Arts & Ecology

Arts & Ecology Day 2009

Today on World Environment Day, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), in association with Bash Creations, will announce the launch of an Arts & Ecology Day in 2009.

The announcement of Arts & Ecology Day 2009, which takes place at City Hall, will comprise a fast moving one-hour programme of performance and commentary by people committed to responding positively to sustainability challenges. Music, poetry, practical ideas and inspiration will be provided by a range of contributors including Royal Institute of British Architects President Sunand Prasad, theatre director Nigel Hinds, musician Marmaduke Dando, and world leading expert in the development of sustainable cities, Peter Head, Director at Arup.

This pioneering initiative will engage the creativity and influence of the arts community in making London a more sustainable city. ‘Arts & Ecology Day 2009’ will raise the profile of sustainability by celebrating new plays, poems, music, artworks and dance across London, with the aim of developing into a world-wide campaign.

Click here to see Smartplanet's photo essay which promotes the concept and stay tuned to this blog and our site to hear more about Arts & Ecology Day 2009...

Great virtual oaks grow from little virtual acorns

Tree planting has now begun on one of Arts & Ecology’s more unusual artist residencies!  Dirk Fleischmann, the artist selected for a residency in Second Life has been spending the week at Antipolo Farm in the Philippines (in real life!) where over the course of the week he will have planted 600 fruit tree seedlings and 2000 forest tree seeds. 
After all the hard digging is over his ‘alter-ego’ Flex Dix – Dirk’s Second Life Avatar- will then take the baton (or spade?) and begin to realise a mirrored forest on ZKM Island, Second Life made up of real-life images of his trees in the Philippines. More info from Dirk/Flex soon!

Body armour and designer trees!

Can you imagine how you might advise an artist about whether or not he should take his body-armour with him on a residency? That’s the everyday nature of daily conversations and logistical planning within the RSA Arts & Ecology team as its international programme begins to bear fruit! A range of artists are now completing commissions and placements somewhere in the real or virtual world - all addressing serious ecological issues. 

London based artist, David Cotterrell, is back from a month’s residency in Kabul with the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. In April, he left for Afghanistan in a whirl-wind of last minute checks and hitches: who would pay for the UN flights into Kabul? Does the RSA insurance policy adequately cover an artist in a ‘passive war’ zone? Should he take body-armour with him?  In the end, David arrived safely in Kabul and spent his time working alongside Afghan artists and craft makers as well as teaching students at Kabul University’s Centre for Traditional Afghan Art and Architecture. He also developed his own practice in the context of ecological and related social issues as a result of the conflict.

The head of the arts programme at TMF, Jemima Montague, said of David, ‘..you are now the most  famous international artist in Kabul - everyone said how much they learned, how moved they were by your images and observations’.

Watch out for the next blog about his time in Kabul and outputs over coming months.

In other worlds, German artist Dirk Fleischmann is currently to be found either near a ‘forest farm’ in the Philippines or wandering around the strange, angular terrain of Second Life – on a virtual island run by ZKM! The artist is trying to buy a plot of land in the Philippines where he intends to ‘seed an art- forest’. He plans to mirror the growth of this real-life forest with designer-trees in Second Life! His research residency can be tracked in Second Life and the RSA Arts & Ecology website from the middle of June. Fleischmann will also be interrogating notions of carbon offsetting within cyber space!

Other events:
Matt Collishaw resurfaced with an impressive new work at Spring Projects, a new London gallery space in Kentish Town. The gallery specialises in fusing fashion, design and fine art under the inventive eye of its director, Andree Cooke, an excellent curator with a track record in crossing these disciplines. His installation entitled ‘Deliverance’ left viewers with literal and emotional marks as momentary revelations of humanitarian and environmental disaster were exposed to the eye with a cacophony of flash-lit images. The snatched glimpses of human tragedy forced a phosperent after-image onto the back of the eye (if not the brain!) and it was quite a struggle to re-gain composure on re-entering the wine-sipping throng of the London art crowd.

The next show at Spring Projects commences on June 13.

Organised by Director of Exhibitions, Mark Sladen, the ICA is currently running a series of solo, one week shows by sixty artists from Ireland and the UK.' Nought to Sixty ' is pitched as ‘a multifaceted portrait of the emerging art scene in the two countries’ and I think this snap shot is well worth a visit. Look out for Alexander Heim who addresses ‘intrusions into urban life where animals, processes and chance routines create self-sustaining pockets of otherness’ - 16-23 June

The Art of Crocheting to Save the Great Barrier Reef

A storm has been brewing among ecologically-aware crocheters across America, who have joined forces to create a hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. Initiated at the Institute for Figuring, this collaborative work is designed to draw attention to the Australian Great Barrier Reef’s demise as a result of rising sea temperatures and pollution. So far, the exhibit spans 3000 square metres, including undulating corals, ruffled sponges, kelps and slugs, and is still growing. Scientists have warned that the current threat from global warming and pollutants could lead to the Reef’s destruction within 30 years - so urgent action is needed. Started in Los Angeles by sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim, the project has spread across America, involving crocheting groups, scientists, mathematicians and artists. It has been found that the hyperbolic coral forms represent a natural manifestation of non-Euclidian geometry, thought until recently to exist only as an abstract concept. In this way, the 'conceptual enchantment' of the project weaves together craft, science and the environment.

Greenwashing in Turin

Tue Greenfort Untitled, 2008 modified Eurobins

Arts & Ecology recently made a trip to Turin for the opening of Greenwashing at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo which has been curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna). It is the concluding project of a year long programme at the Fondazione tied to the environment.

25 international artists were invited to participate in Greenwashing, including some familiar faces to the Arts & Ecology project; Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Tue Greenfort, Cornelia Parker, Tomas Saraceno and Sergio Vega.

Among the highlights were The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s ironic demonstration of alternative energy sources in the form of wired up citrus fruits in the guise of BP's logo which in time exposed itself as a health hazard and Chu Yun’s collection of defunct outdated technologies whose stand-by buttons were winking in the dark in a sedate yet sinister fashion - last year the government announced that stand-by switches will be outlawed in the UK

If you are able to get to Greenwashing you won’t be disappointed - this is undoubtedly the seminal exhibition of artists who are reflecting, responding and challenging the state of our planet.

Cornelia Parker at the Whitechapel

On Wednesday night we launched Arts & Ecology EXCHANGES with a panel discussion, Culture in a Time of Crisis.

One of the highlights of the evening was Cornelia Parker showing an extract from her filmed interview with Noam Chomsky, in which he spoke with incredible clarity about our future, consumerism and our relationship to the environment.

You can see this work, Chomskian Abstract, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery from 13 February to 30 March 2008, open Wed – Fri, 11– 6. This exhibition is in partnership with Friends of the Earth.

80-82 Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX. The Whitechapel is expanding and during this time the entrance to the Whitechapel Laboratory is via Angel Alley, which is the first passage on the left when facing the building.

Stop. Watch. New short films by artists that address ecological emergencies

Animate Projects and RSA Arts & Ecology, in partnership with Arts Council England and Channel 4, have commissioned seven artists to make short films for the internet that explore ecological themes.

The artists, from the UK, USA, Switzerland, Sweden and Korea are: Jordan Baseman, Phil Coy, Manu Luksch, Christine Ödlund, Elodie Pong and Annie Wu, Simon Woolham, and Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries.

They take diverse approaches, that consistently and powerfully challenge common perceptions and clichés of current debates about environmental crises and their human impact.

The films will premiere online in June 2008.

The Black Cat

Amongst the many blogs out there, one that is well worth visiting is John Thackara’s. John Thackara is the director of Doors of Perception, an organisation which sets new agendas for design, including sustainability. In his recent blog entitled ‘High entropy notions of quality’, he advocates the need for ‘a new aesthetics of sustainability’. Our experience of the world is one where the massive amounts of energy that we use are disguised in the highly visual, slick and simultaneously confusing nature of our surroundings. He suggests an aesthetics that in some way unravels this, asking his reader to imagine an airport, ‘what might it mean to be aesthetically triggered to be aware of the amount of energy embodied in the artefacts, structures and processes that surrounded us in such places?’

This reminds me of a work called The Black Cat by German artist Dirk Fleischmann in which he locks all the electrical appliances in a domestic flat away in one room. Exhibited in 2005 at Ramm, an exhibition space in a private flat, in Frankfurt, the starting point for the work was that this household consumed the same amount of energy as Fleischmann was producing in another project my solar power plant.

You entered the flat in complete darkness, unsure of what is going on around you. The only light was leaking out from the seams of one shut door (the room usually used as the exhibition space). As you explored you realised that a mass of cables, which felt strange and bumpy underfoot were leading beneath this shut door. And as your eyes adjusted, you noticed cables handing down eerily from the middle of the ceiling in each room where the light fitting should be and from different places around the walls, all leading under the door. It soon became clear that all the appliances: TV, cooker, lights though still on and connected by these long cables to the electricity supply, were hidden and locked away, rendering the flat functionless.

By hiding all these things away, the presence of energy was revealed from its usual hiding place, the physical form of the electrical equipment and our habitual interaction with it, subsumed into its use value.  The work made you aware of our completely unconscious and abstracted interaction with energy in daily life and the investigative process of experiencing the work made the massive amounts of energy that we do consume strangely tangible.

Fiona Parry

One Big Day

Last week I went to One Big Day, an event organised by Arup, an innovative, international firm of engineers and consultants providing design, project management and consultancy services, in partnership with Climate Group. Bringing together leaders from government, business and civil society, the question that framed the event was how we can achieve a low-carbon UK by 2050. I went on behalf of Michaela Crimmin, RSA Head of Arts and London Leader.

The day started by looking at our current situation. Jim Walker from The Climate Group explained statistically the damage we are causing and the targets we are aiming to meet; as well as addressing public opinion and the barriers to the UK becoming 80% carbon neutral by 2050. One of Arup’s current building projects is the Dongtan eco-city outside Shanghai, China. In a fictional film, with that comically old fashioned sci-fi feel that portrayals of the future often have, Arup presented their vision of everyday life in a carbon neutral community, 40 years from now. This would be a compact and highly efficient community dealing with waste, food, energy, water etc collectively, with most amenities within walking distance and the inhabitants working from home to reduce travel emissions.

Later that morning we were asked to discuss how to unlock the major opportunities and barriers to a low carbon economy. One thing raised on our table was how to mobilise local communities. After ten minutes enthusiastic talk about communities living more sustainably together, one person asked the sobering question, ‘Who is my community, as far as I know I don’t live in a community?’ highlighting another major barrier to tackle. The feedback from all the groups included barriers such as lack of consistent information and understanding, time scales and too many bad choices. Many of the opportunities centred on developing an economy around renewable energy and energy efficiency, creating new services and employment and providing the education to make this possible.

In the afternoon speakers, including Jeremy Webb, the editor of new Scientist and Mark Watts from the Greater London Authority, looked at climate change from a business, NGO, media and government perspective. Newscaster John Snow chaired the open discussion at the end with an impressive amount of energy. From an Arts & Ecology perspective one important point from the floor was where is culture in all of this? When it comes to innovative thinking, which tackling climate change needs, it seems to make a lot of sense to get the cultural industries more directly involved. Arup is itself addressing climate change in creative ways and in the wrap up John Miles, from Arup, stated that the next phase of these events would also include a cultural agenda.

Youth voyagers tell their tales

I’ve just come out of Cape Farewell’s Youth Expedition Conference which took place at the RSA today and was organised by Creative Partnerships.   12 students were selected to board Noorderlicht, the vessel bound for Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic which became the crew’s temporary home between 14 – 23 September 2007.

Embarking from London, the chosen 15-16 year olds came from schools across the UK, Germany and Canada with the objective to explore climate change and see the very real effects for themselves.  During their trip they responded to the issues from a scientific and artistic point of view, but perhaps paramount to this was the invaluable experience of sharing perspectives from their own cultures and feeding back their discoveries to a much wider audience via online broadcasts. 

To assist with the communication and legacy of the project on dry land each school had a ground team who brought the project alive to those who weren’t on the trip – fuelled with pride and purposefulness these students made contact with the media and got the whole school on board in a philosophical sense.

I was totally blown away by the fascinating stories, observations and accounts from such a talented, articulate and positive group of young people.  There was a privileged insight into the perspective from the Inuit community courtesy of Doriana and her teacher who call the Arctic their home.  While Western eyes look at the Polar bear with wonder and spectacle, the Inuit community find their increasingly everyday presence alarming - Polar Bears are solitary animals but have been forced to come into villages to scavenge for food when the ice breaks up and doesn’t return when it should do. 

After lunch Josef and Jethro played an acoustic and enchanting rendition of a score that they had written on the boat and we had the opportunity to see Franzi’s innovative short film which ingenuously told the tale of plankton from a fluorescent narrative!

I urge you to look at the site and read these amazing accounts; it was an inspiring and incredibly optimistic day.  Creative Partnerships are now working on a tool kit which will be distributed to schools next year to ensure the outcomes and experiences reach a much wider audience.