On World Music Day (Friday 21st June) we launch the exciting outputs from ‘The Burnie Journey’ an exciting new example of creative community engagement.
Over winter 2018-2019, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and Creative Carbon Scotland, with support from Aberdeen City Council, collaborated to deliver a project on arts-based community engagement with a focus on flood preparation and awareness in the Den Burn Valley in Aberdeen.
Unlike traditional forms of public engagement, this project sought the skills and expertise of musician, Simon Gall, to design and facilitate a number of workshops on flooding and flood risk management in the local community on behalf of SEPA.
Workshops were held with Fernielea Primary School’s P6 Class (ages 9-10) to explore how the Council is managing flooding of their local burn and how to prepare for flooding, using music and sound to reinforce the key messages.
On working with the Primary 6 class, Simon Gall said:
“It’s been heartening to see the children engaging so enthusiastically with the Denburn and flooding issues more generally. I think our hands-on, creative learning approach to the topic is key. The children use their creative skills to process and convert fairly pedestrian information – gathered first-hand – into something unique and memorable. I hope the experience leaves a lasting impression on them while also leaving some lovely creative work for others to use and enjoy.â€
This type of approach has the potential to be used by Scotland’s other flood authorities , businesses or multi-stakeholder projects looking for more meaningful and exciting ways to engage communities in important issues, like flooding and climate action.
To learn more about this approach and its benefits, visit SEPA’s Floodline Scotland website to access the project report, videos and podcast. This project forms part of Creative Carbon Scotland’s culture/SHIFT project which supports cultural and sustainability practitioners to explore new ways of working together to address complex problems and bring about transformational change.
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.
Since 2000, the UN has observed World Refugee Day on June 20 to raise awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world. As part of my own World Refugee Day observance, I’m reflecting on Blessed Unrest and Teatri Oda’s recent production Refuge.
I had the opportunity to dramaturgically support Blessed Unrest in their latest production, and even more, am eager to write about their piece in the context of the climate crisis. Refuge is described via Blessed Unrest’s website:
Blessed Unrest teams up with Teatri Oda from Kosovo and musicians from Metropolitan Klezmer for this world-premiere play based on real events in which thousands of Jewish World War II refugees were harbored by families in Albania, most of them practicing Muslims. Despite Nazi occupation, no Jews were taken to concentration camps from Albania, and it was the only country in Europe with more Jews at the end of the war than at the beginning.
Perri Yaniv, Becca Schneider, Nancy McArthur, and Eshref Durmishi in Refuge. Photo by Maria Baranova.
Presented at Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City, Refuge starts with two women running toward each other and embracing centerstage. These women, one Albanian and one American, tie us to modern day as the actors who play these contemporary characters transform back in time to two distinct moments in history: 1940s Poland and 1990s Kosova.
In 1940s Poland, a Jewish family leaves their home to escape the Holocaust. In 1990s Kosova, an Albanian family flees persecution from the former Yugoslavia. Refuge sets up these two narratives, and we see how the stories intertwine. The Jewish family journeys through Europe, intending to catch a ship to the United States before the Nazis spread further. This family meets a Muslim-Catholic family in Albania who takes them in for as long as necessary. Based on actual events, the Albanian family treats the Jewish family as their own, helping them fit into Albanian culture to protect from any Nazi suspicions.
Albanians practice Besa, an ethical code of honor meaning “to keep the promise.†In this way – according to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center – “the Albanians went out of their way to provide assistance…These acts originated from compassion, loving-kindness and a desire to help those in need, even those of another faith or origin.†Later in the play, we realize that the daughter of the Albanian family in the 1940s is the grandmother of the 1990s family, and she is still trying to reconnect with the Jewish daughter, through written-yet-unreturned letters.
Refuge illustrates Besa through these fictional families, telling a story not often heard. Through invigorating music, rigorous movement, humorous and heartfelt text, Refuge brings Besa to life for a new audience. The play lays out the problems, especially what it means to be displaced and to relocate home, but it does not dwell on the hardships. Instead, Blessed Unrest and Teatri Oda use true stories from the past to demonstrate how the world could be: namely, more loving. The Albanian family, like many real Albanians during World War II, set aside religious and cultural differences, and not only welcomed strangers into their homes, but treated them as family.
Ilire Vinca, Eshref Durmishi, Perri Yaniv, Becca Schneider, and Nancy McArthur in Refuge. Photo by Maria Baranova.
We need more plays like Refuge, especially in the context of climate chaos. People, populations of entire countries, have had to move from one place to another due to environmental hardship, and such migrations will only increase. Examples include Houston, Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea. While Refuge is clearly talking about refugees – people fleeing their home because of persecution – there are questions around the term “refugee†as related to climate change. The UN is careful to distinguish climate migrants from refugees, enumerating aspects that “define human mobility in the context of climate change and environmental degradation†including the aspect that creating a “refugee status for climate change related reasons…can lead to the exclusion of categories of people who are in need of protection.†Nonetheless, we’re talking about people on the move, some needing to completely reframe what and where home is. Refuge reminds me that “home†isn’t always a physical place; home is where my family is.
At the end of the play, we’re back in modern times and the Jewish daughter recounts one of her letters to the Albanian daughter: “I have children now, Tana. I have a granddaughter. She exists because of you and your family.†The Jewish daughter recognizes her survival as a direct result of Tana’s family, the Albanian’s choice to open their home to strangers for the duration of a world war. Tana responds: “I am just a person.†This line, a simple reminder, strikes me every time. How will each of us as individuals move through the world? How will we work together to build a better world? In whatever ways we yield our collective power, we must hold space for those already seeking, and who will seek, refuge. We are each just people, but together we can change the course of history, to a more equitable and just world for us all.
Eshref Durmishi, Ilire Vinca, Perri Yaniv, Becca Schneider, and Daniela Markaj in Refuge. Photo by Maria Baranova.
(Top Image: Ilire Vinca, Eshref Durmishi, Nancy McArthur, Perri Yaniv, Becca Schneider, and Daniela Markaj in Refuge. Photo by Maria Baranova.)
This article is part of the Persistent Acts series which looks at the intersection of performance, climate, and politics. How does hope come to fruition, even in the most dire circumstances? What are tangible alternatives to the oppressive status quo? The series considers questions of this nature to motivate conversations and actions on climate issues that reverberate through politics and theatre.
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Julia Levine is a creative collaborator and vegetarian. Originally from St. Louis, Julia is now planted in the New York City downtown theatre realm. As a director, Julia has worked on various projects with companies that consider political and cultural topics, including Theater In Asylum, Honest Accomplice Theatre, Superhero Clubhouse, and Blessed Unrest. She is the Marketing Manager at HERE and is Artistic Producer of The Arctic Cycle. Julia writes and devises with her performance-based initiative, The UPROOT Series, to bring questions of food, climate, and justice into everyday life.
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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.
In this spotlight, I look at how ecology intersects with weird fiction. This has been an interest of mine, but I have done only one similar spotlight – on Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy – two years ago. It’s good to come back to this subject.
I am honored to talk with the amazing Marian Womack about her new collection of short stories, Lost Objects. See Weird Fiction Review for a detailed review of Lost Objects, including a link to read “Orange Dogs†online. Jeff VanderMeer says of the book, “An intriguing and illuminating first collection, chockfull of interesting ideas about the natural world and ourselves.†Published by Luna Press (July 2018):
These stories explore place and landscape at different stages of decay, positioning them as fighting grounds for death and renewal. From dystopian Andalusia to Scotland or the Norfolk countryside, they bring together monstrous insects, ghostly lovers, soon-to-be extinct species, unexpected birds, and interstellar explorers, to form a coherent narrative about loss and absence.
What led you to the writing of this short story collection, and had you traveled to the various places within?
Lost Objects wasn’t originally planned as a collection. The stories it contains were written over a period of several years, roughly from the birth of my son in 2012 onwards, and I hadn’t thought of writing a thematic collection as each of these stories came to me. But it became clear in retrospect that these individual narratives did add up to something that deserved to be seen as a whole, a collection of different perspectives on the same or similar issues, and – with a little tweaking – the collection fell together out of disparate and apparently unconnected materials. As far as traveling to the environments I write about is concerned, on one level none of these places exist, yet. But their present-day iterations do: some of the stories are set in Cambridge, UK, where I live and work; “Black Isle†is set to a certain extent near where some of my family live, to the north of Inverness in Scotland, and “The Ravisher, the Thief†is set in Barcelona, a city I know well from my years living in metropolitan Spain. Other stories are set in environments I have visited in my youth.
What kinds of lost objects did you see in these areas, in real life?
From an environmental perspective, we are losing everything, all the time. I live in suburban Cambridge, and over the course of the last few years the visible diversity of, for example, bird life has declined enormously. This is not just anecdotal; there are statistics to back it up, but even speaking from a personal perspective you see the old certainties changing and failing all around you. I am writing this in the middle of an astonishing heatwave, and talking heads on the television say this could now be the new normal: seasons are failing, crops are dying, and the tendency is still to think about this kind of radical change as something that will happen just beyond the horizon of our perception, in a hundred years’ time, or a hundred and fifty. But it is happening now, and here, and it is terrifying.
The short stories in Lost Objects explore the unsustainable worlds of our society, and the losses therein – cultural continuity, people, animals, plants, clean water. How did you come about imagining the what-ifs, or maybe more appropriately, the what-if-this-continues types of settings, which are varied among these stories?
I think that in a lot of these stories I am not really writing speculatively. The scenarios they describe are plausible extrapolations of the current world. (Parenthetically, I am a firm believer in the idea that science fiction is never really about the future, but is about the present as we experience it.) But from a technical standpoint, I think that what I do is to take an environment as close to my real world as I can, and then develop it with little “tweaks†here and there until the final result is a world that is both ours and not-ours, both now and not-now.
Great point. I’ve run across the phrase (particularly in weird fiction) “charnel grounds†when describing our world, as it is losing these sorts of objects. We do seem to be in a place now where regret and loss result in a discomposure. We feel ghosts, see ruins and skeletons at our feet. Symbolically at least. Did the concept of charnel grounds, or anything similar, occur to you when working on this book?
To give a short answer, not really, no. But it’s interesting and appropriate to think about it: the current extended meaning of “charnel grounds†is a little vague, and is generally applied to a space of disorganized destruction and death, which is a little apocalyptic for my tastes. But charnel houses were originally spaces for storing “overflow bones†when graveyards got too full. Old bones were dug up so that new bones could be put in their place. The old bones were still treated with respect, still counted as consecrated, were as valuable as they had been before, just put to one side. I think that’s the way I like to understand the symbol perhaps: my stories are filled with death and loss, but it’s a loss that connects us to the past, that is set aside but still valued. I think that over the years to come we are going to have to have to learn to mourn in a way we haven’t needed to since the Victorian era, and the concept of the charnel house might help us here.
I see more and more fiction that addresses climate change, environmental losses, and extinction. There is a big diversity of stories being told. I think of eco-fiction, a term I’ve heard you use as well, as a way to intersect environment, humanity, and literature. Have you seen much of this in weird fiction, and if so, can you talk some about that?
Well, the intersection between ecology and the Weird is one of the things I’m writing my doctorate about, so I could speak about this for hours. But in the interests of concision, let me just say that one of the key tenets of the Weird is the idea of the irruption, the entry into apparently “normal†space of the abnormal invader. This corresponds to the Lacanian idea of the Real: the abnormal invader is actually a glimpse of the unmediated, unvarnished, incomprehensible “truth†that stands outside the symbolic and imaginary interpretations of the world we throw up around ourselves. What eco-fiction is giving us is a world in which the Real (environmental forces that are beyond the control of any single individual) is more absolutely present, and this incomprehensible cosmic truth that previously we only saw in glimpses is now breaking through to display itself to us on a day-to-day basis. Of course, this is not to say that in the world outside of fiction there aren’t people whose devotion to the symbolic or imaginary order of things isn’t strong enough for them to live their lives in a state of denial…
I wish I had hours to talk with you, because the Weird is also so interesting to me in how it connects with our natural world. In Lost Objects, you deal with tough emotional reactions to the changing world around us. It’s so important to recognize this as it’s hard for all of us to watch what’s happening. I talked with poet Lorna Crozier, author of The Wild in You, a while back, who said that as we grow older, we grow lonelier. Part of it is that as we age we begin watching friends and family pass away. But loneliness is also born of saying goodbye to the wilderness left on the Earth. “It’s the loneliness that comes from wiping out of songbirds, salmon runs, and old-growth forests. It comes from trophy bear hunting…†etc. I think the characters in your stories feel this most vividly. How can writers continue to share this without coming across as didactic?
Nothing wrong with being didactic, in my opinion… There was a post gaining traction on Facebook this morning from a climate scientist who had been invited to appear on the BBC, and who refused because he was going to be interviewed alongside a climate-change sceptic “in the interests of balance.†This is not a balanced issue, and shouldn’t be seen as one. And any tool for raising consciousness, whether it is emotional or scientific or statistical or whatever, is valid. I realize that saying this runs the risk of continuing to further entrench fixed positions, but I don’t think there’s a divide to speak across in this instance. If the house is on fire, there’s no point arguing with the person who says it isn’t. As far as representing the problems of climate change in an emotional fashion is concerned, I think maybe one way to avoid manipulativeness is to show the continuing validity of Donne’s “no man is an island,†to represent the fact that we are all – from the level of the planet down to that of the community, the neighborhood, the family – connected to one another, and our actions cause joy or pain to those around us.
I agree with you. To end, are you working on anything else at the moment?
I have just finished (to the extent that you ever think these things are finished) a supernatural detective novel, an uncanny story set in London and Norfolk. I’m quite pleased with it. And as far as the future is concerned, I am working on another novel that I’m not quite ready to talk about yet, as well as some short stories. The things that interest me stay the same, more or less: the way that the planet is changing, and our role on it as custodians or parasites, embodying the problem and the solution at the same time.
Thanks so much, Marian. I hope we stay in touch, particularly about your studies and new works of fiction.
Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge). Mary lives in the lower mainland of British Columbia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.
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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.
Storytelling is a vital skill to have when talking about climate change. In this episode podcast, I introduce you to novelist Aaron Thier, a master storyteller. In his book Mr. Eternity, Thier takes readers on a 1,000 year odyssey.
The main character calls himself Daniel Defoe. We never learn his real name. Old Dan can’t seem to die. Five different narrators in five different periods from 1500 to 2500 bump into this traveler. The book is brilliant, hilarious, deeply moving, weird. It is essential reading for climate advocates. Learn why Aaron wrote the book and the challenges novelists face when telling climate stories. Aaron also reads extended excerpts from the book.
Coming up next month, Peterson Toscano uses comic storytelling and performance art to re-imagine a well-known Bible story but this time with a climate change twist.
As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson reissues The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org
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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.
Creative Carbon Scotland has added expertise in climate solutions, business change and a creative practitice through new board members. Ragne Low, Lewis Hetherington, Clare Harris Matthew Rate have joined the board at an exciting time in the organisation’s development.
Creative Carbon Scotland believe that the arts and culture have an essential role in achieving the transformational change to a sustainable future, and these new additions will help to strengthen our work.
A climate expert board
Ragne is an expert on the climate crisis and energy policy. She holds a post at the Scottish Government where she works on the decarbonisation of heating. She was formerly at the Centre for Energy Policy, University of Strathclyde, and before that was Programme Manager of ClimateXChange, Scotland’s centre of expertise on climate change. She has a long track record of working with academic and policy communities to generate research impact and help inform policy and practice across climate change mitigation and adaptation. Ragne comes from a public policy background, with nine years’ experience at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She is also the Chair of the Board at Sniffer.
“This is a time of tremendous opportunity to drive positive change and Creative Carbon Scotland is in a unique position to help organisations and communities to address their climate impacts and adapt to our changing climate. I’m thrilled to be joining the Creative Carbon Scotland Board and really look forward to supporting Creative Carbon Scotland’s innovative work at the intersection of culture and climate change action.â€
Ragne Low
An arts board
Lewis is a Glasgow-based playwright and theatre-maker whose work is rooted in collaboration and storytelling. His previous work with the National Theatre of Scotland includes Tin Forest: South West, Instructions for Butterfly Collectors (Traverse) and The Archivist (Òran Mór). As associate of Analogue he has won two Fringe Firsts and the Arches Brick Award for his work on Mile End, Beachy Head, 2401 Objects (with Oldenburg Staatstheater) and Stowaway. With Catrin Evans he wrote and directed Leaving Planet Earth for Grid Iron, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival.
Other theatre credits include 5 (National Youth Theatre), A Perfect Child, Sea Change(Òran Mór), Friends Electric (Visible Fictions), Three Little Pigs, Red Riding Hood andGoldilocks (Platform). With Ailie Cohen he created The Secret Life of Suitcases (Unicorn) and Cloud Man both of which are currently touring internationally. Lewis’ work has been presented throughout the Scotland and the rest of the world including performances in Australia, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Germany, USA and Japan. He is a former Board member of the Playwrights Studio Scotland.
He has been working as the Embedded Artist with Bike for Good on ‘Velocommunities‘, the 1000th Climate Challenge Fund project, to use theatre and video to document and explore Glasgow’s transition to a more sustainable city.
“As an artist I’m always interested in telling stories which are not being told, asking questions which don’t have easy answers, and amplifying urgent concerns about the world.Â
For me it’s really about creating space for new ways of seeing the world, giving audience a chance to reassess and reflect. That’s why I think the arts have an absolutely integral role in the way we talk about sustainability, it encourages us to explore complicated, mysterious, ambiguous terrain, to face real beauty and real horror on personal and universal scales, and begin to process what world we live in now, and how we might change it.â€Â
Lewis Hetherington
Clare has taken over as the Director of SCAN (Scottish Contemporary Arts Network), a founding member of Creative Carbon Scotland, and takes the place on the board of their former director. She has a background in publishing and communications and has edited a range of award-winning titles covering arts, culture and social affairs. Her experience includes working with organisations across the UK, including The Big Issue and Scottish Refugee Council. Her work in the arts includes communications support for CCA, Trongate 103 and Glasgow International, as well as time spent co-ordinating Glasgow’s Youth Music Forum.
“We know that artists and visual art organisations are able to create innovative ways of questioning the way we live, and as such we believe it’s important for SCAN to be part of this discussion. SCAN is committed to supporting the work of Creative Carbon Scotland, and to growing our own role to positively influence the wider sector and public to be engaged with environmental challenges.â€
Clare Harris
A changing board
Matthew is Head of Portfolio management at Fujitsu having previously worked as Head of Strategy & Business Change at Fujitsu, UK and Ireland and in Fujitsu Services as a Business Servies Lead and Business Transformation Manager. He has a masters in Business Administration from the University of Edinburgh. He originally worked with Creative Carbon Scotland through a placement organised by the Foundation for Social Improvement which works to offer strategic support to small charities.
See the full Creative Carbon Scotland board and find out about the full range of expertise helping to set the strategic direction of the organisation.
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.
I’m writing this from the misty mountains of Qingliangshan National Forest Park, a stunningly beautiful natural area in Zixi county, Jiangxi province, in rural China. The closest railway station (Nan Cheng) is over two hours away. It doesn’t just feel remote here, it really is. Though the soil is fertile, the people friendly, the air fresh and the water clean, the area is facing other difficulties: the last school closed last year because there were no students left, and the (aging) population is declining as the remaining young people trade rural life for city life. Family fragmentation and depopulation are the unfortunate consequences of a generation in pursuit of an urban lifestyle.
Local landscape of Qingliangshan
Rural life is not appealing to this generation of Chinese; the prevalent attitude toward the countryside is that if offers no desirable work opportunities (farming is too physically straining), it’s low-tech, it’s full of bugs and snakes, there are no good hospitals and no prestigious schools. Even if Chinese youth was interested in a more simple life in the country, no Chinese parent would endorse this plan.
My workshop during the Lucitopia Rural Design Challenge
So it was a bold move when Lucitopia Town Limited Company, in collaboration with C-Platform, Xiamen MeXdia Creativity & Technology, and Creative Cooperative decided to organize a “Rural Design Challenge.†They brought over 60 international design students and volunteers to spend a week in the mountains of Qingliangshan, doing field research and interviewing locals, in order to come up with informed proposals to re-invigorate the area.
The aim of the Rural Design Challenge is to encourage students to come up with ideas that can be implemented and benefit the local community – bringing people in, creating work opportunities, and feeding the local economy. The area was coined Lucitopia Town in order to brand it and its possible products for an international audience. I joined the group for a week as lecturer, mentor, and as a member of the jury, selecting the winning proposal(s). A task not to be thought of lightly as the founders of Lucitopia Town are ambitious and hope to actually implement some of the best design ideas.
Lucitopia could potentially serve as a model, a best practice example for other remote villages as exodus to the city is a problem occurring across China (and to some extent across the world). It is clear from the marketing language, with terms such as “Design Creation,†“Mountain Stories,†“New Rural Lifestyle,†and “Future Fantasy,†and from Lucitopia branded honey, tote bags, and other products, that they are aching to be launched into the world even though the site is hardly established.
We sleep in containers (very much resembling Shoreditch Boxpark in London) that look alien in the leafy green bushiness of the region. I guess the aspiration is to look like a hip-ish eco-village, but it looks more like a construction site. Because of recent heavy storms, the (rain and mountain) water storage tanks are clogged with sand and leaves and there is no running water.
In addition to being a design challenge, this becomes an immediate social challenge: some of the students (and even teachers) find it very hard to cope without running water for 24 hours. For many, this is their first time in Asia, or even their first time away from the city. They are confronted with cultural differences and/or are lost in translation, on top of having to deal with jet lag. Stress, chaos, and tears abound. It’s a proper baptism as it becomes apparent how detached city people are from rural life. However, the situation has the benefit of pointing students toward possible design challenges/solutions concerning the site.
The local church with surrounding farmland
Over the the next few days, we explore local villages and farms in small groups and it all becomes crystal clear why we are here. Lucitopia proves an excellent base for further exploration: the area is largely undeveloped (which is not a given in China), the small-scale organic farming practices are inspiring, and the most incredible natural resources grow abundantly around us. We come across high quality fresh green bamboo, raspberries, honeysuckle, shiitake, peanuts, tea plantations, spring water, wild herbs used in Chinese medicine, and bees raised for honey. The whole area is teeming with life and potential. The students are excited and pick up on the many possibilities immediately.
What is also interesting about the area is that the local inhabitants are comprised of two different groups. In 1959, a dam was built in Qiandao Lake, Chun’an County in the neighboring Zhejiang Province. The construction of the reservoir displaced local people who were brought to Zixi. Completely dispossessed, they had to start their lives from scratch again, starting with building their own house. Their architectural style and ways of living and farming are very different from those of the people who had been there for generations, making the landscape diverse on multiple levels.
The students are buzzing around for brainstorms, surveys, and prototyping, interrupted by the occasional identity crisis. Some ideas seem naive and Western to me, some so good that they are more likely to lead to mass tourism than conservation of the area – which is actually my biggest fear with this project. Occasionally they strike a nice balance, ranging from foraging walks and site-specific recipes, to a Renewable Energy Light Festival and culinary school with the local ladies.
On the evening before the final day, the volunteers organize a “Chinese evening.†We sing and dance, learn about paper-cutting, calligraphy, tea ceremonies, and there’s a contest picking as many peanuts as possible with chopsticks in one minute. When I go outside to cool down from hysterical peanut picking and admire the starry night, I get talking to one of the students who is still grappling with her proposal. She has plenty of ideas but still isn’t convinced there is something that would bring people to travel so remotely.
Yet look at us, I think. We are a group of over 70 young (some would say talented) people, from 18 different countries, coming from educational institutions in Singapore, Russia, China, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany. We are dancing and drinking tea with the locals of Qingliangshan, showing our dedicated interest, and using all our energy to come up with creative ideas. From where I stand, the so-called middle of nowhere looks like the centre of the universe. Perhaps the best idea has already been implemented.
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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 and the initiator of the Van Eyck Food Lab.
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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.
American sculptor and installation artist Nancy Cohen is passionate about water, so much so that much of her work for the past 12 years has focused on the topic. Her large-scale installations are the product of significant research on the history and ecosystems of individual waterways that have been damaged by human interventions and climate change.
I spoke to Cohen recently about her motivation for addressing the nature of waterways, her choice of materials and her fundamental approach to creating what she called, “beauty with an edge.â€
Why Water?
Cohen has spent most of her life observing the rivers near where she has lived and worked, both as a child and as an adult. These include the East and Hudson Rivers in New York and the Mullica and Hackensack Rivers in New Jersey, where she now resides. As a result of this day-to-day exposure to rivers, Cohen began examining “what was going on in the water†and addressing in her work the changing ecosystems of the waterways around her. At times in collaboration with environmental scientists and landscape architects, she witnessed the causes of the changes (industrial development, overbuilding, overfishing, littering, chemical waste dumping, dredging, etc.) as well as their consequences (polluted water, loss of habitats, loss of species, invasive species intrusion, flooding, salt water intrusion, etc.).
Although Cohen clearly acknowledges the negative, man-made impact on waterways, her installations, sculptures and drawings are filled with a sense of awe at the ability of some plants and animals to adapt and survive in their altered conditions, as well as recognize both the strength and fragility of water. Despite her tendency to focus on nature’s remarkable capacity for adaptation and to create works of immense beauty, Cohen admits that she is “not a blind optimist†when it comes to the future of the environment. She is making artwork that has an “edge,†and though alluring, often receives responses from viewers suggesting that her installations appear to be dystopian habitats.
Materials
Cohen’s installations and paintings are comprised primarily of paper and glass that she makes herself, along with other media chosen to serve her vision for the pieces. Her decision to use paper and glass as the foundation for her work is based on her commitment to materials that reflect a connection to water and to the waterway sites themselves. Cohen explains:
Water is an intrinsic component in making paper. During the paper-making process, the artist is literally immersed in water. Paper also allows for the reflection of water’s movements and color changes and can accommodate grasses and other natural materials that are embedded in the paper itself. In addition, many of the waterways I have addressed, such as the Mullica River in South Jersey, have had a long history of paper-making along their shores. Similarly, sand is a major component used in glass-making, which also took place in factories along these waterways.
Elements of a General Theory of Hydrodynamics
Cohen’s installation Elements of a General Theory of Hydrodynamics is part of an exhibition entitled “Summation and Absence,†on view through August 16, 2019 at the BioBat Art Space on the Brooklyn waterfront in New York. According to the curators, “each installation opens a fresh portal into what is at stake for life on this planet, inviting the viewer to reflect on the beauty and complexity of life within a vulnerable ecosystem.†Elements of a General Theory of Hydrodynamics was originally created in 2008 for the Holland Paper Biennale at the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, Netherlands.
The installation reflects Cohen’s understanding of the current state of the Mullica River in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. As she described it,
In coming to know the Pine Barrens – from readings, from conversations with marine biologists and environmentalists and, more directly, from a winter boat ride through the marshes – I began to feel the fragile ecosystem as a fragile presence in itself. As in our own lives, elements hang in the balance, each one necessary, vulnerable, beautiful and above all, interdependent…
I am struck by the endless planes of both still and undulating water and the deep equilibrium and balance of the place. As just one example, the waters of the estuary are of many kinds, distinct but intermingled. The browns and blues – and yellows and greens – of the gradual progression from river to sea find their way into sculptural forms of handmade paper that look as if they might have been stained by the passage.
More generally, the waterways are in slow and constant evolution, much as we are. Form, space and color are never static. In its movement the water changes what it touches – it quite literally moves the environment that gives it form. And, lastly, the nature-in-itself of the estuary does not exist alone. A man-made world impinges and is impinged upon. But the necessity of evolution, of impact and especially of inescapable but perilous interaction – this is what each of us confronts in every moment of our lives. In its moods and modes, I have found the ways of the water very human.
Nancy Cohen, Elements of a General Theory of Hydrodynamics. Handmade paper and wire, 47 x 11 x 8 inches, 2008. CODA Museum, Apeldoorn, Netherlands.
Works on Paper
Not confining herself to installations and sculpture, Cohen is a prolific creator of mixed media works on paper. Her most recent paper images, along with mixed media glass sculptures, were shown at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City from March through May of this year. The seven works on paper were based on waters observed during two artist’s residencies this past summer in Samara, Dominican Republic and in Eastport, Maine. The images shown below and at the beginning of this article are based on Cohen’s examination of the shoreline of Eastport, Maine. Both pieces address what’s left of the fishing and canning factories, which have been abandoned as a result of overfishing in the area and have since fallen into the ocean. Underside depicts how the water is reclaiming the architecture; Remnant reveals the remaining pieces of the wooden piers that supported the factories and have become covered with “seaweed creatures.â€
Cohen’s process in creating these works incorporates water at every stage. She first made the blue background paper from the fiber of abaca, an herbaceous plant similar to the banana plant. Then, using wet pulp from various fibers, she formed the surface imagery, which leaves the impression that it has been stitched. Even the irregular, undulating quality of the paper evokes the intrinsic movement of water.
Nancy Cohen, Remnant. Paper, pulp and handmade paper, 54 x 54 inches, 2018.
Hackensack Dreaming
Hackensack Dreamingis a monumental installation inspired by the post-industrial landscape of the Mill Creek Marsh, a highly polluted section of the Hackensack River near a popular mall in Secaucus, New Jersey. Cohen described her first look at the site during the winter of 2014 in the following way:
A few steps from the shopping center parking lot, we entered a quiet space where pools of flat, still water gave way to the tops of wooden tree stumps that seemed to break free from thin sheets of ice while simultaneously appearing to encapsulate them as they ruptured the surface of the pale blue water. The stump forms are inexplicable, magical, sculptural. They seem to embody fragility, perseverance and a caught moment. Conceptual ideas I have been moving around in my work for years were suddenly presented to me besides the New Jersey Turnpike.
Crafted from handmade glass, rubber, metal and handmade paper, Hackensack Dreaminghas been exhibited in a number of venues including the Visual Arts Gallery of the New Jersey City University in Jersey City, NJ (2015) and the Agnes Varis Art Center at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, NY (2016). In a review of the installation for ArteFuse, an on-line contemporary art blog, A. Bascove described his impression of the room-sized piece:
This is a dream of thousands of years ago, before mammals walked the earth, when these waters teemed with trilobites, brachiopods, jellyfish, early crustaceans and sea sponges, the earliest forms of life…
Cohen’s skill and virtuosity are in full command as she finds the poetry in the ruins and memories of a forgotten, once vital, living body of water. The passage of time, the impersonal destruction by human encroachment never entirely supersedes the recognition of sublime beauty and the pulse of life in the most unexpected places.
After reading numerous articles and looking at many images in preparation for this article, I was impressed by both the evolution and clear focus of Cohen’s work over the past twelve years as she developed a body of work on the enduring beauty, power and fragility of water. It was also clear to me that Cohen has perfected her craft in papermaking and glassmaking to the point where it effectively evokes the state of our environment today. As she told me in my interview with her, this is, as a human being and as an artist, her contribution to the critical conversation on climate change, the most important existential issue of our time.
(Top image: Nancy Cohen, Underside. Paper, pulp and ink on handmade paper, 25 x 50 inches.)
This article is part of Imagining Water, a series on artists of all genres who are making the topic of water a focus of their work and on the growing number of exhibitions, performances, projects and publications that are appearing in museums, galleries and public spaces around the world with water as a theme.
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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. Her latest bodies of work focus on the threat of rising tides, our new plastic seas and the wars that are predicted to occur in the future over access to clean water. She is also the co-creator of two interactive public art projects: The Wave, which addresses our mutual need for and interdependence on water andHome, 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.
In the light of the climate change bill currently going through the Scottish Parliament, which makes clear that every part of Scottish society and business will need to radically reduce its carbon emissions, one of our Board members asked whether our work could be useful in other fields with lots of small-medium enterprises. We’ve been very successful at getting the arts climate active. Could Creative Carbon Scotland’s work with the cultural sector be a valuable model for others to apply elsewhere?
Well, for a start, change by individual organisations is very difficult
One of the things I learned from the research for my PhD was that individual behaviour change doesn’t really work. Individuals – and for that matter organisations both small and large – operate within a complex web of factors that hinder change. Individuals are prone to habitual behaviours that are very hard to shake off: just move the bin in your kitchen and see for how long you go to the wrong place. Organisations have the same problem: they very often do things just because that’s the way things are done and the friction caused by making changes is difficult to overcome. And both individuals and organisations are influenced by others that set certain rules or dictate (sometimes in the nicest possible way) how we do things. As a theatre director I was aware that how I behaved in the rehearsal room affected everyone else: if I was stressed and rushed, we all would be, but if I was relaxed (or at least acted so!) we would all work better. But often there are more overt influences: we have to submit reports to everyone from auditors to Boards that measure particular things, so we work to achieve those targets. If Triple Bottom Line reporting became standard even for the small limited company reporting to Companies House, sustainability would have a much higher profile.
Working on Structures
As we were developing Creative Carbon Scotland, therefore, influencing the structures within which cultural organisations work was an important part of the plan. We continue to work with individuals through our Green Tease programme (aimed mostly at artists and individuals working in sustainability), and through our Green Arts Initiative, which provides a network and support system for individual Green Champions in over 220 cultural organisations. We focus on organisations through the Green Arts Initiative and through our Carbon Management work. But our work with structures and the bodies that shape them has recently taken some important new steps.
Carbon Management Planning
We’re gearing up to continue last year’s work with Creative Scotland, which one way or another shapes the world within which many arts, screen and creative industries organisations work. Our work will focus on the requirement for 121 organisations that receive Regular Funding (ie subsidy for a period of three years, to allow for planning and stability) to develop and implement Carbon Management Plans. Each organisation has identified a project to reduce emissions from its main source for the current year – as many cultural organisations have rather ‘lumpy’ carbon profiles that can vary widely depending on their programme of work, this is more appropriate than seeking an across the board reduction. This programme is itself aligned with the 2009 Climate Change Act’s Duties for Public Bodies, demonstrating how structures influence behaviour.
This year Creative Scotland and we are encouraging the officers who manage the Regular Funded Organisations’ (RFOs) relationships with the funder to attend workshops alongside senior staff from the RFOs themselves. We’re building on training last year when we worked with the RFOs and the officers separately. This time by bringing them together we want to help each group to understand the challenges involved in achieving the carbon neutrality by 2045 target set by the Scottish Government and the even more stretching zero-by-2037 target set by Glasgow and Edinburgh City Councils, all reinforced by the the IPCC’s SR1.5 report last year and the more recent report from the UK’s Committee on Climate Change. These targets mean that both RFOs and Creative Scotland need to move on from doing ‘business as usual but lower carbon’ to fundamentally reviewing what arts organisations do as well as how they do it.
The City of Edinburgh Council’s Cultural Service, Screen, Theatre Forum in Ireland, Adaptation Scotland…
Meanwhile we have helped the City of Edinburgh Council’s Cultural Service to align their grant funding conditions with those of Creative Scotland as their contribution to the city’s work on reducing its carbon emissions. For the first time any organisation receiving a regular annual cultural grant will be asked to develop and implement their Carbon Management Plan, or if, like the main Edinburgh Festivals and the RFOs, they already have one, to allow us to share their information with the Council. We’ll be providing free training to organisations new to this work and supporting the Council officers in their analysis of the data. I think this plan is so far unique among Scotland’s local authorities, just as Creative Scotland’s Carbon Management Planning is, we think, a world first. Other local authorities – feel free to join the party!
At an earlier stage, Screen Scotland the new unit that supports film and TV production, recently issued a tender for some research to look at how their funding schemes and the facilities they support can be used to increase the environmental sustainability of the industry in Scotland. We’re working with colleagues in Ireland on developing support for Irish cultural organisations which want to improve their environmental performance. And we’re working with Adaptation Scotland on a couple of projects. Our Creative Europe project Cultural Adaptations will help develop guidance for cultural SMEs on adapting to the impacts of climate change and both it and another culture/SHIFT project in Levenmouth include work which aims to change the thinking within organisations working on adaptation. Each of these examples is about achieving change at scale by intervening at a higher level.
Can we help others?
All this effort leads to that Board member’s question: can we use our experience to export this approach to other sectors? The organisations we work with are nearly all SMEs and many are micro-enterprises, and for the most part climate change mitigation and adaptation work has focused on larger entities, but there may be many other SME groups that could follow our example. Arts organisations often think they are unlike others, but sports organisations share similar characteristics: voluntary or non-profit status, unusual buildings used intermittently but very busily at times, lots of travel by audiences or teams/participants, loyal audiences that are attracted and retained by emotion and values as much as market considerations.
For example, the guidance that Adaptation Scotland provide is good but generic, and when we tried it out on a group of cultural managers they had plenty of ideas about how to make it more relevant not only to cultural SMEs but SMEs in general. (Stop Press: Funnily enough, the very good new Capability Framework that Adaptation Scotland has just produced for the Public Sector I think partly helps address this issue, although it’s aimed at much larger bodies.) We’ll be helping Adaptation Scotland to apply this learning but could we also be helping others? At our Green Arts Conference last November attendees from the Scottish Government were impressed by how we’d achieved a level of engagement and knowledge that would be the envy of their colleagues working with other sectors with no obvious connection with the world of climate change.
We’re lucky to work with a small and coherent sector that has a quango subsidising it, meaning we can use the lever of funding to get engagement, but the Green Arts Initiative – more than 220 member organisations and growing – is a voluntary scheme which is not connected to funding, suggesting there are other reasons for participation. We have been supported by Creative Scotland from the beginning, and in return we’ve helped them deliver on their duties under the 2009 Climate Change Act. Their foresight has prepared the sector well now that the climate crisis is really taking hold and significant change is fast approaching. And I think our background in the arts provided a level of trust – a trust which we work hard to maintain.
It seems to me as though we have a lot to offer others who need to engage their sectors in addressing the climate crisis. Let me know where you think we could help.
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.
We are pleased to announce that our annual gathering and knowledge-exchange event for for the Green Arts community will take place on Tuesday 8 October in Edinburgh, Scotland, during Scotland’s Climate Week!
The conference aims to be the central meeting point for Scotland’s cultural Green Champions, and those interested in how the arts and cultural sector is taking on the challenge of environmental sustainability.
With a focus on climate justice, adaptation to the impacts of climate change, carbon management, using the arts to shift our wider culture, and best-practice from our member organisations, the full-day event will showcase how we can lead the way to a sustainable Scotland.
Find out more
You can find out more about the Green Arts Conference, including reports from the previous conferences by clicking here.
Register your interest
To be the first to hear about programme announcements, participation opportunities and early-bird tickets, register your interest below:
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.
Irish visual artist Siobhán McDonald’s recent exhibition Crystalline: Hidden Monuments at Limerick City Gallery of Art explored geology, archaeology, human intervention, time and climate change through a series of interconnected bodies of work. Running from February 1 to March 31, 2019, the solo exhibition unfolded over several rooms in LCGA, beginning with the artist’s 2017 work Crystalline. The final room of the exhibition was a multimedia enquiry into the Black Pig’s Dyke, an Iron-Bronze Age linear earthwork/monument in the north midlands of Ireland that is currently the subject of an archaeological research project which uses radiocarbon dating as part of its process.
The heart of the archaeological enquiry is to determine the function(s) of this dyke, which was a bank roughly nine meters wide and in some parts six meters high, with ditches of roughly three meters depth each side. Excavations in 1982 revealed evidence of a palisade lining the bank. The dyke crosses five counties, which are now the border counties between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. McDonald was commissioned by Monaghan County Council and Creative Ireland in 2017 to research and create new work with the Black Pig’s Dyke as her starting point.
The artist’s practice naturally finds interconnectedness everywhere – particularly when looking at human interventions into nature and the consequences of these interventions. In this exhibition, interconnectedness was highlighted in part through the bringing together of explorations of Black Pig’s Dyke and a formerly hidden monument revealed in the land by a drought in Ireland in 2018.
Sound Inscription Score, 6-meter drawing on antique paper. Following a seam of geology and gold across Ireland. Linear earthworks circa 2000 BC. Photo by Kevin Lim.
Much of McDonald’s work is framed by the relationship between Humans and Nature, and most notably by her interest in mapping time: geological time, personal time and how events can repeat, reoccur, echo or act as reminders, signaling to us and being reinterpreted in new contexts. For example, the burning of the Palisades signaled war, crisis point, something being concluded; are we at this point now again? We are in a time of great need: needing to change the impact of multinational industry and demanding that governments support meaningful change – it is not just about individual-consumer impact. The archaeological, scientific and artistic interest in the Dyke shows that after centuries of myopia, our society is willing to look beyond our own time and needs, and investigate the time and needs of others before us.
What is known about the research on the Dyke is that it will not lead to one simple, conclusive answer as to why this was made and then partially destroyed. The Black Pig’s Dyke Regional Project Phase One Report Summary states: “It is evident from the research carried out to date that the linear earthworks can no longer be reduced to just one interpretation.â€
An artist will often ask questions knowing that there may be no answers, and scientific research often yields more questions than conclusions. However, our acceptance with not knowing, or our recognition that the Dyke was numerous things at numerous times, is acceptable to us. We can simultaneously know and not know, something that seems at odds with our social media-led culture where someone or something is either held up for praise or mercilessly judged, with no in-between.
Palisades, a row of charred wood, lined the gallery wall, creating a border and leading the viewer to the 4-minute video Future Monuments. Palisades references evidence recorded in an archaeological investigation of Black Pig’s Dyke, which shows that the bank was lined with a wooden fence or palisade that was burned, presumably during a time of war. The artist chose not to present us with images of an intact structure or a wall of flames, but with what is left.
In the center of the square gallery space, the circular charred wood sculpture work What Remains anchored the gallery. Like Palisades, it spoke of what is left: the mark of human intervention on the planet. It showed that nothing ever really “ends†or disappears; things move on and change, usually carrying echoes, scars or memories that inform what happens next. Working with carbonized wood positioned this exhibition in the realm of archaeology and science rather than myth. McDonald unraveled myth from fact but did not destroy the presence of myth: she created a porous context and a liminal space that allowed for these multiple layers to be seen clearly.
While working with the archaeologists in charge of the research project, the artist’s process involved looking at facts, what remains, and what the traces of humans and the rest of nature leave for us to see as evidence. The evidence of the palisade being burned speaks clearly of an “ending.†This is not to say the dyke ceased to function after the burning, but maybe its function, or its meaning, changed.
Palisade, pyrolysis (burnt in an environment without oxygen). Dimensions variable. Future Monuments, 4-minute film. On-site interventions on The Black Pig’s Dyke on Winter Solstice 2018 and New Grange during the drought in July 2018.
However, this “ending†is viewed by the artist as the ending of one thing and the beginning of another: What Remains is circular – a motif that was repeated several times in the gallery space and in other works throughout the rest of the LCGA exhibition. This circling, or cycling, was shown in the Future Monuments video by the revealing of a crop circle during the Summer 2018 drought: this echo of the past reveals the damage we are doing through global warming, and reminds us that our time, in comparison to historical time or geological time, is minimal. The contrast between how long humans have been on Earth and the amount of damage that has been done in that short time is explored and presented in a way that we can relate to in our own lives by exposing the cycles, meanings and values within that time, and how they connect to our history and the land we inhabit. We are not apart from nature, despite our constant attempts to distance ourselves from it. We are a threat from within it.
There is a sense that time (in the widest possible interpretation) is running out in Future Monuments, which was filmed in mid-summer in Newgrange and mid-winter at the Black Pig’s Dyke – the Summer and Winter Solstices. These Solstice points remind the viewer of the importance of measuring and mapping the sun in prehistoric eras – and perhaps one of the functions of the Dyke was to measure and track the sun’s activities in relation to place. Future Monuments’ audio gives a suspenseful, cinematic quality to the non-narrative video work. The video itself was displayed on a small screen, with the viewer having to turn their back to the large circular What Remains in order to view it.
This scale could be interpreted as benign as a minimal intervention; rather than leaving her own mark to add to the many layers of human interventions, the artist attempted, in her practice, to leave minimal traces. This was echoed in her minimal interventions into the two locations in the video. The soundscape, however, filled the gallery space and seemed to be the sound piece for the entire space rather than just the video, endlessly signaling and messaging. The gallery became a place for relic, prophecy, consolation and warning – the viewer was at once made calm and uneasy.
We are in a time of great need.
Hidden Monuments will open in Monaghan, Ireland on June 27, 2019. The show will run until July 30. McDonald is also exhibiting some of the works at the International Art Fair: VOLTA Basel 2019, June 10-15.
(Top image: Lunula, 24-karat gold, whole calfskin and smoke using a seismograph to inscribe earth signals onto paper surfaces. 120 cm square. What remains, floor installation: birch, oak and willow. Dimensions variable.)
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Maeve Mulrennan is the Head of Visual Art & Education in Galway Arts Centre, a multidisciplinary public space in the West of Ireland. She has written for Visual Artists Ireland NewsLetter, Paper Visual Art, CIRCA and Billion Art Journal and contributed several essays for exhibitions and artists publications. She has an MA in Visual Art Practices from IADT Dún Laoghaire, h.Dip in Arts Administration form NUI Galway, BA in Fine Art from Limerick School of Art and Design, and BA in English Literature, Sociology / Politics & German from NUI Galway.
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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.
