The Poetic and Mythologic Crossroads of Ecological Art

Art Journal ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Regina Vater
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Sacha Kagan

Contemporary western societies are marked by symptoms of a culture of unsustainability, rooted in problematic modes of knowing the reality, across social systems, whether in the sciences, arts or other fields. Transdisciplinary researchers across the world are already aware of these issues and working on resolving them. To contribute to these efforts and focus on a perspective which potential may have been receiving too little attention so far, this article is introducing how a sensibility to transdisciplinarity and complexity can inform aesthetics of sustainability, and why this matters for a global (environ)mental transformation process. The relevance of this approach is discussed with the field of ecological art and the practice of walking.


Author(s):  
Maija Demitere ◽  
◽  
Jan Georg Glöckner ◽  

In the paper “Two perspectives on ecological art”, we will compare two perspectives on sustainability and the practicality of an ecological artwork. One perspective is from Latvian media artist Maija Demitere, researching slow media art, deep sustainability, and food production. Demitere uses micro-gardening prototypes as an instrument to inform the public on the problems of food production (local food, biodiversity, pesticides, herbicides, pollution caused by agriculture). Demitere uses gardening in combination with DIY (Do it Yourself) technologies to talk about slow living, ecology of the mind, and mindfulness. The second perspective is offered by Jan Glöckner. Glöckner is a German artist and researcher. His research interests are collaborations between fungi and Hominidae. Glöckner reaches out with diplomatic gestures towards fungi to re-localise humans within the larger domain of living entities. He is working on an ethical framework that draws from deep ecology and Tibetian Buddhism to ensure the rights of microorganisms and macroorganisms in artistic, industrial, and research setups. The first part of the paper will focus on recycling, waste management, waste produced by households, and the artists’ perspective on the problem. The second part will focus on a specific case of the exhibition “Life” by Olafur Eliasson at the Foundation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland. The second part will also look at the idea of “artistic greenwashing”. The last part of the article will attempt to conclude what can be considered an actual sustainable artwork and propose possible key points that describe a (deep) ecological artwork. The paper uses such methods as case studies, literature analysis, and autoethnography.


Author(s):  
Andreas Broeckmann

The final chapter develops the hypothesis that towards the end of the twentieth century there is a fundamental shift in the understanding of the machine, and thus also of machine art. This shift is effected by the emergence, since the 1960s, of the paradigms of systems thinking and of ecology which conceive nature, the environment as well as the human body as systemic factors and inscribe them into a technological understanding of the world. The chapter looks at early examples of ecological art, especially by Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, and Otto Piene, which show how closely related are the conceptions of ecology and technology in their works. Detailed analyses of later works by Knowbotic Research, Marko Peljhan and Seiko Mikami show how the systemic, environmental understanding of technology increasingly decouples the relation of machine and human subjectivation. Seiko Mikami’s work in particular questions the position of the human body and its faculties in relation to technical systems which in her installations change from being neutral media interfaces into autonomous, solitary machine subjects, articulating the “ecological” crisis of the machine as a crisis of human subjectivity.


Leonardo ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Wallen

At a time when the world is beset by ecological crises, ecological art offers inspiration, insight and innovation. This essay provides an overview of the artistic and scientific roots of the practice and illustrates the significant role that ecoart can play in the formulation, development and promulgation of a culture of sustainability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-175
Author(s):  
Meiling Cheng

This article takes an ecological approach to Beijing-based artist Yin Xiuzhen’s cross-media artworks, which comprise installations, performances, and inhabitable sculptures. Yin’s creative outputs—from her earliest installations that bemoan the vanishing old Beijing, through her Portable Cities series that uses fabric architecture to convey her impressions of world cities, to her latest “ecoengineering” projects that provide contemplative spaces for viewers to temporarily inhabit—delineate the career trajectory of an individual female artist establishing her position within the contemporary art world. The author’s inquiry suggests that Yin’s reluctance to embrace her gender identity as central to her ecological art reflects her species-based environmental ethics that goes beyond identity politics. Yin’s ecological focus manifests her situated knowledge as a metropolitan resident living and traveling in a glocalized era. While we may debate about the feasibility of (en)gendering her art, many of Yin’s ecology-leaning solutions point to urgent ecological imperatives that are much less negotiable for our continued terrestrial survival.


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