Arts & Ecology

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fruits in the guise of BP's logo which in time exposed itself as a health hazard and Chu Yun’s collection of defunct outdated technologies whose stand-by buttons were winking in the dark in a sedate yet sinister fashion - last year the government announced that stand-by switches will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.

Notes from Delhi - Week 2

Read on for extracts from week two of the Arts & Ecology residency at KHOJ Artists' Association.  You check out the full version on the Arts & Ecology project page.

19th November

'Asim takes us to the Yamuna River.

On the way, I see a man giving a block of ice ‘a seaty’ on the back of his bike - he’s pedalling fast cos it’s melting.

First stop is an illegal Muslim settlement that neighbours the Yamuna River.  A high red fence cuts access to the banks of the river, it has been recently erected - 2005 or so. The reason for the erection is unknown. We look through the fence at green misty marsh beds, the river stench encircles us.

We go to the bridge. We can’t take photos here - there’s a general fear that bridges and other vital civil structures may come under terrorist attack. We look over and the smell of pollution is so over whelming I get a headache from it.

There are a lot of plants taking up a lot of space. Asim tells us the story; Lady Mountbatten, the wife of the last Viceroy of India was having an affair with Jawaharlal Nehru (first Prime Minister of India). As a token of her affection she gave him water Hyacinth, the settler plant started occupying every inch of the waters taking advantage of its resilience to the system in place. It starves the water of oxygen so a beetle was modified to combat the Hyacinth’s strong hold and its reign collapses. Interesting analogy.

On the other side of the road we can walk down to the bank. One of the boaters takes us for a spin through toxic foam, passing plastic bags and general detritus. Even though the river is extremely polluted things seem to carry on, things somehow keep going, Swifts dip the water and I still get that sense of relief and grounding I find a trip on the water offers.

Boys are diving for things of value.
The river is sacred yet its physical mortality is not recognised.
 
…. the alchemy of transformation is rapid and very visible here.' 

21st November

'In pursuit of the idea of self made and the exploitation of the hand made. I visit the local basement embroiderers in Kirkee village. They are all in basements, young men do all the work, some are paid a meal a day. We visit four in total, the work they are doing is extremely fine and sells for a lot of money. Taking photos is generally not an option, and the atmosphere is quite tense. The last place we visit is the most comfortable. It’s small with three people working and we talk directly the embroiderer’s. I ask him if they can teach me embroidery.

They say it takes at least 6 months but I could go along. I like the idea of taking on a job of this kind. Heath and I discuss this as an option for the project producing a map on the shawls whilst I go to work to learn about the people’s lives and the technique.

Unfortunately this would require a time much longer than our remaining weeks. Possibly could see if I could go for three days to add to the research experience.'

Notes from Delhi - Week 1

The first Arts & Ecology residency began in November at KHOJ Artists' Association in New Delhi with artists Kayle Brandon and Heath Bunting. 

Throughout the duration of their residency Kayle and Heath are sending us their accounts, observations and thoughts. You can read their diary in its full entirety on the projects section of the Arts & Ecology website but here on the blog we'll provide you with a couple of snippets from each week. Enjoy!

15th November

‘Walked around Kirkee village where KHOJ studios are sited. The village used to have lots of farming land then the city grew around it and ran through it. The floor is littered with sweet wrappers, later I find out they are chewing tobacco wrappers. The dogs seem exhausted; lots of the bitches have tits that drip to the floor, overwhelmed by reproduction.

Things have a beaten, worn appearance; I think the climatic elements of the desert in the north, the monsoons and the sun play liberally here.

Delhi is colourful. People wear very colourful clothes, well, the women wear very colourful clothes, traditional to India wear, and men seem to tend toward the western trouser, shirt set up.

Here a new shopping Mall has risen on one side of a busy road. Directly on the other side, is a community that live in tents and have horses and goats. The border that separates the two contrasting places is the road which is always swamped with vehicles. Conveniently crossing the road isn’t an easy undertaking.

Rachel and I go over and look around the highly guarded, air conditioned Mall. We try on very expensive dresses, then return to the village. We are able to transgress realms fashioned out of class, money and status systems. We are realm hoppers.’

18th November

‘Another day of money moving in and out of pockets… Gandhi’s portrait in and out of millions of pockets (he’s on every bank note).

Decided to go the Mahatma Gandhi Museum, we commence a haggle with an auto drive, and then in the auto we go, back into the bedlam of Delhi’s road network. Auto journeys are fast becoming the staple of my experience; long, short curly ones, fast, bumpy, scary ones.
 
Inside the Gandhi museum the lights go off and then on a few times. During the loss of power there are moments of standing and looking at things in half light, the experience is somehow emotional.

Memorable things: A chart of the salt march, a room dedicated to the Khadi principle, spinning wheels and pictures of men spinning in conference centres, gardens and assembly rooms. The museum hosts a collection of Gandhi’s things; his dentures, can opener, foot scrubber, and sandals to name a few.’

Extracts taken from Kayle Brandon's residency diary, November 2007.

Sound as a Pound?

Last weekend, I biked down Regent’s Canal and emerged on Mare Street to then disappear for two hours in the continually breeding galleries of Vyner Street.  For Arts & Ecology, there were rich pickings at Wilkinson gallery where David Batchelor’s exhibition Unplugged (remix) was showing.

The ground floor space yielded a series of rather brutal totemic structures, collectively titled Parapillars, onto which were attached plastic findings like fly swatters, toilet brushes and combs from the pound shops of London's East End and Scotland.  It was quite a startling sight though there was a system to it – the objects attached to each structure were selected according to colour and categorised further by object type.  The work gave off a magnetic energy, exposing an artificially coloured rainbow of similarly worthless yet essential items.

For me it triggered a memory of a previous experience in Sri Lanka.  I spent a short period of time in the southern area of Kalutara six months after the Tsunami hit and like many others assisted with the clean up of the beaches.  What seemed like an infinite amount of possessions washed up on the beach day after day; flip flops; toys; plant pots and among other things, thousands of toothbrushes.  All plastic, all cheaply produced but at an extreme cost to the environment. 

Batchelor’s pound shop pickings, almost all derived from a never ending production line in China.  Dispersed across the world these goods arrive in our towns and cities and are sold at super low prices aimed at low income households.  It would be interesting to see the real cost behind a baby blue ladies comb from China. 

The show has now finished at Wilkinson but is accompanied by a catalogue published by Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh where the work was first shown earlier this year.

See also Milton Keynes Gallery’s current exhibition; Pascale Marthine Tayou: Plastik Diagnostik.  For his first solo exhibition in the UK Marthine Tayou presents a series of works at the gallery and off site installation, Plastic Bags at the MK Dons Football Stadium which, faithful to his practice draws on the detritus and throwaway ephemera discovered on the streets.

Climate Change: Science, Art and Human Rights

Last night I went to the first in a series of talks organised by Arts Catalyst, the British Library and the Open University on Climate Change & Human Rights. The President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland – Aqqualuk Lynge – made some very simple, very direct pleas. Work with us as equal partners. Develop mutual respect and compassion. Exercise moderation for the sake of our people today and your people tomorrow. He talked of ethics and human rights, of responsibilities to the earth and each other, in the context of science – of reaching for courageous alternatives. You could say the usual stuff and shrug – but coming from a highly intelligent and articulate man whose world is increasingly polluted and destabilised, it made for thoroughly uncomfortably listening.

Can Lynge’s appeal to the science community stretch to the arts as well? The chair, Dr Michael Bravo of the Scott Polar Research Group, University of Cambridge, rather wearily said he was tired of artists expressing the romantic in this context and yearned for something more critical. Someone from the audience said the arts can open the debate. Surely we can go further than that?

Tomorrow (Wednesday 7 November) at SOAS there is a day long symposium on how artists, technologists and scientists can lead African responses to climate change. Melting the Ice – African Perspectives on Climate Change – will be chaired by the publisher and playwright Margaret Busby OBE. Speakers include artists Yinka Shonibare MBE, Baaba Maal and Romuald Hazoume. Email nr20@soas.ac.uk for a place.

Welcome to the Arts & Ecology Blog

A big welcome to this first post for the RSA's Arts & Ecology project. It's a regular chance to talk about what's happening on the project, and on the broader issues that it is addressing. Far more importantly, as our team here has far more questions than answers, we hope to provoke your responses and ideas to inform this next more ambitious, more participatory stage of Arts & Ecology.

If you don’t know what has been achieved previously, there is information on the site. So this is essentially an introduction to ‘what next’ on the project.

The RSA has long been at the cutting edge of combating climate change, first offering a prize for reducing industrial smoke emissions in the year 1770. More recently a massive tree planting scheme. And now the Arts team sits next to another major project at the RSA, CarbonLimited, developing new ways to encourage individual citizens to play a role in reducing the carbon emissions which increase global warming. We want to match their practical and exploratory initiatives with completely different, complementary perspectives, those of artists and the cultural sector.

We started Arts & Ecology in partnership with Arts Council England in 2005. Two huge words coming together inevitably create potential for the largest ever Pandora’s Box and I frequently feel that the lid is perilously close to bursting open.

So we at once try the difficult art of focus, yet remain open and alert to the complexity, scope, inter-relatedness and the sheer enormity of the issues. What I have seen markedly change in these two years is the sheer amount of interest from both within and outside the sector in what artists and the cultural sector have to say and bring to the debate. We now have on average two thousand visits a month to the website, daily contacts – artists coming through London, non-arts organisations wanting to involve artists in their activities, people wanting to know how they can source more information and be engaged.

Well before us there were and always will be extraordinary arts projects addressing climate change. Of course artists raising questions, posing new ideas, exploring behaviours, commenting, revealing. And organisations,Cape Farewell, Platform, a number of academics and university courses, the website Yasmin to name but a few.

We have Peter Gingold’s Tipping Point and Al Tickell’s Julie’s Bicycle. All operating in different ways but all working for positive change. Further national and international examples are described in the book we published at the end of last year, Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook and even this is inevitably well short of comprehensive.

What we want to do at the RSA with ACE is to profile many of these activities and to extend the discourse. Building and adding to previous debate, Arts & Ecology Exchanges will provide a platform for artists alongside politicians and others who are influencing our future.

A new series – one event a month for five months beginning in the New Year – is currently being planned so let us know if you are interested but not already on the mailing list and we will be sure to send you information as soon as we have dates and speakers confirmed. The headings for this series are huge including conflict and migration; population increase, consumption and waste; diminishing biodiversity and the threats to the eco system.

A bigger project is the development which is currently taking place of the new Arts & Ecology Online. This blog is a precursor and we’d WELCOME your suggestions as to what you would like included on the site as we prepare the briefs and specifications.

What would you like to see and what services?

Anything from the briefest note would be incredibly helpful. Our vision for it is that it will profile interesting projects, of course; have plenty of means for conversations across the world between artists and between the cultural sector and people in other disciplines; have regular thinking pieces from a wide range of contributors; information on environmental issues and organisations. That it will be a hub, a place to make connections and add ideas.

The third related and new venture for us is Arts & Ecology International. Three artists are preparing to travel to Afghanistan and to India; a project is underway in Brazil and we will be developing new partnerships in China, India and the U.S. in 2008. Working internationally in another way, we are commissioning short animations which will be shown on Arts & Ecology Online and beyond – and a project in virtual space on Second Life.

But to end this first blog with art. On a recent Saturday morning I experienced one of the great rewards for working with artists. I got up before dawn to go to Gunpowder Park to see the latest work by Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno. He talked at our No Way Back? Conference at the LSE last December, and then again at the symposium we ran as part of the 2007 Sharjah Biennial. This time time there was little talking.

Trained as an architect, Saraceno’s work poses the idea of floating cities. At the invitation of Arts Catalyst he brought a giant inflatable to the early morning autumn mists of Essex. It lay there, a huge circle of sheeting on the ground, held down by sandbags.

A small group of lucky, lucky people were there in the dew. Slowly we helped the giant fill with air and grow as the sun came up and saw it brought to life, the colours of the foil which forms part of the material spectacularly colourful as the sun reflected off it.

This is why I work with artists – this is a serious, magical, unique, positive experience. This is invigoration for the Green movement, for the Climate Change lobby, for the scientists pouring over statistics and charts. Thanks to Saraceno and to Arts Catalyst we who were there will remember this morning for the rest of our lives.