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This week, the Jan Van Eyck Academy, a post-academic institute for art, design and reflection in the quaint town of Maastricht (Netherlands), opened a Lab for artists to do Nature Research. In addition to offering a range of (amazing) facilities that can support woodwork, (RISO) printmaking, photography, video, and metalwork, the institute now acknowledges that nature is not only a great inspiration for artists, but the lack of it is a growing concern for many. The Van Eyck is positioning itself on the frontline of international pioneering art institutions that are enabling artists to explore in depth, through their work, their relationship to nature. The playground for this new Lab is a studio, garden, and greenhouse. Named after Jac. P. Thijsse, a famous Maastricht ecologist, the Lab gives artists an opportunity to do active research (get their hands dirty) and to consider the subject of nature in relation to ecological and landscape development issues. It’s supposedly a place to build bridges – between humankind and nature, but also between art and other disciplines, including agriculture, biology, botany, and (landscape) architecture.

The Jac. P. Thijsse Lab launched during the Van Eycks annual Open Studios with two works, including one by artist Marcus Coates who will be a Van Eyck advisor this year. Outside in the gardens, people could hear birds enthusiastically singing, ready for spring. Inside the Lab studio, however, it was revealed that the cheerful chirping outside was human voices replicating bird songs. Coates’s Dawn Chorus (2007) features individuals sitting in their own habitats – a car, an office, a bedroom, a school staff room – singing bird songs. For this project, Coates recorded birdsong of individual birds and then digitally slowed down the songs by up to 20 times. Singers from amateur choirs were asked to mimic this slowed down sound, which is similar in tone to the human voice. The recording was then sped up to the original speed of the birdsong, creating a magical transformation of the human voice into that of a bird. The work shows us a new way to look at nature and highlights our interconnectedness. Solely by changing the speed of the sound, we end up speaking  the same language.

In the greenhouse, a mysterious installation by artists Fabio Roncato (Van Eyck participant of 2016/2017) and Ryts Monet was found. It consisted of original bricks from the greenhouse, infused with a bright blue Yves Klein-esque pigment that reminds us of chapel ceilings in small Italian towns. A galvanised meteorite seemed to have crashed on the floor among the blue bricks – an invitation from the artists to reflect on the topic of the unknown landscape and the outer space. Their work shows that a greenhouse in the context of the Van Eyck is not just a place to grow plants; it is really a laboratory for ideas, questions, experiments, and reflections on the landscape in the widest sense of the word.

The van Eyck is not the only art institution that has picked up on artists’ growing interest in growing. Other great European places that accommodate artists unafraid to get their hands dirty include Prinzessinengarten (Berlin, Germany), ZKU (Berlin, Germany), Pollinaria (Abruzzo region, Italy), Grizedale Arts (Lake District, UK) and AtelierNL (Noordoostpolder, Netherlands) amongst others. In the last few years, even upmarket commercial gallery Hauser and Wirth re-purposed an old farm and garden in rural Somerset (UK) into an artist residence, complete with restaurant and exhibition space (see photo at the top of the page).

We live in times that force us to formulate a response to a wide range of serious environmental challenges: mass extinction, loss of biodiversity, climate change. However, these crises aren’t just disasters. They’re also great opportunities to demand and help build new systems that serve people and planet more equitably than neo-liberalism has. Moving away from the old systems requires a new mentality, which includes a big re-think of our relationship to the natural world. Is nature solely a resource for us to enjoy and plunder? Or are we nature? We are stuck in the idea that the world revolves around humans. This is why, not so long ago, we refused to believe Galileo Galilei. We, humans, want to be at the epicenter of it all. The potential for non-human narratives has barely entered our consciousness.

Moreover, we have become so addicted to fossil fuels and raw materials that humankind is now a climatic and, some scientists argue, geological force. A new geological epoch called the Anthropocene – which marks the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems – has now replaced the Holocene. This shift comes with a responsibility to ourselves, nature, and other species, and with plenty of new questions to grapple with. If art spaces that provide time for nature research can help artists to engage with some of these questions, we might be moving towards interesting answers.

About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Pages from the Frozen Sea is a scattering of photographs of the ways that ice can freeze a moment in time. Against a background of disappearing ice, the gathered photographs explore different ways to hold on to memory and emotion. Is it possible, as ice is melting more quickly than expected, to create a temporary stopgap? A photograph proposes a suspension of an experience, of an emotional state. It’s a suspension of disbelief, as if it might allow us to stop and steady ourselves, and find a way to think straight again (and reimagine the future).

Sarah Stengle and I wanted these explorations of ice to float in a digital sea. We wanted the pages to be fragmented and free, but to be considered a book all the same. We sent out an open call and received submissions from the US, Canada, England, Finland and Germany which we posted to a Facebook and an Instagram page.

Burning carbon is creating exponential change to the climate. Yes, fire and ice have always fought it out on this planet, but we’ve been working on the side of fire all these years now. Fire is winning. It would be wonderful to tell humans to cool it, because the rapid melting of the polar ice caps is terrifying. In the face of extreme weather, of upheaval and chaos, I think we feel frozen in our tracks. Freezing up is its own defense, and we lock down our fear inside ourselves.

Kafka imagines an interior emotional landscape that is trapped in ice. He writes, “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” A book can break through by delivering life-affirming warmth, truth, inspiration, art and craft. You need to be free. Your wellspring needs to flow.

In thinking about extremes of temperature and art, Sarah and I talked about Olafur Eliasson’s glacier melting in Paris, about Andy Goldworthy’s icicles and David Hammons’ sidewalk sale of snowballs. We thought about the decentralized spirit of Yoko Ono’s work, and her instructions to: “use things until they melt.” The material and the moment change completely in the hands of each artist.

Sarah and I are now the caretakers of photos floating in a digital sea, gathering around an idea. It seems to me these floating photos possibly reverse the idea of a glacier fragmenting. Instead of dissipating and becoming less, they have the potential to become more. Maybe our book is a gathering of ice, a growing of ice. If Kafka’s book is an axe, maybe this book of ours is a crystal.

Aylin Green’s photo is of a frame frozen in ice: a freeze frame. It’s a portrait without a face, and darkly I feel I could know it well. There’s something important here, and if only it could be carefully melted, lovingly cared for, it would be revealed. Ice is very personal after all. They call this the Anthropocene age. Our stories are lurking everywhere on this planet, and this planet is lurking everywhere within us too.

Karian Blank seems to be documenting geology and her photo could easily belong in a natural history museum. Photographed in the cold, clear light of day, this specimen tells a prehistoric tale. When I learn that it’s pure invention and that the marks are the imprints of vintage buttons, I have to marvel at the power of stories we tell ourselves. The marks then may be seen as a form of human fossils.

Veronika Irwin’s photo of wire lace frozen in a thin layer of ice is mysterious. She expresses mathematical concepts through delicate lines that gain strength through repeated patterning. Her lines are vulnerable and loopy and yet they suggest strength and a quiet musicality. They prove a logic capable of replicating themselves ad infinitum. Inhabiting a pale light, for the moment, they bubble with possibility.

Sarah and I have felt our imaginations stretched as we viewed these and the many other submissions we received. As artists ourselves, we too have been creating ice pages. Sarah’s art is always alert to the drama that occurs when strangely ordinary materials come into relationships with one another. In her photo, there are what look like nails scattered on the floor of what could be an invented ice cave. I see elements of rough construction work below contrasted with finely crafted and futuristic-looking angles above. What Sarah was doing was not quite what I am seeing. Her method was simple but not obvious: she recorded what happened to blue ink, water, straight pins and the force of a magnet in freezing temperatures. Nature had a hand in creating her fiction.

My process was to freeze a photograph from a magazine into a chunk of ice, leaving the image trapped in a stubborn form (see picture at the top of the page). An image of snow-covered trees appears, as if it were a mirroring of beautiful surroundings, but it’s only a torn sheet of paper. An illusion. I don’t know if Kafka’s axe needs to break it open to reveal its emotions.

Sarah and I will keep growing our crystalline book of ice when we announce another open call for 2018. The form may change in a year’s time. The weather may change. This winter there were not enough cold days in Sarah’s Minneapolis or my New Jersey to freeze our art outside and, anti-heroically, our explorations happened in our kitchen freezers. This year was an El Nino year, and so our hope is that next winter will be colder. Pages from the Frozen Sea needs more cold to come together.

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Eva Mantell is co-curator with Sarah Stengle of Pages from the Frozen Sea. Other curating projects include Start Fresh at the Arts Council of Princeton and Windows of the Future at Carrier Clinic, NJ. Eva’s artwork has been exhibited at the Hunterdon Museum, Jersey City Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and in ongoing projects with the arts collective Overflow. Upcoming exhibits include Natura Mathematica at Central Booking, NYC and Animal Architecture at the Monmouth Museum, NJ. Eva has a BA from Penn and MFA from the School of Visual Arts and lives in Princeton, NJ.

About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Plastic, plastic, every where,
All the fish are bereft;
Plastic, plastic, every where,
Not a soul is left.

I met Hong Kong painter Michelle Kuen Suet Fung at an artist residency in Alaska in 2016. She is a diminutive woman with a big smile, a big vision, and an even bigger heart. Four four weeks Michelle and I shared meals, living quarters, hikes, hopes, and worries, and together navigated the intricacies of ferry travel in remote regions. I was lucky to get to know her and her work, and to see the world through her eyes for those four weeks. I gained a friend, a colleague and a new tip for avoiding all those environmentally harmful plastic utensils when eating out: carry bamboo travel utensils (like these) with you at all times…

Michelle draws inspirations from a wide range of sources and popular sub-cultures, including fairy tales, children’s picture books, the Japanese Otaku, fifteenth-century European etching, as well as traditional Chinese painting. Animals and their relationships with humans is a long recurring thread in her works.

What are you working on right now?

I have three main projects in 2017. For the past month, I have been working on a book manuscript of “Plastic, plastic, every where!,” a dystopia of plastic consumption. (See video interview.) The cautionary tale begins in the present and spans about a hundred years. The narrative, which borrows from fairy tales, children’s literature, and prophecy, presents a future where humans’ frenzied consumption of plastic (as in objects like lifesaver donuts, telephone hotdogs, etc. …) has led the human race past the point of no return:

In the first half of the 21st century, marine animals have developed such an insatiable appetite for plastic that the nations of the world set up feeding stations. Over time, however, fewer and fewer animals show up to the feedings, and eventually, none show up. The global craze for plastic-eating originates from the 2084 annual meeting of the Great Five Industrial Nations on Miami Island, cut off from the mainland because of rising sea levels. At the meeting, China (in the form of a pig) proposes that if animals can learn to eat plastic, why can’t children?

The work was presented as a drawing installation in 2015. I have adapted the narrative into book form, and the story is shortlisted in the Young Writer’s Competition in Hong Kong. I will complete the manuscript in the spring and hopefully the book will be chosen for publication.

Concurrently, I am making “Plastic, plastic, every where!” into a moving drawings video. The work-in-progress has been almost two years in the making and went through substantial changes after my artist residency at Art Omi (NY, USA) last summer. This year, I will invest time to complete the final draft before pairing music and sound to the visuals.

Last but not least, China’s micro-narrative in “Plastic, plastic, every where!” has been developed into an autonomous work. In 2084, China has solved its pollution problems with Plan Polluta, condensing air pollution into building bricks. With these bricks, China builds floating artist colonies in the sky. I am making propaganda posters and banner paintings (loosely based on those from the Cultural Revolution era) to be shown in a solo exhibition at Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA, in 2018. The gallery will be transformed into a promotional center for the Ministry of Polluta. Besides painting, I am also conducting research for the two performances that will take place during the exhibition.

You have lived in many countries. How do you think that influences your work?

I never quite knew how it affected me until last summer art critic Dominique Nahas described my works as cosmopolitan. It then dawned on me that I could only make cosmopolitan works because I was exactly that! I have lived in Hong Kong, Canada, UK and the US and speak three and a half languages (the half language is French.) I really enjoy looking at things from multiple points of views without realizing it. For instance, when I translate, I often find meaning differs slightly in different languages. It comes down to cultural sensitivity and connotations. However, I am poorly educated in the Middle Eastern, African and Native perspectives, and many other minorities. While it is impossible for any works to be truly inclusive, I hope my works are less about navel-gazing.

Do you consider yourself an activist? Why?

I have been asked that question before, and I don’t see myself as one. I think fundamentally activists work to bring about social change and artists focus on making their best possible work. I definitely belong to the latter group. Having said that, I do think the most compelling advocacy is to lead by example. Far from perfect, I strive to live a greener lifestyle. I stopped ordering anything take-out unless I have my own containers. I haven’t bought chemical household products such as laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, household cleaner for years. I make my own from food scraps or other greener materials. By persisting in my own habits, I see changes in people around me. I also share some of my insights on social media: the response is almost always encouraging.

You participated in the Tidelines Ferry Tour in 2016. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?

That was a humbling journey. We toured eight communities in Southeast Alaska in one month under the theme of climate change. Having lived in Canada for almost two decades, I barely had contact with First Nations. I had to reassess my presumptuous assumptions about a green lifestyle in the 21st century. On this trip, I developed enormous reverence for a community for its respect of nature. Meat-eating is damaging to the planet in most developed countries, but salad-lovers may cause more harm in Alaska if we consider all the fuel and energy needed to fly in the leaves. The trip taught me to take my urban arrogant attitude home.

I wrote bilingual (Chinese and English) weekly blogs on the tour for Altermodernists, a Hong-Kong-based media platform for local artists:

Week 1 Blog Entry
Week 2 Blog Entry
Week 3 Blog Entry
Week 4 Blog Entry 

What is the single most important thing artists can do to address climate change?

In this age of chaos and uncertainty, I hesitate to give artists an aura of visionaries. Artists should do what we have historically done well: Make great work. Facts do not compel change; pain and strong emotions do. If my work can elicit strong reactions that result in concrete change in one viewer’s behavior, I will consider my work successful.

What gives you hope?

It is relatively easy for those who live in the war-free First World to find solace: A blue ocean, a delicate flower, a cool breeze, a delicious meal, and our loved ones. When I gaze at these beautiful things, I have a fierce urge to protect them. When I look at my niece’s porcelain skin and watch her play with two leaves for almost an hour, I know we want to still have tigers, whales, elephants, and polar bears for her to experience. If we choose to have no hope, all battles are lost. I choose to have hope, because that is the only thing we have to go on.

About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

This article was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on September 20, 2016.

I am a theatre director in an early stage of thinking about performance and climate change—more of an idea and question gathering place than a how-that-translates-to-process-and-dramaturgy place. This is a tour of some ideas.

This past fall, I co-organized a conversation with Sarah Cameron Sunde and Moe Yousuf in conjunction with the Theatre Without Borders Conference. About twenty-five folks (across disciplines and nationalities) shared personal entry points to making real the massiveness of climate change; themes I remember include anticipatory grief, environmental racism, individual vs. collective agency, and tempered hope in human ingenuity and the earth’s resilience. Then, Sarah invited Moe to lead us in making pickles. Pickling framed our conversation in a longer experience of time, and it gave (some of) us a reason to meet again later to experience our (well, failed) pickles.

Also thinking of a conversation I had with Dehlia Hannah. Hannah is a curator-as-research practitioner whose current project A Year Without Winter, co-led with scholar Cynthia Selin, gathers scholarly and artistic responses to climate change over three years in resonance with the Year Without a Summer and its role in forming Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. (The Year Without a Summer, 1816), was a tumultuous global cooling event sparked, in part, by a massive volcanic eruption.) When I asked about hope in the context of climate change, Hannah expressed concern that hope can be an uncomfortably close bedfellow with denial. Even if climate change is not an apocalyptic disaster flick, it will effect real and unknown loss—to the planet’s ecological systems, and to the human (and other) life inside those systems. Imagining climate change will require being present to loss—anticipated and experienced. Maybe to replace hope with attention. How do we sustain attention in the context of climate change? A Year Without Winter provides a conceptual framework, a dialogical network, and a three-year incubation to connect wide ranging entry points in imagining and responding to anthropogenic climate change. This creative system models an ecological way of seeing.

I’ve been thinking, for my own work, about what makes up an ecological way of seeing. Some entry points that make sense to me include complexity, corporality, contingency, and collective action.

Complexity
Anthropogenic climate change happens on a scale that’s hard (for me) to imagine. It’s not drought, hurricane, or weather in general. It’s a change in long-term patterns of weather. This distinction feels important because chronic, systemic change requires different attentions than extreme weather events. Warming global climate doesn’t follow a dramaturgy of crisis, although, as we are seeing more and more, it can contain crisis. It follows more closely a dramaturgy of chronic illness. Something that will play out over time in unpredictable ways and that requires continual and curious action. It requires urgency, but urgency without attachment. We will not see all the consequences of our actions—good or bad—within our lifetime. How does my theatre rehearse a seeing with this kind of sustained and unresolved attention?

Corporality
As weather patterns change, stories about folks’ connection to land and life take on new stakes. Narratives about human control over nature contributed to seeing the natural world as disposable resource, contributed to actions that created climate change. I don’t think this assumption, especially embedded in Western culture, can get us out of climate change. How does my theatre center stories (remembered or reinvented) that situate human beings as part of larger living and evolving systems?

Contingency and Collective Action
Something that impacts the whole planet requires the whole planet to respond. I grew up wearing a lot of sweaters inside in the winter and rolling down car windows in the summer; and I think a performance of personal responsibility is a meaningful practice. I rehearse mindfulness, but I don’t think it’s an impactful practice in terms of emission reduction. This requires not just pooling individual actions, but changing regulations, energy sources. This requires collective action. How is my theatre rehearsing a personal awakening to collective action? And, what are the images I have for the collective? As many folks in this series have pointed out, climate change disproportionately effects many communities of color. Rebecca Solnit has some language I appreciate about natural disasters as policy disasters, as putting pressure on existing social inequalities (particularly referencing Hurricane Katrina and discussed cogently in an On Being interview.) How does my theatre enact and envision a global community that is multivalent, fluid, and offers specific critique to entrenched systems of oppression?

One of the formidable aspects of man-made climate change is that we don’t know exactly how the earth will respond to a rising average temperature. In order to be able to respond deeply and impact fully, it seems important that our attending prepares us to continue not knowing. An older image of apocalypse is not physical destruction, but disclosure of knowledge. As artists, we know something about waiting for this apocalypse, about doing the deep and urgent work of being changed, with the trust that changed seeing leads to changed action, changed policies. I admire projects like Chantal Bilodeau’s Arctic Cycle, Mondo Bizarro and ArtSpot’s Cry You One, and Lars Jan’s Holoscenes for crafting such spaces. And, I would add, this work, this orientation to apocalypse is also a definition of hope. A hope I can live with.

______________________________

Emily Mendelsohn is a Brooklyn-based director.  As a member of Waypoints, an ensemble of US/East African artists, Emily directed Erik Ehn’s Maria Kizito and Deborah Asiimwe’s Cooking Oil through residencies in Kigali, Kampala, New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Emily co-curates Border Labs, a process and performance exchange between artists in Los Angeles and Tijuana. She is a recipient of the TCG Global Connections In the Lab program and a Fulbright Fellowship in Uganda. Affiliate artist New Georges, member Theater Without Borders. MFA CalArts.

About Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog