Educators TOOLBOX
Art & Ecology


Art & Ecology:

Perspectives and Issues



by Don Krug

Ecology and Life-Centered Issues

Some contemporary artists seek ways to engage people directly in thinking critically and taking action about life-centered environmental and community-based issues. They believe that for healthy systemic ecological change to occur, individuals will need to question their own world views, and perhaps change the way they live from day to day. Mary Jane Jacobs suggests that new genre public art "must reach those for whom the art's subject is a critical life issue." What are these life-centered issues and how do they compose the social, cultural, and historic fabric of daily living? How have artists dealt with life-centered ecological issues through their art? Paolo Soleri created a plan for an Arizona community based on limited energy resources. Viet Ngo works with larg-scale communities to construct sewage treatment plants that use plant life and wetlands to purify water. Alan Sonfist has restored portions of urban landscapes with historic memories by reintroducing indigenous plants and animals. Some contemporary ecological artists address broad life-centered issues such as unfair labor practices, overpopulation,water contamination, toxic chemicals, nuclear waste, fossil fuel consumption, animal extinction, animal rights, forest depletion, soil erosion, and changing climate patterns, to name a few ecological concerns. At the heart of these issues are views about community participation, communication, and ecological sustainability.

Community Participation

Community involvement is a prerequisite for significant, large-scale change. Definitions of community are elusive. It is used here to mean the integrative sets of relationships among people and their environment, organized around specific activities within a particular geographic location. For contemporary ecological artists, audience participation is a must. Community participation is advocated as a means to promote positive socio-ecologicaland political-economic change. Artists are working with many different groups of people. Mierle Laderman Ukeles shook the hand of every sanitation worker in New York city during her eleven month performance called Touch Sanitation (1979-1980). Her artist-in-residence stay with the New York Sanitation Department culminated in heightened awareness about the problems of public waste.

Dialogue and Communication

Establishing supportive dialogue among a community of voices is critical for building strong and lasting ecological connections. One of the criticisms of some public art performances and installations is that artists frequently complete their work and leave. Many contemporary ecological artists strive to work closely with communities through open, public forums and by building partnerships that lead to ecologically sustainable ways of living. Through their art forms, artists engage community members in dialogue about a web of relationships that includes art, aesthetics, ecology, and culture. Since 1977, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison have spent many years traveling the globe, working with community people on long-term projects that last a month to several years, and examining and responding to environmental changes within particular ecosystems. Barbara Matilsky (1992) wrote

After firsthand study, research, and interviews with ecologists, biologists, and planners, the artists create a photographic narrative that identifies the problem, questions the system of beliefs that allow the conditions to develop, and proposes initiatives to counter environmental damage. Exhibiting their art in a public forum--like a museum, library, city hall--usually stimulates discussion, debate, and media attention. By communicating to the public the problems that confront a fragile ecosystem and the ways in which the balance can be restored, they exert pressure on the political system and rally public opinion in an attempt to avert ecological disaster (pp. 66-67).

The Harrisons' educational practices include documentation and public dialogue, which are important aspects of their working process. It is assumed that positive ecological change requires a deep commitment on the part of many dedicated individuals and groups of people. New genre public artists facilitate work across disciplinary boundaries and negotiate community conflicts through dialogue, negotiation, and compromise. These community-based ecological actions require patience and collaboration.

Ecological Sustainability

Some contemporary ecological artists believe what matters most is ecological sustainability. Artists working toward ecological sustainability have as their task the responsibility of "finding alternatives to the practices that got us into the trouble in the first place; it is necessary to rethink agriculture, shelter, energy use, urban design, transportation, economics, community patterns, resource use, forestry, the importance of wilderness, and our central values." (David Orr, 1992, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. Albany: State University of New York Press.)

One example of ecological sustainability through art is Mel Chin's Revival Field (1990-present) in St. Paul Minnesota. Chin worked with Rufus L. Chaney, a Senior Research Scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to develop plans for the "green remediation" of toxic waste from the Pig's Eye landfill. Chaney developed hyperaccumulator plants for extracting toxic substances from the soil through the plant's vascular system. The goal of the artist was to eventually restore the area for plants, animals, and humans. In this way art, aesthetics, ecology, and culture become inseparable.

Methods commonly employed to initiate ecological sustainability include artistic actions, rituals, performances, and process dramas. It is important to understand, however, that ecological sustainability has many meanings. Van Der Ryn & Cowan (1996) point out,

Sustainability is not a single movement or approach. It is as varied as the communities and interests currently grappling with the issues it raises. The shape that it will take is being contested now, and the stakes are high. On the one hand, sustainability is the province of global policy-makers and environmental experts flying at thirty-five thousand feet from conference to conference. On the other hand, sustainability is also the domain of grassroots environmental and social groups, indigenous peoples preserving traditional practices, and people committed to changing their own communities (p. 4).










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