ecoartscotland has worked with UNFIX, the DIY festival of performance on several occasions, including in 2019 when we hosted Christiana Bisset’s embedded artist project. Chris Fremantle and Anne Douglas also performed at UNFIX 2019, with selected readings from the works of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison.Â
With the next iteration of UNFIX planned for this summer, possibly with some haptic elements as well as some digital, Chris Fremantle met with Paul Michael Henry and Ane Lopez. They discussed performance as everyday life, what UNFIX stands for and how it relates to other projects that question our culture, as well as the climate emergency.
UNFIX 2021 is in partnership with The Barn in Aberdeenshire as well as CCA in Glasgow, and the Open Call for Proposals (deadline 2 April) includes opportunities to work with both those organisations.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
The Barn, Banchory, has always had an environmental dimension, including allotments, a wild garden, biofuel boilers and shares the site with Buchanan’s, a slow food bistro. But as the largest rural multi-arts centre in Scotland, The Barn has used the challenges of Covid and the impact on the performing arts to rethink what it might mean to be an ecological organisation. To do that, amongst other initiatives, the team created the Becoming Earthly programme to engage with artists also interested in the question of what it means to be terrestrial. For the initial phase eleven artists/practices participated from across the visual and performing arts. This programme involved seven sessions, each led by a different person [1], and had physical, reflective as well as discussion elements. As David explains, Becoming Earthly isn’t a conventional project. It has generated its own energy and is continuing.
Chris Fremantle was an Associate Producer on the programme, and he put out a call to participants to reflect on what Becoming Earthly meant to them. This is David Haley’s response. The poem above and at the bottom is David Haley’s alternative to an image.
Reflection
This is not a review of Becoming Earthly and given the brevity of this text, much has been omitted, particularly the contributions of individuals at The Barn and each of the Session Leaders. The question is, how did Becoming Earthly influence my practice and thinking? This reflection starts with my application to Becoming Earthly:
Question: Emancipation from outmoded industrial urban infrastructures, corporate digital technologies and oppressive education is vital for human ecological resilience; how may we regenerate fundamental culture for critical recovery with Earth?
Expectation (extracts): I hope Becoming Earthly will enable me to explore and learn with others, new ways of thinking and doing to generate the critical mass for transition beyond the current straightjacket of social norms … I hope that we (will seek) timely, regenerative means of listening to others, human and non-human alike.
Together we may pursue diverse ‘capable futures’ to create the capacity to dream with passion, hope and grace.
Structure – Form – Process
Having the opportunity was very important, because it represented acceptance. Even as a mature artist, researcher and ecopedagogue, I still need assurances that the work I do is relevant, so being offered a place with Becoming Earthly (BE) was/is important. Zoom is a very particular environment to interact with others and given the ongoing pandemic, it is one that some of us accept as the ‘new normal’, some view as a great techno-communications advancement and others as a necessary evil. However, I think we must remain aware that it is not the same as meeting people face to face and it brings with it both favours and disadvantages different people’s communication and learning skills. At times, I find it difficult to contain my enthusiasm and have to rein myself in to ensure that others have space and time. Managed with care, as a co-learning dialogue, BEhelped my awareness to aim for listening in creative Zoom encounters I have created or participated in since.
Content, Relevance & Context
Given the conversational limitations of Zoom, notions of transition, transformation and regeneration did emerge and continue to do so. Some political widely/deeply cultural issues were explored beyond merely topical concerns, but overt expressions of outrage and passion are still considered unacceptable in polite society.
As for art and ecology, BE directly and indirectly touched on some aspects, particularly with John Newling’s work. While all participants seemed to be interested in his form of working and thinking, for some it seemed to be a relatively new phenomenon, so I learned that there is still a great need for further discourse on what ecological art might be and might become. Indeed, triggered by BE, the notion of ‘beginners mind’ [2] is something I have returned to.
There was some disquiet around the provision of academic texts, their relevance to artists and non-academic people. Personally, I wasn’t an academic until I, as an artist, needed to read and reflect upon complex issues. Given our contemporary, gross consumption of instant information and hyped culture of digital media, the texts provided by each session leader continue to provide good challenges and alternative perspectives for my slow thinking. It is worth noting the trust that built throughout the sessions, so maybe folk who were concerned about potential ‘academicism’ will be reassured and take the time to return to the texts.
Other Insights
Opening-up. Even as an aged, white, educated, male, artist, I thought of myself as pretty radical and empathetic to/with issues of colonialism and intersectionality, however BEopened me up to much deeper ‘acknowledgement’ – in the sense of John Coltrane’s Love Supreme, Part 1 [3] – re-examining the context in which we live, I see as essential to the process of BE. My reading has since found new paths of exploration, particularly around intersectionality, colonialism and nuances of pedagogy that previously I only saw as dialectical – rationalised arguments of political realities, now giving way to empathetic understanding. Dialogue as an art form is something I have been engaged with since the mid-90s and I immersed myself in Socratic and critical forms of dialogue, but BE expanded my capacity for feeling/experiencing perhaps, even empathising with these issues. And as personal transformative challenges, these are now embedded in my practice and engagement with others. Practically, I gained confidence and some skills to facilitate a series of Zoom, storying workshops with people experiencing stress and anxiety issues, What’s your story?.
Session 8 –BE was seven sessions, but ‘Unfinished…’ was generated by Paolo Maccagno’s initiative to self-organise. A great idea that takes the ‘what next?’ to a specific place of possible transformation, based on self-determinism. I like the idea of ‘Unfinished…’. It suggests evolutionary becoming, beyond hegemony; a dynamic to counteract many of society’s solution-led myths and takes Heidegger’s notion of daseinto that of grace (non-Christian) or becomingness [4]. If it works, it may emerge into a ‘Living Knowledge Network’; if it doesn’t, like most evolutionary events, it will at the very least have provided an opportunity…
Dreaming. Occasionally, at 3.30 in the morning, I find myself dreaming of cows at play, without guilt – an unresolved paradox that resonates from Wallace Heim’s session that found synergy between Play, Shame and Care.
Historically, emancipation takes time, sometimes a long time, for the conditions to be right. That is when ‘the most moral act of all is to create the space for life to move onwards’ [5] and when the time is right, like all revolutions, it will happen, ‘all at once and all together’ [6]. Becoming Earthy contributed generously to the former. I now await the latter; maybe a Second Becoming…?
down to earth dreaming
on becoming an artist
again and again
David Haley makes art with ecology, to inquire, learn and teach. He publishes, exhibits and works internationally with ecosystems and their inhabitants, using images, poetic texts, walking and sculptural installations to generate dialogues that question climate change, species extinction, urban development, transdisciplinarity and ‘critical recovery’ for ‘capable futures’.
Notes
[1] including Wallace Heim, Paolo Maccagno, John Newling, and Johan Siebers.
[2] Suzuki, S, (2020) Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: 50th Anniversary Edition Paperback. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications Inc.
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pi5ZJZ07ME and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Love_Supreme
[4] Hodge, J. (1995) Heidegger and Ethics. London: Routledge
[5] Pirsig, R. (1993) Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. London: Black Swan, 407
[6] Harrison, N (2017) On The Deep Wealth Of This Nation, Scotland. Lecture for The Barn at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
Robin Wall Kimmerer helps us to understand how humans can be important parts of living systems in our interactions with other living things (Braiding Sweetgrass). Gary Snyder discusses ‘reinhabitants’. Barry Lopez identifies three qualities that are for him critical in indigenous peoples’ ways of living.
…three qualities – paying intimate attention; a storied relationship to a place rather than a solely sensory awareness of it; and living in some sort of ethical unity with a place… (Barry Lopez, ‘We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight’. High Country News, 1998)
ecoartscotland is looking to commission a response to or reflection on the book Earth Writings. The four practices highlighted all offer very different ways of thinking about art practice from conventional constructions. If you are interested please send a short note outlining your interest with links to two relevant pieces of your own writing to chris [at]fremantle [dotorg] .
Earth Writings (2020) is a richly illustrated arts book of essays, artwork, and exhibition vignettes that explore a range of Irish environments — Bogs, Forests, Fields, Gardens — through four artists creative practices. Written as an invitation to think and act differently about our current earth crises, readers learn how healthier places and worlds can be made through the work of MONICA DE BATH, CATHY FITZGERALD, PAULINE O’CONNELL and SEOIDÃN O’SULLIVAN, artists working in southwest Ireland who, to borrow Donna Haraway’s (2016) words, ‘stay with the trouble’. Scholars PATRICK BRESNIHAN, NESSA CRONIN, GERRY KEARNS and KAREN E. TILL, respectively, engaged with the artists and collaborated to write short essays that reflect upon the artists’ embedded ecological and social practices that make ‘kin in lines of inventive connections’ (Haraway, 2016). Introductions by LUCINA RUSSELL (Kildare County Council Arts Service) and Karen E. Till (Maynooth University Department of Geography), with a short inset of 2019 exhibition images and artist’s statements.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
Yes, 2020 was a dumpster fire. To celebrate its end, we think back on than a year’s worth of trashy insights. Here are the top ten posts from Discard Studies in 2020 as determined by our readers! Here’s what you all read the most:
The New York City Department of Sanitation is the largest sanitation department in the world, and the only department with both an artist-in-residence and an anthropologist-in-residence. Not only does the DSNY continue to pick up waste and snow, it is also integral as first responders in urban disasters, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. This is an abbreviated history via archival photographs of NYC’s municipal waste collection history, posted in 2013 but still viewed regularly. We hear there’s a sanitation museum on the way in New York City, so readers rejoice!
One of George Waring’s White Wings cleans NYC streets, 1880s.
The ninth most read article this year was written only two months ago. It’s about how universalism eliminates and controls crucial aspects of difference. Evoking the universal “we†is a technique of discarding through differentiation in a way that upholds dominant power dynamics. If you’ve ever been convinced by claims that “we†are destroying the planet, or “we†have failed to advert environmental catastrophe, or “we†are consuming out of control, this post is for you.
This article has been in the top ten since its publication in 2016. Researchers have the potential to uncover particularly sensitive information that, when revealed, may have very real social and material consequences for research participants and their communities. Examples of this could include the presence of contamination (in places, bodies or animals), access to knowledge that is considered sacred, or interview responses that are political and potentially identifying. Additionally, we might be given access to potentially painful community events and experiences. As researchers interested in justice, how do we proceed helpfully and ethically in our research in such situations? Read on.
This image of a pregnant Inuk woman was taken during a four month long dump fire that occurred in the Arctic community of Iqaluit, Nunavut. During the fire, pregnant women and women of childbearing age were warned not to go outside due to risks of dioxin contamination. The Inuktitut syllabics written on her hand read ‘Taima’ or ‘enough’, referring to decades of government underfunding that contributed to this and many other dump fires. The image is an example of refusal, as the image refuses to depict Inuit as passive victims of slow violence, instead redirecting attention towards government institutions. The image was distributed to media outlets and became the Facebook profile photo of a local ‘Stop the Dump Fires’ protest group. Photo by Shawn Inuksuk, 2014.
A 2015 review with staying power! The central argument in Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor—that there’s a long history of people and their homes being treated as disposable—is worth restating. It’s worth shouting from the rooftops. Slow Violence is also a call to spend more time with literary efforts that stretch our understanding of temporal and spatial violence while evoking empathy without complacency, works that show how communities and individuals have lived with the ongoing legacies of this violence.
It was a slow day in the office in 2012 when we put together this digital gallery of mouldy art. Really, it;s just some beautiful images of artists who use mould as a medium. Something about 2020 brought viewers in. It is beauty in slow destruction, after all.
Daniele Del Nero, After Effects, paper, flour, mould.
A central framing question in discard studies is about the scale of different type of waste. This article from 2016 remains a touchstone that analyzes (and links to!!) some of the central figures in waste and disard studies: the oft-quoted statistic that municipal solid waste accounts for only three percent of the waste in the United States, and the world. It’s said that the remaining 97 percent is industrial. But how is that number made? Is it reliable? We dig deep.
Chart by the author, based on figures from MacBride 2012, Royt 2007, EPA 1987.
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a zillion times: trash is matter out of place. Waste is dirt. Or is it? Max Liboiron doesn’t think so, for two reasons: first, they find that many, many scholars are using the idea of matter out of place in contradictory ways that have acute implications for theories of power. This is important because many of us who might self identify with the field of discard studies are dedicated to justice and good relations in our work, and conflating different theories of power may actually have effects that scholars are opposed to! That is, scholars and students may be against oppression and would like to intervene into structures of power, but their use of “matter out of place†conflates different theories of power that can actually allow techniques of power to go unnoticed, and may even contribute to naturalizing them. Secondly, when they dug into the work of uncovering the uses and circulations of “matter out of place,†the editors of Discard Studies, three seasoned scholars of discard studies, came across some surprises! In short, while “matter out of place†has been used to talk about both blue bins and concentration camps, our theories should be able to distinguish between them.
Waste colonialism describes how waste and pollution are part of the domination of one group in their homeland by another group. The concept has been gaining traction since the 1990s to explain patterns of power in wasting and pollution. Because all waste and pollution are about power by maintaining structures that designate what is valuable and what is not, understanding the role of colonialism in waste is crucial for understanding waste and power generally. 2020 is a year where new forms of waste colonialism and imperialism have taken shape during the pandemic (particularly in flows of tourism and the class and racialization of essential workers that are both heroes and disposable simultenously), and in the effects of climate change and how the gains and burdens of extreme weather and wildfires are playing out at massive scales.
This very short article from 2017 has been making the rounds in 2020. Toxins are poisons produced within living cells or organs of plants, animals, and bacteria. Toxicants are synthetic, human-made, toxic chemicals. The article argues that the difference is not merely one of semantics, but of justice.
Our top post this year is, once again, a map. In 2016 and 2019 it was our number two. In 2017 and 2018 it was our number one and it is again this year! What staying power! It shows the 40 most influential environmental justice conflicts in recent American history included in a Global Atlas of Environmental Justice. In the United States, decades of research have documented a strong correlation between the location of environmental burdens and the racial/ethnic background of the most impacted residents. In an effort to choose landmark cases in the U.S. the team from University of Michigan elicited feedback from more than 200 environmental justice leaders, activists, and scholars in identifying these case studies.
“The map shows some of the most representative environmental justice conflicts in the United States. In an effort to choose landmark cases we elicited feedback from more than 200 environmental justice leaders, activists, and scholars in identifying these case studies. These cases represent a range of time periods, geographic regions, communities, and environmental challenges. However, they are only a very small subset of the many influential case studies that have contributed to the U.S. environmental justice movement past and present.â€
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
“It is our pleasure to invite your submission for artistic contributions at The Nature of Cities Festival, a global virtual gathering of interdisciplinary thinkers and doers working toward greener cities for nature and all people.
We will review submissions for artworks, performances, films, interventions, micro-talks, and practical workshops about cities and nature that resonate with the theme: radical imagination with nature and all people
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
Tim Collins and Reiko Goto Collins have spent the past year visiting the Midlands of Eire undertaking a Deep Mapping of Lough Boora. The thing they were invited to visit is a twenty-year old Sculpture Park looking for a new direction. The resulting publication By Collis and Goto is intended to contribute to the goal of an “exceptional and sustainable artistic vision†which will inform the future development of this Sculpture Park in the Land and Environmental Arts facility in Lough Boora Discovery Park.
Below you will find some key points on why peatlands are a current focus of policy intervention, and then you’ll find some examples of other artists and writers drawing attention to peatlands, working with scientists and communities, and representing peatlands to distant communities.
Collins and Goto describe ‘deep mapping’ as, “an attempt to become conscious of a place and its multiple layers of experience, meaning and value.†They say that is ideally a collective exercise which requires, “a commitment to lived histories and current discourse, walking and talking with a wide mix of people wherever possible.â€
The land of Lough Boora Sculpture Park has a long and varied story to be interrogated. 10,000 years ago, with the end of late Devensian Glaciation, the depositing of fen plants, forest, heather and sphagnum started a process of forming the raised bogs.
This landscape became the focus of resource extraction which “heated irish homes for centuries†and created jobs, prosperity and communities. Eventually, however, the move from resource extraction to renewable energy and land management became the new driver of change.
The development of the award-winning Sculpture Park in the new millennium brought a different animation to the landscape as aesthetic and community values became of greater importance. This transformation of the land was both a success and a struggle. Just as the choices to previously experimentally reinvent the land with a variety of planting techniques was never straight forward, so it was with how to best make art which “opens a space to imagine new social, ecological and economic relationships.â€
Peatlands are currently a focus at international, national and regional levels including in global environmental policy, UK and other national policy, and in Scottish Government policy and strategy.
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, along with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Wetlands International and other institutions launched the Global Peatlands Initiative at the UNFCCC COP22 in 2016. This highlights,
“Peat is partially decayed plant material that accumulates under water-logged conditions over long time periods. Natural areas covered by peat are called peatlands. Terms commonly used for specific peatland types are peat swamp forests, fens, bogs or mires. Peat is found around the world – in permafrost regions towards the poles and at high altitudes, in coastal areas, beneath tropical rainforest and in boreal forests.
Peatlands store large amounts of carbon. Although they cover less than three per cent of global land surface, estimates suggest that peatlands contain twice as much as in the world’s forests.â€
And goes on to highlight threats,
“The major threat to the peat carbon stocks globally is drainage. Drained peatlands are mainly used for agriculture and forestry, and peat is extracted for horticulture and energy production. Drainage of peatlands and poor management can result in a variety of problems, the most obvious of which are large and persistent peat fires, such as those in parts of Southeast Asia and Russia in recent years.
In addition to the often reported recent loss of tropical peatlands, degradation remains a significant source of emissions in many temperate and boreal countries after decades of non-sustainable use. In boreal areas, permafrost is thawing, causing land subsidence and potentially leading to high greenhouse gas emissions. Further degradation and loss of peat ecosystems, regardless of their location, could seriously hamper climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and the achievement of the Paris Agreement.â€
The UK Government’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) Natural Capital Account has a section on Peatlands which highlights,
around 12% of the UK land area.
provides over a quarter of the UK’s drinking water and
stores a significant amount of carbon making it an
important habitat for providing both provisioning and regulating ecosystem.
major tourist destination and provide cultural history
form some of the UK’s most extensive wild spaces and are
rich in rare and endangered wildlife boosting the UK’s biodiversity.
Key UK challenges identified include:
peatlands form both the highest and lowest value agricultural lands
agriculture on lowland peats, mainly in the east of England, include areas of high cropping value. However, this activity on peatlands has a negative impact on the peat from drainage and ploughing activities. It is estimated croplands on peat emit a total of 7,600 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year (kt CO2e yr-1) in the UK.
Key drivers of peatland restoration programmes:
conservative estimates of the benefits of meeting the committee on climate change objective of having 55% of peatland in good status were of the order of £45 billion to £51 billion over the next 100 years.
Robert Macfarlane’s essay on ‘counter-desecration’ challenges the assumption that the Brindled Moor on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides is a ‘wet desert’. He draws together the arguments for understanding the moor as a lived in place with a deep cultural history and not merely terra nulis to be used for a wind farm. His essay re-frames our understanding of the landscape with the explicit intention of affecting landscape decision-making. Macfarlane on the essay which appears in his collection Landmarks.
In Situ and The Gatherings – part of the Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership
Pendle Mobile Hut has been commissioned by In-Situ and Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership. The hut was designed and made by artist and architect Nick Wood of How About? Studio. It is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.
The Gatherings is a strand of work developed by arts organisation ‘In-Situ’ http://www.in-situ.org.uk/ as part of the £2.4m Pendle Hill Landscape Partnershipscheme, managed by Forest of Bowland AONB. In-Situ characterises itself as ‘embedding arts into everyday life’.
The Gatherings is described as follows,
“The Gatheringscame about because of the recognition for the need to open up access to the Pendle Hill Landscape and introduce artists and creative processes to explore the hill and its past, its ecosystems and the way people connect with it. As In-Situ, we are able to bring to the project our experience of working with people in place connecting people and re-positioning how we experience a place through art or artists interventions and processes, which often involve conversation, listening and working in response to these.
Through The Gatherings we are aiming to find longer term approaches and collaborations with artists and embedding artists into longer term programmes. Through differences in the way we commission artists, support the artistic process and encourage a slower, more embedded way of working in place, we are challenging the traditional ways that artists are commissioned to work in the landscape.
Rather than bring something to a place and say “this is artâ€, we aim to find better or more embedded ways to work with artists in the landscape that lead to more unexpected, subtle or meaningful interventions – and there is likely not be a visible permanent end result. This is challenging because it involves risk on both sides, as it is not always clear what the result or methods will be from the outset, and is a slow process involving investment of time in getting many people on board and talking and revising, honing ideas in a collaborative way.â€
a full-scale touring performance based on Five Verses on Six Sacks of Earth, a micro opera by artists Nastassja Simensky and Rebecca Lee. https://www.in-situ.org.uk/5-stacks
‘Pendle Peat Pie’ is a new regional dish developed by environment artist Kerry Morrison and local chef Andy Dean, in conversation with Sarah Robinson, a Conservationist and Ecologist. https://www.in-situ.org.uk/peat-pie
Working with peatland ecologists to engage public in restoration processes (by asking people to carry small bags containing Cotton Grass up the hill with them for planting at the top), potentially to be developed into large scale performative work;
Isabella Martin will be exploring the Pendle landscape and learning about the heritage of its drystone walls and hedges working with rural business partners.
Kate Foster, Galloway Glens and international projects
Kate Foster, line-drawing responded to the idea that Sphagnum species (bog-forming mosses) are typically 85% water.
Peat Cultures, Kate Foster’s work in the context of the Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership. She worked with the Crichton Carbon Centre to pilot aspects of a wider project, Peatland Connections (2020-2023), which has a twin focus on restoration and engagement.
Foster’s approach draws on ‘citizen science’ approaches opening up the work of ecologists and hydrologists to wider participation. A future series of workshops will enable those living in and around the Galloway Glens to understand the scientific processes of data gathering, measurement, etc, underpinning the peatland restoration project through hands on participation.
Foster has also undertaken a residency in Wageningen University in the Netherlands with a creative investigation, Veencultuur, concerning entwined Dutch peatland histories. She supports the work of Re-Peat, including participation in the 24 hour Global Peat Fest. RE-PEAT is an international youth-lead organisation registered in The Netherlands, with members in the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Sweden, and Chile. Re-peat’s creative campaigns include members studying peat at a university level, working with peat in a scientific field, and also simply amateur enthusiasts.
‘Mending the Blanket’, pantea and Kate Foster, 2020.Â
Kate says,
“We made this short animated film to show how wetlands are now being valued across the world. An example from a remote part of Southern Scotland pays tribute to the commitment needed to restore a ‘blanket’ peatbog. Our Iranian – Scottish creative collaboration seeks to find new ways to say why wetlands benefit people, wildlife and landscape.â€
Hannah Imlach, Cryptic and Flows to the Future
Flows to the Future, a Landscape Partnership led by RSPB and focused on the peatlands in Caithness and Sutherland, involved a number of artists residencies including by Hannah Imlach. The following film introduces Hannah’s approach.
You can read Hannah Imlach’s thoughts about working with Flows to the Future here.
Cryptic, a Glasgow based internationally-renowned producing art house, brought the Flow Country Blanket Bog to the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh in 2019 with the installation Below the Blanket, https://www.cryptic.org.uk/portfolio/below-the-blanket/Â
Note
A previous version of this was prepared for Art and Artists in Landscape and Environmental Research Today (AALERT) Landscape Decisions (AALERT 4DM) project and we are planning to develop further resources on this subject. Please contact ecoartscotland if you have other examples of arts, design and creative approaches to working with peat and peatlands that you think contribute to landscape decision-making.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (photo courtesy of RGBE)
Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), kindly agreed to be interviewed for ecoartscotland. The interview happened by email during July 2020 and is focused by the reinvention of Inverleith House as ‘Climate House’, moving beyond the 20th century idea of the gallery as ‘white cube’ and reconnecting with the context of the Botanic Gardens. This new approach is happening alongside a collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries in London, developed as a result of match-making by Outset Partners.
Chris Fremantle (CF): Can you tell us a bit about what Inverleith House will be like once it is ‘Climate House’?
Emma Nicolson (EN): We are confronting a pivotal moment in the role of the arts within Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Climate House reimagines Inverleith House as a gallery for the 21st century, igniting a new arts strategy across the Garden, and establishing RBGE as a visionary institution within Climate Crisis.
This marks the beginning of a three-year vision for Climate House which will act as a pilot project to be reviewed after that time. It’s underpinned by ‘By Leaves We Survive’, a new arts strategy for Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. We are focusing on the ‘21st century explorer’, inspiring discoveries between artists, scientists, horticulturists, scholars, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers and visitors and local communities.
Ellie Harrison, Early Warning Signs, 2011, installed outside Inverleith House 2020
The Climate Crisis (and the pandemic) isn’t the first crisis for RBGE. RBGE was established in 1670 during an era of famine, plague and witch trials, by two physicians Robert Sibbald and Andrew Balfour. Their vision was to create a garden that would supply the apothecaries and physicians of Edinburgh with medicinal plants to help improve the wellbeing of the people of Edinburgh.
Now, four centuries later, our vision is to transform Inverleith House into Climate House – an institute for ecology at the edge, reconnecting our gallery both to its roots as a centre for medical innovation and its future as a hub that will promote the synergy between art and science as we face one of the most significant challenges of the 21 century.
Climate House will be an intimate place for contemporary art that is embedded within the natural world. The physical manifestation of Climate House is not set in stone, conceptually it will be a place to explore the future of our planet through art.
CF: What will we experience?
EN: My vision for Climate House is that it will be a place you want to dwell in, as soon as you step into the building you get a sense of a warm welcome, a sense of home for art.
Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh
For those not familiar with Inverleith House, it has a rich history of displaying modern and contemporary art. Originally built as a house for Sir James Rocheid, a prominent agriculturalist of the 19th Century. The house and a portion of his land was sold to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1877. The house then became the home to the Regis Keeper of the gardens. In 1960, the house was turned into the inaugural home of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and in 1986 it became the official art gallery of the Botanic Garden developing a renowned exhibition programme of contemporary and botanical art.
Despite Inverleith House’s deep historic relationship to the gardens it has become untethered from the organisation’s wider activities in recent years. Isolated in part by the 20th Century approach to displaying contemporary art. We want to move on from the ‘white cube’ of yesteryear, taking a different tack that reconnects the house to its surroundings, but also to transform the house into a gallery fit for the pressures and urgent challenges of the 21st century. The most pressing of which is the Climate Crisis. Inverleith House’s proximity to the world of plants; the richness of scholarship, inquiry and praxis associated with RGBE means we have resources at our disposal to begin to think about the role of a gallery in the age of Climate Crisis. Art and culture have a valuable and important part to play in linking objects, images, processes, people, locations, histories and discourse in a physical space to open up dialogues and imaginaries that we see as critical to connecting audiences to this crisis.
Our plan is to work with artists like Christine Borland, Cooking Sections, and Keg de Souza to transform Inverleith House into a Climate House and create a new vision. Inverleith House is a house in a botanic garden; a garden made for explorers of the past. We want to transform Inverleith House into a home. A home for the 21st century explorer. This explorer listens to the voices less heard, refuses to conform to the boundary between culture and nature, and is willing to imagine ways of living for the future.
A key area of focus for our work will be around listening to voices less heard. These might include indigenous peoples and women in science. RGBE’s Collection grew with the British Empire and our work still operates in many geographies across the globe in doing vital work in the areas of conservation. There is also historical amnesia about women’s role in the study of plants. I want to unearth these stories and put them front and centre of our programme. However, I recognise that often the stories that just lurk below the surface tend to be that of privileged women from the upper classes. Although these stories are valid and worth sharing we also acknowledge that we need to dig deeper to unearth the stories of working-class and indigenous women who have contributed to the knowledge of our natural world.
CF: Will we visit Climate House to see different artists’ work or will we mostly interact with Climate House as an environment centre?
EN: We will explore the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture and geopolitics. I want to think about how we present sound, live art, dance, performance and music, fashion, and the creative industries as well as internationally important visual art. And beyond this how do we work with resources, the buildings, knowledge, expertise, networks for the greater benefit of Edinburgh, Scotland and beyond.
Climate House is being built on the core principles of Sustainability, Collaboration, Intimacy and Attentiveness. Through these values we want to play with the scales of domesticity, creating intimate connections to the globally threatening phenomena of Climate Crisis. I was very inspired by the work of Maria Puig de la Bellacsa’s and her book ‘Matters of Care, Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds’. To do this, we will connect the wealth of expertise in RGBE’s activity and its collections: the Living collection; the Herbarium (some 3 million specimens); and the Archive (the historical collection) to artists and audiences. Our aim is to lead a society-wide journey towards a worthwhile future where surprising discoveries can happen and meaningful impact is achieved.
Sustainability: The mission of RBGE is to “explore, conserve and explain the world of plants for a better futureâ€. In executing this mission, we must acknowledge the Climate Crisis and think of ways that the gallery can respond through our programming and operational endeavours. These considerations may be formed through advocating the value in artistic practice in imagining “a better futureâ€. This sees us leading in best practice in how we work with artists, by valuing their contributions and paying them appropriately and responsibly. It includes how we think about materials and waste in the conceiving and mounting of exhibitions and projects. Sustainability also means thinking robustly about our relationships beyond the gallery and the garden and how we connect to conversations and activities society-wide. As director of ATLAS we were a member of Creative Carbon Scotland’s Green Arts Initiative and considered climate impact of everything we did this is something I hope to implement at RBGE through Climate House. There is a lot of valid discussion right now about the need for hyperlocalism or to find ways of reducing our carbon footprint and to be inventive with our programming.
Collaboration: Working with others is vital to how we operate. The house is situated amongst a rich and vital community of scholarship and scientific research. It is our aim to connect scholars, scientists, activists, entrepreneurs and artists together to explore, interpret and discuss our natural world. For example, we have already initiated several internal gathering and sharings with artists and RBGE specialists in science and horticulture. This has included Christine Borland who is looking at the story of flax in Scotland and Cooking Sections who are engaged with Scotland’s forest landscape transformation and food production.
Intimacy: Using the home as our inspiration we want to explore intimate stories. To think about the domestic setting and how this model can be applied to an art gallery. Through an informal approach, informed by closeness. We want to create spaces of retreat and relaxation, warmth and comfort. But also spaces to discuss how we imagine living together in times of Climate Crisis. To challenge the idea of the idyllic home and instead welcoming the unruly edges in to create a space to hold many voices that is not alienating and open to all.
Conversations: Changing courses by Keg de Souza at AGNSW. Artist Keg de Souza hosts a series of conversations and food events as part of her work Changing courses for the exhibition The National 2017: new Australian art (image courtesy of the artist and RBGE).
Attentiveness: This value demands rigour, a way of working that pays close attention to something. We are attentive to our context – the deep and rich history of the gardens and its contemporary activities. We are attentive to our artists making sure that we deploy support structures that enable the artist to develop their practices in new and challenging ways. We are attentive to our audiences, creating situations and experiences that resonate, inspire and inform our audiences of the world around them.
CF: What are you bringing from your work at ATLAS to ‘Climate House’?
EN: There is a lot of my work with ATLAS I see as relevant to this role, although very different, but a key aspect would be the importance of understanding your context and building connections to create engagement, this is always at the core of what I do! I also really believe in artists as agents for change – they help us re-imagine the future, see things differently and move minds. They help provide an emotional connection to some of the difficult topics and concepts that our scientists are exploring. I think it is important to form long term relationships with artists that allows work to evolve over time. I hope to bring some of the artists whose practice I believe has the capacity delve deeply into the work of RBGE inspiring, challenging, engaging and igniting our audiences.
CF: And can you tell us a bit more about Keg de Souza’s role and how they will be contributing to the development?
EN: We are delighted to be working with interdisciplinary artist Keg de Souza as part of Climate House. De Souza has previously had major exhibitions in Melbourne, New York, Vancouver and London, and is known for her socially engaged art practice, using mediums such as inflatable and temporary architecture, food, video, text, illustration, mapping, and open dialogue projects to explore the politics of space. Her work often brings communities from around the world together through active citizenship and situation specific projects, with an emphasis on cultures, inclusivity, displacement, shared knowledge, and questioning established methods of learning. The understanding that de Souza, as a woman of colour, and her potential collaborators will bring to Climate House around identity and Indigenous Knowledge will be particularly impactful for all communities involved. When looking for ways of living for the future, we may find answers long embedded within Indigenous culture and histories, and Australia, where de Souza is based, is more advanced in this respect. De Souza has previously worked with the Australian Indigenous writer Bruce Pasco on displacement of Indigenous food cultures in Australia. Pascoe’s ‘Dark Emu’, for instance, reassess the ‘hunter-gatherer’ label given to pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians, evidencing that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing. De Souza points to contemporary work being carried out to share knowledge, ideas and experience we hope that her insights will ignite new research and debate.
CF: It is being called ‘Climate House’ and it’s located in one of the main biodiversity organisations in the world – when you talk about ‘Climate House’ what will it encompass? What does ‘Climate’ encompass for you?
EN: Whilst RBGE is home to crucial research related to climate change adaptation and biodiversity, we have not been able to engage with this work in great enough depth within our arts programme thus far, nor share it creatively with our audiences. Likewise, we have not had the opportunity to hear what our audiences have to say about the climate emergency. Time is running out, the current Covid-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus for many the need to revaluate our relationship to the environment and to respond to the Climate Emergency and Biodiversity Crisis. With this increased awareness people are seeking answers. The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicts that we have less than 10 years to significantly reduce carbon emissions if we are to avoid the worse consequences of climate change.
Because of the Garden’s relationship to plant science and showcasing the value of the natural world, it is inherently well placed to lead the way in addressing climate change in all the work we do and this includes helping our staff, volunteers and audiences to take similar steps at home however small. We already have sustainable practices across the Garden that includes; water saving, rain garden, recycling, composting, sustainable food sourcing and avoiding food waste. We want to share our knowledge with audiences that will encourage them to take their own steps towards sustainability and climate action. So I am thinking of ‘Climate’ in the most general of ways, interconnected with everything we do.
CF: How is the partnership with the Serpentine Gallery going to work? Some people have suggested that it will be like V&A Dundee – an outstation model?
EN: To receive the Outset Contemporary Art Fund’s Transformative Grant, in partnership with the Serpentine, presents a momentous opportunity to focus on the desperate nature of our planet’s plight.
This year will be one of transition. Exploring new ways of working with different kinds of partners including the Serpentine, ensuring that the changes I want to make have time and space to take root so that we grow the new Climate House on solid ground. We were recently successful in being awarded an Art Fund Networking grant which will help us form the General Ecology Network a key part of our collaboration with the Serpentine. We have no concept of being an outstation. The two organisations operate as separate entities but will work together in partnership. Currently I am working with Lucia Pietroiusti, the Serpentine’s Curator of General Ecology, and we are sharing knowledge, ideas and artists and hope to come together with our programming where appropriate for example we recently cocurated a Serpentine Podcast featuring artists from Back To Earth and Climate House. Over the coming weeks we will begin to define ways in which this collaboration can unfold, and we have already identified several avenues that we will be exploring. The programme will be geared very much towards developing artistic and curatorial practice.
Through the General Ecology Network we intend to access those at the very forefront of ecological concerns and in turn share this with peers and artists who can provide citizens of all generations and backgrounds with opportunities to discover, explore and engage with this vital field of knowledge. We envisage this happening through a range of public programmes, events, podcasts, meetings, skills exchange and workshops. And – given the current pandemic situation and social distancing guidance – we are currently reviewing how these programmes will take place and identifying the best possible digital platforms and practitioners we might want to employ. Sitting with a garden in a park both our institutions have these incredible spaces as assets and we are talking about how we can take art outside, inviting audiences to engage with our programmes beyond the gallery walls.Â
This immediate goal for the General Ecology Network will then allow content we create to be transformed into tools that can be shared more broadly both across the sector and with the public. We will focus on creating access to new and specialist knowledge, opening up conversations, and sharing new perspectives on the on-going debate on climate emergency and biodiversity crisis.
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ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.â€
Arthur C. Clarke
In English, earth means ground, soil, and land, but it also means our world – Planet Earth. From Hebrew to Spanish, to Zulu, to Cree – this dual meaning is common in many, if not most, of the world’s 7,000 languages. In many cultures, it also takes on a more spiritual meaning. Think of the Norse goddess Jörð, the Hindu goddess Bhumi, or the Greek goddess Gaia and her Roman equivalent Terra – all humbly named for dirt. It’s perhaps not surprising when you consider that in the evolution of language, the word for land predates organized religion and planetary science. This planet might be 71% water, but we are a terrestrial species. The surface beneath our feet, which we may or may not worship, is earth.
Many languages, however, have separate words for earth and Earth. Often, the planet bears a maternal name, as in Nabgwana meaning mother of abundance in Kuna, or Nahasdzáánmeaning our mother in Navajo, and in many other cultures that feature Father Sky and Mother Earth deities.
Throughout the Muslim world, the planet’s name is a reflection of the theological belief that Earth is the land of the living, while heaven is the home of the divine. The Arabic name, DunyÄ, translates to lower place, as opposed to heaven, the higher place. Meanwhile, earthas in ground or land is called ʾarḠin Arabic. In Indonesia, the predominately Muslim Sundanese people call it Marcapada – the mortal place.
To an alien visitor, it might be surprising that we have so many names and understandings of our own planet, but that’s just the human way. Observing it from space, one might just call it as Carl Sagan did – the Pale Blue Dot. But for us humans here on Earth, it is the sacred ground, the holy mother, the land of life.
One Planet, Many Names (opaque text version) by Jordan Engel
Mapped here are some of the many names for our planet. 250 languages are represented in all.
The map itself is Pacific-Centered (150°E) and South-Up. It uses the Equal Earth projection, a beautiful equal-area projection developed in 2018.
As always, Decolonial Atlas maps can be reused under the Decolonial Media License 0.1. Feel free to print them yourself, and send us your photos of them out in the real world!
(Top photo: One Planet, Many Names (translucent text version) by Jordan Engel)
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
The virus is driving adaptation and the priorities are quickly becoming apparent. Three pieces published in the past 24 hours provide an insight into the issues.
On the one hand Nesta’s blog There will be no ‘back to normal’ which highlights aspects of normal which may be ‘gone’. One of the recurring themes is the tension between the emergence of positive community-led responses and the imposition of structural responses. It doesn’t tell us the answers, but it certainly highlights some of the big alternatives.
And on the other a letter to cultural leaders signed by over 200 professionals and academics expressing ‘grave concern’ and ‘imploring’ them to not lay off education teams, asking,
At a moment when museums and galleries claim an interest in their diversification, why do they de-fund the very people and communities made most vulnerable by the current crisis?
What we are learning is that adaptation clearly has phases, including:
the ‘immediate reaction’ (throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks)
the working out what the ‘new normal’ looks like – the shifted Overton Window of testing and surveillance, social distancing, new austerity, etc.
the massive uncertainty of potentially going in and out of ‘lockdown’ periodically.
Finally the Dark Mountain project, who have been arguing for 10 years that the form of our civilisation is the shape of the problem, announce their latest publication, developed before the pandemic, and arriving in the middle of it.
Their opening line is,
What is there left to say?
(Top photo: ‘Violet Storm’ by Kate Williamson)
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
The corona pandemic is currently affecting every area of peoples’ lives across the globe. As we emerge from the crisis, how do we ensure a sustainable recovery – which balances economic, social and environmental wellbeing? Sustainability First is launching an Art Prize to invite original, radical ideas and visions in response to the question ‘How do we build from the current corona crisis towards a more sustainable future?’
The Sustainability First Art Prize is open to all living British and international artists based in the UK, established and emerging, over the age of 18 years. Images of up to 3 works can be submitted online only per person. The works must be original, created in any media – including but not limited to painting, drawing, mixed media, sculpture, video and installation.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
