TOWARD
AN ECOLOGICAL ETHOS IN ART
references
for a workshop conducted at Goddard College Aug. 03
How does one envision a sustainable relationship to the natural environment?
Can artists point to the changes in human behavior necessary to create such
a future? How can artists address the ideology of scarcity and consumerism fostered
by capitalist economics? Can we help create communities that foster a sense
of well-being implied by the word "abundance"? Over the last several
years I have been involved in an on-going on-line "ecoart dialogue," about how
artistic practice can be informed by an ecological perspective, a perspective
that begins to address questions raised by our discussion of the concept of
abundance. In this workshop I would like to share bits of our conversation and
some of the extensive documentation of work and critical writing available on
the internet. We will begin with a dialogue about the possible meaning/definitions
of an ecological ethos and move into an examination of the wide range of artistic
practices/possibilities afforded by this concept and related questions.
DEFINITIONS OF ECOLOGICAL ART OR "ECO-ART"
Lynne Hull
Ruth Wallen
Great Overview Article:"Lyrical
Expression, Critical Engagement, Transformative Action: An Introduction to Art
and the Environment." by Timothy Collins with Erica
Fielder, Herman Prigann, Ann
Rosenthal, Ruth Wallen and Jeroen Van
Westen
ECOLOGICAL ART AS REMEDIATION OR RESTORATION
(note consider these catagories loosely, most artists could fit into more than
one)
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working to rid environment of toxics:
Mel Chin's Revival
Field"
PBS coverage
Georg
Dietzler
working with waste:
Mierle
Laderman Ukeles:
Engine
Company 75 Firehouse
Touch
Sanitation by Robert C. Morgan
Susan Leibowitz
Steinman
Jo
Hanson (see also her listing in WEAD)
Buster Simpson
Jackie Brookner
working on environmental restoration:
Allan Sonfist
Time Landscape
Agnes
Denes
Aviva Rahmani: Ghostnets
Tim Collins and Reiko Goto:
Nine Mile Run
Herman Prigann
The Artist in
the Alchemical Garden- curated by Amy Lipton
|
Jackie Brookner
Prima Lingua, 1996-2002 64 x 101 x 80"
Concrete, volcanic rock, mosses, ferns, wetland plants, fish, steel
My living sculptures, called Biosculptures are evocative, plant based
systems that clean polluted water, integrating ecological revitalization
with conceptual, metaphoric and aesthetic capacities of sculpture. These
projects raise community awareness of the urgency of restoring health
to aquatic ecosystems, encourage the necessary imagining of a world where
human and other than human systems are mutually benificial, and help create
the public will to protect and restore these resources.
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USING THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT TO CREATE ART
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Nils-Udo
(is this eco-art?)
Lynne Hull (could also fit in restoration
category)
Betty
Beaumont
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Lynne Hull
Raptor Roost L-2
A sculpture for safe roosting of hawks and eagles.
1988
14', wood metals, latex paint
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INTERPRETATION, POINTING TO NEW BELIEF SYSTEMS
Ruth Wallen
Erica Fielder: The Bird Feeder
Hat
Jyoti
Dwadi and Barbara Matilsky: The Myth of the Nagas and the Kathmandu Valley Watershed
Jeroen van Westen
Shelley Sacks of Social Sculpture
Research Unit
Beverly Nadius
Beehive Collective
COLLABORATIVE WORKS ADDRESSING SOCIAL/POLITICAL SYSTEMS
EXHIBITIONS, REFERENCES (for the many more aritists
that I wanted to include but didn't have time to show)
Fragile Ecologies curated by Barbara Matilsky
Natural Realities
curated by Heike Strelow
Ecovention curated by Amy
Lipton, catalogue by Sue Spaid
Greenmuseum-great on-line
site of eco-art
WEAD- Women Environmental
Artists Directory
MISCELLANEOUS WEB RESOURCES
Doug Krug
on Art and Ecology educators resource for Getty Foundation ArtsNet,
Green Arts (has great bibliography)
The Arts and Healing Network
Public Nature
Green Home
BOOKS - a short list
of favorite references, see also activist and community based art in Peggy's
big bio
Basic References
Lucy Lippard:
Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory
Lure of the Local
On the Beaten Track
Jeffrey Kastner, ed. Land and Environmental Art
Alan Sonfist, ed. Art in the land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental
Art (older anthology)
John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond (coffee table book)
Baile Oakes, Sculpting with the Environment: A Natural Dialogue
Suzaan Boettger, Earthworks : Art and the Landscape of the Sixties
Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art
Alexander Wilson, TheCulture of Nature: North American landscape from Disney
to the Exxon Valde
Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another
Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent:On Landscape, Gender and Art
(see some of her other books as well)
see also exhibition catalogues listed above
Ecofeminism
Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature
Mary Mellor, Feminism and Ecology
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution
Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
Susan Griffin, Women and Nature (and severa lmore recent books)
Carol J. Adams, ed. Ecofeminism and the Sacred
Irene Diamond and Gloria Reman Orenstein eds,, Reweaving the Wrold: The
Emergence of Ecofeminism
Judith Plant, ed. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism
Landscape (partial listing)
Estelle Jussim and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cook, Landscape as Photograph
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory
New Paradigms
Frijof Capra, The Web of Life, a New Scientific Understanding of Living
Systems
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flexh:the Embodied Mind
and its Challenge to Western Thought
Carolyn Merchant, ed., Ecology: Key Concepts in Critical Theory
Francisco Verela and Humberto Maturana
The Tree of Knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding
Thinking about Biology: an introduction to current theoretical biology
Charlene Spretnak, Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature and Place in a Hypermodern
World
