Ecological Art

One of the responsibilities of my current job is generating topical bibliographies.  Right now I'm working on one that's related to Earth Day and aesthetics.  As a result, I'm getting a crash course in what has been called, variously, environmental art, natural art, earthworks, reclamation art, ecological art...  In other words, a bunch of approaches to the human engagement with the non-human world through aesthetic creation.

It seems that most of the "nature art" I've been researching is, in its essence, about simplification and reductionism.  The spiral combining form with raw material. The crack letting in a sliver of changing light, the holes tubular rays of sun.  The sticks twisted into fantastic nest-like shapes.  The repetitive fields of waste and discards and effluvia.

They do concentrate the attention, isolate elements and refine them to their barest physical essence... but it seems to me that such efforts work against one of the aspects of the world that is hardest for humans to grasp today: interconnectedness.  Is there an aesthetic that can train us to see complexity, to feel, to know, the intricacies of cause and effect and relationship that link things, active things, dynamic changing things, together? 

Human beings clearly want to see cause and effect, about connection, with their superstitions about karma and knocking on wood and ideas about wishful thinking and obsessions from afar.  But though we have these _impulses_ do we combine this urge to know with clarity of vision?  Encouraging such clarity is the job of the artist, and yet... it seems that the dominant aesthetics are not engaging with these issues of interrelation, except in obvious ways, as in the links between animals, people, food. 

We need an aesthetic that helps us grasp the connections between rock and air, between bodies and toxins, between the small scale and the large.  Perhaps it is the character of art to reduce and refine, and it is thus unsuited to the explication of complexity and raw, unfiltered reality. 

But wouldn't it be good to try?

Comments

[marja-leena]

Good questions! I'm not an environmental or "nature" artist, and haven't thought of it the way you have discussed it, so it's been on my mind all day. I don't know how I would, if I could, make something that would cover all those powerful connections. I wonder if any of Andy Goldsworthy's work would come close. You may be right, it's just too complex. But worth a try, I agree.

[Rana]

I'm glad that now someone else is thinking about this with me! ;)

My problem is that I'm so heavily visual, with a dollop of the tactile, that I'm having trouble envisioning (see!) alternatives; I have a suspicion that it would be things like dance, or music, or something else entirely (orchestrated scents and smells?) that would be necessary to convey and explore those connections.

If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to find out more about this stuff - always fun.