of commissions for a related exhibition entitled Nuclear: Art and Radioactivity. On the one hand, the approach of Simon Hollington and Kypros Kyprianou was to criticise through mimickry the communications strategies of the nuclear power industry, which involved the setting up of the British Atomic Nuclear Group, giving the appropriate acronym B.A.N.G. This seemed to rest on a rather familiar artistic strategy, although to make a valid critical point about the absurdity, defensiveness and moral bankruptcy of the commercial advocates of nuclear power. The other new work, by Chris Oakley, appeared to run the risk of looking like an advertisement for nuclear power, in the idealised picture it presented of nuclear fusion being developed at Culham as a clean and safe alternative to fission. The artist was clearly sensitive to such criticisms, admitting that the press people at the nuclear plants he suceeded in accessing tried to influence him through the archive materials they provided into giving a rosy picture of nuclear power. He also was questioned at the symposium about why he decided not to refer in his film to the dual history of Harwell, as birthplace both of UK atomic energy and the British nuclear weapons programme. There were clearly pitfalls in the aestheticisation of nuclear power through a reliance on visual imagery alone to deal with a complex and highly politicised issue.

The symposium was enlivened by a video link up with radical new media artist Steve Kurtz in Australia, who gave an off-the-cuff introduction to his current work researching the way in which George Bush used ‘radiation’ as an ideology to justify the use of torture and undermining of civil rights in the USA. Asked in a question about the chances that Obama will bring a change in US policy, he said he feared that Obama was not likely to do much about the fundamental problem of ‘predatory capitalism’, The Critical Art Ensemble he said was interested in ’stopping the abuse of information so we can make an intelligent decision.’

There were also two presentations by scientists, both of whom were clearly anti-nuclear. One of the scientist presentations showed how the government’s consultation process for the new generation of nuclear power plants, which was given the go ahead earlier this year, was completely flawed and undemocratic. The other scientific presentation was an enjoyable jaunt through the history of the universe, specially done for artists, by someone who clearly had an artistic frame of mind, despite his strictly scientific credentials. He started with a quote from Joni Mitchell (‘We are stardust – billion year old carbon’) and went on to say that the only safe place to have a nuclear reactor is in the sun, and that we should go back to this original energy source that powered evolution from the beginning. Keith Barnham (the scientist in question), explained why he moved from heading a team of particle physicists at the CERN accelerator to pursuing practical research into a new generation of solar energy panels. It was actually quite inspiring…

The last presentation was by the veteran conceptual artist Gustav Metzger, who used the categories of ‘prescience’ and the ‘extreme’ to approach the notion of apocalypse, looking back to moments in modern art history, such as Picasso’s Guernica, while picking up on amusing but significant slices of life culled from the British press, such as a report that Abramovich is buying a house in Kensington, in order to pull it down and build a bigger one, but bomb proof. His message was in the end quite pessimistic, as he said that no one wants to realise that ‘there is no permanent life on earth.’

One of the other illustrious speakers was Kate Hudson, chair of CND, who spoke about the history of CND and nuclear disarmament. Someone made a comment about the failure of CND, and one of the younger artists interjected meaningfully: ‘I was 10 in 1980, and spent the next decade walking around with a CND badge, you don’t know what effect that had.’

The dimension of sustainability came out strongly in several of the talks, and was reflected in the artists’ long term commitment to the nuclear issue and the dematerialised notion of the art work, which most speaker’s shared. There was an interesting moment when members of the audience stood up to insist that the scientists not misunderstand contemporary art, by conceiving of it in aesthetic terms (on the lines of ‘we need artists to make our solar panels more beautiful’), when in fact, what many artists were doing is exploring the idea of art as an alternative knowledge producer, something that trespasses on the excusive rights of the sciencist to control knowledge. Many of the speakers also showed a keen interest in finding ways to intervene in dominant systems, especially those of the media, and to address white hot ecological issues through their work.

Photo documentation of the recent exhibition REHAB at Labor Gallery Budapest can now be found on the gallery website.

Documentation of the Exit or Activism? symposium at CEU Budapest will follow soon…

The Exit or Activism? Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at Central European University on 29 February and related exhibition REHAB at Labor Gallery Budapest were very successful, and there’s been a lot of response, through emails, conversations, as well as on the web and even Hungarian television.

Here are some photos sent by Danish artists Leinchen & Jon Micke and an extract from their email:

‘We walked the context in a pre or extended exhibition space; a scattered and deconstructed REHAB prologue & epilogue, so to speak, from the VI-district to Labor: Was it by accident the opening of REHAB matched the Budapest’s Open Air & Night Show of Ready-Made & Trash in the Streets? Mass consumption really stands out in accumulated urban forms, when interior are dropped as exterior garbage and collides with the tableau of purchasable commodities (and trademarks.) on display, framed and behind glass in shopping streets, and each accumulation possess its own individual character from the voluptuous and demanding over the unorganized and chaotic to the solitude and deserted.’
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REHAB Lomtalanitased: 10 ready-made accumulations installed and prospectively framed in mixed light and on low tech cell phone by Jon Micke under a slight influence of vernissage wine

Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art: Exit or Activism?

This symposium investigates the current state of thinking about sustainability in the light of the continuing mutations of post-Fordist global capitalism and its devastating effects on the environment, society and the individual. The axis of discussion will revolve around the strategic possibilities for resistance offered by tactical withdrawal versus relentless activism through contemporary art. On the one hand, the dilemma gives rise to a conscious decision to slow down, decline to participate, to seek a way out, or ‘exit’ as envisioned by Paulo Virno, or on the other, there is a passion to overcome political exhaustion and confront head on rampant injustice, environmental degradation and lack of liberty.

SPEAKERS
Emanuel Danesch is based in Vienna. As a poly-media artist in the broadest sense his projects and documentary films cover issues of cultural, economical and political transformation. At the symposium he will present his new film LiveSafelyinEurope.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes are curators and art historians who deal with issues of memory, ecology and translocal exchange.  They have curated and written extensively on the issue of contemporary art and sustainability. blog

Ivan Ladislav Galeta is an artist and head of the multi-media department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He is a noted avant-garde film maker, conceptual artist and explorer of sustainable practices.  He will present his NOART EARTH DAY project at the symposium.

Gene Ray is a critic and theorist living in Berlin and working at the intersections of art and radical politics. He is a member of the Radical Culture Research Collective, author of Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory (2005) and editor of Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy (2000). His presentation is entitled ‘Exit, Radical Culture and the Re-Composition of Struggle.’

Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker based in Vienna, who organizes theme-specific exhibitions, projects in the public space and videos on issues such as global capitalism, forms of resistance, social alternatives, racism and genetic engineering. He will present his projects 100 Years of Greenhouse Effect and Sustainable Propaganda. www.ressler.at

Tamara Steger is director of the Centre for Environmental Policy and Law at CEU and a specialist in environmental justice and sustainable development. Her paper is entitled ‘Fin de Siecle to Stuckism:  Reclusiveness and Social Activism for Sustainability’.

Adam Sutherland is Director of Grizedale Arts where he has developed a wide ranging artist centred programme that incorporates the local cultures of the Lake District – historical, political and economic. www.grizedale.org

Yanina Taneva is Art For Social Change Programme Manager at The Red House – Center for culture and Debate, Sofia. Her paper is entitled: ‘Does Concrete Blossom? Environmentally-Conscious Art in Present-day Bulgaria as Political Statement’

Alan Watt is a lecturer in environmental philosophy and the development of environmental thought at the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at Central European University. He will speak on ‘Sustainability as a Political Ideal’.

For more details, see the symposium website: www.translocal.org/sustainability

Public lecture by Maja and Reuben Fowkes at Turner Contemporary dealing with a pivotal issue for art and sustainability.

A heightened awareness of the ecological consequences of our actions, lifestyles, and everyday choices has rapidly gone from a fringe concern to a mainstream preoccupation, reinforced by the newfound enthusiasm of politicians and the media for green issues. Contemporary artists have in many cases maintained an independent position, showing a willingness to engage with the most radical implications of sustainability for society as well as for artistic practice, while remaining alert to the dangers of coercion, manipulation and social control. This presentation will investigate the ongoing encounter of contemporary art with the quest for ecological citizenship, including the artistic exploration of its deeper ramifications and discussion of the instinctive preference for an ecology of freedom.

This text probes some of the legacies of modernism for sustainable art practices, arguing for a re-evaluation of the notion of artistic autonomy as a path of resistance, and was published as part of the Dokumenta 12 magazine project, where the full text can be found.

In 1467 the Madonna del Buonconsiglio miraculously appeared in the town of Genazzano near Rome, descending from a cloud and hovering before an unfinished church wall. Genazzano immediately became a site of pilgrimage and devotion. At the same time, Our Lady of Shkodra, the most venerated icon in Albania, was seen at the height of the Ottoman siege, floating up into the sky, and was followed by two Albanian witnesses all the way to Rome, where they lost sight of it. The holy legend was kept alive from generation to generation and the Madonna was prayed to in Albania’s darkest times of foreign occupation and religious persecution, with hope expressed by the hymn “Madonna of Good Counsel, return to us.”

The rigid divide between autonomous art, for which the highest imaginable function is to have no function, and instrumental art, which is accused of sacrificing artistic freedom for the sake of a political message, is a direct legacy of modernism, and still informs many widely-held assumptions about the nature of artistic engagement. Recent theoretical reassessments of artistic autonomy however, point to a degree of convergence in contemporary art between approaches formerly considered to be binary opposites. Christoph Menke has argued that along with autonomy, art in modernity achieves sovereignty, which enables it to raise claims against rationality. It might therefore be suggested that the autonomy of art guarantees its status as a separate sovereign sphere, with a resultant independence from the rules and conventions of society. It is autonomy that gives art, as well as artists as social actors, the potential to be free and able to offer alternatives to dominant ideological paradigms. So, sustainability of art recognises no contradiction between autonomy and engagement, as long as the formal qualities are fulfilled, as it is precisely the autonomy of art that creates a space for resistance.

Following on from the Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at Central European University Budapest in March 2006, this guest lecture and workshop led by Mari-Aymone Djeribi and Dominic Stevens was organised in April 2007 to explore the rural as a site for contemporary art and architecture and discuss the possibilities and challenges of sustainable living.

Mari-Aymone Djeribi is an artist who makes artist’s books, installations, objects, films and sourdough bread. She founded her publishing company mermaid turbulence (www.mermaidturbulence.com) in 1993. Her work appears in a number of international public collections, most notably the Tate gallery Artists Book Collection, UK and Centre National D’Art George Pompidou, Paris , France.

Dominic Stevens is an award-winning architect. His work has been published internationally (see, for instance, A10 Magazine March-April 2007) and, more importantly he hopes that it has improved the lives of the people that commissioned it. He represented Ireland at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Having moved to Leitrim in rural Ireland in 1999, Djeribi and Stevens built a timber and strawbale house and they farm with their two small children just under five acres, tending goats, ducks, chickens and trees.

This lecture was given as part of the TRAIN open lectures series at Chelsea School of Arts and provoked a lively and productive discussion with the audience.

The notion of sustainability has spread from the field of environmentalism to many other areas of human activity, including the spheres of art and culture. There is a growing understanding that radical change is required, if we are to find a way to ‘meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ For art, the implications are felt in the preference for sustainable forms, the critique of unsustainable art world structures, and the reassessment of art history from the point of view of our relationship to the natural world. It offers a challenge to the ingrained habit of producing objects and the relentless search for novelty in contemporary art.

What we are dealing with is no longer confined within the niche of earlier environmental art, which is associated with art acting as a vehicle to popularise environmental campaigns, or symbolic gestures to purify rivers through ritual, or to raise consciousness through art with a direct ecological message. In fact, the closeness to sustainability of much challenging contemporary art practice owes more to the legacy of 1970s conceptualism, and even primarily the non-market East European variety of conceptual art, than for example to Land Art. This presentation will therefore discuss the ways and extent to which a concern for sustainability has passed into the mainstream of contemporary art.

The rigid divide between autonomous art, for which the highest imaginable function is to have no function, and instrumental art, which is accused of sacrificing artistic freedom for the sake of a political message, is a direct legacy of modernism, and still informs many widely held assumptions about the nature of artistic engagement. We will consider recent theoretical reassessments of artistic autonomy that point to a degree of convergence in contemporary art between approaches formerly considered to be binary opposites. Arguably sustainability in art recognises no contradiction between autonomy and engagement, as long as the formal qualities are fulfilled, as it is precisely the autonomy of art that creates a space to consider alternatives.

The implications of sustainability for contemporary art will be examined through the work of international artists, including Adrian Paci, Heath Bunting, Beata Veszely and Ivan Ladislav Galeta. Their sustainable practice might be considered in terms of the contemporary avant garde.

This lecture was given by Maja and Reuben Fowkes at the conference Europe Now, Europe Next organised by Culturebase.net and sought to bring a ecological dimension to the notion of ‘cultural versus national borders’ in Europe.

Issues around borders and memory have had a strong presence in contemporary art for a decade or more, especially in Eastern Europe, where identities of all kinds were put into question ‘after the Wall.’ We argue that a powerful set of concerns have recently come into play, changing how these issues are perceived and placing them in a new context. The need to face up to the implications of climate change is arguably as much of a challenge for contemporary art as it is for the car industry. The challenge of sustainability for art leads to the questioning of established institutions and practices, including art fairs and biennials, the craze for building new art museums, down to the ecological impact of the art work itself. Sustainability also opens up new possibilities for art to take a critical position towards the unsustainable aspects of contemporary society.

This paper explores the implications of sustainability for contemporary art and examines how the need to respond to the global ecological crisis is bringing about a reorientation of the most acute contemporary art, where virtual space is valued as a carbon-free zone, the border crossings of Europe rediscovered as an accidental wilderness, and popular memories and myths are treated as perishable elements of human experience that are endangered by the juggernaut of progress. Equally, just by being sustainable through their practice and preserving their autonomy from mainstream society, contemporary artists have the potential to create a space for radical thinking and to experiment with alternatives.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes were invited by the organisers of the excellent Shifting Ground Conference in County Clare to curate a film screening dealing with issues of sustainability in a rural context.

Responding to the broad dilemma of ‘how to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ has implications for artistic practice both in terms of formal approach and subject matter. The transformation of society into a more sustainable one entails putting into practice the principles of ecology, grassroots democracy, social justice and non-violence.

Sustainable Visions presents films that deal with changes in rural economies, the position of the other in closed communities, the contemporary desire to reconnect with old knowledge, and the possibilities of non-violent artistic intervention in the rural environment. The programme will include Goran Dević’s Imported Crows (2004), Csaba Nemes’s Africa Day (2006), Beata Veszely’s On the Way to Heaven (2006), Ivan Ladislav Galeta’s Fire (2006) and Denis Krašković’s Strabat Mater (2006).

This text originally appeared as a chapter in The New Art, a collection of essays on contemporary art published by Rachmaninoff’s London. Our account of the challenge of sustainability for contemporary art includes criticism of the ‘turbine hall effect’ on contemporary art.

Sustainability presents a far reaching challenge to society and raises important issues for contemporary art. Responding to the broad dilemma of ‘how to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ has implications for artistic practice and brings a reorientation of in our opinion most attuned contemporary art towards sustainability. According to environmental thought, the key problems to be addressed on the path to sustainable living are a capitalist model of growth, consumerism, hierarchies in society, social injustice, and the human impact on the environment and natural world. The transformation of society into a more sustainable one entails putting into practice the principles of ecology, grassroots democracy, social justice and non-violence.

The artistic engagement with sustainability draws on radical critiques of art and society and the dematerialised practices of conceptual art to offer sustainable alternatives for art and life. While in contemporary living we have a greater understanding of sustainability in our everyday choices (or the lack of them), contemporary artists increasingly take on the role of alternative knowledge producer, involved in producing, mediating, and exchanging alternative models and dealing with issues that are marginalised in mainstream culture and politics.

Sustainability in art brings awareness of a wider ecological context around the production and reception of art works. It questions the sacrosanct status of the art object as the highest civilisational value and problematises the belief that artworks are created, and should be preserved, for eternity. Just as in society there is a tendency to stop seeing nature as an endless resource, attuned artists problematise the understanding of art as commodity, and are reluctant to add to the stockpile of art objects, choosing instead to explore alternative means of expression.

This essay appeared in a special issue of Praesens: Central European Contemporary Art Review published to accompany the Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at CEU Budapest as well as on GreenMuseum, where the full text can be found.

The Land art movement of the 1960s and 70s has often been seen as the origin of today’s environmental art. Land artists famously left the white cube of the gallery to make dramatic interventions in the living landscape. ‘Instead of using a paintbrush to make his art Robert Morris would like to use a bulldozer.’ This statement by Robert Smithson points to the ‘earthmovers’ preoccupation with marking, removing, and rearranging natural materials on a grand scale, arguably treating nature as a giant canvas. Although they were involved in a dispute with Greenbergian modernists, who disapproved of all art that tried to link to the real world, denied the connection of art to a specific historical context, and wished artists to remain within traditional disciplines, it could be argued that their polarised positions represent two sides of the same modernist coin.

A more fruitful ground for searching for the origins of today’s sustainable art is in the innovative practices of the conceptual artists of the same period. Their radical questioning of the art system, alternative strategies for making and presenting work, engagement with social and political realities, ethics, and encouragement of independent thought, are all important legacies for contemporary art. Furthermore, dematerialisation, through the disavowal of the art object and shift towards process-based practices, performances, actions, as well as ephemeral works that were created not to last, was an invaluable inheritance for later sustainable art, as of course was the desire of conceptual artists to provoke on the level of idea or concept. Regarding the interplay of art and nature, a highly resonant image from the late 1960s was the art student Goran Trbuljak’s gesture of throwing empty picture frames into the boundless sea.

This gathering of artists, theorists and environmentalists at Central European University Budapest in March 2006 was the first occasion on which issues of sustainability and contemporary art were tackled in a collaborative, interdisciplinary and transnational context. A number of important future projects grew out of this successful event.

Sustainability has been at the top of the global environmental agenda for more than a decade, but an understanding of ecological responsibility is only now beginning to have a visible impact on society and culture. The symposium will explore the radical and innovatory power of the concept of sustainability, which implies a strategy for integrative development in harmony with nature and a reinvigorated notion of global justice on the basis of shared environmental responsibility.

Our intention is to create a transdisciplinary space for discussion of the fundamental issues bridging the fields of art and environment and an opportunity to be inspired by the response of leading international artists to the challenge of sustainability. Presentations will show how contemporary art might engage with the full implications of sustainability beyond visualising ecological disasters and illustrating environmental campaigns.

The innovative practices featured range from finding ways to foster cultural diversity, exploring new environmental notions such as sustainable pleasure, developing alternative concepts of wealth, and finding out new ecological uses of space. The role of the curator in engaging with environmental issues will also be examined, while aestheticians and environmentalists will offer theoretical perspectives on art and sustainability.

Speakers
Alexios Antypas (US)
Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon (UK)
Cosmin Costinaş (RO)
Jonathan Dronsfield (UK)
Miklos Erhardt (H)
David Haley (UK)
Newton & Helen Mayer Harrison (USA)
Tamás Kaszás and Viktor Kotun (H)
Hildegard Kurt (GER)
Kristina Leko (CRO)
Edit Molnár (H)
Csaba Nemes (H)
Nils Norman (UK)
Marko Peljhan (SLO)
Renata Poljak (CRO)
Rúrí (IS)
Diane Warburton (UK)

Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art

Delegates tuck in to rebel caterer Oran’s fabulous vegetarian lunch

Ruri’s exhibition at Liget Galeria and her presentation were highlights of the Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at CEU Budapest. See the gallery link below for documentation of her show, which in addition to photographs on glass included a waterfall video installation.

The Icelandic artist Ruri, in her series of photographic and sound installations Endangered Waters, archives elements of the natural landscape that are threatened with extinction as a consequence of human intervention. She catalogues the qualities of individual waterfalls in Iceland , preserving their unique sounds and appearance, for a future in which they may have ceased to exist. Her work is dedicated to exposing the huge environmental costs of Iceland’s exploitation of hydroelectric power by highlighting the threat to the survival of Iceland’s waterfalls posed by extensive dam building.

Liget Galeria Budapest
28 March – 8 April 2006

This review of the RSA’s first symposium on Ecology and Artistic Practice was published on Green Museum and provided a rare critical take on what would turn out to be a significant development in the spread of ecological concerns to mainstream contemporary art. What follows is a short extract, please follow the link below for the full version with illustrations.

The theoretical basis and ‘keynote paper’ to the symposium was provided by Gary Genosko, Research Chair in Technoculture Studies at Lakehead University, Canada, who spoke about Félix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies. His paper ranged from the distinction between inter- and trans-disciplinarity to Guattari’s notion of ecosophy, and the need to extend our understanding of ecology from the ‘environmental’ to include the ‘mental’ and ‘social’ worlds. A new subjectivity that could challenge the dominance of consumerism would he predicted be ‘marbled by eco-consciousness’ rather than a representing a ‘single-issue’ eco-logic or one that followed the ‘paper trail’ of the ‘techno-scientific elites.’

Questions and comments from the floor revealed some concern about the lack of urgency and relevance to ecological activism of Guattari’s ecosophy. A lively discussion broke out contrasting the ‘unified vision’ of deep ecology theorist Arne Naess and the ‘fragmented’ approach represented by Guattari. The speaker reiterated his view that ‘fundamental change in how we think’ is only possible through the emergence of ‘dissident subjectivities that become ecologically expressive.’ Simplistic and ‘single-issue’ theories, along with all attempts at a ‘technocratic solution’ to environmental problems are counter-productive, while long-term ecological solutions are to be found in the ‘paradigm of creativity.’

Art and Ecology: Unified or Fragmentary?

This essay was written for the exhibition Unframed Landscapes and deals with the position of nature in contemporary art. In addition to appearing in the exhibition catalogue, it has been republished in GreenMuseum and NeMe. The following is a short extract, and the whole text can be accessed using the link below.

The rise of environmentalism, feminism, and post-modernist critical theory together has significantly changed our understanding of nature, and consequently artistic practice. Ecology has challenged the anthropocentrism of a culture based on the objectification and exploitation of nature. When talking about environmental artists Newton and Helen Harrison, eco-feminist Carolyn Merchant has praised the way ‘they think of the world as a giant conversation, in which everyone is involved, not only people, but trees and rocks and landscapes and rivers.’

Feminism in general, and ecofeminism in particular, have brought a new understanding of how gender has shaped the ways in which we see the environment. This has involved drawing attention to the ubiquitous binary coupling of women with nature and men with culture. Landscape art is deconstructed as mastery over nature that is evident in the rules of perspective and the stress on viewpoints for representing nature. Eco-feminists aspire to move beyond dualistic thinking and to establish relationships based not on hierarchy and domination, but on caring, respect, and awareness of interconnection.

Post-modernist theory demonstrates how our relations to the non-human world are always historically-mediated and constructed. For post-modernists, landscape is a set of contingent visual and verbal conventions, rather than something natural and given.In the words of Simon Schama, ”it is our shaping perception that makes the difference between raw matter and landscape.”
Nature in Contemporary Art

The group exhibition Unframed Landscapes offered a reassessment of landscape as a genre in contemporary art. The conventional understanding of landscape implies a picturesque view of the countryside – images of ruined castles, a lonely tree in the puszta and romantic seaside villages come to mind. This understanding of landscape has, however, been revealed as culturally-constructed, the product of political ideologies, and conveying human domination over nature. Furthermore, landscape is perceived through a frame by a distant spectator, who remains alienated from the object of his gaze. Nature as a theme in contemporary art acts as a barometer of our ecological attunement.

The exhibition Unframed Landscapes researched our relationship with nature across the full range of current media, including: landscapes painted from train windows, video photography exploring gender and landscape, computer animation researching images of a natural phenomenon on the web, digital snaps expressing the marginality of nature in city life, and physical interventions in the natural environment. The participating artists were Balázs Beöthy, Ivan Bura, Péter Császar, János Fodor, Andrea Huszár, Tibor Iski Kocsis, Csaba Nemes, Ana Opalic and Matko Vekic.

Venues
Institute of Contemporary Art Dunaújváros 16 Jan – 13 Feb 2004
Ecology Pavilion Mile End Park, London 20 May – 6 June 2004
Gallery of Extended Media, Zagreb 10 – 30 June 2004
Unframed Landscapes

The intriguing idea of Human/Nature is open to a number of interpretations. It includes the notion of a dichotomy between civilisation and the natural world and holds out the possibility of overcoming it. It also involves the tricky concept of ‘human nature’ that has divided philosophers for centuries between advocates of a harsh ‘law of the jungle’ and believers in the intrinsic goodness of the ‘noble savage’. The debate between proponents of optimistic and pessimistic views of basic human character is further complicated by the post-modernist’s belief that human nature is a self-referential linguistic construct and only meaningful within a specific cultural context. Nevertheless, we still feel a desire to delve the mysteries of human nature, and in this situation, art can take a role in divining and expressing the global unconscious.

We are witnessing a growing tendency to seek out new forms of spirituality and a rediscovery of ethics in art. Reconstructive post-modernism regards interconnectedness, social responsibility and ecological attunement as the crucial issues for human creativity. It calls for a reenchantment of the human soul. Human/Nature is about an awareness of how fragile the balance of nature is, how precious local lifestyles are, and how much it all depends on us.

Artists
Viktor Daldon, Slaven Tolj, Sandra Sterle, Ivan Šeremet, Denis Kraškovic, Ivana Franke, Luko Piplica and Alem Korkut.

Venues
Trafo Gallery Budapest 16 May – 11 June 2002
Galerija Balen and Muzej brodskog Posavlja Slavonski Brod 17 Sept – 4 October 2002

Human/Nature