This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Taiwan, the mountainous island off the southeastern coast of China, is officially known as the Republic of China (ROC). It was given the name Formosa by the Portuguese in the 16^th century based on the expression Ilha Formosa, meaning  “beautiful island.” And it still lives up to its name. With its subtropical North and a hot, tropical South, it is home to a great diversity of flora and fauna, and colorful temples around almost every corner.

Taiwan has been one of the “Four Asian Dragons” since the 1980s: it has undergone rapid industrialization and become advanced in service and capital-intensive manufacturing. Electronic and computer parts are the production cornerstones in Taiwan, while labor-intensive manufacturing, such as garment manufacturing, have moved to cheaper locations like China. Many people still mainly know of Taiwan because of the “Made in Taiwan” label on their t-shirt. Unfortunately, Taiwan’s rapid economic transformation took place without much concern for the environment.

A big environmental challenge in Taiwan is the contamination of soil, water, and air by heavy industries, mostly from the petrochemical sector. Taiwan didn’t start building an environmental protection system until the late 1980s. By that time, artists had started taking initiatives in addressing environmental issues and today, many of them are engaged as activists. Central to their practice is the use of natural materials such as bamboo.

Here are my ten favorite art initiatives in Taiwan that engage with nature in different ways. If you visit, make sure not to miss these gems!

1.  Bamboo Curtain Studio

Website: bambooculture.com
Founded: 1995
Type: Residency, independent art space
Who for: Artists, writers, curators, policymakers, environmentalists, communities and scientists from across the globe who are keen to engage in social and environmental projects and want to network in Taiwan

Art has the unique power to foster conversation and be a catalyst for change. We believe art can create social change and provide an alternative perspective to understanding the world. With our previous collaborative artists, we could really feel and witness behavior change through the engagement process. Our practice aims to promote cross-cultural exchanges by providing art and cultural workers with a creative environment and assisting them in carrying out their productions.
—Iris Hung, Director

2.  Name: Bio-Art.tw

Website: bioart.tw
Founded: 2012
Type: Experimental art space
Who for: Biologists, scientists, artists, (bio) hackers

We are part of biodiversity and we can’t even be responsible for our own survival. We can’t “save” other things, species, as we don’t know what they have in mind, what is good for them. Can we say we have a better life? We only have the ability to judge ourselves. A lot of environmentalists are trying to save the earth or some animal. I recently read that less cute looking animals get less research funding. Everyone should be engaged in this conversation, but I think artists can show us how to observe and think, teach us how to have our own opinion.
—Pei-Ying Lin

3.  Cheng Long Wetlands Environmental Art Program

Website: artproject4wetland.wordpress.com
Founded: 2010
Type: Annual art program, residency
Who for: Artists, environmentalists, locals, craftsmen, children

In the past, villagers were cutting the trees but now they are protecting the forest. The project did work; villagers now think their land is beautiful. Maybe they cannot solve the problem of the land sinking, but they have learned to live with it and still appreciate it. There is so much participation from the villagers now.
—Zhao Mei Wang

4.  TAIWAN East Coast land Arts Festival

Website: teclandart.tw/en/author/tecart_people/
Founded: 2015
Type: Festival
Who for: Anyone interested in the East Coast of Taiwan and aboriginal culture, artists, locals, environmentalists

On the East Coast, there are a lot of protests as the government is taking all the nuclear waste to Taitung and Orchid Island. There is a huge gap between communities and the government, and the government is often just making secret (illegal) deals when it comes to nuclear waste or development projects. It’s mostly local people and artists who fight against this. They need lawyers as the government currently has 33 development projects planned on the East Coast, mostly in public areas such as beaches. Now there are people fishing there, in the future they might not even be allowed to go there anymore because of the hotels being built. But it’s their resource. With the East Coast Land Arts Festival, I raise awareness about these issues.
—Shu Lun Wu

5.  Guandu International Outdoor Sculpture festival

Website: gd-park.org.tw/en/festival
Founded: 2005
Type: Festival, nature park
Who for: Everyone young and old who enjoys nature and/or sculpture

It’s our mission to change peoples’ attitude towards nature (…) The park was initially set up because birdwatchers from the Bird Society were noticing the bird population was declining and they suggested to create a conservation area. When the festival opened at the nature park in 2015, it had more than 20.000 visitors. Even though we don’t have art backgrounds, we are keen to learn more, about land art for instance. However, our starting point is nature and an artists’ starting point will be the arts. But the artwork here will always be eco-friendly.
—Nelson Chen and Yi-Fen Jan

6.  RE-THINK (重新思考)

Website: rethinktw.blogspot.tw/
Founded: 2013
Type: RE-THINK is a non-profit campaign which operates with other foundations and organizations to cultivate an environment that inspires people to take action to achieve healthy ecosystems; to teach children the importance of environment friendly practices through education programs; to advocate a single-use, non-biodegradable plastic bag ban; and to raise awareness in communities about coastal preservation, ecosystem protection and water quality.
Who for: Children and adults who want to do something creative and care about the natural environment, or just want to learn about it

Our mission is to educate people through real action. “Environmental protection” can hardly be taught through words, so our job is to guide people to the nature and see the pollution and reality through their own eyes. We’ve all been educated on what “environmental friendly” is, from reuse/reduce/recycle, to the aspects of environmental science. It also has become a cliché and only few people pay attention to it in the real life. So, what we’re doing at RE-THINK is to reverse the image of environmental by recreating its design. We design eye-catching or even humorous posts and let people know environmental issues can be fun, stylish, or interesting.
—Daniel Gruber

7.  Outsiders Factory

Website: outsidersfactory.web.fc2.com/workers_101.html
Founded: 2012
Type: Platform
Who for: Artists, curators, writers, anthropologists, historians, activists and anyone interested in both contemporary art and South-East Asia

I’m tired with “exchanges” and I am advocating for deeper engagement in Asian art, including looking at art history and art theory. There is no real knowledge of the history. This is a big problem in the region.
—Nobuo Takamori, Curator KMFA, Outsiders Factory

8.  Taitung Dawn Artist Village

Website: dawnartistvillage.com
Founded: 2012
Type: Dawn Artist Village is a non-profit organization that promotes the arts both locally and internationally through art residencies, exhibitions, workshops, and participating in festivals.
Who for: Artists and anyone interested in aboriginal cultures and the East Coast of Taiwan

Taipei business style sits uncomfortably with the Taitung style. Think of a mall versus a grocery store – you need to have passion of the local, otherwise your initiative will not survive in the long term. In the beginning some people might come, but it will not survive if you can’t feel the area.
—Shu Lun Wu, Founder

9.  Taipei Artist Village & Treasure Hill

Website: artistvillage.org
Founded: 2010
Type: Artist residency
Who for: Artists, locals

10.  TheCube

Website: thecubespace.com/en/
Founded: 2010
Type: Gallery, exhibition space, curatorial program
Who for: Artists, curators, students

Currently, the Cube is very much focusing on the Asian region and particularly South-East Asia, for instance with a one-year lecture program on multitudes, social movements in Asia. We are interested in social and political changes and how they influence culture change. In addition, we look at the local and work with local artists who are looking at modern history.
—Amy Cheng

AND ONE EXTRA! You don’t want to miss out on this great arts magazine…

11.  White Fungus

Website: whitefungus.com/
Founded: 2004
Type: Bilingual arts magazine
Who for: Anyone interested in contemporary art, new music, history and politics

The surface of politics doesn’t explain why we can’t deal with our problems. But artists aren’t doing a better job. Being an artist comes with a very narrow range of career opportunities decided by a very small group of people. The oil and tobacco companies are also involved. We all deserve to work hard and be rewarded and we all want a future. When you don’t buy into the illusion, it’s not looking good for you. Also, it depends on luck. If we were working class or peasants, we wouldn’t have the luxury to make a magazine.
—Ron Hanson

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Curator Yasmine Ostendorf (MA) has worked extensively on international cultural mobility programs and on the topic of art and environment for expert organizations such as Julie’s Bicycle (UK), Bamboo Curtain Studio (TW) Cape Farewell (UK) and Trans Artists (NL). She founded the Green Art Lab Alliance, a network of 35 cultural organizations in Europe and Asia that addresses our social and environmental responsibility, and is the author of the series of guides “Creative Responses to Sustainability.” She is the Head of Nature Research at the Van Eyck Academy (NL), a lab that enables artists to consider nature in relation to ecological and landscape development issues.

 

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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We begin the second year of our monthly series Renewable Energy Artworks by introducing a new topic on this blog: textile artists and fashion designers experimenting with so-called “smart textiles” that can harvest and store renewable energy.  Throughout 2018, we will occasionally post profiles of textile artists at the forefront of this revolution: the convergence of textiles and distributed energy technology. We start today with a brief introduction to the Dutch fashion designer Pauline van Dongen, founder of Wearable Solar.

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In case you missed it – solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is evolving so fast that scientists in South Korea recently created ultra-thin flexible solar cells, as thin as a human hair.

Could this be the Holy Grail for textile artists? Imagine being able to weave energy-harvesting solar nanothreads into the textiles we use on a daily basis: clothing, bed linen, furniture upholstery, window shades and curtains, sports and camping gear. Not to mention refugee shelters and protective garments for first responders, astronauts, and the military.

The challenge, however, is to move this promising technology beyond the laboratory to the commercial market. As Aimee Rose, chief technology officer at the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, explained in a 2016 Business of Fashion interview: “We’ve demonstrated we can create a fibre that stores energy and can act as a battery – but how do we get that into clothing?”

Smart textiles (sometimes called e-textiles) are much more than just the integration of electronics into garments. They include any textile with the ability to interact with its surrounding environment and react to changes in that environment.

According to Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman in her 2016 book, Smart Textiles for Designers, smart textiles “will challenge your idea of what fabrics and textiles are, and inspire you to rethink what your clothing and other products made with textiles can do.”

For those not familiar with this topic, the following panel discussion about Fashion’s Fourth Industrial Revolution provides an excellent introduction. Bookmark it for the weekend (it’s 53 minutes).

In general, we can say that, to date, there are three generations of smart textiles:

1. garments that hold the sensor in place
2. garments in which the sensor is embedded/integrated into the fabric
3. garments that act as the sensor itself

For this series, I am mainly interested in second generation garments that can harvest solar energy. These include smart textiles that contain electrically conductive yarns, fibres and/or metals that are woven, embroidered, knitted, 3D-printed or embedded into the fabric in order to capture solar or mechanical energy and convert it into clean electricity to charge our mobile devices (or to store that electricity for later use).

The Dutch fashion innovator Pauline van Dongen is at the forefront of this textile revolution, collaborating across multiple technical disciplines to create clothes of the future. She was recently named a laureate in the 35 Innovators Under 35 Europe in 2017.

To date, van Dongen’s Wearable Solar collection includes four items: solar windbreaker, solar parka, solar dress and solar shirt. Although none of these items is ready for the commercial market, van Dongen is committed to advancing the technology to improve production, affordability and long-term use, including repeated washing.

I will write more about Pauline van Dongen in a future post.

In October 2017, Levi Strauss released its long awaited Commuter Trucker Jacket in collaboration with Google. This “connected” jacket has Google’s Project Jacquard technology woven into the denim which essentially turns the jacket into an extension of the user’s mobile phone. While this jacket does not convert solar energy into electricity, I could not resist including mention of it in this space, since it is an example of the first commercially available connected clothing (despite lukewarm reviews).

The video below is visually stunning, and gives a sense of how tantalizingly close we are to this brave new world of textile connectedness.

A headline in a 2016 article in digitaltrends.com says it all: Today we carry technology. Tomorrow we’ll wear it.

(Top photo: Video grab shot from YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qObSFfdfe7I&feature=youtu.be)

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Joan Sullivan is a renewable energy photographer based in Québec, Canada. Since 2009, Joan has focused her cameras (and more recently her drones) exclusively on solutions to climate change. She is convinced that the inevitable transition to a 100% clean energy economy will happen faster – and within our lifetimes – by creating positive images and stories that help us visualize and embrace what a post-carbon future will look like.  Joan collaborates frequently with filmmakers on documentary films that explore the human side of the energy transition. She is currently working on a photo book about the energy transition. Her renewable energy photos have been exhibited in group shows in Canada and the UK. You can find Joan onTwitter and Instagram. 

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

When I tell people I’m an eco-musician, they give one of two responses: knowing appreciation or a puzzled furrow proceeding something like, “What do you mean by eco?”

I explain that this unique diction was not my doing. L.A. Talk Radio’s Diana Dehm realized the importance of music in carrying the torch of progress and claimed the term long before I’d heard it. When I met her over the Internet waves, she was looking for musicians that were writing about the state of our environment for her sustainability news show. Once she began to routinely broadcast the title track from my 2016 album Let’s Talk About the Weather, I knew that I had earned my entrance to the eco-musician’s club.

But how, do you ask, does one become an eco or ecological musician? In my case, the musician I’ve always been was wooed and captured by ecology – its majesty and its tragedy.

I was first moved by what humanity was doing to itself while working on a recording project on the glorious island of Maui in 2012. I carpooled to work with a local lawyer who suffered greatly from lung problems, whose children regularly stayed home from school due to respiratory illness. She was lobbying in the capital against irresponsible sugar cane waste burning practices, which coupled with volcanic emissions to produce a thick haze many simply could not endure. Citizens regularly called in sick, missed school, and suffered without protection. Her and other citizens’ efforts were being disregarded by both industry and the state.

The day I – an athletic, healthy 26 year-old – developed a lung infection from the industry smoke, I was moved to sit at the piano. Despair rolled over me as I contemplated for the first time whether human beings deserved this exquisite planet, or if she would ultimately facilitate our self-destruction. I determined that if there were enough people willing to earn our keep here on Earth – to devote their lives to change – I was willing to dedicate my life to fixing the broken systems enabling these kinds of injustices. I knew my quest would fail if a critical mass of others didn’t join in. So while I chose to pursue a purposeful, challenging passion, I simultaneously promised myself that I would do everything in my power to inspire others to do the same. Then I wrote a song about it.

Four years later I released my first album, a work that spoke directly to drought, immigration, economic struggle, climate change, protest, PTSD and reaching for distant dreams. Less directly, it expressed the pain of my history with a drug addict and genocide I had experienced in the depths of sleep. It drew from my frustrations with the status quo, nationalism, corporate life, and sexism, and ultimately served to push me into the world with a sense of worth as an artist that I had never imagined.

I worried about being wrong in the eyes of certain audiences, but was welcomed into circles that understood my pain and drive – universities, environmental organizations, and eventually Climate Science Alliance reached out to partner. To be sure I was doing everything I could to examine our most challenging problems and promising solutions, I accepted a year-long scholarship to grad school in International Environmental Policy at UCSD. I am currently examining the central theme of my newest performance work, The Let’s Talk About the Weather Experience (LTAWE).

The musical performance takes a burning question I had when I was 17 – “How is capitalism’s growth imperative sustainable?” – and rolls it into the personal experiences that have shaped my activism in the field. From planning rallies, to living in a tiny house on a farm, to declaring bankruptcy against one of the banks funding DAPL, my experience is a testament to my vigorous defense of the commitment I made to myself that smoky day in Hawaii.

The LTAWE makes an extra effort to paint a promising future for humanity. Paul Hawken’s book Drawdown is an inspiration for infusing the highest priority tools and solutions to climate change into the work. In order for people to interact with these and other ideas presented, the performance is followed by an opportunity to live up to its name: an interactive discussion on policy solutions to climate change, pollution, poverty, and corporate responsibility concludes the show.

What people often don’t realize about ecology is that it encompasses both relationships between humans and humanity’s relationship to our environment. Not only are our sociopolitical systems failing to act quickly and protect the world’s people, but they are failing to protect the very ecosystems that make life possible. It is my personal intention to intervene as artfully as possible. I hope that you are inspired to join us.

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Ashley Mazanec is an eco musician and founding director of EcoArts Foundation. A partner and affiliated artist at the Climate Science Alliance, her creative work in eco-entertainment has brought her to speak and perform for festivals, universities, grassroots organizations, nonprofits, and corporations. The podcast named after her 2016 album Let’s Talk About the Weather showcases the shining stars of the ecological art movement. Ashley’s work can be heard on LA Talk Radio and in corporate stores such as T.J. Maxx, Hershey’s and Abercrombie Kids. You can catch her live solo and with her progressive rock band Ashley and The Altruists, hosting eco art events, and supporting causes with groups such as such as Surfrider, The San Diego Green Building Council, and International Rescue Committee.

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

FEATURED: Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) – Image C, 1999. Offset lithograph (photograph and text combined) on uncoated paper; 30 1/2 × 41 1/2 inches. Edition of 7. Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

The fifth in a year-long series on artists who are making the topic of water a focus of their work and on the growing number of exhibitions, performances and publications that are popping up in museums, galleries and public spaces around the world with water as a theme.

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Unlike many contemporary artists who have come only lately to incorporating the theme of water in their work, American artist Roni Horn has been exploring the nature of water for over 30 years. In her drawings, photographs, installations, writing and books, she has posed questions that challenge us to examine our own personal relationship with water as well as its universal qualities. In a 2005 interview by Art 21 on her works Doubts by Water, Same Thames and Still Water, Horn admits: “I never intended to have water in everything I do, but I almost feel like I rediscover it again and again. It just finds its way back into new work.”

Since Horn is such a prolific artist and doing justice to all of her work (which in addition to water, explores human identity, ecology, landscape, weather and language) would require no less than a book (several do exist), I’ll focus here on two of her pieces that represent her attempt to define water’s elusive nature: (1) Saying Water, a 40-minute monologue that she created about the Thames River in London; and (2) Vatnasafn / Library of Water, a project in Stykkisholmur, Iceland in which she restored a town library building as a public space housing her own installations and a place for community gatherings and programs.

Saying Water

Horn wrote Saying Water in 2012 while she was staying in A Room for London, a riverboat installation sitting on the roof of Queen Elizabeth Hall overlooking the South Bank of the river Thames. Her residency was part of a larger project entitled Hearts of Darkness, in which artists and “stowaways” from other professions were invited to create something new related to the river and the project’s theme.

As she reflects on the meaning of the dark, opaque and dirty Thames river, Horn incorporates song lyrics (“Blah, Blah, Blah” by George Gershwin; “Down by the River” by Neil Young; “Take Me to the River” by Al Green; etc.) and stories of suicide, sex and murder that occurred in or by the river. She poses numerous questions: “When you talk of the water, are you talking of yourself or the weather?” “Is water sexy?” “What does water look like?” “Do rivers really ever end?” But primarily, she is developing a comprehensive and powerful vocabulary about water itself and its physical, sensual, spiritual and fundamentally unknown qualities. Here is just a small sampling of her powerful visual language:

Water is… everywhere differently, a spiritual presence, an intimate experience, half the sky, an act of perpetual motion, familiar but elusive, troubled or calm, rough and disturbed, quiet, clear, still, cold or hot, brash or brisk, soft or hard, foul or fresh, limpid or languid, sweet, agitated, unsettled, deep, clean or filthy, a utopian substance, powerful, vulnerable, fragile, energetic, the future, a plural form, a master verb.  

Water… reassures you, affirms you, shows you who you are, extends you out into the world, camouflages light, sighs, sucks, laughs, splishes, splashes, slashes, washes, murmurs, gushes, bubbles, babbles, shimmers, shines, gleams, twinkles, sparkles, blinks, winks, waves.

Black water… is always violent; it dominates; it’s alluring; it’s black milk; it’s life threatening; it’s mesmerizing.

Horn acknowledges the level of pollution in the Thames by imagining what the water contains: “not just the rats and sewage but the viruses and bacteria like hepatitis, dysentery, E. coli, biles and even a remnant of the plague… the polyphenols… the trichloral ethanes…” And at the end of the monologue, she proclaims that “when you look at water, you see what you think is your reflection but it’s not yours; YOU are a reflection of water.” Immerse yourself in Horn’s Saying Water here. Although listening once is great, twice or three times is better in order to absorb the full impact of her cadence and imagery.

Vatnasafn / Library of Water

Horn has a strong emotional tie to Iceland. Her first journey there was right after graduate school, when she traveled throughout the country by motorcycle. Since then she has returned again and again, ultimately establishing a residence in Iceland where she resides for part of the year, and incorporating its pristine landscape, changing weather, intense light and distinct geography as a major component of her work. In 2003, she began a long-term project to create a new identity and purpose for an existing library in the small town of Stykkisholmur, Iceland. Horn called it “the most beautifully situated library in the world,” overlooking the harbor and offering astounding views of the ocean and an overwhelming sense of sky, sea and weather.

Completed in 2007, the Library of Water contains three works by Horn: The first is a “bilingual sculpture installation,” a rubberized floor containing 100 inscribed words in Icelandic and English that refer to the weather, an integral part of life in Iceland. The second is a series of 24 floor-to-ceiling transparent columns filled with water from 24 of the major glaciers in Iceland that were formed millions of years ago and are receding at a rapid pace. The columns refract and reflect the light from the vast landscape outdoors, and create a sense of tranquility and peace within the interior space. The third work is a collection of stories on weather, a project that Horn undertook to record the memories of, and reflections on, weather from residents of the area in an attempt to capture its significance in their lives.

Horn has written, spoken and created hundreds of works of art about water of all kinds. In contemplating the dirty Thames, she marveled that

…even in its darkness, it has this picturesque element. It’s something about the human condition – not the water itself – humanity’s relationship to water. So, in the end, it doesn’t make a difference what the water looks like. It will always have this kind of picturesque quality to it because that’s almost a human need – that water be a positive force.

(Top image: Installation of columns containing water from 24 glaciers in Iceland, Vatnasafn Dictionary of Water, Stykkisholmur, Iceland.)

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Susan Hoffman Fishman is a painter, public artist, writer, and educator whose work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout the U.S. Susan’s latest bodies of work focus on the threat of rising tides caused by climate change, the trillions of pieces of plastic in our oceans and the wars that are predicted to occur in the future over access to clean water. Susan is also the co-creator of two interactive public art projects: The Wave, which addresses our mutual need for and interdependence on water and Home, which calls attention to homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in our cities and towns.

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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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