io-magazine (environmental art)
SUMMER 1998
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What is Environmental Art?
Stephanie Ross
Rooted Art?: Environmental Art and our Attachment to
nature
Emily Brady
Kissing the Mess
Aesthetic Engagement with Ideas of Nature
Hester Reeve
Hans Haacke- Environmental Artist with Sociopolitical
Concerns
Anita Seppä
Environmental Art. A New Sanctification
Jale Erzen
Highway, Art and Environment
Olli Immonen
The Highway Number Four Roadside Art Project
Antero Toikka
Thoughts about "Art in nature"
Hermann Prigann
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IO_contents
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IO contributors
CONTRIBUTORS
Emily Brady is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Lancaster University, England.
Agnes Denes is an American artist of international renown. She also lectures at
the universities in U.S and abroad.
Jale Erzen is a painter and Secretary-General of the International Association
for Aesthetics.
Olli Immonen is Secretary of the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics.
Hanna Johansson is a Ph.D. student at Helsinki University, Finland.
Hermann Prigann is an artist who also teaches in Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany.
Hester Reeve is a performance artist who is completing her MA in Values and
the Environment at Lancaster University, England.
Stephanie Ross teaches in the Philosophy Department at the University of
Missouri, St. Louis.
Anita Seppä is a Ph.D. student at Helsinki University, Finland.
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IO bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art, ed. by Sonfist, A.
New York: Dutton, 1983.
“Art into Nature: Decoration, Incursion, or Revelation?” in P.J. Cormick, ed.
The Reasons of Art University of Ottawa Press, 1985, pp. 232-42.
Beardsley, John Probing the Earth: Contemporary Land Projects. Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977.
Carlson, A. “Is Environmental Art and Aesthetic Affront to Nature?”. The
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 16, no. 4, December 1996.
Cavsey, Andrew "Space and Time in British Land Art", Studio International
2/1977.
Crawford, D. “Nature and Art: Some Dialectical Relationships”. Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 42, 1983.
Endo,Toshikatsu Nordiskt Konstcentrums utställningkatalog nr.3.
Pohjoismainen taidekeskus, Helsinki. 1989.
Frankenstein, A. “Christo’s ‘ Fence’, Beauty or Betrayal?”. Art in America, vol.
64, 1976.
Gablik, Suzi The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
Garraud, Colette L’Idee de nature dans l’art contemporain. Flammarion, Paris,
1993.
Gussow, A. A Sense of Place: Artists and the American Land. San Francisco:
Friends of the Earth, 1972.
Haacke, H. Framing and Being Framed. The Press of the Nova Scotia College
of Art and Design; New York University Press, 1975.
Humphrey, P. “The Ethics of Earthworks”. Environmental Ethics, vol. 7, 1985.
Irwin, Robert Being and circumstance: Notes Toward a Conditional Art.
California: The Lapis Press, 1985.
Lippard, Lucy, R. Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. N.Y.
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IO bibliography
1983.
Ross, S. “Gardens, earthworks and environmental art”, in S. Kemal and I.
Gaskell, eds., Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Sonfist, A. Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments. Purchase, NY:
Neuberger Museum, 1978.
Trilogi: Kunst - Natur - Videnskab (Trilogy: Art - Nature - Science), ed.
Jürgensen, A. ja Sutton, G. K. Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik, TICKON.
Danmark, 1996.
The Writings of Robert Smithson ed. by Holt, N. New York University Press,
1979.
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how to contribute
Instructions for Authors
IO – The Internet Magazine of Applied Aesthetics is intended to
provide an international forum for discussion on issues in applied
aesthetics. Applied aesthetics embraces various disciplines, including
philosophy, art theory and practice, etc., and covers a range of subject
areas, such as environmental aesthetics, art studies, and cultural and
environmental policies.
As an on-line publication, the magazine aims to make use of the special
possibilities and opportunities of the internet. We encourage authors to
explore these opportunities, and to write in a style which is likely to
promote discussion. Authors are discouraged from writing in a style
that is overly academic or technical. The writers should also bear in
mind the requirements of an international readership when making
reference to localized places or events.
Footnotes, which will appear at the end of the article, should be kept to
a minimum. Citations should include author s name, title, publisher,
date of publication (for example, for a book: R. Burton, The Anatomy
of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (London, G.M. Dent and Sons,
1978), p. 53. For an article, G. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,”
Science, vol. 162, 1968, pp. 1243-8.).
Contributions should be submitted as follows: one printed copy and one
on 3.5 diskette, PC or Macintosh format, Word or Word Perfect
preferred. If pictures or graphics are used, authors should indicate if
they have a preference for the layout. The editors reserve the right to
make final acceptance of submissions and to make alterations which do
not involve any change of meaning.
Contributions should be sent to:
Editor
IO – The Internet Magazine of Applied Aesthetics
International Institute of Applied Aesthetics
Kannaksenkatu 22
15140 Lahti
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how to contribute
Finland
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IO links
LINKS
Philosophy in Cyberspace: Aesthetics
Lancaster Environmental pages
Aesthetics On-Line
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IO web design
Jonna Iljin Tuukka Savolainen Tommi Tienhaara
Institute of design / Lahti Polytechnic
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IO editorial note
We are pleased to introduce the first issue of IO, The Internet Magazine of
Applied Aesthetics, which has emerged from activities and projects initiated by
the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics, based in Lahti, Finland.
IO is intended to provide an international forum for discussion on issues in
applied aesthetics, and it aims to open creative and critical perspectives to the
subjects discussed.
As an area of research and education, applied aesthetics focuses on issues
emerging at the intersection of theoretical aesthetics and various applied
disciplines. The disciplines that applied aesthetics embraces include philosophy,
art theory and practice, etc., but the questions raised are also often closely
connected to a range of special subject areas such as environmental aesthetics,
art studies, and cultural and environmental policies. And of course, in
connection to these issues the ethical and ideological perspectives become often
more than relevant.
The title of the magazine was chosen for its relevance to electronic media - I,O
referring to the whole conceptual basis of digital information and at the same
time to turning on and turning off. And also the title has more complex cultural
and even astronomical connotations; IO being one of Jupiter's moons, and
playing as well on ancient Greek mythologies.
The issue at hand is focused on environmental art. The subject merges the
artefactuality of art with natural processes in the nonhuman world. This
phenomenon raises complex issues including questions of aesthetic, ethical,
ecological, spiritual value, and social and political considerations. The articles,
art work and other resources in this issue address these questions from various
perspectives - artistic, philosophical, and also more interdisciplinary
approaches.
The magazine is divided into two main sectors: the articles and the gallery. A
short bibliography on environmental art has also been collected from the
authors, which can be found through the contents page.
We hope you enjoy our first issue - and welcome your comments and
discussion.
Emily Brady and Anita Seppä, Editors
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IO editorial note
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Stephanie Ross
What is Environmental Art?
Before addressing the aesthetic problems raised by environmental art, we must
find a way to delimit the category in question. Just what counts as
environmental art?
There are a variety of candidates, and they suggest a number of related and
overlapping criteria that seem relevant. While I have no interest in seeking a
set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the category “environmental art”,
I shall begin by examining a set of examples, each of which blends in a
different manner the notions of art and environment.
I should note that except for the case of gardens, my examples will be almost
exclusively drawn from the North American artworld. I hope readers will
supplement them with examples from other locales and cultures.
For a start, we can certainly think of many works of art that are about the
environment and responsive to it. Consider the landscapes of the Hudson River
school, Cézanne's many portraits of Mont Sainte Victoire, or – in a different
medium – Smetana's tone poem The Moldau (about a river) or Moussorgsky's
composition Night on Bald Mountain.
These are all nuanced and sensitive works of art that are descriptive of the
natural environment. Yet we wouldn't classify them as environmental art. The
problem is not simply their failure to reside in the environment; exhibiting
Cézanne's canvases at the foot of the mountain they portray would not
transform them into the sort of art we are seeking.
Nor do we consider all works of art that are located in the environment to be
environmental art. Many works of art are exhibited outdoors. In the United
States, the General Services Administration sponsored an Art in Architecture
program beginning in the 1960's. The program set aside a certain fixed per
centage of construction costs of federal buildings for the purchase or
commission of works of art.
As a result, plazas surrounding many new buildings are graced by venturesome
pieces of sculpture. We would, however, classify most of these works as public
art rather than environmental art. While they are outdoors, and thus available
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for public viewing (in fact, some people complain because it is impossible not
to see them...) they are in an urban environment. And most of them are not
about the natural world.
A controversial and much discussed example of this type of art is Richard
Serra's Tilted Arc, which generated a vigorous debate about work identity when
it was removed at the request of workers who loathed the piece itself and the
effect it had on the courtyard space they hoped to put to friendlier uses.
Consider next the various sculpture parks or sculpture gardens that grace our
communities. Some are associated with museums (e.g., the sculpture gardens at
New York's Museum of Modern Art or Washington's Hirshhorn Museum),
some with corporations (e.g., the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden at
Pepsico's World Headquarters in Purchase, N.Y.), while others are simply
outdoor venues for large scale works of art (e.g., St. Louis' Laumeier Sculpture
Park). They differ from the examples of public art canvassed above in
inhabiting what is generally a more bucolic setting.
Yet the Henry Moore sculpture Two Piece Reclining Figure permanently
exhibited on the lawn of the Missouri Botanical Garden is not a piece of
environmental art. Reclining Figure is outdoors, unlike the Cézanne landscapes
mentioned two paragraphs back, yet it could just as well be exhibited in a
museum or gallery. Doing so would not raise questions about work identity.
Perhaps one reason Reclining Figure does not need to be exhibited outdoors is
that it is not about the outdoors. That is, it does not take the environment as its
subject.
Suppose we conjoin the two conditions just mentioned. Might it be the case
that environmental art consists of precisely those works that are both in the
environment and about the environment?
This clearly will not do either. It is at once too restrictive and too inclusive.
There are certainly genuine instances of environmental art that don't meet this
new criterion because they simply aren't about anything at all – that is, they are
non representational. There is no reason why environmental works can't be
abstract.
As such they might be about volume, mass, and rest, or about abstraction and
the whole history of Western art, but they certainly aren't about the natural
world in the sense of directing our attention to details of the ecosystems that
surround them.
There is another reason why this last attempt to characterize environmental art
is inadequate. It omits a centrally important class of examples, those which are
manipulations of the environment. These works take the natural environment
as their medium – they involve the modification of some aspect of the external
world. And this explains why these particular pieces cannot be moved, let
alone exhibited indoors, without destroying their very identity.
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But again, a whole range of examples is possible. Compare Michael Heizer's
Double Negative and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty – classic earthworks in
which chunks of rock or soil are literally dug or shaped or moved – with the
much more delicate, ephemeral creations of Michael Singer and Richard Long.
For Double Negative, Heizer used explosives and machinery to remove
240,000 tons of earth and rock from 2 cuts on opposite sides of a deep mesa,
while Smithson, in building Spiral Jetty, used ten wheeler dump trucks and
Caterpillar truck loaders to place 6,650 tons of basalt, limestone, and earth in a
spiral 1500 feet long and 15 feet wide.(1)
These projects are vast and disruptive. By contrast, Singer "creates incredibly
fragile and transitory works by gently tying, balancing, and bending the natural
materials found in the beaver bogs, marshes, ponds, evergreen woods, and
bamboo stands where he works," (2) while Long's works have included making
a path in a grassy field by walking back and forth for hours, creating and then
photographing configurations of stones while taking a walk, and a piece, titled
A Ten Mile Walk Done on Nov. 1, consisting of a walk documented by a line
drawn on a map. (3)
Environmental Art in Terms of Gestures
If we put aside art that is merely about the environment as well as art that is
simply in the environment, we can classify the complex relations of art to
environment in many of these remaining works by borrowing from Mark
Rosenthal.
In his article "Some Attitudes of Earth Art: From Competition to Adoration,"
(4) Rosenthal suggests a taxonomy of recent environmental art in terms of
gestures. I have elsewhere built on his suggestion to recognize the following
categories: masculine gestures (5), ephemeral gestures, performance works,
and landscapes and proto gardens.(6) Let me discuss each of these in turn.
Masculine gestures in the environment would comprise many of the massive
earthworks done remote sites in the American West in the 1970's: Michael
Heizer's Dissipate, Double Negative, Five Conic Displacements, Robert
Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Walter de Maria's Lightning Field.
Gentler gestures include works like Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels (a set of 'locator'
tunnels – concrete pipes with perforations keyed to celestial events), Mary
Miss' Field Rotation (a pinwheel shaped sunken stucture in an Illinois field;
one critic suggests the work's components refer to "such local vernacular
structures as corrals and grain elevators" (7), and James Turrell's Roden Crater
(a volcanic crater near Flagstaff, AZ, which the artist is subtly reshaping so
visitors will experience both geologic time and celestial events).
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Though I called works like Holt's Sun Tunnels gentler, they don't yet qualify as
ephemeral gestures because they are intended to endure in one place.
The works of Singer and Long count as ephemeral in my system. Both artists
make small alterations to a natural scene and leave them to eventually revert
back to their former condition. The British artist Andy Goldsworthy creates
similarly subtle and adaptive works.
Critic Suzi Gablik reports that "what he makes – lattices of horse chestnut
leaves stitched together with grass stalks, fresh green blades of spring grass
with white stems placed around the circumference of a hole like a sunburst,
yellow dandelions threaded onto grass stalks and laid in a stream, a zigzag trail
of bracken fronds on the ground – usually blows away in the wind or rain,
sometimes after only a few seconds." (8) Goldsworthy documents his creations
with photographs, just as Long photographs his walks.
The works of Christo and Jeanne Claude bear certain similarities to both
previous categories. Their installations here in the United States – Valley
Curtain, Grand Hogback, Rifle, Colorado, 1971 -72, Running Fence, Sonoma
and Marin Counties, CA, 1972-76, Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater
Miami, Fl, 1980-83 – introduce artifical elements (orange curtain, white fence,
pink skirts, all constructed from nylon fabic) into the landscape on a grand
scale.
Yet after a few days the pieces are entirely dismantled and the sites returned to
their previous state. Another artist whose works are performances in the
environment is Dominique Mazeaud, whose walks along the Rio Grande River
in Santa Fe constitute a project she called The Great Cleasing of the Rio
Grande River. Mazeaud walks along the river each month on the same day,
saying prayers and collecting refuse in garbage bags. he writes accumulates a
set of thoughts she calls her "riveries" in a journal. (9)
Landscapes and proto gardens constitute yet another category of environmetal
art. Alan Sonfist is an artist who has created a number of installations called
Time Landscape, each recreating the native flora of the site it now inhabits.
Sonfist has also created Pool of Earth, a landscape equivalent to found art, by
outlining an area in a chemical waste dump with a circle of stones and
declaring the landscape or garden to be anything that happens to sprout in that
circular space.
Work of Art and its Site
While the set of examples I have accumulated so far indicates some parameters
for environmental art, they don't settle all of the issues.
For example, how do we rule out cases like the following, which are art, are in
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the environment, and take aspects of the environment as their medium, yet still
don't seem straightforward examples of environmental art: (1) Mt. Rushmore,
in South Dakota, carved with the busts of four United States presidents; (2) the
project, now underway, to create a topiary version of Seurat's painting La
Grande Jatte in Columbus Ohio.
Contrast Mt. Rushmore with the other manipulated mountain described above,
Turrell's Roden Crater. And compare the Ohio topiary project with any of the
great gardens of 17th century France and 18th century Britain, on the one hand,
and with Sonfist's landscapes, on the other.
These last contrasts suggest an additional aspect that is crucial to
environmental art. Whether a work uses its site as medium – digging,
sculpting, or otherwise rearranging the environs – or merely responds to,
references, or records the particularities of that site – it must have some
relationship more intimate than merely being there. (And surely more intimate
than the even more distant relationship 'being about').
We can chart the possibilities here with the help of distinctions outlined by the
artist Robert Irwin in his essay "Being and Circumstance." (10) There Irwin
distinguishes four different relationships a work might have to its site. In order
of increasing intimacy, they are: site dominant, site adjusted, site specific, and
site conditioned/determined.
Site dominant works have no particular ties to their sites (Irwin's example is a
Henry Moore sculpture). Site adjusted works make concessions with regard to
"scale, appropriateness, placement, etc." Site specific works, though conceived
with the site in mind, are still "keyed (referenced) to the oeuvre of the artist;"
and finally, site conditioned/determined works "draw all their cues from their
surroundings [...] the site determines all the facets of the 'sculptural response.'"
Given Irwin's categories, we might consider stipulating that environmental art
must be either site specific or site conditioned/determined. This would rule out
some of the problem cases above and explicate the special connection that
joins the two components of environmental art.
Some puzzles remain, however. What are we to say about the genres of
environmental art? Is it only the plastic and visual arts that contribute to this
category? Why mightn't there be an environmental novel, or an environmental
symphony?
How are we to classify certain photographic projects, like the works of John
Pfahl, who documented nuclear plants throughout the United States in large
format overtly beautiful and romantic landscape photographs, or those of
David Hanson, whose series Waste Land is comprised of aerial photos of
hazardous waste sites?
A related question is this, how do we deal with overtly didactic works which
aspire to educate us about environmental crises?
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Exhibitions of the work of Helen and Newton Harrison are often comprised of
charts, maps, and tanks of living creatures. Their topics have included acid
rain, watersheds, commercial fishing, lagoon ecology. If this is environmental
art, then we can imagine quite similar works resulting from vastly different
projects.
The first might be a series of maps and charts indicating the flow of a river and
the draining of a watershed, while the second might be a series of maps and
charts indicating a trek taken by another artist through that same watershed, an
outing that generated noother physical traces.
Although these two displays might prompt very similar aesthetic experiences
among gallery goers, their 'denotations' (significance) might be extremely
disparate. And it remains possible that only one, or neither, is environmental
art.
There is one other question we should raise here. Why assume that all
environmental art is produced by environmentalists and Greenpeace
sympathizers? Why mightn't advocates of clear cutting and strip mining create
works of art to support their wilderness ethos – i.e., farm it, plunder it, make it
serve...?
Many of the massive earthworks of the early 70's had adversarial relationships
to the terrain they altered, though they might still count as site specific or site
conditioned/determined, in Irwin's taxonomy. Other works have been located
in natural sites that have been blighted by mining or industry. Is it appropriate
to insist that the category ’environmental art’ carry some fixed political
valence?
Gardens
My final topic is gardens. It is certainly the case that gardens are naturalistic
works of art in the landscape, and that their raw material consists of plants plus
the local topography.
How then should we demarcate gardens from environmental art? For a start,
note that not all gardens are works of art. This follows in part from the fact that
beauty is neither necessary norsufficient for the that category. Moreover, not
all gardens are site specific or site conditioned/determined.
Many famous gardens from the past resisted or overcame their sites. Consider
LeNotre's endless struggle to drain the swamps of Versailles while retaining
enough water to run its waterworks and fountains, or Capability Brown's
practice of damming streams and levelling villages to achieve his signature
effects.
The enthusiasm of Victorian gardeners for the bedding system and their
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introduction of exotic species from around the world both evidence a desire to
trump local environmental conditions.
Finally, many gardens have content, they convey messages to those who stroll
through them. The great gardens of the past have offered disquisitions on
topics as varied as politics, religion, classical texts, and erotic love.
So it is of course possible that some gardens not only inhabit but tell us about
the natural world. These are all considerations we must keep in mind in
determining whether some gardens count as environmental art.
Notes
1. Much of my account of these and other works is drawn from the very helpful
anthology edited by Alan Sonfist, Art and the Land (New York: E.P. Dutton,
Inc., 1983).
2. Michael Auping, "Earth Art: A Study in Ecological Politics," in Sonfist, Art
in the Land, p. 98.
3. Carol Hall, "Environmental Artists: Sources and Directions" in Sonfist, Art
in the Land, pp. 34 35.
4. In Sonfist, Art and the Land, pp. 60 73.
5. I acknowledge the sexism inherent in this term. I believe it reflects sex role
stereotypes that are prevalent in our society today. I think we just do classify as
male things that are large, bold, energetic, and expansive.
6. Stephanie Ross, "Gardens, earthworks, and environmental art", in S. Kemal
and I. Gaskell, Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univeristy Press).
7. Judith E. Stein,"Making Their Mark" in Making Their Mark: Women Artists
Move into the Mainstream (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989).
8. Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art (New York: Thames and Hudson,
1991), p. 92. I am grateful to Terry Suhre for pointing out this example to me,
as well as the work of Domique Mazeaud.
9. Reported in Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art, pp. 119 122.
10. In Robert Irwin, Being and Circumstance: Notes Toward a Conditional Art
(California: The Lapis Press, 1985).
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IO - Articles
Emily Brady
Rooted Art?: Environmental Art and our
Attachment to Nature
Aesthetic experience can engender an intimate relationship with the natural
environment by engaging us with our surroundings in a particular way. The senses,
thought, imagination and emotion are the aesthetic resources which facilitate
aesthetic appreciation and the vehicles for developing that potential relationship.
For example, through touch we are drawn closer to things we otherwise observe at a
distance – we stoop low to the ground to feel the soft sponginess of moss, or lie back
in it and gaze into the sky above. Reflections and associations may accompany these
sensations, and perhaps a feeling of comfortable exhilaration in taking in the moss’s
environment, which has, for the moment, become ours too.
Experiences of this kind foster attachments to nature – to particular environments
and places, and to species or other things that form these environments. We seek out
these places and things time and time again because we value them. In my example,
the attachments are developed through direct or immediate experience of the natural
world. But our relationship to nature is also developed, aesthetically and
non-aesthetically, through artefacts and culture – through spirituality, natural history,
art and so on.
What I would like to explore here is the extent to which environmental art fosters
attachments to nature. Does environmental art engage us with nature in ways which
enable us to develop a relationship with it, or does it distance us from nature? Does
environmental art foster the kinds of attachments which support an intimate
relationship with nature, or does it impose humanity on nature, manipulate nature or
in other ways undermine harmonious attachments to nature?
What are some of the ways in which these attachments are made? My interest in
these questions is not an ethical one; I will not argue here that environmental art
ought to encourage a feeling of attachment to nature, or that such art would be better
art (although a case could be made for both of these views).
I recognize that environmental art varies as much in its intentions as in its styles and
production, and my aim is to distinguish between those cases where attachment to
nature predominates from those where it does not.
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IO - Articles
Our Attachment to Nature
Before discussing cases of environmental art in relation to the questions above, we
need to have some idea of what constitutes attachment to nature and what the depths
and limits of this attachment are.
Essential to the concept of attachment is that one thing has a strong connection to
another thing in terms of some particular meaning, value or significance. Besides
this, attachments vary according to the particular significance involved. My feeling
of attachment to a friend is based in care, affection and respect, while my attachment
to my bicycle is based, primarily, in its utilitarian significance. Some attachments are
very deep, involving intimacy and closeness, while others are more tenuous and
distant.
In the context of the natural environment, it is worth noting that attachment overlaps
with a sense of place – a sense of place may engender attachments, and existing
attachments may engender a sense of place. Attachments related to place are often,
although not exclusively, related to familiarity and associations.
Many of our attachments to nature evolve through knowing some environment,
living in it, or being able to relate to it because it reminds us of other places we know
or other things we value. But attachment is a broader notion in that it may not be
connected to a place at all. We may be attached to things in nature which are not
associated with a particular place or environment, and the kinds of attachments we
make may be based in meanings which are unrelated to the idea of place.
Attachments to nature are also broader in the sense that they may be based in
preferences for things that are strange and unfamiliar. Sometimes we value
something and want to develop a connection to it precisely because it is different and
distinct from ourselves.
These points illustrate how a feeling of attachment may evolve through both
continuity and difference, which is especially important in the context of our
relationship with nature. Human beings are part of nature, and in this fact we find a
basic source of attachment. We recognize a continuity with nature through the acts of
living and inhabiting, flourishing and decomposing.
At the same time, however, we recognize difference in the otherness of nature.
Nature is also strange and unfamiliar to us and, accordingly, our relationships with it
are characterized as much by conflict as by harmony. The otherness of nature
reminds us not to take it for granted, to recognize it on its own terms, and in this way
to respect it.
The sort of necessary distance of respect, however, need not detach us from nature.
Like the attachment characterized by friendships, our relationship to nature may
involve affection and intimacy based in what is shared, but also the recognition that
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the other is a distinct entity with their own particular needs and projects. The ideal
kind of attachment to nature involves, in my view, the play between intimacy and
respect.
Environmental Art and Attachment
Given the concept of attachment I have sketched, what role does it have in our
appreciation of environmental art?
To answer this question, I consider cases of environmental art which belong to the
four categories of environmental art outlined by Stephanie Ross in her article in this
issue, ‘What is Environmental Art?’: masculine gestures, ephemeral gestures,
performance works, and landscapes and proto-gardens.(1)
Masculine gestures categorize works of environmental art which are fairly
permanent, and range from earthworks that involve moving tons of earth or rock
(e.g. work by Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer) to softer gestures that are less
disruptive to the land (e.g. work by Nancy Holt and Herman Prigann.
Smithson’s and Heizer’s work is overtly human and intentional in terms of using
nature for art’s sake. Smithson’s earthworks usually make use of forms on a grand
scale – jetties, ramps or mounds which stand out in the environment and mark the
land through their sheer mass. Heizer’s works cut monumental forms into earth or
rock on a grand scale.
The sites chosen by both artists tend to be remote and inaccessible, spaces vast
enough for massive art works. Their sites are ‘site-specific’ in that the art work is
created in some relation to the chosen site, but the art work is the focal point, with
the site mainly as backdrop.(2) This is especially true for Heizer whose forms require
a background of seemingly endless space, such as a desert.
More than any other environmental art (except perhaps Christo’s), these works have
received criticism from both ethical and aesthetic points of view. Some have argued
that even when the art works are not ecologically damaging, they are nonetheless
unethical, representing an affront to nature.(3)
It could be argued, for example, that in the way these works impose human forces on
to nature, they strengthen the hierarchical dualisms which have led to the oppression
of nature (e.g. human/nature, animal/non-human animal, culture/nature). These
artists are primarily interested in art rather than environmental issues, so that they are
open to such criticisms comes as little surprise.(4) On aesthetic grounds, they may
also constitute an affront, because they ‘forcibly assert their artefactuality over
against nature’ and work aesthetically against rather than symbiotically with the
aesthetic qualities of their surroundings.(5)
I cannot address these criticisms here, but they are relevant to the issue of
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attachment, namely, because they identify some obvious ways in which these art
works detach and distance us from nature. These works are about art more than
nature, so they are less likely to encourage an engagement with nature from which
attachments might arise. For example, through a photograph of Heizer’s Double
Negative we are drawn to aesthetic features of the work itself, rather than the work
pointing to aesthetic features of the surrounding environment.
In many cases, these art works represent an aggressive and disruptive relationship
with their environments, akin more to power relationships between people than the
cooperative harmony of friendships.
Although these works do appear to render attachment to nature difficult, it could also
be argued that to some extent Heizer and Smithson are able to bring out the aesthetic
qualities of the environment, and in that way create a relationship. The sheer contrast
of their forms may perceptually accentuate and therefore bring to our attention
particular aesthetic qualities in the surroundings – the sharp horizontal line of a
structure makes apparent the variety of pleasing curves of mountains in the
background.
The contrast between the overt intentionality of masculine gestures might emphasize
the otherness of nature; artefacts against a vast natural backdrop point up the feeling
that nature is wild and remote in contrast to the controlled character of the art work.
The otherness brought out here corresponds to the element of distance essential to
friendships, as noted above (or potentially it severs attachments altogether).
A final point is that some of Smithson’s sites were chosen because they had already
been damaged by human action, such as waste sites and disused quarries. In this
respect his works are in some ways congruous with the humanly altered character of
the site, thereby drawing attention to human impact on nature (Asphalt Rundown is a
case in point). This might have the somewhat ironic effect of inducing concern for
nature in the face of destruction.
Compared to other masculine gestures, Holt’s and Prigann’s projects have more
interest as environments themselves and for the way they highlight aspects of their
surroundings or refer to their sites more explicitly. For example, Holt’s creations can
be entered and explored, and at the same time she creates views and vistas out from
the work and to the landscape or even the stars through cement pipes or other means
(see especially Views Through a Sand Dune, Sun Tunnels and Hydra's Head).
Similarly, Prigann’s Yellow Ramp creates connections through art to the local
environment and the sun above at a particular time of year.
Although these works are more oriented toward art than nature, they have stronger
connections to their natural environments than other masculine gestures, and rest on
the border between being site-specific and ‘site-conditioned’(6) (when the art work
takes its very direction from the site itself). They are still quite clearly art works in
the land, but they are more sensitive to their surroundings. Importantly, unlike the
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work of Heizer and Smithson, these works and their accompanying environments
can actually be appreciated since they are not so inaccessible.
This means that the appreciator can be enticed into the micro-environment created by
the art work, an environment which also has significant connections to the
environments beyond it. By linking us on earth to the sun and stars above, these
works create an especially interesting kind of attachment – they engage us with parts
of nature usually quite inaccessible to us. In these various ways these gentler
gestures are more likely to engender attachments to the nature connected to these
sites.
The next category, ephemeral gestures, includes works by environmental artists such
as Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. These art works are site-conditioned and
impermanent. The materials used are usually gathered from the site itself and
incorporated into the setting. Some last for a few moments – a formation of leaves
blown away by the wind; some a few hours – an icicle formed onto rocks melts in
the afternoon sun; and others for longer – a path tracked through a field.
These works are intentionally sensitive to their natural surroundings; indeed, they
evolve so much from their surroundings that one might confuse the artefact for
nature itself.(7) The art work is, however, an important force. Natural materials are
manipulated to echo or celebrate particular qualities of nature – its complexity,
simplicity, delicacy, strength, changeability, varying shapes and textures, and more
generally, all its dynamic possibilities.
The sensitivity to nature and veneration of it implicit in these art works encourages
the appreciator (usually via a photograph (8)) to appreciate nature more on its terms
than the artist’s. The artist’s role is to enable us to become aware of nature’s value by
highlighting it in creative and captivating ways.
We are encouraged to become immersed in natural environments and to find beauty
in nature beyond hackneyed or picturesque sights. For example, Goldsworthy’s
Icicle Frozen to a Rock (Cumbria) is penetrating, like the frozen water through
which it has formed. It both embodies and expresses the play between the bleak
feeling which accompanies the permanence of winter cold and the relief of a quick
thaw. While nature can have expressive qualities without the intervention of an artist,
Goldsworthy’s creation helps us to find them.
It is easy to see how this work, and others like it, encourage a relationship with
nature.
We may really hate the winter cold, but in situations where we do not have suffer
from it, we are more able to appreciate its aesthetic qualities. Artists like
Goldsworthy offer us the opportunity to get to know why there might be positive
qualities in nature which are either difficult to appreciate or just go unnoticed
because we think we have seen it all before. This kind of ‘aesthetic knowledge’ can
form the basis of a strong relationship to nature.
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However, ephemeral gestures can still be said to manipulate nature for an artistic
purpose. Rather than constituting a true interaction with nature (as we shall see in the
work of the Sonfist, Harrison or Denes, later in this essay), these works appropriate
nature, and convey its qualities through artistic gestures. While this type of artistic
mediation can help us to find aesthetic qualities in nature, it fosters attachment
involving less interdependence, and thus falls short of the ideal.
Other environmental art works are temporary in nature, like ephemeral gestures, but
they have another distinctive feature – they are somehow perfomative. In this third
category, performative works, Christo’s art is the prime example. Christo is well
known for wrapping things, islands, public buildings, and also for using fabric in the
landscape. Running Fence used one hundred and sixty-five thousand yards of nylon
to create a soft fence through two counties in California.
This piece, like others, drew attention to both the light and sumptuous qualities of its
materials and the features of its site. Running Fence internally framed the landscape
in which it was built, and in that way brought attention to aesthetic qualities of both
the art work and the land.(9)
Although Christo’s work is temporary, its impact and orientation toward art means
that it shares features with masculine gestures. In terms of its propensity to engender
a relationship with nature, it is a step backward from the more sensitive work of
Goldsworthy or Long. While Christo’s work might be taken as a tribute to whatever
environment it is situated in, its incongruity with the landscape means that the
appreciator’s attention is ultimately on the fabric itself, so that nature, here, serves
merely as a backdrop for a brilliant kitsch fantasy.
I turn now to Ross’s final category, landscapes and proto-gardens, which includes
the work of Alan Sonfist, Helen and Newton Harrison, and Agnes Denes. Because
living and growing materials, cultivated over time, are essential to these art works,
these artists are truly interacting with nature.
Their projects necessarily span relatively large amounts of time, and are usually
permanent, although very changeable. Denes’ Tree Mountain – A Living Time
Capsule, was conceived and produced over fourteen years and involved planting ten
thousand trees. Sonfist’s Time Landscape attempted to re-create a pre-colonial forest
in the urban environment of New York City. The Harrisons have been involved in
marine research, examining the natural cycles of crabs in one of their project.
These works range from being site-specific to site-conditioned, but unlike the other
categories, landscapes and proto-gardens involve a direct concern for nature on a
more global scale, with a stronger interest in ecological ideas than aesthetic qualities
(compared to, e.g., Goldsworthy). For example, Denes’ work embodies the very idea
of ecological harmony, aiming to establish a relationship between humans and the
natural environment which is based more on nature’s interests than human interests.
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The social and political statements inherent in these works are more likely to
encourage attachments which have at their core a caring or ethical approach to the
environment. Importantly, these attachments begin at the level of particularity.
Sonfist’s Time Landscape enables urban dwellers to experience a stage in the history
of the conflict between culture and nature. And for some people, these projects
provide a unique opportunity to understand natural processes.
Conclusion
My analysis of environmental art and attachment to nature might be summed up
(with important qualifications) by the spectrum below:
This illustrates how, on the whole, environmental art which is more art-centered,
more imposing in terms of human intentionality, and less interactive with nature, is
less likely to engender attachments to the natural environment which are
characterized by care, affection and respect. Art works which are more
environment-oriented, more interactive with nature and more ecologically sensitive
are more likely to engender both closeness to nature and respect for it.
This spectrum raises a couple of problematic questions. It appears that environmental
art which depends significantly on natural processes is more likely to encourage an
intimate relationship with the environment.
But does this miss the point? After all, the issue here has been to try to determine
how we might establish a closer relationship with nature through an artistic
experience, and the work of Denes, Sonfist and the Harrisons could be seen as more
nature than art.
This leads to the second question. Why use art at all? Why should some
environmental art aim at establishing the kind of attachment discussed here, when
unmediated aesthetic appreciation of the environment provides a more direct
opportunity?
I think there is one answer to both of these questions. Like friendships, our
relationships to nature are developed in many ways and through various routes.
Sometimes the direct route is too easy, leading, accordingly, to superficial
attachments. The more we have to work at it, the more likely we are to develop
deeply rooted and longer lasting attachments.
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Environmental art can help us to do this by forcing us to engage with nature in
demanding ways – whether through art in the land or by giving us creations which
challenge the very distinction between art and nature.
Notes:
(1) Stephanie Ross, “What is Environmental Art?”, IO. Internet Magazine for
Applied Aesthetics, Vol. I, Summer 1998.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Some of these issues are discussed in P. Humphrey’s “The Ethics of
Earthworks”, Environmental Ethics, vol. 7, 1985.
(4) See M. Auping, “Earth Art: A Study in Environmental Politics” in A. Sonfist,
ed., Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art (New York; Dutton,
1983), pp. 92-104.
(5) See D. Crawford, “Nature and Art: Some Dialectical Relationships” Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 42, 1983, pp. 56-57.
(6) Ibid.
(7) See M. Rosenthal, “Some Attitudes of Earth Art” in Sonfist, pp.66-67.
(8) The very use of photographs creates a distance between appreciator and the art’s
environment, and this in turn problematizes the whole idea of attachment through
environmental art. I cannot see any way to overcome this, except to note that in these
cases the attachments made are less likely to be to the particular places where the
works are situated and are more likely to be attachments of a general kind.
(9) A. Carlson, “Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?”, The
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 16, no. 4, December 1996, p. 648.
some links
Subject Matter
Double Negative
Andy Goldsworthy
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Terra Nova
“Terra Nova” is one of Herman Prigann’s projects – a programme that is
concentrating on the aesthetical and ecological recultivation of destroyed
landscapes.
It involves staging an artistic coordinate system of sculptural places in the
landscape that will form a network stretching over the frontiers of Europe – the
“ley lines” of our times.
The programme produces an artistic understanding of nature that has developed
from analysis of the ecological and aesthetic problems of the present condition
of the landscape.
YELLOW RAMP
1993-1995 II. and III. Biennale for land
art, lignite mining area, Cottbus/Germany.
Material:
Earth - granites aprox. 2,5 x 3,0 m stones - concrete slabs, previously used as
temporary road at the surface mining. Plantation with broom - two black
conifers and yellow flowering plants - St. Johns worts - mulleins - lupines - sun
flowers. Lenght 220 m - heighest point of the ramp 15 m - diameter of the
observatory 12 m - breadth on the ramp 4 - 6 m
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Earthwork - geoglyph - a sign and an observation place. The observatory is
constructed according to the rules of the neolithic observatories. The vertical set
up of the concrete slabs are marking the four cardinal points. Between the
concrete slabs on the east side four small passages are left open, that according
to the solstice, the sunshine can cross through and can touch the two stones in
the center of the place. The ramp will be grown over with broom and other
yellow plants and flowers and they will blossom every year from May till
Septemper.
MORE...
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Herman Prigann views landscape as bearing the stamp of culture, and not that
notion, full of romantic projections, that nature is only “the other” – i.e.
something that is opposed to culture and urban conditions. He states instead that
the beginning and the end of culture is nature, the one immanent in the other.
The starting point in Terra Nova -project is first the necessity of making old
industrial sites – disused dumps, dying woodland, former open cast mines etc. –
part of a developed landscape again. Further, concepts and methods of
implementation are required in order to provide initial work and further training
for the large numbers of unemployed people. Therefore both aspects, the
“discussed areas” that are no longer part of a developed landscape and people
who are no longer part of the working process are reintegrated in this project.
This process produces areas that are redesigned aesthetically and ecologically,
with their waste disposed of, and also to increased awareness in the sense of a
humane and ecological approach. In concrete terms, new jobs are produced in
the course of work of this kind. The whole programme can be seen as “cultural
ecology”.
Specialist personnel working on this project on the basis of the various levels of
approach to the problem include ecologists, biologists, landscape planners,
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educationalists and sociologists but also specialists in organization,
management and PR. Many people from various spheres are drawn into the
working and learning processes, according to the size of the various derelict
sites and whether work is done on a number at the same time, which should be
the aim.
Realizing the “Terra Nova” project is overall not just a model, but also a
demonstration of how different solutions can be approached in their
interdisciplinary interlinking of ecology, art and social design beyond Germany
and out into the rest of Europe.
Hermann Prigann: Thoughts about "Art in Nature"
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Hermann Prigann
Thoughts about “Art in Nature”
In Search of Another Comprehension of Nature and Art
The search is not new. An elementary aspect of the collective artistic evolution
was and is the representation of the dialogue with our inner and outer nature.
The aesthetization of this dialogue is art, its object of contemplation and
reflection is the nature of humans and their existing and yet manipulable
environment.
In this oscillating process of our cultural history we are now confronted with a
new background of questions: How is the antagonism, nature versus culture, as
a specific culturally practiced, collective way of thought to be overcome? How
must the aesthetization of our dialogue look, that transforms this antagonism
into a collaboration – which would be one of the consequences?
Certain romanticized and esoterically interpreted cliches about the meaning of
this collaborative are to be avoided here. Only with respect to the background
of global ecological crisis can this collaboration be an expression of another
concrete, namely ecological behaviour. What would be the artefact of an
“ecological aesthetic of nature”?
Calling the tree “Brother Tree” and healing the wounds of “Mother Earth” the
representation of ritualistic images to purify the ground – is this all an
expression of an ecological consciousness? Does it express itself in an art that
undertakes such endeavours?
Art is concrete and nature is concrete. Concerning the perception of both, the
wonderful lies in the factual. To humanize nature through language is a
behaviour of consumption, both have their purpose in our antagonistic relation
to nature and to ourselves. To quote Ernst Bloch: “culture stands in nature like
an army in enemy territory”.
The evidence of this condition lies before us. It is the state of the ecosystem
earth, bearing the imprint of human’s cultural factor. It is thus the result of a
collaborative that is neither prepared nor anticipated, but rather self critical,
perhaps to be newly recognized. “If there is a law in one place, there must be
laws everywhere” (Lévy Strauss in Structures elementaires de la parente).
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Nature is the Dance of Evolution and Entropy. Culture is One
of the Dancers
To make the laws of this dance transparent was and is a perspective of art. The
culturally defined polarity between art and nature invites us to a dialogue if we
contemplate both phenomena on the axis of signs – language – sounds, and
imagine this axis as part of a circular movement that encompasses all the
communicating aspects of the ecosystem earth.
We contemplate our inner and outer world, that surrounds us as one that is
accessible and communicating exclusively by and through the signs that rest
and evolve in this context. Only in this connection can we speak of a dialogue
between art and nature. The interpretation of the signs in this dialogue is the
concern of art.
Art was and is a seismographic recording and representation of our experience
and knowledge of nature. The pictures of its interpretation are codes of a
dialogue with the outer realm, nature as an energetic process of change within
the matter, and the inner realm, our psychic experience of being in this
universal occurrence. In this sense art is the sign language that represents the
understanding of our self relating to these contexts.
Yet the decisive difference to the present representation of this dialogue –
between art and nature – lies in its new determined site. We could say that the
classical form of expression was one that represented nature as appearance, and
now this dialogue takes place in nature.
What follows then is that the ontological and scientific concept of nature in
landscape represents itself in the sign language of art either as an object –
sculptural site – or as a geoglyph.
Otherwise considered, the historicity and materiality of landscape merge with
art into a new expression of the perception of nature. Namely that we are an
integral part of a permanent metamorphic process. From this experience of
being safe in nature, appears in the realizations of this art an aesthetic of free
circumstance. That is, these works in their respective actually experienced
condition are never finished. In them, the simultaneity of past, present and
future can be experienced.
Because these works contain as an aesthetic criterion their change in time, we
can speak of an ecological aesthetic. The evolution of our knowledge about the
contexts of human existence manifests itself on one side, while on the other side
the power of entropy presents itself here as changing and aesthetic in
appearance. Considered in this perspective, nature and culture are linked
symbiotically in art.
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YELLOW RAMP
1993-1995 II. and III.
Biennale for land art, lignite
mining area,
Cottbus/Germany.
Art in the Landscape
Sub specie aeternitatis, with respect to eternity, looking upon the landscape,
creates the consciousness of space – time. Here past and future, in their present
time appearance, join us in the dialogue. This process of experiencing landscape
becomes highly relevant, as we consider it from the perspective of flying. Here,
from this glance, we can read signs in it.
The geoglyphs tell us something of intercourse and understanding of humans
with themselves in the landscape space of his history. This sign language bends
the bow between neolithic time and today, and illustrates how we have given up
the once known universal corporeal measure in relation to space in favour of the
pragmatic measure, with which structures in landscape are now drawn, whose
cause and sense are clearly determined by a utilitarian and exploitative thinking.
An archaic world map would show a few paths that are spanning short
distances, many astronomical rock formations, figurative mounts, earth
pyramids, vast fissures, that bind themselves with others to form directive fields
and figures, and apart from that gigantic space still free from human interaction
with the terrain. Every manipulation of landscape had a spiritual, imaginary
reference and starting point inside the consciousness of a human being.
Today they can protect us from the loss of memory and are indicative of a
future, in which the sign language of the devastation of the landscape can be
transformed into its opposite. That we, in the present state of the landscape can
experience and compare the simultaneity of spiritually and industially set
geoglyphs should cause us a moment’s pause. Observed with respect to time,
the former remain silent, they are no longer to be read in the sense of those who
once put them on face of the earth.
What remains is their aesthetic atmosphere, their inner power and fascination,
that leads us to the contemplation of our being. We enter the poetic space of our
own historicity. This approach is still possible today, as art has, through all the
changes of time preserved and further developed Ariadne’s thread of the
perception of beauty, as the measure of the human body – physical and psychic
– in the space of landscape and nature – seen as the dance of entropy and
evolution.
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With the background of this knowledge those terrains get a new meaning, that
we have transformed into wasteland while searching for resources for our
expanding civilization. They can and should be surrendered to a new formation
that creates geoglyphs – signs, landmarks of our epoch. These signs can only
find and state art through an intuitive understanding of that archaic sign
language, that the powers of nature and the ideas of man about them have set in
and on the earth.
Signatures of the realization of our being, as integrated creatures of what we
call nature. That means, in relation to the concrete object of industrially tuned
work in and on it, to give these landscapes back to humans as space. To leave
clues in the geoglyphs for following genereations, that we have again resumed
the continuation of earth signs and the preservation of living space. In this sense
– sub specie aeternitatis – this art continues a dialogue in nature, one which
speaks to us from archaic time and points to the future.
Nature is neither a thing nor an assembly of things. It is not external or internal,
it does not surround us, it is not available, it can neither be destroyed, nor loved.
Nature is a word without antonym. It is an all encompassing objectless concept,
a condition in movement. Nature as contrary to something else does not exist.
Environment that surrounds man is a more exact expression than nature,
because nature is the concept that includes humans. Human beings are an
aspect, a part of nature, they can influence and destroy the environment, but not
nature. Maybe man will step out of history, out of the world’s evolution, but
nature remains the same.
The currently existing question of survival has apart from the causes determined
by industrial development still another cause in the way we understand
ourselves in the relationship between nature and humans – one of cultural
history, of perception in a broader sense.
To perceive the process – the change – the metamorphic in all as beauty is an
approach to the development of another – for our culture perhaps new
consciousness of ourselves immanent in nature. Nature’s beauty is like all other
notions of beauty a result of cultural and social condition and convention. The
originality in this sense is pure fiction.
What we do in and for landscape – for the space we live in – depends decidedly
upon what we perceive of it.
One main problem that we have today with landscape is the extensive
repression of our own responsibility for its current condition. It has to do with a
revision of our understanding of nature and landscape. Because wherever the
object of interest is destroyed, the precondition for positive change is eliminated
as well.
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Structures of landscape that form, deform, animate or constrict and waste the
lives of its occupants prove the fact that we are not only entangled in record and
history but also in the scenarios of the landscape art, that not solely produces
more beautiful appearance but utilizes the destroyed landscape for new space of
experience, or portrays through objects and cultural sites in the cultural
landscape the dialogue of art and nature.
The habitus of landscape, its physiognomy, receives fixed points through
sculptural sites around which the surrounding is formed. Thereby a possible
position of center in the landscape is developed, this effects an experience of
being in the world and initiates a communication with the surroundings.
What follows from this is that the realized object must be in a definite relation
to the surroundings – then a “sculptural space” emerges, an otherwise arbitrary
placement of artwork in landscape. These objects within the configuration of
landscape facilitate a perception, that allows us to experience the context of
nature and culture. As we constitute art with nature in landscape, we create a
new correlation, changing the habitus of landscape.
Here begins our program. It mediates through the sculptural site in landscape
nature as a space of sensation and perception, in which a sensibilization of the
relationship environment – human beings – culture – nature is made evident.
“Metamorphic objects” from sculptural sites linked to nature in the landscape,
in the outskirts of the city as well as in the city. The object as the metaphor and
artistic theme becomes the intersection of its environment. In certain ways the
object changes, with regard to its intentional substance, everything around it.
Art that has to do with natural conditions as material as well as with the site of
its effects, affects and influences the ecological relationship. This happens in
many ways. Certainly first in the material itself, because here the
metamorphosis is immanent as a temporal process of decay. Here the ecological
relationship takes a part in the aesthetic statement of the work of art, or in such
work of art the aesthetic aspect of this effect is shown.
“Beauty of Temporality” not only shines in the fire, it also creates in works of
art of this type a history of the decay of an object. Thus it becomes the
metaphor of life and through the symbolic character of the object, a metaphor of
culture.
The aesthetic as well as the metaphoric aspect of decay, of metamorphosis, of
dissolution has a long history in the history of art, it is the motif of the
“Moderne”.
Terra Nova project
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Agnes Denes
Wheatfield - A Confrontation
© Agnes Denes
2 acres of wheat planted harvested, Battery Park landfill, downtown Manhattan,
Summer 1992 (with Statue of Liberty across the Hudson)
After months of preparations, in May 1982, a 2-acre wheat field was planted on
a landfill in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade
Center, facing the Statue of Liberty.
Two hundred truckloads of dirt were brought in and 285 furrows were dug by
hand cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were sown by hand and the
furrows covered with soil. The field was maintained for four months, cleared of
wheat smut, weeded, fertilized and sprayed against mildew fungus, and an
irrigation system set up. The crop was harvested in August 16 and yielded over
1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.
Planting and harvesting a field of wheat on land worth 4,5 billion dollars
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IO - Gallery
created a paradox. Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept, it represented
food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to
mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns. It called
attention to our misplaced priorities.
The harvested grain traveled to twenty-eight cities around the world in an
exhibition called "The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger",
organized by the Minnesota Museum of Art (1987-90). The seeds were
evetually carried away by people who planted them in many parts of the globe.
Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule
© Agens Denes
420x270x28 meters, elliptical, 1992-1996, Ylöjärvi, Finland
Eleven thousand people came together from all over the world to plant eleven
thousand trees in an intricate mathematical pattern as part of a massive
earthwork and land reclamation project in middle Finland. Tree Mountain is a
vast monument that is international in scope, unparalleled in duration and not
dedicated to the human ego, but to benefit future generations with a meaningful
legacy.
The project was officially announced by the Finnish government at the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Earth Environment Day, June 5, 1992, as Finland's
contribution to help alleviate the world's ecological stress.
Sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program, the Finnish Ministry
of the Environment, and the Strata Commitee, Tree Mountain is protected land
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IO - Gallery
to be maintained for four centuries, eventually creating a virgin forest. People
who planted the trees received certificates acknowledging them as custodians of
the trees. It is an inheritable document valid twenty generations into the future.
MORE...
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Untitled Document
Agnes Denes
My Work as an Environmental Artist
The issues touched on in my work range between individual creation and social
consciousness. For the past thirty years I have been involved with the creation
of a new visual language of communication that allows the flow of information
among alien systems and disciplines, eliminating the boundaries of art making
new associations and valid analogies possible.
My work addresses itself to an age of complexity, when more information
assaults us on a daily bases than can be assimilated. Our hard won knowledge
accumulates undigested in specializations, blocking meaningful communication
between disciplines. Lacking overview and direction, human values tend to
decline. A new analytical attitude is called for, a clear overview or a summing
up, in which essences carry pure meaning and all things can be considered once
more simultaneously.
By bringing these new concepts into the art arena, and allowing the flow of
information to infiltrate it, art rises above being just another self styled, elitist
system busy with its own functions. Art is a specialization that need not feed
upon itself, but can unify key elements from other systems into a unique,
coherent vision, gaining the power to make statements with universal validity.
In this sense I look at art as the integrator of disciplines, and see the role of the
artist as developing a new vision for humanity. When art renders into visual
form these analytical processess, the hybrid becomes the script in a new
language of seeing and knowing, and the powerful tools of artistic vision, image
and metaphor become expressions of human values with profound impact on
our consciousness and collective destiny.
My first eco philosophical site work was Rice/Tree/Burial in 1968, in Sullivan
Country, New York, and re enacted for Artpark in 1977-79. In this work I
planted rice, chained a forest and buried a time capsule to be opened a thousand
years from now. I then lived on the edge of Niagara Falls for eight days,
incorporating the force of nature into this triad of thesis, antithesis and
synthesis. This work investigated our relationship to the earth and is considered
the first environmental artwork.
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Untitled Document
Today all my philosophical concepts seem to culminate and come to life in my
environmental sculptures and ecological site works, such as Wheatfield – A
Confrontation (New York, 1982), North Waterfront Park Masterplan
(Berkeley, 1990), and Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule (Finland 1992
96). They affirm our commitment to the future well being of the ecological,
social and cultural life of the our planet.
My latest environmental artwork is taking place in Melbourne, Australia,
sponsored by Construction in Process VI, The Bridge. The planting of forests is
essential in Australia. This forest will be situated adjacent to a water
purification plant outside of Melbourne. Taking the Finnish project as example,
these trees will also be nurtured into maturity and maintained for centuries.
My concept with these forests is that these works are gifts to benefit future
generations, from whom we have been taking so much by using up all the
resources of earth. These works are aimed to give back a little. The size of this
forest is 400 x 80 meters, comprised of five intersecting spirals. Each spiral is
made up of three different tree species of varied height.
The tallest trees are planted in the center of each spiral followed by medium
size trees, while the smallest trees make up the outer edges of the spirals. Thus
each spiral also becomes a step pyramid. The trees are the species Red Gum
(Eucalyptus camaldulensis), She Oak (Allocasuarina verticallata) and Paperbark
(Melaleuca helmatororum). The seeds of these trees will also be saved for
future use. The planting will take place in March, 1998, while the ground is
being prepared and the pegs laid out for the patterning of the trees at this
writing.
Another work coming up this spring is a cropland to be planted in Caracas,
Venezuela. It is being created within the hubbub and congestion of the “city”,
thereby calling attention to, among other problems, those we are facing with the
growing cities and megacities of the world.
I find it important to create these works all over the world as examples of what
needs to be done: on destroyed, barren land where resource extraction has taken
its toll; in the nervous tension of cities; on deforested soil – to stop erosion,
purify the air, protect fresh groundwater, provide home for wildlife and afford
people a chance to stay in touch with nature. It is also important that I make my
work beautiful.
The beauty carries the concept and the philosophy and makes this work
different from the average reclamation project. It is art in the purest sense of the
word. It is a new visual language of communication that expands the boundaries
of art. It speaks to people at all levels of life and reaches out to future
generations with a legacy. These works question the status quo, elicit and
initiate new thinking processess and offer provocative, meaningful
communication.
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Untitled Document
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Hester Reeve
Kissing the Mess. Aesthetic Engagement with
Ideas of Nature
The complexity of the universe is beyond expression in any possible
notation.
Lift up your eyes. Not even what you see before you can ever be fully
expressed.
Close your eyes. Not even what you see now.
Michael Frayn Constructions (1)
Introduction
The growing focus in the arts and philosophy alike to re-consider the human
relationship with nature relates directly to the realization that there is a crisis.
This crisis is not only in the ability of pre-human existence states of nature to
maintain themselves alongside the large scale impact of human activity but also
in the representations, ideas and practices that we have traditionally employed
with regard to the non-human environment.
Therefore, as an artist concerned with the human-nature crisis I have a two-fold
motivation. Firstly, there is a creative desire to address nature as
subject-in-its-own-right and not as an object of representation (as it is in many
art works) and, secondly, I have a political desire to communicate to other
humans dynamic and non-everyday questions which provoke their own ideas
and values about nature.
This desire to open up communication possibilities is, for me, very much an
integral part of the art-making process. In my opinion, the passion to
communicate – or rather the passion to explore just what can be communicated
– is far more influential, if present, in extending the existing language forms
and meaning-making boundaries of art-practice than the desire to represent
something in visual language or create beauty.
However, for all the confident assertions about my raison d'être as an artist, the
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closer and more earnest I get in consciously considering nature as subject, the
messier the issue of “knowing nature” and hence presenting value in it
becomes.
To take nature not just artistically (i.e. as in making it the object of a painting
style or using natural materials instead of paint) but also seriously (as in
considering it as an object of human perception and as something which exists
in its own right) means facing up to the following paradox: what we approach
with our consciousness through the term ’nature’ is a "complexity [...] beyond
expression in any possible notation" and yet simultaneously it is "that which we
cannot not desire".(2)
Surely, if we want to develop new values towards the non-human, it is as
important to work with what we claim to know about nature as it is to work
with our aesthetic experience of it. Whilst the human relationship to and
knowledge of the surrounding world has never been fixed but instead is ever
dynamic and developing, it is only at the present point in time, through
deconstruction, that we have become self-conscious of the ways in which we
know and constitute the “nature of Nature.”
This more reflexive stance as “knowers” opens up the conceptual distance for a
questioning dialogue with our ideas. Thus also feasible is an experience of an
aesthetic engagement with our ideas about nature. An aesthetic engagement
with our ideas about nature is not the same as an aesthetic experience of nature
as empirical phenomena. Hence the type of aesthetic engagement I am
proposing can only be made available to conscious experience through art –
which binds together conceptual ideas and physical materials.
On my view, an aesthetic engagement with ideas of nature does not deny the
existence of a world of nature prior to and independent of our ideas about
‘nature’ and our construction of it. Michael Frayn confirms that not only is our
being contingent on there existing a physical world into which we are born but
it is just this ambiguous tension between the human construction of reality and a
physical reality that gives our knowledge-making and work-doing dimension:
"If the physical world ceased to exist, painting and poetry and prose would
become meaningless [...]And the glory of writing is its dependence upon the
world – the necessity it puts us in of coming back again and again to confront
the complexity of what lies before our eyes".(3)
The Mess
To ask that one accept that nature is a "complexity [...] beyond expression in
any possible notation" is not to stress the universe's geographical vastness but to
understand that human experience is defined more by the fact of being human
than by the provable facts we claim to have discovered about a non-human
nature.
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Since nature is a category defined as much through human language as it is
through sense impressions of empirical data, what we term nature might be
appropriately regarded as something of a human artefact. I prefer to see it this
way – not to suggest any artificiality but to highlight how, as a category of
knowledge and experience, nature is invested with human attention and
intention and can not be taken to reflect a mirror-reality of the non-human
world.
When we take on board such a deconstructionist position, we humbly have to
acknowledge that our cognitive understanding can never arrive at an
autonomous and true understanding (or, therefore, depiction) of the nature of
the universe around us. Indeed, to see knowledge as an instrument neutrally
gathering the 'truth' about the world is a fallacious intention since any
comprehension, no matter how useful or pleasurable it may be, will always be
mediated and constituted through our language structures, our knowledge
systems and our sensual organs which screen “data” from the world around us
in terms of their particular capacities as much as in terms of the outside world.
The de-constructionist perspectives on the nature of nature are disquieting
because they remove the traditional assumption that we can read solid and
eternal laws as guide posts from the world around us. Yet we are still
nonetheless presented with a tidy, self-contained picture of human beings in
their world. The confidence in our assumption that humans can achieve total
knowledge of the world – that reality in an ultimate sense is commensurate with
human knowledge – may have been dethroned but we are still presenting
ourselves with a picture of us in control; it may not be 'the true world' that we
know but it is none the less “a” world and one which is according to our
existence, our choices and so forth.
However, it would be arrogant beyond comparison (and limiting to potential
human experience and knowledge of the universe) to believe that the only
reality is that according to the human experience of being. Therefore, our
thoughts must somehow accommodate the paradox that whilst we can only
know according to our human faculties, there is “something” (for want of any
word that could adequate) outside of the social construct of nature and we
humans doing the construction.
Since this something must be incommensurate with human knowledge faculties
and yet can be posited as a possibility by our knowledge faculties, I'd like to put
it that we are conceptually in a “mess”.
The word ‘mess’ has derogatory connotations which I wish to dispel in relation
to my exploration of nature and artistic communication. The dictionary
definition of this term is: lit. mixture. A state of dirt and disorder; a muddle, a
state of embarrassment.
Since shunning the conceptual incongruities surrounding the nature of nature
line of thought can only lead to a conceptual tidying technique (rather like we
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regard matter derogatory as dirt rather than soil when it is inside and not outside
our homes and literally sweep it under the carpet) it seems necessary to
continually confront it. Art has the potential to take the “embarrassment” at the
finitude of human knowledge within the “nature of Nature” and look it straight
in the face.
This is not in order to resolve the ambiguity. Only in surrendering to the notion
that there is no one right or absolute way to view and determine value in nature
can a clear space for the power of the possible in thought, idea and value be
opened.
So, to face the mess means not defining or representing nature but dialoguing
with the many interconnecting levels of reality and human ideas out of which it
has become a tangible thing for us. This leads back to my proposal for the
significance of an aesthetic engagement with our ideas of nature. If we wish to
involve ourselves with revealing value in the non-human it seems constructive
and honest to see our ideas about nature as real and as concrete in terms of the
influence they have on our constitution of nature and the experience they offer
to our cognitive faculties as the objects of phenomenal nature.
Such an aesthetic engagement with our ideas of nature stands in contrast to the
systematic study of an objectified nature. Art can be used to explore the mess
and embody ideas about nature and the processes by which a category like
nature gets constituted by us. This conscious relating to ideas amounts to a
reflexivity which would perhaps be better able to present new meaningful
suggestions about the world than representative visual language.
The aesthetic engagement with ideas of nature may strike the reader as
somewhat oblique – even fussy – yet I believe it stands as an appropriate
collusion with postmodern perspectives on knowledge, reality and art.
Postmodern perspectives on knowledge at the end of the twentieth century
realize that we can no longer view knowledge as an end in itself. In our
post-industrial era of communication and information knowledge has lost its
“use” value under the new goals of “exchange”.
The processes by which we claim to know something are rendered transparent
to us through deconstruction, opening up the inevitable realization that humans
can no longer believe in any absolute location of reality since it is more
appropriate to consider that we construct a sense of reality according to our
faculties in response to the “world” rather than discover the world in its own
right. Hence, rather than a world of subject-object dualism the information age
opens up reality as a multi-leveled medium of contact and feedback between
subjects and objects, between signs and ideas.
This kind of reflexivity poses the perennial questions – what is the world?; what
are the ways in which we can approach knowing the world?; and how can
human nature change from its dependence on out-moded world views? – more
dynamically than perhaps ever before. It also poses such questions more
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humbly since a postmodern position accepts that humans are not at the center of
any one world and rejects the project of “knowing best”.
By offering an experience of an aesthetic engagement with ideas of nature, art
can attempt to facilitate in others a relationship and reflexivity within the
various ways we perceive and know nature in order to keep nature as a category
dynamic, open and celebratory. Such
an engagement is further significant as an experience because it suspends the
human subject temporarily from being author or controller of knowledge
without negating the irreplaceable nature of that knowledge.
Whilst the human is at the center of their knowledge producing activity, we can
not claim that the human is at any central point of what we refer to through our
use of the term nature. Within an aesthetic engagement with ideas of nature the
human is no longer in the position of author or possessor of knowledge but in
the ecstasy of “knowing knowledge”. An aesthetic engagement with our ideas
of nature is rather an extra-ordinary task and not something we can consider in
our daily goings on.
However, art is in a position to make such an experience tangible. It is also an
ambiguous – or messy – task due to the nature of nature. Art again is in a
relevant position to activate this situation if one accepts that art's role is not in
presenting the truth but in revitalizing experience.
Using art as a means of exploring and presenting a site where the “mess” can be
faced opens up the space of communication where humans can collectively
reflect upon and aesthetically engage with human ideas as an attentive
experience. Perhaps performance art in particular has always somewhat
consciously aimed at such a process. Maybe this is what Joseph Beuys meant
when he was asked: What is your opinion about aesthetics in art? He replied,
"Aesthetics is the human being in itself."(4)
The Kiss
I have already suggested that an aesthetic engagement with our ideas of nature
is analogous to looking in the face what I am terming here as an embarrassment
at the finitude of human knowledge.
I can extend this metaphor further by positing the importance of kissing the
circumstance. To kiss is to welcome. The act of kissing is an almost explicitly
human form of expression and communication (5), and hence an apt activity to
reference within my proposal that an experience mediated by art (human to
human exchange as opposed to an experience of the non-human) can help
stimulate people's values about the natural environment.
Kissing is also a relevant metaphor because it is such a powerful experience for
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humans, involving intense physical contact and communicating all manner of
complex ideas, feelings and needs, yet in a word-less and non-literal fashion.
The kiss is also a gesture which can be read by observers and as such can be
translated as many things.
For example, a compulsion to bond physically and share one's physical being, a
greeting between familial members or passing down the breath from on high of
a worshiped spirit to the human soul. To kiss is to act and to embody an
expression and a communication; it is not to describe or to represent an
expression or a communication. Kissing is also something that we "cannot not
desire". In terms of presenting an art event where one can aesthetically engage
with ideas of nature performance art is the medium most analogous to
“kissing”.
Performance art by definition has no definitive style or intention other than the
general desire to revitalize human experience and ideas.(6) Therefore it is
uninhibited, and its idea-making is not limited by a prescribed style or site
constraint (often performance art is site-specific). The methodology, if there can
be said to be any overall one, is about communicating potential
meaning-making between human subjects, and upsetting consciousness from its
blind assumptions and habitual patterns of being in-the-world.
Performance art is communication and physical action combined through the
"human being in itself". The artist is not pretending to be someone else nor are
they confessing their personal experience. Instead they are presenting
themselves as a human being; the human being as language to be read.
All facts and knowledge manifested through a performance piece are contextual
and directly linked to the human subject's constituting presence. For this reason
performance art is usually non-verbal to stress corporeality and to express the
engagement of a whole being in a live action; the human is doing as a conscious
piece of communication rather than explaining.
Performance art is consciously time-based in that the artist performing carries
out his or her actions in real time without any pretense or division between the
event space and the place from which the audience witnesses. This insistence on
the present instance with no thing “staged” is an attempt to work directly with
physical reality as opposed to a "let's pretend" fictional level of reality. The
communicative emphasis on process above end result arises out of a desire to
create situations to effect (and not direct) human experience.
Performance art is action and non-product orientated. The emphasis is placed
on presenting living material above fixing meaning or stating truisms. In such a
way I would argue that performance art is a hard-core instance of askesis – the
classical instance of philosophy philosophizing, "an exercise of oneself in the
activity of thought".(7)
But with performance art this activity of thought results in an embodiment; it
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becomes actualized rather than remaining conceptualized. The thought activity
becomes realized in the “now” of the present moment throughout the duration
of the performance, leaving no after object other than a fragment of memory in
each audience member's mind (i.e. it returns to the thought kingdom). Because
the thoughts are embodied in real time and then disappear when the
performance ends they can never stand as “representations” or conclusions.
The performance artist does not claim and can not be said to be an expert or an
authority of knowledge and facts. When an artist places her or his self in front
of an audience, it is out of a commitment to their ideas (an accountability if you
will) and to the importance of
communicating such ideas in the flesh. It is also not because they are skilled
performers as could be said of a dancer or an opera singer although, of course,
performance artists may chose to dance in their work if their thought process
requires it. The site of the event is
usually not a legitimated one unlike the instance an opera house, for example,
which is authenticated as much by the posters presenting historically acclaimed
playwrights as they are by what gets shown on its stage.
To return to the notion of an aesthetic engagement with ideas of nature,
performance art is, in my opinion, the active embodiment of the metaphor of
“kissing the mess”. As a process and as a form of communication performance
art can move its attention towards nature without possessing it or representing it
yet also without denying the physical involvement of the human subject.
Kissing the Mess
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I have shown why I chose to call this piece “Kissing the Mess” and why I desire
to kiss the mess as a witnessed action.
But what does this communicate? What is the content or does the very notion of
content need
to change here? I want to suggest that it does. Perhaps desire itself can be
regarded as a new type of content especially with regard to our relationship
making with nature. For, without desire for a world what world is there for us?
The words of Michael Frayn with which I chose to open this paper are not
denying the physical actuality of our existence or the human desire to aspire to
further knowing the world and making meaning out of it. Nor does his
realisation that the complexity of the universe is beyond human expression
amount to a defeatist or cynical position.
Instead, he is implying a poetic call to action for the sake of action rather than
in order to arrive at a definitive location of reality or knowledge. This is not to
be precious; this is to celebrate. And perhaps celebration is precisely we’re
often missing in our artistic and academic discussions about our relationship to
nature.
Frayn's thesis in his book Constructions sets a paradoxical challenge – that we
can never encapsulate the nature of nature though expression yet we can not
want to attempt doing so. As I mention earlier, he feels that art is made
necessary and given dimension by the finite quality of human knowledge.
Hence he would support artistic endeavours to express knowledge and ideas
about the world of nature.
However, Frayn would probably want to reject representational knowledge
within the arts since it would contradict the ambiguity of the finite nature of our
knowledge within the vast unknowable circumstance of the universe. This
question can also be connected to Lyotard's postmodern concern that pictorial
art in its quest for beauty and representation of phenomenal reality has done
much to coerce consciousness into believing in the reality according to us as the
only reality rather than freeing thought to think in a less concentric manner, in
this way: "...the avant-garde's are perpetually flushing out artifices of
presentation which make it possible to subordinate thought to the gaze and turn
it away from the unpresentable". (9)
But the question at hand is not new. Already the philosophy of Novalis many
centuries ago tackled similar complicated issues and called for a re-orientation
of vision circumscribed in terms of a "living astronomy". Novalis felt that
human visual knowledge was constrained by the logic of verbal language in
much the same way that natural phenomena were locked into positions of
permanent meaning through the encyclopaedic project taking place in his day.
Therefore he especially critiqued written language as a means of expression
since it was preoccupied with fixing meaning and the rules of logic.
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What concerned Novalis was that human language had become content specific
and self-sufficient thus curtailing the ability of thought's vision to seek out new
correlations between the human being and the world. Novalis also recognised
that the world of nature and the world according to human experience and
perception were not the same world for all their co-habitation. The human
perception of their world reflected our own logical capacities and not the world
as it is in its “worldiness”.
But this was not to deny the human desire to know or even represent the world
but to insist upon a non-intentional approach grounded in the imagination and
extended out to the universe rather than one confined by the rational rules of
linguistics. He did not want to fix content but keep the boundaries of what
constitutes meaning open and questioning. Fittingly, Novalis termed his new
paradigm a "poetic theory of the telescope"(10).
Novalis clearly believed that there was a reality outside of the human
construction of nature but accepted that it lay beyond the faculties of human
knowledge. He might have agreed also with my proposal to “kiss the mess”
since he felt it was possible to express the complexity outside the construction
of nature through the paradox of considering the un-knowable since for him
meaning lay in absence rather than presence.
Novalis made so bold as to claim that intellectual intuition was the highest form
of consciousness because it involves a reflection upon feeling yet remains
beyond any attempt at conceptual clarification. But the significance of
intellectual intuition can also be seen as the risk it urges us to take with the
potential meaning that can get communicated between humans. Novalis was
proposing a content that itself asked that content should be kept open – a
yearning in the face of accepting that any reflection upon the universe, upon
meaning beyond the human world, will always mirror the finitude of human
knowledge.
This yearning is important because possibly it is the only force capable to take
thought beyond reason, and just as performance art can evoke, is a function of
our physical and temporal being in the world.
Perhaps celebrating the inexpressible is a better journey than arriving at the
definable.
You're a cloud, and you rely on me to see a face in
you.
Michael Frayn Constructions (11)
Notes
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1. M. Frayn,Constructions, aphorism no. 1. (London: Wildwood House 1974)
2. G. Spivak, talk (California 1989). Referenced by D. Haraway "Otherworldly
Conversations, Terrain, Topics, Local terms", BioPolitics, ed. V. Shiva (Zed
books, 1995), p. 69.
3. Frayn, nos. 307-308
4. Jospeh Beuys in dialogue with Kate Horsefield, Energy Plan for the Western
Man – Joseph Beuys in America (Four Walls Eight Windows publishing
Company, 1993), comp. C. Kuoni.
5. Havelock Ellis has observed and noted manifestations resembling kissing
between various animals but has been unable to show this act to be an act of
conscious desire as it is in humans.
6. It should be stressed that I am not referring to avant-garde theatre but to “live
art”. The best explanation of the difference between the two practices that I
have come across is: Theatre is totally disciplined and unconscious whilst
performance art is undisciplined and totally conscious. (Thanks: Archer at
Grunt Gallery)
7. M. Foucault "Introduction" in The Use of Pleasure (New York: Vintage
Books, 1990).
8. J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 79 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1979).
9. Novalis 3:411, referenced by K. Menges, "Moral Astronomy: On a Metaphor
in Novalis and its Conceptual Context" in B. Allert, ed., Languages of
Visuality: Crossings Between Science, Art, Politics and Literature (Wayne State
University Press, 1996), p. 124.
10. The thoughts and philosophies feeding my work may not be literally
apparent in my performance art because they do not play the role of subject
matter. “Feeding” is an appropriate word choice here. These philosophical
thoughts give me the faith to follow through my belief that the mess must be
kissed [kiss = physical and conceptual desire expressed in an act of giving
which is also a greeting and a demand for a response]. That this process is
actualised heightens the aesthetic enjoyment of what is done during the
performance. Such embodiments of questioning knowledge, experience and
ideas should take place and be witnessed (even if they make people feel
uncomfortable).
11. Frayn, no. 298.
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IO - Articles
Jale Erzen
Environmental Art. A New Sanctification
Most artistic developements against tradition in the 20th century increasingly
removed the “object of art” from focus, or simply deconstucted, dematerialized,
or dissolved it, disturbing or changing the habitual relation of the art public with
art.
With environmental art this process has reached the extreme where the object
cannot be singled out or recognized for what it is. One can even say that
environmental art objects often have either a plus element (which is the
environment under focus) or a minus element (vis à vis conventional art
objects) in the eye of the general public, and in fact it is difficult to label them
as objects.
The difficulty of finding the object of focus is multiple and is often due to the
fact that the artistic work is inaccessible or unreacheable. Added to this is the
fact that the art work or artistic activity in environmental art is often in constant
change and transformation. The conditions of observing it are usually under
constant change.
Often such works are not made to last, and even if they are, they get
transformed under environmental conditions. Sometimes, when they are seen,
they are not obvious or do not denote themselves readily as art.
What usually happens is that these works are recorded in other media, photos,
writing, etc., and are offered to contemplation or enjoyment depending on other
representations or symbols. It could be said that they become esoteric, removed,
or distant and one may come upon them by surprise.
In contrast to traditional works of art, the work of environmental art has no
fixed technique, no specific content, no place of its own, common to a
taxonomy in art. One can say that even with many avant-garde art such as
happenings or performances and installations, the contrasting formal or material
qualities single them out as different from their context.
In environmental art this difference may be harder to assess. There is no clear
artistic approach except for the aesthetic openness and receptivity of its artist.
What may happen is that in time the artist may develope his or her choice of
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attention or interest and may work with already set intentions. But this does not
guarantee the works to be noticed or immediately seen as a work of art.
One can say that the work of environmental art is more like a discovery than a
creation. In this sense there is a sanctity about it. This reminds me of an
experience I had with a very religious student in one of my Environmental
Aesthetics courses. Every time we talked about art and creativity he insisted
that there could be only discovery and no creation. Although this annoyed me at
that time, I sense now that such an assessment is quite true for most
environmental art, if not for all art.
The assumption that there is discovery is based on the belief that there is
already a message, a value, a “presentation” which is there to be discovered. It
also assumes that the symbols conveying such a value, such as forms, orders,
events, belong to a language which has constant codes and is credible. Such a
contention somehow regards the world as full of meanings that are sacred or
that are transmitted through existence. This quality of already containing
meaning or value is one of the criteria that give something a sacred aspect.
Although most avant-garde environmental artists have not explicitly talked
about the aspect of the sacred in their work, or may have generally even had
reservations about introducing such dimensions, the constant presence of an
“unknown”, constantly to be discovered, deciphered, apprehended and really
never exhausted dimension inevitably renders a sacredness to most
environmental works.
Besides the reasons for this qualitative aspect of environmental art, it is also
true that today’s industrialized society, which has been so alienated from nature,
also feels such a presentiment when confronted with nature and that
environmental works concerning nature or ecology automatically assume a kind
of sacred character. A direct or unexpected contact with nature may throw the
observer off his or her guard and put him or her into a state of confronting the
incognito.
This unknown is also the sensuous with the unconscious, and is brought into
awareness mostly by art. Such an experience creates a response towards the
sacred and may make one apprehend sanctity. It can be classified as a different
experience than the sublime, and being based in the sensuous, can pertain to all
that is Dionysian, in the way that Nietzsche considers the sensuous.
From this point of view, ecological art fulfills a great purpose, that of creating a
new relationship between man and nature, as the other. In the words of Martin
Buber this can be called a relationship of I and Thou.
Because the character of environmental art has an unprescribed and
undeterminable aspect to a greater degree than any other art form, there is
almost a private, secret communication between the art work and artist and also
between the artwork and the observer. We watch it not really knowing how it
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was done, or how it came about. Often meanings that one apprehends or
receives from the work cannot be transferred to a discursive medium.
From this point of view, environmental art also stays partially outside the scope
of criticism. It is marginal not because it is new, but because it is always partly
nature, and as Heidegger puts it, there is more of the “concealedness” to it than
any other kind of art where “form” comes to the fore.
This impenetrable, concealed aspect, this inexhaustable character of
environmental art bordering “terra incognita”, crates a new threshold for
modern consciousness. It forms an in between zone where culture and nature
meet and where human purposiveness which, in the long run, is largely to
blame for its misuse of nature, is put to a question. It creates a new frontier
where human purpose without measure or limit confronts nature’s cyclical
character and the infinity of existence. At this point, time and space converge.
The relation to the sacred creating a special focus on nature and on “the other”,
outside of human purpose and interest also gives art a new value which had
been lost since its schematization in about the 16th century. Increasing
secularization removed from art the sense of awe, love, admiration, or the deep
apprehension for the other, which almost in a magical way, transmitted to
medieval or early renaissance art an existential depth.
Althoug such quality was rooted in religious faith, secularization increasingly
inpoverished art from all kind of credence, very often ending in a cynicism that
robbed the artwork of pulse or profound feeling. In return for this loss, art may
have become the spiritual field in itself, as was claimed by most modernists.
Yet, as we see it at the close of the millenium, this supposedly spiritual field
could easily cater to market values when it no longer had a significant reason
for being. Environmental art which has put us in contact again with the
unknown dimension that is inexhaustible and that seems to upon into existence,
has redeemed for art the quality of the sacred, without needing to depend on
religion. Artists working in this field and the public in contact with such art may
hopefully appreciate again this most significant aspect of art, namely, it being a
medium of access to the sacred.
This is important especially in a high technological age where even human
purpose seems obsolate against self-perpetuating autonomous force of immense
industries which have to grow regardless of all harm to life. Thus, the human
whose unconscious relation with other existence had, till the advance of
industry, a sense of sanctity about the environment or about existence, was held
against their insolent egotism, by this sense of sacred about existence. This was
the only protection against blind technology. At this moment art seems to be the
only channel through which this feeling can be reinforced without racism or
fundamentalism, and without discrimination for the other cultural forms.
I will end by reminiscing on an example of what I took to be a work of
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environmental art I had come upon as I was riding a train in the south England.
All along the side of the railway, thin vertical bars painted in stripes of sunny
colors were placed at varying but measured intervals. Sometimes one saw them
in speedy succession, then, they became less frequent, for a while there was
none; just when one gave up expecting, there were new ones coming up in
different colors; then one would mistake a bush branch for another bar and was
checked by the appearence of a new more colourful one.
The speed of the train became rhythmic by this sequence; the railway periphery
became a treasure land to search for colored bars; the linear strip of movement
along the train danced in rhythm, often taking one into memories of childhood
when colors were felt so much more intensely; attention was held in constant
expectation between now, the past, and the future. And one did not need to ask
whether this was art or not.
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
Hanna Johansson
Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja.
Introduction in english
Onko taideteos aina ymmärrettävä tietyksi materiaalisen ulkomuodon
omaavaksi visuaalis-älylliseksi tai käsitteelliseksi komponentiksi, joka
määrittyy objektiksi tai objektien summaksi? Vai olisiko mahdollista, että teos
olisikin tilanne, joka astuisi voimaan taiteilijan antaman aineellisen merkin,
ympäröivän maisema ja katsojan kohdatessa.
Tätä pohditaan seuraavassa kertomuksessa, jossa katsoja – sinä, minä tai kuka
tahansa – tekee matkaa kolmelle hylätylle muuntamolle.
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Hanna Johansson
Introduction
Our own time is often characterized as the epoch of space. In visual art this
spatialisation is clearly connected to specific changes in the form and content of
the picture. The picture has stepped out of its frame, it has broken the physical
boundaries surrounding it to share the common space with the viewer.
Following this change it has become increasingly difficult to speak of a work of
art using the terminology commonly associated with the definition and
appreciation of art. It is clearly necessary to turn our sight elsewhere. In this
text it has been turned to where the viewer, the work of art and the common
context surrounding them meet and form a joint surface sowed together with an
invisible thread.
The subject is approached through a specific case. The Transformer-exhibition
(1997) was constructed in three no longer used Transformer buildings in
East-Helsinki. The buildings were situated a few kilometers from each other.
The five artists, who participated in the exhibition built their works of art
directly in these spaces. The starting point of the work were the transformer
buildings themselves, their spatial, functional and aesthetic characters.
The setting of the exhibition and the works of art made in the buildings raised
forward the history and changing praxis of exhibition and viewing art. The
interior of the transformers can be considered equal to the "white cube", the
space of a gallery built solely for art. On the other hand, the traces which
remind one of the original purpose of those buildings – totransform and
distribute electricity – and the position of the buildings in the suburban
landscape, were clearly in paradox with the heritage of the "white cube". The
same attitude is strenghened by the fact that the "frames" of the works of the
exhibition were difficult to indicate. Rather, the works melted into the
surrounding space and landscape.
The Transformer-exhibition invited the viewer on a trip; to the suburbs of
East-Helsinki and towards the experiencing of art and landscape. During this
trip the viewer moved in turn between the closed transformers and the open and
functional outdoor space. The spatial alternation as well as the different routes
and modes of transport chosen by the viewers influenced their experiences.
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In this article there are two voices: the walker and the writer. Their voices
intertwine, walk side by side, part and connect again. They open up viewpoints
on exhibiting and receiving art, on walking and experiencing.
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
I
Hän istuuntuu metron oranssinväriselle penkille. On
syksy. Metro suuntaa kohti Helsingin itäisiä
lähiöitä. On kulunut paljon aikaa siitä, kun hän on
viimeksi matkannut tähän suuntaan, sillä hänen
reittinsä viihtyvät nykyisin enemmän keskustassa.
Metro pysähtyy, hän kävelee rullaportaisiin ja nousee
ylös asemalle.
Bussi on puoliksi tyhjä. Matkustajina on joukko juuri
kesälomansa lopettaneita koululaisia, muutama äiti
lapsineen ja jokunen eläkeläinen.
On varhainen iltäpäivä. Bussi kulkee Herttoniemen
metroasamalta ympäristön lähiöihin. Matka etenee
teollisuushallien ja uuden 1990-lukulaisen
merenrantalähiön välistä, sivuuttaen 1800-luvun
kartanomaiseman, sen pihamiljöön ja rakennuksien
jäänteet.
Hän muistaa vuosia sitten käyneensä täällä.
Rakennuksia on tullut lisää ja maisemaa rytmittävät
joutomaat ovat kutistuneet. Lasinen ikkuna ja
moottorin ääni etäännyttää hänet maisemasta, sen
nostalgiseksi tarkkailijaksi. Toisaalta maisemaa on
seurattava – jotta löytäisi määränpäänsä.
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Hänellä on yksinkertainen kartta kädessään. Bussi
kääntyy ja ikkunoista näkyy 1950-luvulla rakennettuja
kerrostaloja. Toisella puolella katse tavoittaa
pienen punatiilisen tornin, samanikäisen kuin
kerrostalot – ja samanäköisen kuin kartan kanteen
painetussa kuvassa. Tornimuuntamo.
Tultuaan ulos bussista hän huomaa muuntamoita
olevankin kaksi. Niiden ovet ovat kiinni, eivätkä ne
sijaitse oikeassa paikassa.
Hän kulkee katua pitkin, puistomaisen asuinalueen
lävitse. Viereisen talon parvekkeella nainen tamppaa
mattoja ja siitä aiheutuva tasainen ääni rikkoo
hiljaisuuden.
Kadun päässä on jälleen punatiilinen tornimuuntamo.
Tämän ovi on auki. Hän astuu sisään.
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
Hän tutkiskelee muuntamon alakerrassa Niran
Baibulatin teosta, peliä nimeltä "Kaikki tiet vievät
Roomaan", selailee postikortteja ja pysähtyy Kemin
keskustasta vuosikymmeniä sitten otetun kuvan
kohdalla.
Hymy nousee huulille, kun hän tunnistaa kuvasta
torin, jossa muistaa vierailleensa joskus
lapsuudessaan. Hän jatkaa peliä ja päätyy rakentamaan
viivallisista kivistä ja kukka-aiheisista korteista
omia kukkareittejään pitkin muuntamon lattiaa.
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IO projektikuvaus
summer 1998
in english
PROJEKTIKUVAUS
IO. The Internet Magazine of Applied Aesthetics on internetissä toimiva
kaksikielinen (englanti ja suomi) verkkolehti, jota julkaisee Kansainvälinen
soveltavan estetiikan instituutti. Lehteä ovat tekemässä myös Lahden
Muotoiluinsituutin multimediaosasto, Helsingin yliopiston estetiikan laitos sekä
yhteistyökumppanit Kööpenhaminan ja Lancasterin yliopistoista.
IO on syntynyt osana laajempaa soveltavan estetiikan tietoverkkohanketta, joka
on saanut EU:n aluekehitysrahaston (EAKR) 2-ohjelman puitteissa tukea
kolmeksi vuodeksi.
Soveltavan estetiikan tietoverkoston avulla pyritään rakentamaan suoraa ja
nopeaa informaatiofoorumia asiantuntijoiden, oppilaitosten, yritysten,
yhteisöjen, instituutioiden ja erilaisten projektien välille sekä profiloimaan
soveltavan estetiikan alojen asintuntijuutta työmarkkinoilla. Tietoverkosto
toimii aluksi Päijät-Hämeen ja pääkaupunkiseudun alueilla.
Tätä tarkoitusta varten projektin puitteissa on perustettu myös erillinen
soveltavan estetiikan alojen asiantuntijapalvelu, joka harjoittaa työnvälitystä ja
PR-toimintaa käytännön tasolla. Soveltavan estetiikan kokonaisuuteen kuuluu
useita eri ammattikuntia: mm. muotoilun, visuaalisen ja graafisen suunnittelun,
arkkitehtuurin, multimedian ja eri taidealojen ammattilaiset sekä ympäristön
suunnittelun ja ympäristön arvioinnin asiantuntijat.
Yhteisesti näitä aloja voitaisiin nimittää myös taiteen, kulttuurin, ympäristön ja
estetiikan alojen ammattikunniksi. Kyseessä on siis varsin laaja ja
monipuolinen asiantuntijaryhmä, jolla on kuitenkin työmarkkinoilla yhteisiä
ongelmia, jotka haittaavat sopivan työn tai tekijän löytymistä.
IO:n ensimmäinen numero keskittyy ympäristötaiteen ongelmiin ja
ajankohtaisiin kysymyksiin. Lehden seuraava numero käsittelee virtuaalisen
estetiikan kysymyksiä.
Asiantuntijapalvelua kehittää Petra Hämäläinen ([email protected]), LAMK
Muotoiluinstituutti, Kannaksenkatu 22, 15140 Lahti, puh/fax 03-7817858
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Verkostoon on koottu myös soveltavan estetiikan alan kotisivuja, jotka pyrkivät
osaltaan edesauttamaan tiedonvälitystä ja helpottamaan yhteydenottoja.
Kansainvälisen soveltavan estetiikan instituutin kotisivut (www.lpt.fi/io/iiaa)
Lahden taiteilijaseuran kotisivut (www.lpt.fi/io/artlahti).
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IO about
summer 1998
IO. The Internet Magazine of Applied Aesthetics is a bilingual (English and
Finnish) network magazine produced by the International Institute of Applied
Aesthetics. The LAMK/ Institute of Design ( Multimedia Department ), the
University of Helsinki (Department of Aesthetics), and associates From the
universities of Copenhagen and Lancaster are also involved in its production.
IO was created as part of a wider plan for applied aesthetics Network, the
project has been granted assistance for three years from the European Union's
Area Development Foundation under the two programme scheme. The aim is to
set up a forum for the quick and direct exchange of information between
experts, schools, companies, professional societies, institutes and different
projects and profile experts in various branches of applied aesthetics. The
network will function initially in the Päijät-Häme and Helsinki regions.
The first number of IO concentrates on problems of environmental art and
current questions about it, while the following issue will discuss questions
about virtual aesthetics.
The project also runs a service provided by experts on the different areas of
applied aesthetics, which functions as an employment agency and also has a
public relations function. The area of applied aesthetics covers many different
professions, including design, visual and graphic design, architecture,
multimedia, the different branches of art, and also environmental design and
experts on environmental evaluation. Together these could be called the
professional areas of art, culture, the environment and aesthetics. Petra
Hämälainen is developing the expert service. More information you contact her
at: ( [email protected] ), LAMK Institute of Design, Kannaksenkatu 22, 15140
Lahti, tel/fax +358 3 7817858
The internet has also collected home pages of branches of applied aesthetics,
which aim to contribute information and facilitate contact.
International Institute of Applied Aesthetics (www.lpt.fi/io/iiaa)
The Artists' Association of Lahti (www.lpt.fi/io/artlahti).
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Olli Immonen
Highway, Art and Environment (1)
suomeksi
Sixty-eight Kilometres of Space
The construction of Highway Number Four from Lahti to Helsinki started in
1997. The length of the new section will be 68 kilometres, from Järvenpää to
Joutjärvi in Lahti.
In the same year, 1997, Lahti Art Institute (a department of Lahti Polytechnic)
began the education project "Art and Highway Four." The aim was with the
help of artworks to emphasise notable points of the landscape, to break the
highway up into recognisable sections, and to give a sense of local place to the
resting places.
The aim was also to develop the readiness of students, as future artists, to
participate in planning big environmental works. The demand for this has
increased nowadays, especially in connection with the construction of highway
environments. The project leader is sculptor Antero Toikka.
Is it Ethical to Participate in the Planning of a Highway?
Building major highways has usually had a harmful effect on the environment.
Creating artworks for them has been described as glossing over environmental
crime with a layer of art
It has never been a prerequisite for art that it must be compatible with
sustainable development. A work of art can destroy its environment or at least
change it; or it can enable a polluted environment to be experienced as
beautiful.
This does not mean that we should support plans which damage the natural
environment. On the contrary, in environmental art in particular, ecological
values have usually been given special emphasis. In recent years, at least in
Finland, environmental art projects have been a part of plans that have been
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strongly orientated towards improving the environment. They have been used to
good effect, for example, in the treatment of gravel-pit areas, and the massive
coal and infill heaps that are a part of city landscapes have been given a new
image. (2)
Highways have many adverse effects which are problematical from an
environmental point of view. The traffic causes noise, dust, effluents. Highways
splinter green areas and forests and cut across the natural routes of animals. The
quarrying and transportation of the gravel needed for them damages the
environment. Remarkable cultural or natural environments may remain trapped
beneath the road area. Moreover, by making road transport easier, highways
encourage an increase in the number of vehicles using them. At some point
saturation point is reached, and yet another new road has to be built (3).
However, there has not been great opposition to the Lahti highway. The reason
is probably that the constructors are in fact merely widening the existing road,
which would improve safety – the old Lahti highway was the scene of many
serious accidents. Nor are there any significant cultural or natural environments
that are threatened by the highway's route. The problems of pollution and other
adverse effects still have to be considered, however.
The question about the ethics of roadside art is connected in part to general
attitudes towards the environment and our actions concerning it. We can work
for our environment by opposing damaging projects, using legal or illegal
methods. Or we can go along with the projects and try to make them more
environmentally friendly.
Lahti education project has not taken up any stand on environmental pollution
where the new highway is concerned; its building has been accepted as an
unchangeable process with both its positive and negative effects.
The target of this project has been instead to improve the visual aspects of the
highway. It is to be seen not as an eyesore, but as a single 68 kilometres long
work of art.
Roadside Art as Environmental Art
Environmental art has been seen as “fleeing” from its definition makers and
changing with values and social changes; on the other hand, the widening of the
concepts involved has also been perceived as harmful. Broadly speaking we
tend to picture environmental art in terms of public works of art and
monuments. Large-scale works which reshape the environment have become
common of late. In its widest sense, environmental art also includes architecture
and landscaping. (4) Road art involves all of these.
In recent years there have been several roadside artwork projects in Finland.
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Communities have raised their image and their visibility with the aid of such
works. The Finnish Road Administration has used artists to participate in
planning highways and improving noise barriers, bridges and underpasses. For
example, the environmental art competition "Arriving in Helsinki" was
arranged at the beginning of 1998 in connection with European Culture Capital
year. Its aim was to find new ideas and works of environmental art which could
be used for improving the various routes into Helsinki.
For drivers the roadside art works are part of the landscape and they can also be
interpreted using the ways of landscape researchers. Applying the ideas of Pauli
Tapani Karjalainen it is possible to come up with new viewpoints. The main
experiences of a work of art (a picture, or a landscape), no doubt concern its
physical form: what we can notice from the car as we go past. But we can also
consider the experimental contents of the work of art; what subjective
experience or imaginary landscape it conjures up . Not least, we must consider
it in linguistic terms, how it is to be described, interpreted and explained.
Experimental content and cultural meanings often play an important role in a
work of art. In many works confusion is aroused concerning the “real”
landscape by changing its traditional meaning within the work of art. Art brings
new ideas to the inner human world. In this way environmental art at least
creates a possibility for the individual to notice and value the everyday
environment.
The Lahti road art project is an interesting example of change in art.
Traditionally object oriented art has been moving towards environmental art.
The aim is no longer the planning of one individual art object destined for one
particular place. Now the environment in its entirety, the landscape, can be seen
as a place waiting for the cultivation of the artist. The rock cutting, bridge or
soil, can be shaped as an artwork. Taking the idea to its furthest, the art work
need not even be shaped. It is enough to light it or present in some other way an
interesting rock, group of trees or landscape.
In the roadside art project the trip from Riihimäki to Lahti has been seen as a
total art work of which the elements are at least movement, road, car, and
roadside art works. Travelling is a process and experience, sixty eight
kilometres of space.
Notes
(1) This article is part of the Lahti Art Institute project presentation made by
Antero Toikka, Minna Nikola and Annika Tontsi.
(2) Remarkable examples of gravel-pit improvement can be seen in Agnes
Denes's work in Ylöjärvi and the work of Nancy Holt in the Nokia region. In
Helsinki the environmental art work on the top of Malminkartano earth-hill will
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be ready in summer 1998.
(3) For adverse factors and opposition concerning one road project see von
Bonsdorff, Pauline (ed.)Ympäristöestetiikan polkuja. (IIAA Series Vol 2.
Gummerus. Jyväskylä, 1996)
(4) Veikko Kunnas "Huomisen haasteena ympäristötaide". Arkkitehti 4/1994, p.
20; Martti Honkanen (1997). Tien estetiikka ja tietaide in Jani Päivänen, Martti
Honkanen, Carita Päivänen and Hilkka Lehtonen eds. Tiekokemus, tierakenteet
ja taide. Tielaitoksen selvityksiä 16/1997 (Helsinki 1997), p. 23. See also
homepage of Foundation for Environmental Art, www.yts.fi.
(4) Pauli Tapani Karjalainen (1996) "Kolme näkökulmaa maisemaan", in
Maiseman arvo(s)tus eds. by Maunu Häyrynen and Olli Immonen (Saarijärvi
1996), p. 8 -15; Pauli Tapani Karjalainen, "Mapping places" in Place and
Embodiment eds. by Pauli Tapani Karjalainen and Pauline von Bonsdorff. XIII
Int. Congress of Aesthetics 1995 Proceedings. Lahti, 1997. There is reason to
value the experience of driving, too: the wind, the movement, the rhythm of the
road and environment can belong to the aesthetic experience. Martti Honkanen
(1997), p. 21, 22; Martti Honkanen "Everyday Values" in Art and Beyond.
Finnish Approaches to Aesthetics eds. by Ossi Naukkainen and Olli Immonen
(Jyväskylä 1995), p. 170.
MAP
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Olli Immonen
Tie, taide ja ympäristö.
Kuusikymmentäkahdeksan kilometriä tilaa (1)
Lahden ammattikorkeakouluun kuuluva Lahden taideinstituutti aloitti
Lahdentien laajentamiseen liittyen koulutushankkeen "Taide ja Valtatie 4"
vuonna 1997. Uuden tieosuuden pituus tulee olemaan 68 kilometriä,
Järvenpäästä Lahden Joutjärvelle.
Tavoitteena oli taideteoksin korostaa merkittäviä maastonkohtia, jaksottaa
matkan etenemistä ja pyrkiä luomaan paikallisuuden tuntua pysäköimisalueille.
Projekti pyrkii myös kehittämään opiskelijoiden, tulevien kuvataiteilijoiden,
valmiuksia osallistua viime aikoina ympäristörakentamisessa ja erityisesti
teiden rakentamisessa yleistyneisiin suurimuotoisten ympäristöteosten
suunnitteluun.
Koulutushanketta johtaa kuvanveistäjä Antero Toikka. Hankkeen ensisijainen
tavoite on koulutusprojekti. Joitakin ehdotuksia kuitenkin myös toteutettaneen
tierakentamisen yhteydessä.
Onko oikein osallistua moottoriteiden
suunnitteluun
Suuret tiehankkeet on yleensä koettu ympäristön kannalta vahingollisiksi ja
taideteosten suunnittelua niiden yhteyteen on nimitetty ympäristörikoksen
kuorruttamiseksi taiteella.
Taideteoksen edellytys ei kuitenkaan ole, että se olisi kestävän kehityksen
periaatteiden mukainen. Teos voi myös jossain tapauksissa tuhota tai ainakin
muuttaa ympäristöään, ja myös saastunut ympäristö voidaan kokea kauniiksi.
Tämä ei kuitenkaan tarkoita sitä, että meidän tulisi tukea luontoa vahingoittavia
hankkeita. Päinvastoin nimenomaan ympäristötaiteessa ekologiset arvot ovat
yleensä korostuneesti esillä.
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Viime vuosina ainakin Suomessa toteutetuissa ympäristötaidehankkeissa on
ollut voimakkaasti mukana pyrkimys vahingoittuneen ympäristön
parantamiseen. Soranottoalueille on suunniteltu ympäristöä parantavia
taideteoksia. Massiivisille hiilivarastoille ja täyttömaille on kaupunkikuvassa
annettu ympäristöteosten avulla uusia merkityksiä.(2)
Moottoriteillä on monia haittapuolia ja niiden voidaan oikeutetusti katsoa
olevan ympäristön kannalta ongelmallisia. Liikenne aihettaa melua, pölyä,
päästöjä. Väylät pirstovat viheralueita ja metsiä ja katkaisevat eläinten
luonnolliset kulkureitit. Moottoriteiden rakentamiseen tarvitaan soraa ja muuta
maa-ainesta, joiden louhiminen ja kuljettaminen ovat vahingollisia
ympäristölle. Tiealueen alle saattaa jäädä merkittäviä kulttuuri- ja
luonnonympäristöjä. Lisäksi moottoritiet tekevät liikkumisen ajoneuvoilla
helpommaksi ja lisäävät näin liikennettä. Teiden kapasiteetti täyttyy jossain
vaiheessa ja edessä on jälleen uuden tien rakentaminen.(3)
Lahden moottoritien rakentamista ei kuitenkaan ole merkittävästi vastustettu.
Tähän on luultavasti ollut syynä se, että kyseessä on vain vanhan tien
leventäminen. Tien alle ei ole jäämässä merkittäviä kulttuuriympäristöjä,
asutusta tai luonnnonympäristöä. Lahden vanhalla tiellä on ollut useita vaikeita
liikenneonnettomuuksia ja moottoritie parantaa liikenneturvallisuutta
merkittävästi. Päästöt ja muut haittavaikutukset koskevat kuitenkin myös
Lahden moottoritietä.
Kysymys tietaiteen oikeutuksesta liittyy osin yleisiin ympäristöasenteisiin ja
toimintatapoihin. Ympäristöä voidaan parantaa vastustamalla aktiivisesti –
laillisin tai laittomin menetelmin – vahingollisia hankkeita. Toisaalla
hankkeisiin voidaan mennä mukaan ja pyrkiä muuttamaan hankkeita
ympäristöystävällisemmiksi.
Lahden koulutusprojektissa ei ole otettu kantaa ympäristösaasteisiin. Tien
rakentaminen on haittoineen ja etuineen otettu itsestäänselvyytenä ja
muuttamattomana prosessina. Hankkeen tavoitteena on sen sijaan ollut tien
visuaalisen ympäristön parantaminen. Uutta tietä ei ole nähty
ympäristöhaittana, vaan 68 kilometriä pitkänä kokonaisvaltaisena
ympäristötaideteoksena.
Tietaide ympäristötaiteena
Ympäristötaiteen on todettu ”pakenevan” määrittelijöitään ja muuttuvan arvojen
ja yhteiskunnallisen muutoksen myötä. Käsitteen laajeneminen on toisaalta
nähty myös haitalliseksi. Väljän määrittelyn mukaan ympäristötaiteeseen
kuuluvat ainakin taideteokset julkisluonteisessa ympäristössä, ympäristötaide
arkkitehtuurin yhteydessä sekä uusimuotoiset ympäristörakenteet ja tilateokset.
(4)
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Tietaide niveltyy osaksi kaikkia näitä. Viime vuosina Suomessa on ollut useita
tietaidehankkeita. Kunnat ovat kohentaneet imagoaan ja näkyvyyttään
taideteoksilla. Tielaitos on ottanut taiteilijat mukaan moottoriteiden
rakentamiseen sekä meluesteiden, siltojen ja alikulkujen suunnitteluun.
Tietaidetta ovat Suomessa tehneet mm. Anne Eerola, Annukka Korhonen, Ekku
Peltomäki, Antero Toikka, Niels Haukeland, Pekka Manner ja Hannu Siren. On
järjestetty useita ympäristötaidekilpailuja mm. meluesteiden suunnitteluun
liittyen. Muun muassa vuoden 1998 alussa kilpailtiin Euroopan
kulttuurikaupunkivuoteen liittyen otsikolla ”Saapuminen Helsinkiin”.
Tavoitteena oli löytää uusia ideoita ja ympäristötaideteoksia Helsingin
sisääntulomaisemiin.
Tiellä liikkujalle tietaideteokset ovat osa maisemaa ja niitä voitaneen myös
tulkita maisemantutkijoiden keinoin. Pauli Tapani Karjalaisen maisemajaottelua
käyttäen esille voidaan nostaa usempia näkökulmia.(5) Päällimmäisenä
taideteoksen kokemisessa ovat epäilemättä taideteoksen (kuvan, maiseman)
fyysiset muodot: se mitä havaitsemme ohikiitävästä autosta. Lisäksi voidaan
pohtia taideteoksen kokemuksellisia sisältöjä: millainen subjektiivinen kokemus
tai mielenmaisema kokemuksesta muodostuu.
Lopulta on otettava huomioon taideteoksen kielelliset merkitykset, miten teosta
kuvataan, tulkitaan ja selitetään. Kokemuksellinen sisältö ja kulttuuriset
merkitykset ovat tärkeä osa monia ympäristötaideteoksia. Useissa teoksissa
hämmennetään vakiintunutta maisematekijää muuntamalla taideteoksen avulla
sen perinteinen merkityssisältö ja tuomalla ihmisen sisäiseen maailmaan uusia
tekijöitä. Näin ympäristöteos luo ainakin mahdollisuuden kehittää ihmisen
kykyä havaita ja arvottaa ympäristöä.
Lahden tietaideprojekti on kiinnostava esimerkki kuvataiteen murroksesta.
Perinteisestä esinekeskeisestä taidekäsityksestä on pyritty siirtymään
ympäristön taiteeseen. Tavoitteena ei ole enää suunnitella yksittäistä
taideobjektia tiettyyn paikkaan. Nyt määritelty ympäristökokonaisuus nähdään
taiteilijan muokkausta odottavana tilana ja myös kallioleikkauksesta, sillasta tai
maamassasta voidaan muovata taideteos.
Pisimmälle vietynä taideteosta ei enää tarvitse edes muokata. Riittää että
valaistaan tai tuodaan muuten esiin kiinnostava kallio, puuryhmä tai maisema.
Tietaideprojektissa myös matka Riihimäeltä Lahteen on nähty
kokonaistaideteoksena jonka elementtejä ovat ainakin liike, tie, auto ja
tietaideteokset. Matka on prosessi ja kokemus, kuusikymmentäkahdeksan
kilometriä tilaa.
Viitteet
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(1) Artikkeli on osa Antero Toikan, Minna Nikolan ja Annika Tontsin
valmistelemaa Lahden taideinstituutin projektiesittelyä.
(2) Soranottoalueiden parantamisesta ovat erinomaisina esimerkkeinä Agnes
Denesin teos Ylöjärvellä sekä Nancy Holtin Nokian kunnassa. Helsingissä
Hanna Vainion teos Malminkartanon täyttömäen huipulle valmistuu kesällä
1998.
(3) Erään tieprojektin haittapuolista ja vastustuksesta ks. von Bonsdorff, Pauline
(toim.) Ympäristöestetiikan polkuja (IIAA Series Vol 2. Gummerus. Jyväskylä,
1996).
(4) Veikko Kunnas, "Huomisen haasteena ympäristötaide". Arkkitehti 4/1994, s.
20; Martti Honkanen (1997). "Tien estetiikka ja tietaide". Teoksessa J.
Päivänen, M. Honkanen, C. Päivänen ja H. Lehtonen, toim. Tiekokemus,
tierakenteet ja taide. Tielaitoksen selvityksiä 16/1997. Helsinki 1997, s. 23. Ks.
Myös Ympäristötaiteen säätiön kotisivu, www.yts.fi.
(5) Pauli Tapani Karjalainen "Kolme näkökulmaa maisemaan". Teoksessa
Maunu Häyrynen & Olli Immonen, toim. Maiseman arvo(s)tus (Saarijärvi,
1996), s. 8-15. Ei myöskään voida väheksyä ajamisen kokemusta: tuuli, liike,
tien rytmi ja ympäristö voivat olla osa esteettistä kokemusta. Vrt. Martti
Honkanen 1997, s. 21-22; Martti Honkanen, "Everyday Values". Teoksessa
Ossi Naukkarinen & Olli Immonen eds., Art And Beyond. Finnish Approaches
to Aesthetics (Gummerus: Jyväskylä 1995), s. 170.
KARTTA
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Untitled Document
Tieprojekti
Antero Toikka
Valtatie 4 tietaideprojekti
Lahden ammattikorkakoulussa on käynnissä projekti, jonka tavoitteena on
saada aikaan visuaalisesti korkeatasoinen tiemiljöö Järvenpäästä Lahteen
vuonna 2000. Perusselvityksiä taiteen mahdollisuuksista tietilassa ja sen
maisemallisia lähtökohtia on työstetty taideinstituutissa syksystä 1996 lähtien.
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Selvitystyötä, julkaisun tekemistä ja taideteosten sijoittumista alueelle on tehnyt
opiskelijoista ja asiantuntijoista koostunut ryhmä, jota olen johtanut.
Tietaideprojektin tavoitteena on vahvistaa kuvateiteen, muotoilun ja estetiikan
tutkimuksellista ja koulutuksellista tilannetta ja kehittää uudenlaisia
yhteistyömahdollisuuksia kuvataiteen, muotoilun, estetiikan,
ympäristösuunnittelun ja alueen teollisuuden välille.
Kuvataiteilijoiden, arkkitehtien ja maisemasuunnittelijoiden
ympäristötaiteeseen suuntautuminen, yhteistyö ja osaaminen on
tulevaisuudessakin merkittävä ja siksi kehittämisen arvoinen ala.
Seuraavassa vaiheessa tietaideprojektia kehitetään tutkimukselliseen suuntaan
luomalla edellytyksiä ajoneuvomuotoilun, taiteen tekemisen, muotoilun ja
ympäristöosaamisen integroitumiselle osaksi tien rakentamista.
Tämä tapahtuu järjestämällä seminaareja ja koulutustapahtumia, jotka tuottavat
tutkimustietoa ympäristöarvoista tien rakentamisen yhteydessä. Tavoitteena on
selvittää taustoja, jotka huomioidaan toteutusprosessissa.
Projekti tuottaa ympäristöosaamista, koulutusmateriaalia ja julkaisuja
tutkimuksen ja hankkeen tuloksista sekä visuaalisesti korkeatasoisen tietilan.
Prosessissa on kolme vaihetta: koulutus, tutkimus ja tuotanto. Vaiheet ovat
toistensa edellytyksiä ja syy-seuraussuhteessa toisiinsa.
Käytännön tasolla projekti etenee vuorovaikutuksessa Kansainvälisen
soveltavan estetikkan instituutin, Lahden muotoiluinstituutin, Helsingin
yliopiston estetikan laitoksen, Lancasterin yliopiston, Ympäristötaiteen säätiön
Tielaitoksen, Nelostie OY:n ja alueen kuntien ja kaupunkien kanssa.
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tie
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Untitled Document
Tieprojekti
Antero Toikka
The Highway Number Four Roadside Art
Project
The goal of Lahti Polytechnic's roadside art project is to create a visual milieu
of high standard along the road from Järvenpää to Lahti by the year 2000.
Basic decisions on the art possibilities and their starting points from the
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landscape have been worked on with the Art and Design Institute since Autumn
1996.
Analysis of the area, the positioning of art works within it and publication of the
project have been done by the group of students and experts which I organized.
The aim of the roadside art project is to strengthen the position of art, design
and aesthetics with regard to research and education, and to develop new
opportunities for co-operation between these areas, environmental planning and
local industrial interests.
Education in environmental art, and co-operation and know-how among artists,
architects and environmental planners will be of significance also in the future,
and is therefore worth developing. The next step in the roadside art project will
be to direct research forwards by enabling designers, artists and environmental
experts to join the project. This will be done by organising seminars and
educational events which will point the way to knowledge concerning
environmental values. The aim is to explore matters which are noticed during
the building process.
The project will produce environmental know-how, educational material and
publications as well road space of visual high quality. It involves three stages;
education, research and production. The stages follow on from each other and
are in a cause and effect relationship. On a practical level, the project is
functioning as a co-operation project between the IIAA, the Design
Institute/Lahti Polytechnic, the University of Helsinki (Department of
Aesthetics), Lancaster University, the Foundation for Environmental Art, the
Road Institute, Nelostie Ltd and regional communities and towns.
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perälä
Levähdysalueet
Levähdysalueiden nykyinen
tunnelma on aika kolkko ja
identiteetitön; sinne pysähtynyt
autoilija ei hahmota missäpäin
tietä hän sijaitsee, kun ne kaikki
näyttävät aivan samanlaisilta
epäystävällisiltä alueilta. VT4-n
varrella sijaitsevista
levähdysalueista jokaiselle oman
ihmista läheisemmän tunnelman
luominen olisi mielestäni tärkeä
tehtävä. Siiheen vaikuttavat heti
jo niillä alueilla käytettyjen
peruselementtien kuten
valaisimien, istutuksien, WC:n,
roskapönttöjen ja istuinten
ulkoasu.
Valaisu
Vaihtamalla korkeat
katuvalaisimet matalampiin
keltasävyisiin lamppuihin (mitä
tarvitaan alueen valaisemisen
kannalta enemmän), paikan
tun-nelma muuttuu heti
ystävällisemmäksi.
Sijoitamalla koko alueelle lisää
melkein maan tasolla olevia
pikkulamppuja siitä tulee Suomen
pitkinä pimeinä aikoina aivan
erilainen mystinen maisema.
Lamppujen valon värin voi vielä
laittaa muuttumaan joka 5
minuuttin jälkeen toiseksi; näin
koko aluetta voi katsoa
omankaltaisena muuttuvana
valo-teoksena.
Hirsirakennelmat
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perälä
Massatuotannossa valmistettujen
penkkien sijasta jokaisella
levähdysaluella voisi olla
hirsirakennelma, mikä toimisi
istumapaikkana, kiipeilytelineenä
lapsille ja abstraktina veistoksena.
Eri levähdysalueilla rakennelmat
voisivat olla maalattu/petsattu
erivärisiksi ja sommiteltu eri
lailla, peruselementteinä
kuitenkin aina eripituiset hirret.
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tulipyörä
Tulipyörä-veistos
Tien varrelle vähän ennen
Lahteen sisääntulo-liittymää
haluaisin sijoittaa tuulessa
pyörivän metallisen
“Tulipyörän” symboloimaan
edellämainittua kaupunkia.
Lahden vaakunassa näkyy
tulipyörä seitsemällä liekillä siitä johtuen “Tulipyörä”
-veistoksessakin olisi seitsemän
liekkisiipeä. Tulipyörän
keskiosan halkaisija olisi n. 3 m
(ilman siipiä) ja koko pyörivä
osa sijaitsisi niin korkealla, ettei
kukaan voisi satuttaa itseään.
Jos taloudellisesti kannattaisi,
voisi saman teoksen kautta
tuulesta saatavaa energiaa
käyttää sen valaisemiseksi
yöllä.
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renkomäki
Renkomäen
liittymä
“ruutulippu” teos on
suunniteltu
Renkonmäen
liitymään
rytmittämään
risteysaluetta.Mustavalkoisella
installoinnilla luodaan
yhtenäinen ja
persoonallinen ilme
liittymälle.
“ruutulippu” on
veistossarja joka
muodostuu
erikokoisista
metalliseinistä jotka
on maalattu.
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joutjärvi
Finland, as the
origin and the end
of the World.
Highway, with a
beginning and a
finish pointed with
the unavoidable
sign of the Art.
Join Art and Life.
Prehistoric Art;
beginning of the
Art.
Indefinite end of
the Art just like
the end of the
World.
They walk
together.
Stones and neon
lights pointing the
start and the finish
of the road.
The Life.
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tuolit.htm
Graniittituolit
Kallioiden huipuille
molemmille puolille tietä
pystyttäisin graniittisia
tuoleja - isoja
perusmuotoisia
“valtaistuimia” korkealla
selkänojalla. Niiden luo
voisi hakata kallioon
portaat, mitä pitkin sinne
voisi kiivetä nauttimaan
maiseman katselusta.
Tuolit antaisivat
mahdollisuuden päästä
tien tasolta ylemmäksi,
vapautua sitä kautta tien
kiireisestä rytmistä ja
melusta, tuntea itsensä
“kuninkaalliseksi”,
tutustua ympäröiviin
maisemiin. Tieltä
katsojalle istuimet
symbolisoivat myös
mahdollisuutta päästä
masentavasta rutiinista,
olla itsensä valtias.
Jossain paikoissa tuolit
voisivat olla muustakin
materiaalista ja
kirkkaanvärisiä.
Mahdollisuuden mukaan
graniitti-istuimia voisi
talvipakkasella
sisäältäpäin lämmittää,
jotta maiseman katselusta
pystyisi nauttimaan
kylmälläkin säällä.
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sillat
Sillat
VT4-n käyttäjä joutuu ajamaan monen sillan alta.
Nykyiset sillat on ulkonäöltään kaikki samankaltaisia
betonirakennelmia. Niiden erottaminen toisistaan ja
sen mukaan paikan hahmottaminen, missä ollaan, loisi
tielle lisää identiteettiä ja rutiinista poikkeavia
mielenkiinnon kohteita. Yksinkertaisin, mutta
kuitenkin toimiva olisi maalata sillat erivärisiksi. Tien
keskimmäinen silta voisi olla maalattu sateenkaaren
väreillä raidalliseksi, kun muut sillat olisivat
yksivärisiä. Näin siitä syntyisi tavallaan tien
keskipaikan merkki, mistä autoilija hahmottaisi
sijainnin. Siniselle sillalle voisi sijoittaa taivaantähtien
muotoisia heijastimia näin, että ne pimeässä auton
valoista syttyisivät ja koko sillan pinta muistuttaisi
tähtitaivasta.
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aurinko ja kuu
AURINKO JA
KUU
TAIVAALTA
HEIJASTUU
Materiaalit ja sijainti
Teos koostuu kahdesta osasta;
auringosta sekä kuusta. Ne
sijaitsevat mieluiten tien
kummallakin puolella vastakkain
tai peräkkäin kallioleikkauksissa.
Aurinko muodostuu viidesta
litteästä ympyränmuotoisesta
tasosta. joista osasta on leikattu
pala pois (kuvaa maisemaa
leikkaamassa auringon
laskua/nousua). Materiaalina
käytettäisiin kiillotettua,
ruostumatonta terästä.
Aurinkoja ei sen kummemin
käsitellä. Kuu muodostuu
myöskin samoista materiaaleista
kuunkiertoa (sirpistä
täysikuuhun ja takaisin)
toteuttaen, mutta pinta olisi
maalattu tummaksi ettei se
erottuisi päivisin, mutta pinnassa
olisi fosforimaalia tai vastaavaa
jotta se hohtaisi öisin.
Sisältö ja ajatus
Valtatie on pienoisvaltakunta.
Kun istuskelee auton
rauhallisessa huminassa,
väkisinkin ajatukset harhailevat
omia polkujaan valtatietä pitkin.
Matkalla ajan ja vauhdin taju
hämärtyy. Samalla voisi tapahtua
aikahyppy; aurinko vie päivän
mukanaan, kuu kierrättää sinua
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aurinko ja kuu
hetkisen omalla radallaan.
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the bridge
THE
BRIDGE
The leading idea
that I want to
express in my
project is the
contrast between
nature and
technology.
I chose the form
of a leaf and
transformed it to
an other form, a
bridge.The
structure is
important,
because is the
feature that the
two things have
in common. The
leaf structure is
reflected in the
bridge and
natural form is
transformed to a
bridge.
The work relates
to land art
because it
communicates
with the
landscape from a
built bridge.
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fosforisillat
FOSFORISILTA
Fosforivärillä maalattu
silta loistaa pimeässä ja
toimiii samalla
signaalina luonnon- ja
kulttuuriympäristön
rajakohdissa.
Fosforisillan väri
vaihtelee kuntien
mukaan ja auttaa näin
pimeässä matkustavia
orientoitumaan
ympäristöönsä.
VALOJA
TAIVAALLA
Kirkkaat värilliset
valospotit taivaalla
valaisevat taivasta ja
toimivat, samoin kuin
fosforisiltakin,
merkkinä taajamaalueelle saapumisesta.
Jokaisella kunnalla on
omat “ taivaan
merkkinsä ” . ( Valo
voi olla myös kuviona.
)
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lohikäärme
Kallio-Lohikäärme
Mäntsälän ohikulkutien varrella
olevassa kallioleikkauksessa
näkyy selvästi vaaleasta kivesta
muodostunut kiemurteleva viiva.
Jatkamalla luonnon piirtämää
kuviota mosaiikkisella tulta
sylkevällä päällä siitä muodostuu
kokonainen lohikäärme. Mosaiikin
materiaalina olisi keraamiset
laatat. Tulipyörän ollessa Lahden
symboolina sopii tulta syöksevä
lohikäärme Lahteen suuntautuvalle
tiellekin mainiosti; voi löytää
yhtäläisyyksia myös tulisen
lohikäärmeen ja moottoritien
muodon ja tultasylkevän luonteen
välillä. Pimeässä lohikäärme voisi
olla valaistu.
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siltaportti
SILTAPORTTI
Värillisistä ja osin
läpinäkyvistä osista
koostuva
akryylimuoviportti
johdattaa tiellä
kulkijan kaupungista
maaseudulle. Portin
väri on voimakkain
sillan keskiosassa.
Reunoille mentäessä
portin läpinäkyvyys
lisääntyy - ihmisen
aikaansaamat värit
vaihtuvat vähitellen
luonnon kuvaksi.
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suodattimet
Parkkialueen
läpinäkyvät
kehikot, eli
SUODATTIMET
Alumiinikehikoiden
keskellä voi olla
läpinäkyviä maisemaa
muuttavia
muovilinssejä, värillisiä
akryyliseinämiä,
hiekalla ja muilla
aineilla pinnoitettuja
muovi- tai lasiseinämiä.
Työn ideana on
vaihdettavuus ja
läpinäkyvyys.
Jokaisesta työstä tulee
enemmän- tai
vähemmän läpinäkyvä,
jotta katsoja voisi
nähdä maiseman uusien
suodattimien läpi.
Kehikot tekevät
tavallisesta
parkkialueesta
poikkeuksellisen
paikan. Parkkialueella
vierailevat näkevät
saman maiseman kuin
aikaisemminkin, mutta
läpinäkyvien
suodattimien kautta
tarkasteltuna tavallinen
maisema muuttuukin
yllättäen
eriskummalliseksi ja
visuaalisesti
kiintoisaksi. Mottona:
Tavallisestakin
näkymästä löytyy aina
jotain yllättävää, kun
vain keskittyy
katsomaan.
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suodattimet
Seinämä vaihdetaan
vähintään kerran
vuodessa. Näin tiellä
kulkijat voivat
taas vaihtaa
näkökulmansa toiseen löytää uusia
suodattimia
ajatuksilleen.
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suuri turismi
“Suuri Turismi”
Veistos suomalaisesta
punaisesta graniitista
lopulliselta kooltaan
noin 2,5 x1,25 x1m
(pit.,lev.,kork.)
Ohessa kuva olemassa
olevasta pienoismallista
(n.1:5), samasta
lopullisesta
materiaalista.
Mahdollinen sijoitus
jollekin
moottoritiealueen
“miehittämättömistä”
parkki/levähdysalueista.
Veistos on kommentti,
autoilun, vapaan
liikkuvuuden
ihanteesta, maailman ja
sen menemisen kuva
(Tärkeintä on liike?):
Toisinaan kaikki menee
hyvin, toisinaan vaan
menee...ja?
Mikä meitä kaikkia
liikuttaa?
Ikiliikuttava ikuisessa
materiaalissa.
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the way to roll on
The way to roll on
Rullalle käpertynyt tie on kunnianosoitus tien syntymiselle. Kymmenien
kilometrien pituisen tien rakentaminen on valtava ja työläs prosessi jossa
mekaaninen “jurassic park” takoo yötä päivää koneiden ja ihmistyövoiman
muodossa kohti päämääräänsä. Lähtöpisteet on valittu ja tieteamit löytävät toisensa
huipputarkkuudella -tien alkupäät kohtaavat toisensa ja muuttuvat yhtenäiseksi
kulkusuunnaksi.
Kuitenkin tässä kaikessa realismissa jossa insinöörit ja huipputekniset työryhmät
muotouttavat tien - on jotain mytologian omaista : suomalainen ponnistelu jossa
alkuvoimalla luodaan abstrakti idea - maailma todeksi - luovuuden ilmentymäksi.
Rullattu tie on jätetty tien penkareelle -unohdettu kuin mikä tahansa materiaali josta
tiet syntyvät. Se ilmentää osaamisen huippulaatua -meillä tietkin on rullatavaraa. Se
on kuin alkemistinen ilmentymä joka voi koska tahansa elävän organismin tavoin
suoristaa itsensä ajokaistaksi metafyysiseen maailmaan. Tiehän on aina elävä
järjestelmä ja se kuuluu globaaliin verkostoon kuin suoni ihmiskehossa : veren on
syöksyttävä järjestelmän paineella , yhtälailla kuin levottomien kyberneettisten
yksiköiden on ohjauduttava eteenpäin maailman haasteisiin. Kyberneettinen
yksikkö on ihmisen ja koneen muodostama hallintojärjestelmä ja sen tiellä liikkuva
sovellutus - auto . Tierulla on merkki - tieverkostot kehittyvät organismin
kasvuvoimalla. Se on raaka-aine joka sykliytymänä värähtelee rakennetun tien
voimaa ja kertoo siinä asuvista resursseista. Tierulla on kuin egyptiläisen sittiäisen
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the way to roll on
pyörittämä sykli ajasta jolloin inhimilliset ponnistukset loivat käsitteet
mahdottoman
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hoppa
HOPPA ON TIEN YLI HYPPIVÄ VALOVEISTOS. SE TUKEUTUU MAAHAN KOLMESTA KOHDASTA, ELI LIIKE JATKUU IKÄÄN KUIN MOLEMPIEN
KAISTOJEN YMPÄRI. LIIKETTÄ KOROSTAA AUTOMUOTOJEN ASETTELU KAAREN MUOTOISEKSI, SEKÄ NIIDEN YKSI KERRALLAAN SYTTYMINEN JA
SAMMUMINEN.
MATERIAALIT:
VALON LÄPÄISY ON TÄRKEÄ OSA HOPPAA. SIISPÄ LASI TAI MUOVI TUETTUNA TERÄSRAKENTEILLA VOISI OLLA ERÄS RATKAISU. TEOKSEEN
KUULUVA VALAISU TAPAHTUISI SITEN, ETTÄ KAPPALEET LOISTAVAT HETKEN KUIN VALO LÄHTISI NIISTÄ ITSESTÄÄN.
file:///C|/www-site/root/io98/hoppa.htm [9.7.2001 11:43:21]
menneen ja tulevan rajaviiva
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haacke
Anita Seppä
Hans Haacke – Environmental Artist with
Sociopolitical Concerns
Environmental art is a large category covering a broad spectrum of ideas and
works of art. The category began to develop in the 1960's when many artists –
mainly American – started to use natural substances in their work and then
gradually moved completely outdoors.
Environmental artists have never formed a distinct group nor have they had a
common philosophical basis for their work. Still, some common characteristics
exist; firstly, all environmental artists have already studied the institutional rules
and framework of the art world and the gallery system by the time they start
producing their works outside on natural sites.
Secondly, all of them have somehow made the traditional concept of a work of
art problematic by changing the focus from a solid work of art (or a
creator-genius) to a dialogue between the work of art and nature, or the work of
art and a specific site.
My aim in the following is not to give an overall definition of environmental art
but to concentrate on one artist, Hans Haacke, who has been working
intensively with nature and the environment since the 1960s but is nowdays
perhaps better known for the sociopolitical concerns inherent in his work.
Haacke is an artist who has always shown a special interest in systems. This led
him first to work with natural systems, such as water and air, and later into
examining the economical, political and social systems within which western
art exists.
Although the focus of Haacke’s art has changed in many ways during last four
decades, his work offers interesting perpectives, not only on art in general, but
also on environmental art – presuming that we are willing to accept
environmental art as a category which includes also some phenomena more
complex than just a dialogue between art and nature.
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haacke
Water and Air Constructions
Haacke became known during the 1960s as an artist who worked mainly in the
realm of nature. His main interest at that time was studying those singular
observations that are part of our “natural” everyday life, but of which we are
hardly aware in a world which has very little time for authentic sensual
involvements.
At the beginning of 1960s Haacke’s main subject was water, which he
“represented” in different kinds of water boxes made of plexiglas. These
constructions all looked quite similar from the outside but were essentially
different from each other, with the water inside the boxes existing in different
forms and partitionings.
Around 1965 Haacke moved on to other flexible natural forces and started to
build his “weather events” with air draughts and blower systems both indoors
and outdoors. Blue Sail (1965) was one of his indoor installations, consisting of
blue chiffon, nylon thread, weights, and an oscillating fan which kept the
installation in perpetual motion, as if it were a living organism fluttering
fragilely in the air, but kept alive only with the help of the fan.
Another wind and air construction, Sky Line, was built outdoors two years later.
It consisted of a line of helium-filled balloons which were connected to each
other by a nylon string. Like the earlier gallery works in air this one was also a
fragile piece of art, not an object in the traditional sense, but more like a system
being constantly manipulated – not by the oscillating fan but by natural forces
such as wind, rain, temperature etc.
Both Haacke’s water and air constructions were based on the ideas represented
in kinetic art movement, stressing the importance of essential phenomenalism
and elementary sensing. A connecting feature in Haacke’s constructions was an
idea of boundlessness and of playing with the spectator and the environment.
Like many other kinetic artists, Haacke sought expression mainly through
movement and the experience of time. He expressed his early artistic manifesto
briefly in the following exhortations:
...make something which experiences, reacts to its
environment, changes, is nonstable...
...make something indeterminate, that always looks
different, the shape of which cannot be predicted
precisely...
...make something that cannot “perform” without the
assistance of its environment...
...make something sensitive to light and temperature
changes, that is subject to air currents and depends,
in its functioning, on the forces of gravity...
...make something the spectator handles, an object to
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haacke
be played with and thus animated...
...make something that lives in time and makes the
“spectator” experience time...
...articulate something natural...
Hans Haacke, Cologne, January 1965.(1)
Haacke’s water and air works were processes that attempted to build a dialogue
between the spectator and his/her environment. He structured the events but left
the rest to the spectator, trying to motivate his/her elementary memory, inviting
a new and intimate re-experiencing of those effects the world offers us the
moment we first open our eyes – but the existence of which we also tend to
forget.
As Jack Burnham has noted, Haacke’s interest in the invisible mechanisms of
nature is
actually “like all meaningful art; it is a revocation of what is always known
about existence, but forgotten at one time or another”.(2)
Poetical Imagination and Phenomenological Reduction
Haacke’s early interest in nature and the sensing of its elementary systems bears
many resemblances to phenomenological and existential philosophy, which
similarly understands the work of art as a lived human process rather than as a
solid and fixed object to be seen “there”, outside the spectator, or in his
contemplating mind.
An interesting theoretical similarity to Haacke’s water and air constructions can
be found in the work of the French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, who
developed the idea of a poetic imagination. Bachelard’s analysis of the
imagination is interesting here, because it seems to be able to explain much of
what Haacke’s early works are about.
Bachelard divides the poetical imagination into two different categories which
work together in our acts of understanding: the material and the dynamic
imagination. The material imagination is tied to material elements, for example
to those that we usually think of as archetypal: air, fire, water and earth.
According to Bachelard, the being of these materials corresponds with the being
of the human subject. Bachelard speaks also of the poetic correspondences in
which we are not
primarily concerned with intellectual abstractions but with the discoveries of
ourselves in matter. For this reason the material imagination is able to “find in
the very depth of materials all of the symbols of the inner life”.(3)
Still, it is not a question of identifying oneself with materials because the
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haacke
pleasure that the material imagining evokes is that of finding ourselves in
material that is paradoxically something other than ourselves. This leads us to
the following interpretation: if we think about the pleasure evoked by Haacke’s
constructions in terms of Bachelard’s notion of material imagination, we arrive
at the conclusion that the pleasure does not rise from the sameness of the
material and our our imaginative activity, but instead from an experience of
being in some sense ulterior to the work and its material.
Bachelard uses also some other archetypes to describe this feeling of ulteriority,
and analyses forms such as the shell, the womb, the house, the snake and the
labyrinth as axes around which a host of images may conspire to evoke typical
human experiences.(4) At the same time these symbols are meant to evoke a
feeling of the origin, not an image (a picture in the mind) in the traditional
sense.
Bachelard’s second class of poetical imagining is that of the dynamic, which
works as a counterpart to the material imagination. The dynamic is a force that
goads the subject matter continually into motion and keeps the forms in
perpetual movement; it makes an arrow fly, a tear drop fall – and Haacke’s
water boxes and air constructions move both in time and in space.
The dynamic imagination is based on our freedom to imagine and on our free
will to fly, fall, make objects live etc. Together these two forms of poetical
imagining – material and dynamic – give us the ability to re-create the world
that surrounds us; they make us like “demiurges before the kneading-trough: we
structure the becoming of the matter”.(5)
Another interesting connection between Haacke’s early works of art and
phenomenology has been pointed out by Jack Burnham, who pays attention to
the similarity between Haacke’s art in the 1960s and Edmund Husserl’s
phenomenological thinking. Burnham states that Haacke’s works can also be
understood in the light of Husserlian “reduction” which tries to take us back to
the “things themselves”.
According to Burnham, “we see only what we want to see and the hardest thing
to see is what is nonliterary in origin, in fact, what is with us from the moment
we first open our eyes”. Burnham makes his interpretation clearer by referring
to Haacke’s water constructions: “thousands of times I have discharged the
contents of a washbasin or have swallowed liquid with the purpose of removing
the contents from the cavity of the glass into the cavity created by my digestive
system. Rarely have I exerted what Husserl calles “reduction” in isolating either
the motions of my body in receiving the water or the actions of the water
leaving the glass. This last is what Haacke is about.”(6)
Turning a Natural Marlboro Man into the Political Helmsboro
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haacke
Country
As we have seen, Haacke’s main subject in the 1960s was nature; its basic
elements and systems, and the works done during this period bear a close
relationship to both kinetic art and phenomenological thinking.
In the 1970s Haacke’s art started to take on a more political direction and the
focus of his works shifted from the observation of our natural surroundings to
the interaction between natural and human systems. He started to show more
interest in the fact that the things we regard as “natural” are always modified by
different kinds of human interests; institutional, governmental, military,
corporate etc.
Gradually this led Haacke to work more intensively with different kinds of
symbolic systems; he studied the various mechanisms which were used not only
in advertising but also in the economical, political and social fields, structures
that he saw as affecting both our conceptions of art and the ways we value
works of art.
Haacke’s interest in the economical and sociopolitical dimensions of art rested
also on a reconsideration of the nature of a work of art. Inherent in each of his
works were questions like: What is a work of art? and especially: How should
art function for its public?
Like Pierre Bourdieu – with whom he recorded discussions which were
published under the title Libre-Échange (1994) – Haacke wanted to make
people more aware of art’s functioning as one form of symbolic power, not as
an innocent field of aesthetic disinterestedness, or politically neutral
contemplation.
According to both Bourdieu and Haacke, symbolic power means an ability to
give categories to thinking and feeling; categories that help us to see and
classify different kinds of things and events in the world – but which can also
easily turn into censorship and restricting doxa. Symbolic power makes us feel
as if the things it represents were natural; it gives us view points on the world,
but without explicit or critical reflection of its own economical or political
basis.
One piece of work which demonstrates Haacke’s way of studying critically the
conditions of art making and his ability to integrate these notions into his own
productions was a work called Helmsboro Country, constructed in 1990. The
work gained its inspiration from the acts of Jesse Helms, a senator of
North-Carolina whose ideological background is a mixture of fundamental
Protestantism and extreme right-wing politics.
Jesse Helms is known as a supporter of right-wing governments all over the
world. He has also taken an active part in resisting the workers’ movement,
women’s and homosexuals’
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haacke
emancipation, and all kinds of sexual enlightenment (he managed to bring down
a bill to promote education about aids in the USA).
In 1989 Helms gained a lot of publicity by attacking an exhibition which was
arranged in the South Eastern Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA) in North
Carolina. The exhibition presented the work of young artists who had received
financial help from the
National Endowment of Arts (NEA) foundation. The work of art that motivated
Helms to act was made by a Catholic artist Andres Serrano, a photograph of a
crucifix covered with yellowish brown gauze. The picture didn’t show clearly
what was covering the Christ figure but the title of the work, Piss Christ, left no
doubts about it. The work was part of Serrano’s artwork series, in which he
represented the fluids of human body, blood, sperm etc.
Helms attack was focused on the NEA. Shortly after the Serrano “scandal”
another photographer Robert Mapplethorp had received financial support from
the NEA. Helms accused Mapplethorp (who had already died of aids by that
time) of pornography and of inciting people to homosexuality.
In the autumn of the same year, 1990, the USA congress approved a bill which
was presented by Helms: the NEA was forbidden to support works of art which
they or the National Endowment for the Humanities might regard as indecent.
This would include works denoting (for example) sadomasocism, homosexual
erotics, the sexual exploitation of children, or people involved in the sexual
act.(7)
Helms also made it clear in public that people who voted against his new law of
censorship would be accused of supporting pornography with the help of public
money.
Haacke’s answer was a 77 x 203 x 121 cm sculpture which looked like a box of
Marlboro cigarettes, but had been through some slight modifications. On both
sides of the box Haacke had printed quotations from Frank Saunders’ and
George Weissman’s statements concerning art, the opinions of two men who
have a big investment in the Philip Morris concern and who seemed to be
worried only about the financial and practical advantages to be gained by the
Philip Morris company by their “support” of art. The Philip Morris company
gave also financial support to senator Jesse Helms.
Senator Helms was also represented in Haacke’s sculpture: his photograph was
printed on the cigarette box with the text “veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I
won). The ”Marlboro” brand name was turned into ”Helmsboro” and “20
cigarettes” on the surface of the box was replaced by “20 bills of rights”. With
the latter Haacke referred ironically to an event in which the Philip Morris
company distributed Bill of Rights rolls to people, bearing the logos of its three
affiliated companies: General Foods, Kraft and Miller Beer.
Helmsboro Country was one of Haacke’s works that shows clearly his mastery
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haacke
in the field of symbolic power. Still, although Haacke fights against patrons and
different kinds of economical and political forces, he doesn’t wish to destroy
them entirely (for this would also kill art) but wants to keep a critical eye on
them, and to make us more aware of the different strategies through which
politicians and enterprises try to allure people’s opinions onto their side. In
works like Helmsboro Country, Haacke steals these stategies of alluring and
reveals them, turning the weapons of symbolic power upon its users.
Helmsboro Country is also a good example of Haacke’s political engagement
and his reluctance to give in to the forces of symbolic power and money.
Neither is he willing to live in an artistic “ivory tower”, which can also be seen
as one form of giving up, nor in a baurdillardian “simulacrum”, which tries to
ensure that there is no reality at all, but only an endless reflection of mirrors.
As Bourdieu comments in his discussions with Haacke, we have a duty to take
part into the world of business people, money men, politicians etc.; the more
they influence our world the more we have to make their pseudo-philosophies
public and force them to discuss them.(8)
Graz
Haacke’s works reassert the artist’s role as an active initiator of acts and ideas
within society. Rather than making works of art and representing them in a
public space, Haacke selectively uses the site and its sociopolitical atmosphere
as material in his works. For this reason most of his works – for example
Helmsboro Country – could not be moved to any other place without extra
explanations and references to its original “site”.
Another interesting example of the site-specific nature of Haacke’s works is a
sculpture which was constructed in Graz, Austria, in 1988, where an annual
exhibition called Steirischer Herbst (funded by the city of Graz, the province of
Steiermark and the government of Austria, in Vienna) has been organized since
1968.
The exhibition in which Haacke was invited to participate with 15 other artists
was focused on the anniversary of Anschluss i.e. the uniting of Austria to
Hitler’s dynasty in 1938. The artists were asked to make temporary public art
works for places that had been important during the Nazi occupation.
Haacke chose Mariensäule, one of the oldest memorials, which had been
erected in 1669 in Herrengasse street, in Graz, when the Germans had gained a
victory over the Turkish army. In 1938 Hitler chose Graz as a Stadt der
Volkserhebung for its merit of being one of the first Nazi forts in Austria.
The ceremonies took place on the 25th of June 1938 at the foot of Mariensäule.
A few weeks previously the Anschluss Nazis had marched along the
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haacke
Herrengasse, a swastika had been raised on the balcony of the town hall and
windows had been broken in many Jewish shops. The Nazis covered the statue
of the Virgin Mary with an obelisk and draped it with a huge red textile on
which were the Nazi armorial bearings and the following text (referring to the
Nazis’ earlier defeat in Vienna, in 1934): “Und ihr habt doch gesiegt” (You
won anyway).
Haacke wanted to cover the statue of Virgin Mary again with the Nazi obelisk,
and he reconstructed it with the help of old photographs. The only difference
between Nazis’ statue and Haacke’s work was a text which was added at the
foot of the obelisk: “Those who were beaten in Steiermark: 300 gipsies, killed ,
2, 500 Jews, killed, 8, 000 political prisoners, killed or died in prison, 9, 000
civilians, killed during the war, 1, 200 disappeared, 27, 900 soldiers, killed.”
A week before the exhibition ended the statue was attacked by a bomb and part
of Haacke’s work and also of the statue of the Virgin Mary under it were badly
damaged. The bomb attack evoked a lot of discussion in local newspapers.
Most of the people who took an active part in these discussions didn’t support
the attack, but the biggest newspaper in Austria, Neue Kronen Zeitung, which
has also supported Kurt Waldheim, criticised the catholic church for letting
Haacke cover the statue of Virgin Mary, and accused politicians of spending the
taxpayers’money on Haacke’s shameful project.
An artist from Graz, Richard Kriesche, arranged a silent demonstration around
the statue on the following Saturday. About one hundred local artists
participated and started to discuss Haacke’s work with the passers-by. The next
day some left-wing activists, students and private individuals brought flowers to
the foot of the obelisk and burned candles around it through the night. Two men
– both supporters of the Nazi ideology – were arrested two weeks later and sent
to prison.
Haacke’s obelisk in Graz took its form and meaning from a direct reference to
its environment and the sociopolitical atmosphere that surrounded it. Haacke’s
act was provocative in many ways and expressed something highly
inflammable about the site where the work was constructed. At the same time it
also forced people to rethink some basic conflicting demands and symbolic
strategies concerning art that is represented in
public environments.
Conclusion
As Pierre Bourdieu notes in his conversations with Haacke, the power of
Haacke’s expression lies not only in what he has to say, but also in those
specific and innovative forms which he uses to express his message. This holds
true both of his early works with nature and of the more recent ones that are
more focused on sociopolitical concerns.
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haacke
The main aim of Haacke’s works is to make us more aware of our living
environments, either natural or more social. Some of his works – such as The
Extacy of Baudrichard (1988) – are directed at a small group of specialists, but
more often he addressess his art to a larger public.
By showing the art world’s connections with various ideologies and money,
Haacke poses questions such as; What is our artistic environment? What kind of
symbolic powers and value dimensions constitute it? What is the social context
of works of art? And in what kind of sociopolitical environment are they born
as works of art?
Notes
(1) See Art in the Land. A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art, ed. by Alan
Sonfist, (New York: Dutton, 1983), p.112-113.
(2) J. B urnham, "Hans Haacke - Wind and Water Sculpture" in Sonfist, p. 117.
(3) G. Bachelard, L'Eau et les rêves: essai sur l'imagination de la matière
(Paris: Gallimard, 1938), p. 202.
(4) See also R. Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard
(London: Routledge, 1993), p.96.
(5) G. Bachelard, La Terre et les rêveries de la volonté (Paris: Corti, 1948), p.
78.
(6) ibid., p. 110
(7) Libre-Échange (Paris: Seuil, 1994) transl. in Finnish as Ajatusten
vapaakauppa (Vammala: Vammalan kirjapaino), p. 19-20.
(8) ibid., 43.
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
Muuntamot taidenäyttelyn paikkana, eräänlaisena galleriatilana, liittyyvät
1960-luvulta 1990-luvulle jatkuneeseen virtaukseen, jossa painotetaan taiteen
esittämisen tiloja milloin keskus/periferia näkökulmista, milloin sosiaalisista,
milloin taideinstituutiota vastustavista näkökulmista. Yhteistä tämäntyyppisille
näyttelyille on teosten kiinteä suhde niitä ympäröiviin tiloihin.
Muuntamo-näyttelyssä kiinnostavaa oli sen tilallisen kontekstin jakaantuminen
kahteen hyvin erilaiseen osaan. Ensimmäinen osa rajautui rakennusten fyysisten
tiiliseinien sisälle, jossa oli näyttelyn ydin, sen sisin osa. Näyttelyyn
osallistuneet viisi taiteilijaa rakensivat teoksensa näihin sisätiloihin ja myös
katsojia kehotettiin kiinnittämään huomiota niihin. Näyttelyn toinen osa käsitti
muuntamoiden väliset alueet – tai täsmällisemmin vielä ne reitit, joita pitkin
katsoja kulki muuntamosta toiseen: kävellen, pyöräillen, autolla tai bussilla.
Näyttelyn kaksi osaa ovat moneessa suhteessa toisilleen vastakkaisia, niin
tilallisesti, toiminnallisesti kuin myös esityksellisesti. Näin ne muodostavat
vastakohtaiset parit ainakin seuraaviin käsitteisiin nähden: suljettu/avoin,
liikkuva/pysähtynyt, esitetty tila/tilan esitys.
Tilallisen eriytymisen – avoimen ulkotilan ja suljettun sisätilan – vedenjakajina
tai merkitsijöinä toimi näyttelyssä muuntamoiden punatiiliset seinät. Katsoja
joka kulki muuntamolta toiselle joutui kulkemaan vuoroin suljettuun sisätilaan
ja vuoroin avoimeen, toiminnalliseen ulkotilaan.
Tämän merkitsijän roolin kautta muuntamot itsessään imeytyivät osaksi
kokonaisuutta. Katsoja joutui kohtaamaan kolme muuntamoa – ei ainoastaan
sisältäpäin, vaan myös suhteessa niitä ympäröivään maisemaan. Näin tilallisten
käytäntöjen ja esityksellisten tilojen välille syntyi vuorovaikutus.
Näiden kahden tilaelementin ohella myös näyttelyn varsinaisissa teoksissa
korostui kahdenlainen tilaan liittyvä merkityksenanto. Yhtäältä näyttely ja sen
teokset muotoutuivat rakennuksiin jääneistä jäljistä tai tilojen akuutista
luonteesta. Töiden lähtökohdat olivat muuntamot itsessään.
Toisaalta osa teoksista kommentoi rakennusten alkuperäistä, nyt jo väistynyttä
käyttöä, sähkön tuottamista, jakamista ja välittämistä, ja tähän liittyvää
symboliikkaa. Juuri tämä jälkimmäinen näkökulma yhdisti toistamiseen
muuntamorakennukset toisiinsa, näkymättömän energian kuljettamisen ja
jakamisen verkostoksi.
Näyttelyn teoksia voi yhteisesti nimittää myös paikkasidonnaisiksi,
väliaikaisiksi sekä katsojalle tarjotuiksi havaitsemisen tilanteiksi. Symboliseen
tai assosiaatioiden tasoon liittyi osaltaan myös rakennusten alkuperäisen
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
toiminnan lakkauttaminen, jonka vuoksi ne tullaan purkamaan.
Mutta juuri siksi, että niitä ei enää käytetty sähkön muuntamiseen, ne olivat
muuttuneet "käsillä olevista" käyttöesineistä "esillä oleviksi" huomion pisteiksi.
Miten nämä rakennukset sitten toimivat uudessa, muuntuneessa funktiossaan?
Muuntamoiden asema kaupunkimaisemassa on vailla vertaa. Niitä ei olla
rakennettu esteettisiä tai ylipäätään arkkitehtuurisia seikkoja silmälläpitäen
(niiltä puuttuu usein myös nimetty suunittelija) vaan enemmänkin käytännön
tarpeita, sähkön jakamista, tyydyttämään. Tämän vuoksi ne sijaitsevat
omituisissa paikoissa, elävän kaupungin keskellä ja samalla kuitenkin syrjässä.
Tämä johtuu tietysti osin siitä, ettei näitä rakennuksia ole tarkoitettu koettavaksi
tai elettäväksi, eivätkä ne ole ihmisille vaan sähkölle rakennettuja linnoituksia.
Myös niiden paikat ovat määrittyneet, ei ihmisten kulkureittejä vaan ennen
kaikkea sähköjohtoja seuraillen. Näin muuntamot ovat tietynlaisia epätiloja,
joita on rakennettu sinne missä niitä on tarvittu ja sinne, mistä niille on löytynyt
vapaata tilaa.
Johtuen siitä, että näitä rakennuksia ei ole tarkoitettu käytettäväksi, niihin ei
kiinnitetä myöskään huomiota. Tietoinen katse ohittaa ne ja ne jättävät jälkiä
korkeintaan muistoihin, jotka sitten sopivassa tilanteessa nousevat esiin
tiedostamattomasta muistivarastosta. Olemmehan me kaikki niitä lopulta
kuitenkin nähneet.
Myös rakennusten muotokieli on enemmän käytännön kuin innovatiivisen
arkkitehtuurikielen ohjailemaa. Tornimainen muoto on seurausta siitä, että
avoimet johdot oli sijoitettava ihmiskosketuksen yläpuolelle. Toisaalta ei voida
kuitenkaan sanoa, etteikö muuntamoita olisi myös koristeltu. Näidenkin kolmen
esimerkin fasadeissa voi havaita pieniä, mutta kuitenkin selvästi harkittuja
koristeellisia yksityiskohtia.
Edellä esitetty Muuntamo-näyttelyn tilallinen konteksti sisältää jo vihjailevan
ajatuksen katsojan keskeisestä roolista, niin tilan käyttäjänä kuin myös taiteen
kokijana. Tällainen kokijakeskeinen lähtökohta taiteen tarkastelussa on melko
uusi ilmiö ainakin jos tarkastelukenttä määräytyy taidehistorian kautta.
Taidehistoriahan on perinteisesti keskittynyt tarkastelemaan taideobjekteja,
yhtäältä teosten sisältöä ja toisaalta niiden tekijöitä, taiteilijoita. Viime
vuosikymmeninä kuvataiteen tutkimuksessa huomio on kääntynyt kuitenkin yhä
enemmän kohti katsojaa ja kiinnostuksen kohteeksi on tullut autonomisten
teosten ja niiden valmistajan sijasta teoksen ja katsojan kohtaamisen prosessi, ja
lopulta itse havaitsemistapahtuma merkityksiä luovana toimintana.
Kiinteiden kohteiden sijasta teokset muistuttavat yhä useammin konstellaatioita,
joissa yhteen tai useampaan tilaan sijoitetaan teoksien osia. Vedenjakajan roolin
vanhan ja uuden välillä saa vaihdellen minimalismi, joka tiputti veistoksen
jalustaltaan todelliseen tilaan; kollaasit, jotka kasvattivat maalauksen ulos
pinnasta; ready-madet, jotka pyrkivät murentamaan taideteoksen ja
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
käyttöesineen välistä statuseroa; käsitetaide tai ympäristötaide, joka lopulta vei
taiteen ulos instituutioista ja teki siitä paikkaansa sidotun väliaikaisen tilan
merkitsijän. Näiden kaikkien yhteenvetona muodostui nykyisin jo yleisesti
käytetty installaatioiden luokka.
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IO - Gallery
Wheatfield - A Confrontation
Agnes Denes
Tila, reitti, katsoja
Hanna Johansson
Terra Nova -project
Hermann Prigann
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Hanna Johansson - Tila, teos, reitti, katsoja
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