Art & Ecology

Bierstadt, A storm in the rocky mountains

Calanin, NEVER FORGETT Valley of Wyoming

Turner, The Thames above Waterloo Bridge

Heath, Thames Water

van Valckenborch, View of Antwerp with Frozen Schelde

Nara, Our Changing Coastline

Shirage, Challenging Mud

Long, A Ten Mile Walk England

VAGA, IJsblokkenactie

Geys, Kolen in een auto

Holt, Buried Poems

Heizer, Double Negative 1960s

Haacke, 10 turtles set free 1970s

van Snick, Autoband 1970s

Harissons, Portable Orchard (Survival Piece #5)

Earth Arts Exhibition 1970s

• land art exhibition → site-specific, natural materials

• not invasive, destructive

Chicago, Women and Smoke 1970s

Mendieta, Imagen de Yagul 1970s

• decay x cirle of life x fertility

• female power of creating & nurtering life

• burial as transformation

Sonfist, Time Landscape

• commemorate & recreate pre-industrial landscape

• research on native plants

• commemorated

• paradox

Hassinger, Twelve Trees, 1970s

• 2× 12

• highways

• industrialized world x loss of nature

• actual forests & plants are lost → humanity is left with a manufactured version of the environment

Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Performance 1970s-1980s

• maintenance art → domestic workers → invisible task

• trash collecters → consumption (we forget about out trash)

• sanitation workers as essential environmental caretakers

Buchanan, Marsh Ruins, 1980s

• references to one of the biggest mass suicides of enslaved people

• show the landscape

• created stones: tabi = a type of cement created with oyster shells

• flooded 2 a day → dissapears

Johanson, Fair Park Lagoon, 1980s

• 100 year anniversery of Texas

• created earlier to prevent floods

  • water polluted → crew of Delas Museum of Art decided to commission this work to make it better

  • institution playing an activist role in shaping the city & responding to environmental issues

  • walkways around the lagoon: spending time outside, observing animals & plants

Denes, Wheatfield - A Confrontation, 1980s

• horizontal field vs. vertical city

• 158 dollars worth of the cereal grain on land valued at 4.5 billion dollars

• a leisurely wheatfield vs. an island of achievement-craze culture & decadence

• a city of competence, sophistication & crime vs. an open field & unspoiled farmlands

• everlasting vs. forever changing

• recently: work contributes to the system it critisises → agriculture + colonisation

Beuys, 7000 oaks, 1980s

• oaks → donation money → many still there

• In response to the extensive urbanization of the setting the work was a long-term and large-scale artistic and ecological intervention with the goal of enduringly altering the living space of the city.

Goldsworthy, Ice Star

• at night → picture → melt

• belongs to no-one

• dissapear back to the earth

• 
  

Sekula, Fish Story, 1980s-1990s

• 7 year photographic work

• world is developing at sea

• cinematic american movie posters at the other side of the world, chooses the perspective of the workers, traditional fishing village that is doomed to dissapear

• fish story

• critical realism

Chin, Revival Field, 1990s-.

• extract contaminated soils of polluted landfills → extracts them by using platns, tested in labs

• it is art: argicultural methods to shape the artwork

Superflex, Supergas, 1990s

• first made in Tanzania, lack of energy resources

• could use the poo of animals & humans to generate energy

• is merging ecological activism with NGO’s

• questionting politics that are preventing energy for these communities

Norman, Geocruiser, 2001-4

• a green bus

• library: communicate ideas of utopian ecological worlds

• lens to see other ways of living

Banerjee, Oil and the Caribou, 2002

• white “empty” space → drill for oil & minerals

• images are striking & explain what you can see

• animals migrating & footsteps are in the snow

• counters the idea that the artic is empty

• was able to amplify activist voices

• destroying the herd directly threatens the physical, cultural, and spiritual survival of Indigenous communities who have relied on them for thousands of years.

Eliasson, The Weather Project, 2003

• lot of conversations are about the weather

• articial sun & mirrors & fog

• succes

• a massive multinational consumer goods corporation

• it turned a looming climate catastrophe into a cozy, indoor tourist attraction

Marakatt-Labba, Historja, 2003-7

• colonised by Sweden

• rare metals in EU → important for ‘green’ cars

• community was replaced somewhere else

• culture showed in work → the snow, stories etc.

• history lost due to colonisation

Lu, Ancient Springtime Fey, 2006

• converted garbage piles → inspired by old landscape painting

• economic growth in China → great but very bad for the climate

Forensic Architecture, Ecocide in Indonesia, 2017

• documented environmental crimes

• gather as much information as possible

• fire → huge part lost

• indonesion government was stealing land from indonesian people → got dry, mass graves of orangutan (died & killed)

  • now it is a crime

Grandville, Les Fleurs animées

• flowers x women

• right: sensitive so she is dressed up as a plant that closes when she’s anxious

• women as passive & needing a caregiver

Van Spiegel, Illustration from De furmato foetu

• belief that plants were female

• they didn’t understand how plants reproduce

• fertility of nature x fertility of women

Barrias, La Nature se dévoilant

• mother nature disrobing before the scientists, presented in a way of exposion herself

Blechen, The interior of the Palm House on the Pfauninsel Near Potsdam

• collection of palm trees → exotic plant

• built building for these palm trees

• commissioned these paintings to show the palm treees

• women are also exoticized: visually pleasing → their position is also objectified just as the palm trees

Attacks on the orchid houses and the tea pavilion by suffragettes

• they also attacked botanical gardens

• attacking those kind of arts that compare them to nature

Francseca Woodman, Untitled

• using her own body in the landscape

Vargas-Periera

• using her own body in the landscape

Aguilar, Nature Self-Portrait

• different body-types in the landscape

• brown, queer body → doesn’t align with the beauty standard

Chipko Movement

• women who decided to protect the trees from logging

Greenham Commons Women’s Peace Camp

• protest against American Nuclear weapons being stored in the UK
  peaceful encampment around the nuclear storage

• activist example of how the ideas of eco-feminist writers were put in practice

Harfleet, The Pansy Project

·       Mostly active in the UK but also in USA, Belgium, France…

·       Plants pansies in the places were homophobic attacks took place

·       To turn those places in more positive thing

Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors

·       2 ambassadors visiting the English court

·       Symbolizing the new powers: Christianity & capitalism

·       Instrument of the 7 liberal arts

·       Distorted skull > foreshadowing of wat is coming with the colonial period

·       Entangled violence: relation between European expansion, invasion, settlement & domination and the development of large-scale agriculture represents an entangled violence

·       Colonialism converted “almost all non-human life into objects for capitalist accumulation, transforming pre-existing human animal relation, and altering food production and consumption – Wadiwel

Gast, American Progress

·       The claim of new land x the erasure of a indigenous people

Igarashi, Kuarupu

·       Show what is happening with settler colonialism

·       They destroy the rainforest to be able to instal agricultural ambitions

o   Local people & animals die

o   Story ends: shifts to a different location > in the hamburger we see local indigenous people, animals, plants > attention to the agricultural animals that die & local indigenous for agricultural profits

Karrabing Film Collective, Just because you can't see it..., 2018

T.J. Cuthand, Reclamation, 2018

Groundswell in the Strait of Dover : Claiming Nature’s Right to Be Reborn, Hilde Van Gelder

Evans, Threads from the Refugee Crisis

De Myle, Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat, 16th century

Ping, Theater of the world

Coutts, The Inheritors, 20th century

Chalmers, Electric Chair

Anderson, Winnie the Pooh, 2011

Dion, Survial of the cutest (who gets on the ark?), 20th century

Custafsonn & Haapoja, The Museum of the History of Cattle, 2013

Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes, 2021

Cardoso, Flea Circus, 20th century

Shimabuku, Sculptures for Octopuses: Exploring their favorite colors, 2010

DEGAS, A COTTON OFFICE IN NEW ORLEANS, 19th century

CORREGIO & MILLAIS

Brueghel the Elder, Big Bouquet in a Wooden Vessel, 17th century

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The Six Drowning Street

·       6 photographs from Van Gelder

·       About plant agency > in Nieuwpoort Kromme Hoek

o   Place where the former lighthouse of Nieuwpoort stood > they thought they would be to visible because of the lighthouse > they placed a commemorative stone

·       She took those flowers that layed there with her & went to the UK with this

·       she used local water to clean the print

·       she also travelled back with them

·       she looked at different types of flowers & plants to take with her

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MUCAC MALAGA

·       They call it space zero: dedicated to recognize & highlight culture’s essential role & contribution to sustainable development

·       Culture spaces are unique places to reflect collectively on today’s great challenges

·       With this space museums become a meeting point for exchanging opinions, imagine & suggest a change in narratives & values

·       Museum is completely dull  & empty

·       It is situated in front of this space > the cube

o   See pwp for the statement

o   There are different Centre Pompidou’s

ANDREAS GURSKY, RHEIN II

JEFF WALL, DEAD TROOPS TALK, 1992

Sekula & Wall

Jeff Wall

·       Allan Sekula

BLACK TIDE – ALLAN SEKULA

·       Ship = The Prestige

o   It sinks, happens in 2002 > oil leaks > biggest environmental disaster up till then in Spain

o   They try to cover it up

o   Reportage about this in the paper

o   Positive: the people are cleaning

o   He invites us to perform an opera: seven songs about is

ZAKOLE GROUP, Warshaw

·       Zakole: name of an area: it used to be a riverbend and now it’s a swamp > still quite central in the city

o   Private land but divided into small patches

·       Swamps are recognized as essential to the climate > they should be protected

·       They invited artists & scientists to collaborate

·       Used observational methods to see what is happening there > invited people on small walks

·       Attention Cube: choose a cube of 1 kubieke meter & see what happens in this space, then change experiences

·       They also draw maps of the area

·       Inventory: you can use an app > you can enter what you encounter there > more than human beings

o   Observational tool that helps them appreciate the site

o   Also a tool to further protect the site

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN WARSAW, 2025 – WOUL YOU LAY YOUR EGGES HERE?

·       Petition to protect the site

·       But is was mostly to let people know the site

·       Smells from the swamp etc. > they were trying to show the senses

·       But also do you feel safe in this space?

 

MOHAMMED SALEH, URBAN FARM, BETHLEHEM, 2019

·       Farming on the land as part of cultural heritage

o   Agriculture x culture

·       They want to use urban farming also so that they are self sufficient

o   Vitory gardens: striving for self sufficiency > so that Palestinians didn’t need to use food from Israel

o   Pictures on the left form the seventies during the first uprising

o   But victory gardens were also used in Europe during WOI & WOII

o   Acquires knowledge on how to create irrigation system, what to plant etc. > he gives people the tools on how to make their own gardens

·       Broader context:

o   1993 & 1995: on the Westbank the land is divided

§  There’s only one area for where Palestinians have full control

o   Insistence on presence in the land is very crucial here > a way to reclaim te land even if it is left unattended

 

VIVIEN SANSOUR – PALESTINE HEIRLOOM SEED LIBRARY

·       Sees library: wanted to protect Palestinian seeds

·       Started to engage with agriculture as a form of culture & heritage

·       She talked with local farmers to see which ones needed protection the most

·       Heirloom seeds: they adapted through the climate

·       Reflection on traditional cuisine: she put in in places in the city & talked to people about which types of dishes they cook & if there are certain ingredients that are hard to find nowadays or have been lost or how they engage with seeds or plants

·       She creates a library: she wants them to be put back to use

FORAGING FIREFLIES FESTIVAL - 2023

·       They wanted to bring together scholars, artists, farmers to bridged this gap between culture x agriculture

·       But also to fight disconnection from the food production that most contemporary societies have

·       meals made from local projects, but also lectures, activities etc.

·       but they also went to places outside the city to get to know the agriculture > learned more about farming

·       agriculture intervening seen here as something artistic

·       Artist were showing their knowledge & sharing their skills

·       Most took place on the Sleiman farm > out of the city > famous for location on top of the hill, facing an Israeli settlement

·       Foraging hike: on each walk they showed them different thing: about farming, about the land, about new urban etc.

·       Since the ‘60s Israelis controlling both the infrastructure & water

·       Very realistic depicture of nature

·       Shows the problems that aren’t always depicted

 

 

DAR YUSUF NASRI JACIR FOR ART & RESEARCH

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LAND RESIDENTS

·       Farm destroyed during Israeli > they tried to clean up the site & revitalise it

·       They use natural methods to clean it

·       Sunflowers: have ability to remove the toxins

·       It was a trial & error process > but this did help having understanding more & creating more knowledge

INSTALLATION VIEW OF PHOTOGRAPHIS WORKS BY EDWARD BURTNYSKY (LONDEN, 2018)

·       This picture shows on a pretty big scale

·       Focuses on the oil fields → picture that is visually pleasurable and ethically just (= USA → American freedom, progression → for them it is just to go further in this process because of these reasons)

·       Industrial sublime → he starts to criticize the notion of this being ethically just → this can’t be ethically just because it is very destructive

·       This emersion into the sublime → very privileged (can only be if you can look at it from a distance & it is still wrong)

 

BIEMANN, FOREST LAW

·       Looking at suffering: hedonistic

·       She tries to get rid of the sublime

·       The work:

o   If you show the destruction → a way of repeating the harm → she tries to bring a positive story → the constitution has granted fundamental rights to nature + the individuals that are fighting for their land & their way of life

ELS OPSOMER, BUILDING STORIES #001 (That distant piece of mine) (2012)

·       She criticizes the distant piece of mind → the hedonistic, modernistic tableau performance

·       No narrative: it is just observed

·       The people live with dignity → they ignore the filmmaker → she disappears in the environment

·       The camera is static

·       It isn’t made aesthetically pleasing → just shows how it is

·       A strategy of veiling and unveiling

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·       Astrid Nobel → the wadden sea, 2025

o   Materials: see the pwp dia = natural materials from the wadden or near the wadden island

o   She painted the wadden sea with ep & flow

·       Map that shows how the island is sinking because of gas extraction

·       She started working with natural materials

·       She created a clock that she wanted to change with each tide → difficult to control → used sands → she developed a pigment because of grinding sands and other materials she found

·       She also collected polluted land that was about to be taken by the sea → a lot of it did get into the sea

·       She made the destruction part of the work without making it obvious

·       During the pandemic → she felt very homesick → she wanted to create something that reconnected to Ameland again → she kept seawater from the wadden sea & started painting from het memories

·       She used shells, fossilised bones… → she blended her own imagination with the landscape

Sun 2022

·       A newer work

·       She was experimenting pigments x seawater

·       Shells were dying in the wadden sea during the heatwave → their very important shells as food to different organisms

·       The shells could become quickly extinct & it seems like no one cares

·       She made SUN → painting with seawater, cockle pigment, burn marks, cockle shells

·       The first time she incorporated shells → she had been avoiding this technique because she associated this with the colonial wonderkamer of coastel tourist art

·       She did find it important to include them so that people would see the shells & look at them with care & attention → an animal that provides us with clean water & oxygen → there are now buring alive

 

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Silence after the tern

·       Certain birds came to the sea every year → because of rising sea levels the whole place got flooded so they left → other birds became very hungry and started massacring chicks → know she only hears silence when she used to hear so many birds

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The universe bends around the dying birds

·       Is telling the story of the birds

·       Barnacle story → she encountered a barnacle that needed help → and she imagines

·       Goose → gets picked up by the wind → in the sky transformers into a spermwhale, covered with barnaceles → according to local oral history geese are born from barnacles → so there is a connection

o   She tries to evoke a feeling that the environment can heal

o   She also finds the place to be magical

o    Spiritually alive & creates stories

·       Middle: birds skull remains

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Cycle of a seal

·       Sea pigment

·       Bones & little fishbones on top of the painting

·       Waddensea → 2 types of seals

·       Astrid grew up with stories how seal babies are abandoned by their mothers when disturbed to often

·       Her parents tried to help the seal babies that were abandoned & helped to shelters

·       Important not to romantice wild animals

·       There are often stories behind her works

·       The painting here → encounter with a new born seal → she seal made these patterns by the way it moved

o   She engraved them on the seal ribs

·       The little seal ended up on the wrong shore → the baby seal returned to the sea & she then observed the tracks

·       the cycle of life & death → the bones

·       fish bones & seal bones → intertwined hunter & prey

·       a lot of circular motives → time, regeneration

 

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Walivstraan

·       Ook lange Walvis geschiedenis

·       Incorporated some of the wale remains that were part of her family heritage

·       The wales are coming back to reclaim their ancestors

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Bed bench

·       Centrepiece of the exhibition = walvistraan (whale tear / whale oil) → destructive whale oil history

·       They used to be a table to access the bed → very specific style that comes from ameland with whales & boats

·       Her father restores them

·       She build one herself

·       Freedom & new possibilities → guides going with you to the dream world

 

Joeri Verbesselt, Only with hunters do we have wild animals, 2024.

• a glimpse of interspecies epistemology

• Rapongan: fishing practices → fishes become ocean teachers

• Fish dialogue as a hybrid voice:

  1)evokes the agency the fishes communicated to me during our initial encounter;

  2)the interpretation that Syaman Rapongan, as an experienced interspecies storyteller, offered;

  3)and the nonhuman voice-giving strategies found in his writings.

  ●

  The dialogue is not spoken aloud, but evoked through subtitles, which implies translation.

  
  

  🐠🐠🐠 A “fishy interspecies voice.”

Chandra Bose, Plant Autographs and Their Revelations

Renger-Patzsch, 1926