Most Important

greenmuseum.org is the most important for ecological art. I should have said that a long time ago.

How Do People/ecological artists Respond to Urgency?

How Do People Respond to Urgency?
WEEK IN REVIEW April 23, 2006Meltdown: Yelling 'Fire' on a Hot Planet By ANDREW C. REVKIN: is global warming now a reality? What do scientists know for sure and when are they just guessing?
http://tinyurl.com/hq9l9

Revkin poses a very serious question in this article which was also addressed last year by the article, Is Environmentalism Dead? The latter posited that people go numb in response to fear as a strategy. But what if the fear is legitimate, timely, requires our responses, as, with global warming?

These questions relate to ecological art making because they inform the dramatic framing of work that is in a viewed by the public.

So, how can we have to find a way to help people get past the numbness of urgent calls for dramatic action and not let them avert themselves from truth. O but maybe that sounds too holy & self-righteous, doesn't it?Philosophically, I have always held the position that it is a good thing to be vulnerable, talk about fears and concerns and explore anxieties. In art we do this by getting someone in the face with ideas and experiences. This is an assertive pose. It is arguably also both a Feminist and psychologically based position.

But for many people, there is nothing scarier. Vulnerability, emotion, exposition of fear and anxiety can evokes feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, even deep memories from childhood in the listener. They just want the scary stuff to go away. Esp if it is in their face.

Feminism believed that people would respond with a sense of justice deferred to an exposition of issues. Many of us believed that if we spoke to issues of child care, for example, men would see how they were missing something by not participating more fully. Some did respond that way. Others had a fight or flight response. Many seem stuck there. The same dynamic is at play with global warming.

But fight or flight is not always possible or desirable even when we feel fear. When we avert our eyes from danger or pain it tends to get bigger. This is true on every level of life I have ever observed. It is certainly true of global warming. Arthur Miller, in the Crucible, wrote of that fear and ultimate capitulation to inevitability. In the original play, Marilyn Monroe dreams of the scary child-monster she tries to escape. When she finally turns and embraces it, she finds out it is herself.

We can address global warming. Yes the actions needed are dramatic. They can be broken down into manageable part. Ecological art can be part of that process. Thus we make our internal urgency match the external pressure. Science addresses the dynamics of dealing with complex problems differently than art.

Peter Taylor, Australian author of "Unruly Complexity" (Univ Chicago Press 2005) addresses the interface between internal and external dynamics as a scientific modeling problem. The publisher describes his book as " How does science deal with situations that lack definite boundaries, where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change?"

We have birthed global warming and we must turn and face this monster we have created. But how exactly do you convince people it is safe to do that? How to invert the relationship between internal fear and external aversion that can result in necessary change?

If there is part of me that is pollyanna, it is in foolishly thinking I can "help people see the light" of my point of view: If I give enuf important facts, clear reasoning, compassion for their worries, they will be willing to be open, vulnerable, trusting of life, new ideas. That is not always true. But I have seen people change opinions and positions about critical problems, with or without my help over time.

As an ecological artist my first task is to accept my own sense of informed urgency. And then express it.

In my installation for Exit Art, http://www.exitart.org/ I painted a large mural of how Arctic Melt will come down thru the waterways and the Atlantic and flood the building where The Drop show is being exhibited. In the center of the mural, I outlined what has to happen to make the building safe, extending out to the surrounding blocks. It included tearing up all the impervious traffic surfaces and replacing them with indigenous plants and sheathing the building with green. I don’t expect this to manifest imminently.

The biggest problem I see is that we don't have the luxury and kindness of time. So for the sake of my own sanity, I shall continue to do what I normally do. That is, trying to articulate the problems in my work and my thinking. I shall continue to find colleagues of like mind. I shall cast my personal fate to the winds of the universe and rejoice every time someone is willing to pay attention to these issues, as Revkin demands.

Actions and Questions

More than usual this week, I have been thinking abstractly about the meaning of actions and questions. This has been on my mind because my mentor and friend, Allan Kaprow, died last week and I have been reflecting on the meaning of his life and work.

Allan Kaprow was the artist who coined the word Happenings. I have been reflecting on the meaning of his life and work, in general and to me personally. I have asked myself about that in the context of a sense of great closure for me this year. Today I mail out the taxes that conclude the settling of my mother's estate, almost three years after her death. Much has changed for me in that time.

The other thing I have thought about a great deal is what it means to ask questions, this season of Passover.

As one obituary commented, Allan once predicted that the future role of the artist was going to be in significant, simple ACTIONS. Allan's best actions posed questions.

This morning I listened to a NPR program while I was on the net, on the meaning of Passover:
Avivah Rosenberg, quoted Primo Levi, to the effect that (at Passover) we ask as the stranger, in rags, in fear and shame so that next year, we ask in virtue. Rosenberg pointed out that to ask any question is to challenge the status quo of consensus. In that sense, a question is an action. A good question is an act of courage and a social action capable of profound consequences.

The ecological art curator Amy Lipton has said that the role of contemporary ecological artists may be to ask questions.

Following the trajectory of this logic, there are two ways to act. One is in consensus with the prevailing norms. The other is in an act that questions those norms. The actions of an ecological artist may pose political questions.This is the season of high holidays for Jews and Christians. the latter has formed Easter on the basis of Passover. Arguably, Passover is an opportunity to teach the art of asking questions. Equally arguably, Easter is a time to answer questions with Mysteries.The connection to Allan's death, in my mind, is that the act of asking a question is a profoundly spiritual choice... as well, as a political position.

My commitment to being an ecological artist, for example, was a commitment to enacting a life of questions and mysteries. As the Dalai Lama said of Passover, (the exploration of these questions brings us to): liberation from slavery to freedom and this has brought you hope in times of difficulty.

Adrienne Rich wrote of the consequences of asking questions on Passover (and the immigrant experience): The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door.

If you, gentle reader, are willing to share publically, I ask you to comment about what a significant question or action might be to you? What doors may have opened as a consequence of an action taken or a question that arose in your life? How that might relate to the triage our ecology needs today?

Corporations on our side?

I was pleasantly surprised, in Grist today:

http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2006/04/06/griscom-little/index.html?source=daily

to see that corporations are being more sensible that this administration about global warming. They have asked the Energy and Natural Resources Committee for tighter & more consistent regulations on emissions. Diane Feinstein (D) commented that it was the best attended event for this committee she had ever seen.

So the race is on between the pragmatists and the naysayers. My money is on the pragmatists, as the evidence keeps growing for the devastating effects of global warming. they are likely to get louder as time goes on.

Periodically, I consider how these ruminations must sound to someone who isn't an ecological artist. As, my Scottish friend who likes to picture me at my easel, outdoors, painting the far islands.

Sometimes, I wonder myself, about my obsession with global warming these days. For almost two decades I've considered myself a wetlands specialist in my genre. Well, just to restate my thoughts breifly, the earth is my canvas. The variations caused by global warming are like working with a particularly large tool- just enuf out of control to be exciting ( when I'm not petrified by what we are doing).

The connection to wetlands is even simpler. Global warming will swallow the coasts where those systems are clinging for purchase against the pressure of fragmentation. On the other hand, they may be one of our last lines of defense as the storms pick up this decade.

We are in a game of brinksmanship here with nature and some people are determined to play Russian Roulette. As, all in this administration are doing in spades.

If corporations are willing to look at the facts and consumers are willing to listen, we may just have, ironically a payer of hope for our collective future. That would be in stark contrast to an administration that boasts of how prayerful it is.

2100

2100 is the year there will be no more Polar Bears because there will be no more Arctic ice. But the NRDC, an organization I revere, is going to try to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

This depends upon public commentary, which is possible until April 10. I urge anyone who reads this and likes Polar Bears, to go to the follwoing site and makes comments:

http://www.savebiogems.org/polar/takeaction.asp

Global Warming Bonuses

It is true the Polar Bears are starving. The melting ice caps mean they are now too far from the seals they live off. They can't sustain enuf body fat to carry and nurse their young.

But the Spring bulbs ARE coming up early. When I am enjoying the warm air and thinking about my garden, it is very hard to remember the bad news about all this melting.

I understand the multi-nationals are even happier about global warming. As soon as the Polar Bears vacate, they can go in and mine the Arctic for all sorts of resources. No matter that we already squander most of the irreplaceable resources we extract from the earth.

Is there hope for the Polar Bears?

I am thinking about art and specifically ecological artists I know. I have always had faith that art can move people in ways nothing else can. Also, from art, we can always gauge the future. If the current Whitney Museum show is any example, the future is going to be angry. It will be full of information organized to convey ideas about the source of that anger.

I don't mind informed and thoughtfully organized anger. Education organizes information into arguments, polemics and ultimately, ideas. Ideas without information sometimes scares me. I think that's why fundamentalist zealots of all kinds can be dangerous. By definition, education and information require an ever-expanding mind. An open mind is the antithesis of fixed ideas at the core of much organized religion.

That's a long ways from Arctic meltdown and starving Polar Bears. Or is it?

It often seems to me that at it's best, ecological art has an educational component. Research is a resource for ecological artists just as marble is for a traditional sculptor. Perhaps then, I can hope that art foresees a future in which education has an expanded role in culture. And if enuf people are informed about the options to prevent and slow further global warming, a Polar Bear might live another day.

The bonus of global warming for people who are not multi-nationals is only in the very short term. It is in the hope that some ecological artists, including myself, are so angry that we might give a voice to a starving Polar Bear. Even as the Spring bulbs come early in the warm air we might consider that.