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Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison

Initial sketch, Greenhouse Britain: Where the loss of land due to

ocean rise is first expressed, 2006

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In their recent multimedia installation, GreenhouseBritain, 2007 09, Newton Harrison a nd Helen MayerHarrison chart the futu re impact of global warming onthe UK. Using video animation, a large-scale topo-graphical map of Britain, photographic documentation,analytical texts a nd sound elements, their pedagogi-cally oriented presentation portrays a dark fut ure ofrising waters, storm surges and shrinking coastlines.

Supplementing this ominous forecast, theirproject also supplies creative proposals for the con-struction of water barr iers and the development ofenvironmentally friendly housing for the scores ofpeople who will inevitably be displaced as t he waters

overtake low-lying areas such as the Norfolk B roadsand the Thames Es tuary, owing to the gradual melt-ing of the Greenland a nd Antarctic ice sheets over thecourse of the next centu ry and beyond.

Yet while the Harrisons art has admi rablyaddressed global warming since the early 1970s, whenthey began their longstanding coll aboration and whenclimate change was much less discussed, todays con-text of widespread public information campaigns

from Al Gores 200 6 educational filmAn InconvenientTruth to popular science books like Tim FlannerysThe Weather Makers, 2005, and Elizabeth KolbertsField Notes on a Catastrophe, 2006 have shiftedthe discourse on the environment. This has revealednew questions about what role art might play now thatconsciousness-raising is being accomplished by themass media and culture industry, even if still plaguedby governmental inaction.1 As is now widely known

particularly since the scientific consensus establishedby the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange) , most recently in 20 07, which has renderedthose who deny climate-change increasingly scarce(but, with continued industry fundi ng to wage theirmisinformation campaigns, by no means extinct) we live in a changing world of anthropogenic global

warming. The IPCC predicts a coming world, halfuninhabitable, of rising sea s and temperatures, droughtand water scarcity, and massive species extinction,which will undoubtedly provoke geopolitical chal-lenges regarding resource distribution, environmental

justice between developed countries and the globalSouth, and vast climate migration.2 This future definesnew imperatives for an ethics of living, a politics ofgoverning, and in turn provokes new challenges forcontemporary artistic practice and art exhibitions particularly for those, such as the Barbicans exhibition,Radical Nature Art and Architecture for a Changing

Planet 1969 2009, intent on participating in the ethico-

political reinvention of life in the face of climate cha nge.

Exhibiting Sustainability?

Given this state of urgency, there hasbeen, not surprisingly, a slew of recent exhibitionsand research projects worldwide attuned to art andecology. The most prominent include: Ecovention:Current Art to Transform Ecologies, an exhibition at theCincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, 2002 , which

surveyed practices since the 1960s that endeavour toameliorate the effects of environmental degradation;Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art, mounted atChicagos Smart Museum of Art in 2006 , investigatingdesign-related approaches to environmentalsustainability; Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook,a 20 06 compilation of texts by ecologists, culturaltheorists, activists and art writers that considersnotions of land, cultural production and the ecological

emergencies of the 20 th century; Still Life: Art, Ecology,and the Politics of Change, the eighth Sharjah Biennial,2007, addressing social, political and cu ltural relationsto nature and the environment, including a symposiumthat examined ecological practice and everyday life;and lastly, Weather Report: Art and Climate Changeat the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007,

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which highlighted educational initiatives arounddesertification, floods, changing watersheds, renewableenergy and carbon profiling, and partnered artists with

scientists to create dialogues around cl imate change.3

The growing momentum of such projectswould appear salutary for their contribution to thefocusing of public attention on the environment andthe threats posed by c limate change. However, thatachievement should not distract or prevent us f romforming a critical asses sment of the aims and accom-plishments of recent projects, as well as evaluatingthe promises, perils and perplexities to borrow thesubtitle of yet another recent exhibition, Greenwashing that characterise these recent engagements with artand ecology. One signal peril, indeed, is the tendencyto accept the fl attening of representations complexityand to surrender intellectual criticality in t he face of thereal urgency of climate change. The da nger here is thepublics passive deferral of responsibility to scientif icexpertise and governmental authority, which makes

us vul nerable both to solutions forged by exclusivesocial and political interests and to the forces of com-mercial exploitation that would use green rhetoric forthe purposes of economic profit. And yet, if artist s andcultural practitioners refuse to surrender their discern-ing consideration of scientific dictates, then what dothey do, as Bruno Latour asks, when t heir methodologi-cal commitment to resisting the self-evidence of truthprevents them from accepting the truth of impending

ecological crisis, which potentially allies them withclimate-change sceptics?4 Facing this dilemma, onemust be aware of the fact that whatever we know aboutthe environment knowledge that will determine ourfuture actions and chances of surv ival we owe to thediverse practices and institutions that represent it. Assuch, we can perhaps only affirm the need for a criti-cal realism that both refuses to relinquish t he validityof scientific paradigms and remains dedicated to a

guardedly analytical approach to ecological discourseas a system of representations forged at the intersectionof power and knowledge.

To this end, it is necessary when consideringthe historical formation of environmental art to scrutinisethe diverse meanings of ecology and denaturalise therhetoric of sustainability, recognising these buzzwords

as deeply political, contentious and ideological. Thisessay aims to accomplish that aim in its examinationof select h istorical moments of arts entwinement

with ecology, which, it is hoped, will also provide auseful historical framework with which to consider theBarbicans show, Radical Nature. When confrontingthe claims of sustainability, one needs to ask whatsustainability means, whose interests it promotes, andwhose are left out? Consider, for instance, the classicarticulation of sustainable development, as definedby Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland in theUN-convened World Commission on Environmentand Developments 1987 report, Our Common Future,as: development that meets the needs of the presentwithout compromising the ability of future generationsto meet their own needs. 5 While the UNs dedication tosustainability may appear a s a decisive world-historicaldevelopment, its formulation of sustainability is vague atbest for what are these needs exactly? Whose needscount and whose do not? Whereas the definition places

its agenda under an inclusive commonality, implyinga shared responsibility for safeguarding humanitysecological inheritance, the definition of sustainabilityin fact situates the environment as valuable largelyfrom the perspective of economic needs; indeed,the report goes on to explain that while sustainabledevelopment does imply limits ... technology and socialorganisation can be both managed and improved tomake way for a new era of economic growth, one that

will make development sustainable.6

This priority hasin fact guided Western governmental mobilisations ofsustainability ever since.7

Conversely, others approach sustainabilityonly to question its very terminological legiti macy. Ascultural geographer Erik Swyngedouw argues, Thereis no such thing as an unsustainable city in general, butrather there are a series of urban and envi ronmentalprocesses that negatively affect some social groups

while benefiting others.8 The problem with sustain-able development is that it tends to present a classlessvision of ecological justice made in the USA, as postco-lonialist theorist Gayatri Spivak puts it, which appears,falsely, as incontestable who can oppose sustainabil i-ty, after all?9 This green agenda typically prioritises theneeds of developed nations over all others, even while

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the cleaning up of European and North Americanenvironments has come at the cost of trans ferring theirpolluting industries and environmental responsibility

to the global South, which, a s is widely acknowledged,faces the largest negative future impacts of globalwarming. It is crucial in this regard to critically chal-lenge environmental proposals that would justify theworsening of social inequality, promote authoritariangovernmental directions and further concentrate thepower of decision-making in the hands of multi-nation-al corporations. If we choose to accept the u se of theterm sustainability, how, we must a sk in relation to c ur-rent artistic practice, can ecological sustainability meetthe demands of environmental justice? For, a just urbansocio-environmental perspective, Swyngedouw con-tinues, always needs to consider the question of whogains and who pays and to ask serious questions aboutthe multiple power relations ... In other words, environ-mental transformations are not independent from class,gender, ethnicity or other power struggles.10 In this

regard, there is a growing need to address the globalgeopolitics of environmentalism, with greater focus oninitiatives based in places like Sub-Saharan Africa andSouth East Asia such as the Nigerian photographiccollective Depth of Fields exposure of the degradedecologies of Lagoss mega-slum, the Indian researchgroup Sarais study of emerging urbanism in Del hi,and recent exhibitions outside of the North Americanand European context, including 48 Degrees Celsius:

Public.Art.Ecology in Delhi, 2008, which investigatedthe ramifications of cli mate change on the city.11

Finally, one must also confront the troublingobservation that exhibitions dedicated to sustainabilityare fundamentally contradictory; for even as they seekto address climate cha nge and work towards crea-tive solutions although certainly not al l projects areequally politically or pedagogically inclined theycontribute to the very problem of global wa rming

by virtue of their own c arbon footprint, the resultsof transporting artworks, maintaining the exhibitionspaces climate control and printing c atalogues. Onemight conclude that eco-art ex hibitions are simplyunviable from an environmental perspective. Yet if t hisresponse is both inadequate and unrealistic as muchas it would be to insist on immediately discontinuing

all unsustainable technologies, rather than workinggradually towards a state of sustainabil ity we need atthe very least to consider just what justi fies the continu-

ation of unsustainable art ex hibitions committed to thesubject of sustaina bility.

Fragile Ecologies

Among the first art projects that investigatedthe nature of the environment during the 60s and 70sin the American context were Hans Haackes GrassGrows, 1969; Newton Harrisons The Slow Birth andDeath of a Lily Cell, 1968; and Alan Sonfists TimeLandscape of New York City, proposed in 1965 andrealised in 1978. 12

These engagements were soon followed bythe first group shows, including EarthArtat CornellUniversitys gallery in 1969, comprising land art byHaacke, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim andRobert Morris. Surveying these early years, the QueensMuseum of Arts Fragile Ecologiesexhibition in 1992,

curated by Barbara Matilsky, examined the historicalformation of environmental art, the development ofwhich, for Matilsky, was due to the political and socialclimate during the 60s, when an increasing numberof people [in the States] began to question traditionalvalues and governmental policies regarding Vietnam,racial segregation, womens status and the environment.Spurred on by the publication of signal environmental-ist texts like Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, 1962, and

Paul Ehrlichs The Population Bomb, 1968, and propelledby events such as the inauguration of Earth Day in 1970,artists turned to nature and began interpreting its life-generating forces to create radically new kinds of art. 13

Most of Fragile Ecologies inclusions, aswell as the projects referenced in its catalogue, de-velop a model of what we could term restorationisteco-aesthetics, referring to art that attempts to repairdamaged habitats or to revive degraded ecosys-

tems. Sonfists Time Landscape of New York City; theHarrisons Portable Orchard, 1972 ; Haackes RhinewaterPurification Plant, 1972; Agnes Denes Wheatfield

A Confrontation, 1982 ; Joseph Beuyss 7000 Oaks,1982; and Mel Chins Revival Field, 1990, each of thesepieces variously attempted to rescue natural environ-ments from polluted conditions. As such they fulfilled

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Matilskys definition ofecology as the scienceof planetary housekeep-

ing (deriving from theGreek oikos, meaninghouse or habitat) thatwould sustain the inter-relationship of all formsof life in their diverse en-vironments.14 Exemplaryis Sonfists stated goal:to elevate disappearingnative landscapes to thestatus of historical monu-ments and, by extension,to sensitise people so thatthey could view natureas an important part of their cultural heritage.15

Despite its apparent ecological ethics,posed against industrial capitalisms despoliation of

the environment, there are nonetheless several prob-lems with Matils kys approach, not least of which is thespiritualist len s through which nature is apprehend-ed, which supplants c onceptual rigour. At the root ofthe problem is Fragile Ecologies tendency to separatenature from culture. Relegated to a non-cultural zoneof organic purity, and reminiscent of the mythopoeicrealm attributed to the biological environment inJames Lovelocks Gaia hypothesis nonetheless an-

other crucial ma rker in the development of ecologicaldiscourse nature ends up objectified as a n ontologydivorced from social, politica l and technological proc-esses.16 Undermining the seemingly laudable environ-mentalist intentions of the exhi bition is a dangerousdepoliticisation, which reproduces the very objectifi-cation of nature that has got u s into trouble in the firstplace. Sundered apart, Neil Smith observes, natureand society die in reciprocal conceptual torpor, for

the positing of an external nature rationalises andjustifies the unprecedented exploitation of nature ...[which is] the massive racket that capitalism, histori-cally and geographica lly, represents.17 Matilskys defi-nition of nature committed just such a d ivision, even iffrom a perspective critical of capitalisms treatment ofthe environment.

One couldadd to Matilskys con-textual genealogy of

environmental art the factthat the period between1972 and 1992 roughlythe historical frameworkcovered in FragileEcologies marked theemergence of interna-tional non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs) ,and inter-governmentalprotocols, agreements,and cooperative ac-cords for dealing withenvironmental concerns,

framed by the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference on theHuman Environment and the 1992 Earth Summit inRio (United Nations Conference on Environment and

Development).18

The latter event, moreover, gave riseto the growing criticism that UN initiatives failed to ad-dress both postcolonial concerns and the inequality be-tween post-industrial nations and the global South. Yet,about this wider context and the political calls for global

justice that would challenge a depoliticising Western-centric environmentalism, Fragile Ecologieshas nothingto say, favouring instead an articulation of its New Ageeco-aesthetics that is oblivious to the larger geopolitical

stakes: environmental artists, Matilsky noted, visualisethe forces, processes and phenomena of nature: organicgrowth, light, water, crystals and other elements, creat-ing works that respect nature and establish a reverentrelationship between the viewer and the earth.19

It is not t hat the artistic projects representedin Fragile Ecologiescommit the same abuse of natureas capitalist industry alt hough neither are theyentirely divorced from that framework, as when they

rely on industrial technology to create their projects but rather t hat the exh ibitions conceptualisationof nature perpetuates the problematic structure ofobjectification relied on by capitalist industry. It is thisvery system that makes it possible for t he exhibition, forinstance, to celebrate practices that advance band-aid approaches to devastated landscapes, without


Alan Sonfist, Time Landscape of New York City, 1965present



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connecting the repairing of a pond, the preserving ofa historical landscape or the growing of a wheat fieldto technological, social and economic ecologies that

equally construct the environment. In th is regard, theminor referencing of Robert Smithsons conceptualenvironmental art in Matilskys essay is telling,particularly where she notes that Smithson rejectedartistic approaches to post-industrial terrains that wouldmerely cosmetically camouflage t he abuse committedby corporations.20 Unfortunately, however, shemisses the opportunity to complicate her discussionof the exhibitions inclusions by taking seriously thisscepticism. Nor does she consider the implicationsof Smithsons formulation of his Dialectic of Site andNon-site by which he theorised the inextricablerelationship between the geographical location of awork of art (Site) and its scu lptural, photographic ortext-based representations (Non-site) which wouldhave excluded the very possibility of monumentalisingnature as an autonomous sphere of existence.21

Systems Ecology

While Fragile Ecologiestended to reducethe complexity of ecology in favour of an idealist con-ception of nature, by the mid-1970s other engagementshad in fact al ready expanded the notion of ecology toencompass social and technological systems as wellas organic ones. These form an alternative and moreconceptually ambitious discourse, informed by the

development of cybernetics (t he interdisciplinarystudy of regulatory systems, related to systems theory),which emerged in the second half of the 20th cen-tury.22 Developed in the work of diverse figures suchas British anthropologist and social scientist GregoryBateson, artist-theorist Jack Burnham, Hungarian-bornartist and writer Gyrgy Kepes and visionary architectRichard Buckminster Fuller, systems ecology providesa useful c onceptual framework for comprehending

the work of artists such as Dan Graham, Robert Barr y,Hans Haacke and Les Levine, who were practisingin the 60s and early 70s.23 As Burnham wrote presci-ently in Systems E sthetics, Increasingly products either in art or life become irrelevant and a dif-ferent set of needs arise: t hese revolve around suchconcerns as maintain ing the biological liveability of

the earth, producing more accurate models of socialinteraction, understanding the growing symbiosis inman-machine relationships, establishi ng priorities for

the usage and conservation of natural resources, anddefining alternative patterns of education, productivity,and leisure.24 The accuracy of Burnha ms predictionshas been borne out by the subsequent development ofartistic practice up until today.

In contrast with Matil skys objectification ofnature, Bateson, the author of the 1972 book Steps to anEcology of Mind, considered ecology as simultaneous-ly natural, social and technological, wherein ecologicalhealth was understood to be dependent on civilisa-tion and the environment maintaining a sustained andlong-term flexibility .. . to create an ongoing complexsystem.25 Defining flexibility as an uncommittedpotentiality for change, Bateson viewed it as a preciousresource, for ecological imbalance ca rried unpredict-able and potentially catastrophic effects. 26 Always,in any living (i.e., ecological) system, ever increasing

imbalance wil l generate its own limiting factors as sideeffects of the increasing imba lance, Bateson warned in1972. In the present instance, we begin to know someof Natures ways of correcting the imbalance smog,pollution, DDT poisoning, industrial wastes, famine,atomic fallout and war. But the imbalance has gone sofar that we cannot trust Nature not to over-correct.27There certainly appear weak points in Batesons view including both the absence of any consideration of

greenhouse gases that were already contributing to aclimatic im balance and the problematic implicationthat there was once a human civilisation that lived in astate of balance with the environment to which mod-ern society could return. That said, such a theorisationof systems ecology was nevertheless capable of open-ing up a range of ar tistic practices dedicated to thecomplex interlinking of biological, technological, socialand political ecologies that const ruct an environment

that can no longer be considered simply as natural ,and where any output, according to the operations ofcybernetic feedback, was simultaneously understoodto affect the working of the system.

Consider, for instance, Haackes modelling ofa bio-technological system in Rhinewater PurificationPlant, 1972. I nvited to produce a two-month project for

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the Museum Haus La nge in Krefeld, West Germany,

the artist set up a chemical treatment, charcoal andsand filtration plant to process polluted water fromthe Rhine river. The purified water collected in a largeacrylic basin containing goldfish, which demonstratedthe successful restoration of a life-supporting, albeitartificial , habitat. Yet this project would not be li mitedto the local, cosmetic fix of restorationist aesthetics.In his related Krefeld Sewage Triptych, 1972, shownon the same occasion, Haacke recorded the level of

untreated sewage that the city of Krefeld spewed intothe Rhine annually (42 million cubic metres), includedthe volume and types of industrial and householdsewage, and provided the names of major contribu-tors. As Haacke observes in his descr iption of thepiece, because the Museum Haus Lange is a municipa linstitution, whose director is a civil servant, his projectgenerated media reports via regional newspapersthat exposed the citys role in the creation of the rivers

pollution. The resulting political effects of the techno-biological operation performed in the art gallery couldthus be considered as part of what Haacke termed areal-time social system, which not only intervened ina degraded ecosystem but also identified the cause s ofits situation and worked towards drawing public atten-tion to the broader political culture of abuse. 28

Nevertheless, Haackes demonstration of

ecological health, to use Batesons terminology, mightbe criticised for its failure to involve the audience moredirectly within its feedback loop; rather, it relegatedviewers as mere observers of a system that excludedtheir immediate active participation (perhaps thepedagogical authority of Haackes mode of addresscorresponded to the projects technoscientific instru-mentalism, a criticism with which cybernetics has alsohad to contend).29 It was left to other artists, such as Dan

Graham, to initiate video-based social experimentsthat developed the social possibilities of cyberneticssystems, particularly as it was conceptualised in themagazine Radical Software.

Running between 197074, and publishedby the Raindance Corporation, a counter-culturalmedia think-tank, the magazine served as a plat formfor the articulat ion of the notion of media ecology, de-fined by theorist Arlo Raymond as the study of a medi-

um of communication and its affect upon other media/society. 30 Exploiting the low-cost possibilities of videotechnology, artists and activist groups attempted toconstruct and mobilise feedback systems from com-munity cable television ( such as Ant Farm, Videofreexand TVTV) to closed-circuit video installation experi-ments (as in the work of Peter Campus, Dan Graham,


Hans Haacke, Krefeld Sewage Triptych, 1972



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Joan Jonas and Bruce Nauman) , which would contestthe one-way broadcasting control of media by corpo-rations and create community-organised systems of

self-representation in their place.31In projects such as Graha ms TV Camera/

Monitor Performance, 1970, for which he rolledaround on a stage holding a video camera pointedat a monitor located behind the audience; or his TwoConsciousness Projection(s), 1972, a closed-circuitvideo system mediating the spontaneous commu-nication between two participants and an audience,Graham created what he termed learning machines,in which participants would be able both to observethemselves and to alter their social system with newforms of behaviour that would be immediately per-ceptible on television monitors.32 Yet whereas Grahammay have developed the implications of media ecol-ogy as a system that interlinks technology, communi-cation, sociability and affect, t here was a conspicuousbracketing of biological systems, as developed in

Haackes environmental art .33 Indeed, as Raymondstated in Media Ecology, In a world of biological,chemical and physical pollution, it seems to me that we

are overlooking the semantic p ollution in our environ-ments, as we attempt to restore our ecological bala nce;however it was precisely the balance between thesemultiple ecologies that was lost in Grahams focus onsocio-technological systems.34

Forming yet another model of culturalecology, Gyrgy Kepes, founder of the Center forAdvanced Visual Studies at MIT, edited the bookArtsof the Environmentin 1972 . In his introductory essay,Art and the Ecological Conscience, Kepes stated thatEnvironmental homeostasis on a global scale is nownecessary to survival. Creative imagination, artistic sen-sibility, can [ serve] as one of our basic collective, self-regulating devices that can help us register and rejectwhat is toxic in our lives. 35 In this text, we also find con-tributions by the interdisciplinary group Pulsa, whichstraddled the division between socio-technologicaland bio-political systems. Self-described as researchersin programmed environments, Pulsa created projects inthe late 60s and early 70s that interlinked various mediaand biological systems, as in theirAutomation Houseinstallation, 1971, comprised of sound and video installa-tions, and their Harmony Ranch experiment in com-munal living, agricultural self-sufficiency and collabo-rative art and musical projects, developed in Oxford,Connecticut.36 In their essay The City as an Artwork,

which they contributed to Kepes volume, Pulsa arguedthat, because conventional urban design is based on anaesthetic of concealment and a concern for picturesquefacades ... resembling a pre-technological society, theresult is malfunction and a basic human alienation fromthe systems which make life in a given environmentpossible.37 (The same criticism could be waged in rela-tion to Fragile Ecologies.) Pulsa proposed to repair thissystemic malfunction by creatively expanding the in-

teractive awareness of local populations through mediathat incorporate principles of feedback: environments,programmed events, cable television, tapes, films.38Similarly, at Harmony Ranch, the group enacted experi-ments in self-organised, collective organic farming thatwould reveal information about long-term growthrhythms and regenerative changes.39

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In this regard, Puls as activities resonated withKepess desire to de-materialise and de-reify t he envi-ronment by revealing it a s a series of inter-connecting

flows and dynamic energies that would challenge thesocio-political, economic and geographical separa-tions between, on the one hand, the world of ghettos,criminal wars, urban violence and in ner erosion, andon the other, bioengineering, genetic engineering ...distant sensors, cyborgs and an ever-increasing com-munications network.40 However, the collectives com-mitment to transcending the functional political as-pects of human experience and generating an a bstractaesthetic awareness within an environment could beequally taken to task for its very abstraction. As art his -torian Yates McKee argues, the groups understandingof urban crisis as primar ily a question of organisationaldesign and ecological maladjustment, to be amelio-rated in part by formal experiments in perception,failed to address the structured patterns of inequalityof the city that had otherwise become inescapable forurbanism in the aftermath of t he ghetto rebellions andclaims to rights of the mid- and late 60s.41 That failurenotwithstanding, Pulsa did accomplish important workgeared towards de-idealising nature and disarticul at-ing the environment to the degree that natures separa-tion from social, political and technological processeswas impossible to maintain, even while its status as anobject of reverential focus would continue un inter-rupted in the work of other artists to come.

Political Ecology

Because early systems ecology rarelyjoined with environmental activism at least in thedevelopment of a widely visible artistic formation the continued objectification of nature has meantthat even today one could claim that the task of newenvironmental art would be to unsettle the self-evidence of environment itself, addressing it a s a

contingent assemblage of biological, technological,economic and governmental concerns whoseboundaries and agencies are perpetually exposed toconflict, as argues McKee.42 Views of that assemblagehave indeed shifted since 1970, a nd today, withincreased integration between environment andgovernment, political scientists such as Timothy

Luke have argued that the environment has becomethe ultimate domain of being for the production ofknowledge, power and subjectivity.43 For Luke, t his

movement owes to multiple catalysts, including theoil crises of the 70s and the conseq uent growingawareness of the li mits to growth, the incipientglobalisation propelled by the dtente between theUS and the Soviet Union and the latters eventualcollapse in the early 90s, a nd the expansion ofinternational regulatory bodies, such as t he UN WorldCommission on Environment and Development.44

The result has been the gradual reshapingof government according to the priorities of enviro-discipline, referring to the authority of eco-knowledge,geo-powered forces to police the fitnes s of allbiological organisms and the health of their naturalenvironments.45 One can understand this enviro-discipline in terms of the practice of government,non-governmental and international agencies todetermine our understanding of the health of ournatural environment so that sustainable developmentis defined in ways favourable to financia l interests,in opposition to comprehending ecology as afield of interlinking systems of biodiversity andtechnology, social practices and politica l structures.This conflicted situ ation gives rise to the followingquestion: how can artistic practices, operating atthe juncture of art institutions, act ivism and non-governmental politics, challenge the emergence

of neo-liberal eco-governmentality? How can artoppose the commercialisation of nature, packagedas economic resource, or redirect commercialforces in favour of alternative ways of definingthe environment and sustainability with a focuson global justice? How might artists, fur thermore,animate an environmentalism of the poor meaningenvironmental justice viewed from the perspectiveof those who have the least access to resources, job

protection, socio-political and economic equality andgovernmental and media representation to avoidthe exclusivity of environmentalism born of affluencein Western capitalist societies?46 Equally it appearsincreasingly important to avoid simplistically opposingSouthern global justice with Northern apoliticaleco-activism each participati ng in a problematic




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generalising stereotype as if the politics of ecologicaljustice does not transcend all geographical divisions.

In fact, some of the most compelling recentpractices and exhibitions develop a political ecologythat not only disarticulates t he self-evidence of theenvironment and questions t he automatic assump-

tions of sustainability, but also critically considers theunequal division of the benefits and risks of climatechanges effects, as well as evaluates the politics of en-vironmentalist responses to global warmi ng. Consider,for instance, Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art,which is amongst the most provocative and sophisti-cated of recent exhibitions to introduce a critical regardtoward sustainability, a term t hat has come to replacethe earlier concentration during the 70s on ecological

homeostasis and balance, and responds to the emer-gent imperatives regarding global warming.47 Theshow included artists who practise recycling and com-munity activism (such as Dan Petermans ExperimentalStation and Michael RakowitzsparaSITE, 1998); thosewho research sustainable fuels and alternative land use(Nils Normans Ideal City, Research/Play Sector, 2005,

and The Geocruiser,2001); artists who addressresource and infrastruc-

tural needs in developingcountries and impover-ished urban communi-ties (Ma rjetica Potrcs

A Hippo Roller for our

Rural Times, 2005, andDry Toilet, 2003); and stillothers who deploy crea-tive activist practices that

investigate the politicsof space, for instance,challenging the assumedrights of the US mi litaryscontrol of Vieques inPuerto Rico and therebydefining a political-ecological practice in theLatin American context(Allora & Calzadill asLandmark, 200104).

In general, t he show represented a prevalent trend inart that relates technological systems, economies andpolitical sociability to biological systems, refusing tosee nature as a separate entity, whether to be commodi-fied by developers, exploited by industry a nd agri-business or spiritually revered by eco-activists.

For its curator Stephanie Smith, sustainabilityinvolves meeting the needs of the present without sac-rificing the capacity of future generations to meet theirown needs.48 While this definition mirrors the seminal1987 formulation of sustainability in Our CommonFuture, Smith importantly goes on to register the dis-crepancies in the terms divergent meanings, w ithoutwhich the mythical community signalled by our com-mon future risks superseding the conflictual geopoliti-

cal stakes of sustaina bility.49

Following the in sights ofeco-designer Tony Fry, she distinguishes betweensustainable development (the g reening of existingmethods of production without changing consumerhabits or altering expectations of capitalist growth andtechnological progress) and the development of sus-tainment, meaning redirecting development toward a

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very different basis for t he creation of economy, soci-ety, and a relation between human beings, the artif icialworlds they create and the biosphere. 50 The distinction

is crucial . But against Frys questionable division ofhumanitys artificial worlds and the biosphere, Smithcalls for an explicit formulation of sustainability thatgrants equal attention to social and environmental jus-tice, which turns sust ainability into a pol itical ecology.51According to Swyngedouw, the recognition of t hispolitical meaning of nature is essential if sustainabilityis to be combined with a just and empowering urbandevelopment; an urban development that returns

the city and the c itys environment to its citizens .52 Inthis regard, a just theory of su stainable developmentmight even comprise a model of development withoutgrowth, which would aim to improve the quality oflife of the largest number of people without increas-ing overall economic production and consumption.53Corroborating Swyngedouws politica l approach toecology, Smith observes that sustainable design positsthat a purely green approach, which considers envi-ronmental questions in isolation from other factors aswas the tendency in Fragile Ecologies is incompleteand ineffective.54

In terms of situating current practice, how-ever, Beyond Green is less helpful. While it revealsan important strain in contemporary practice, one that

presents objects, structures, and processes/networksthat use aspects of sustainable design to metaphoric,practical, speculative, ironic, and playful ends, thecuratorial introduction provides little explanationfor this development towards play and irony, nordifferentiates, moreover, between the practical andthe speculative in recent art.55 Consider, on the onehand, the project of the Danish collective Superflex,whose work includes the production of biogas units

for domestic use (cooking, lighting) in Cambodianand Tanzanian villages, based on the cultivation ofmethane gas from animal manure; Marjetica Potrcsdevelopment of water transportation devices, dry toi-lets and wind energy tech nology to provide urgentarchitecture for informal cities; and the internationalcollective Learn ing Groups inventive usage of recy-cling technologies for community-based architecturein Monterrey, Mexico.

Each of these projects advances an artisticlineage that connects with the eco-act ivism of the 70sand comes close to a model of pragmatic non-govern-

mental activity and hu-manitarian engagementin attempting to improvethe everyday conditionsof those living in poverty.

(Indeed, Superflex imple-mented its biogas projectin Tanzania, where thereis a shortage of fuel sup-plies owing to deforesta-tion and erosion, in co-operation with the NGOSURUDE, or Foundationfor Sustainable Rural

Development.) Suchmodels demonstrate theresurgent vitality of col-lectivist practice and ofthe artistic interdiscipli-nary collaboration withpolitical and scientific


Superflex, Supergas / Tanzania, 1997



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organisations, which productively destabilises andreinvents the place and f unction of ar t today.

Yet there is, on the other hand, another recent

formation, one expressive of an ironic and subversiveartistic neo-conceptualism, which simultaneouslyrefuses to sacrifice ar ts institutions of autonomy andcriticality to the exclusivity of pragmatic and hu-manitarian problem-solving. Consider, for instance,Henrik Hkans sons Fallen Forest, 2006, which tips alush section of vegetation on its side in the m iddle ofan art gallery eq uipped with grow lights, in relationto the Harrisons 1972 Portable Orchard. Whereas the

Harrisons were ear-nestly dedicated to theamelioration of envi-ronmental degradation,Hkanssons disorientinggesture spectacularisesa post-natural artificein which an organicenvironment has beenthoroughly immersedwithin multiple techno-logical, media and cul-tural ecologies. Sim ilarly,consider Tue GreenfortsDiffuse Eintrge, forwhich the artist arrangedfor a fertiliser truck, normally filled with liquid manure,

to shoot a jet of iron chloride into Lake Aa duringSkulptur Projekte Mnster, Germany, in 2 007, therebyconnecting the environmental source of phosphatepollution from farm runoff originating in surroundingMnsterland with the potential chemical treatment thatwould alleviate the recurrent a lgae blooms. Yet un-like the hopeful glimmer of, say, Haackes RhinewaterPurification Plant, which glimpsed the potential, ifunlikely, success, of its ecological intervention via t he

demonstration of the clean goldfish basin , Greenfortscriticality resides in his ironic exposure of the ridicu-lousness of such cosmetic measures to maintain thelakes idyllic appea rance.

In these recent projects, irony and playfulnessare not simply made in jest, for the purposes of culturalentertainment, but rather indicate a deep scepticism

about the motivations, aims and results of pragmaticenvironmental art. Artists are now inescapablyinscribed wit hin urban regeneration strategies,

explains Nils Norman , and in order to start thinkingabout this bind critically we need to begin creatingmore disruptive and experimental methodologies, not

just neo-situationist spec tacle. 56 In Normans large-scale billboard Ideal City, Research/Play Sector, typicalof the arti sts agit-prop signage, computer-illustrateddesign maps out an imagina ry playscape and researchpark composed of a central adventure playgroundsurrounded by several geodesic domes. The Ideal City

exemplifies the approachof recent artists towardsviewing the environmentas formed by a multitudeof ecologies biological,technological, political,social mobilised byrepresentation investedwith the capacity toinspire imaginativealternatives to the realityof everyday neo-liberalurbanism with which itcompetes.57 In this sense,Normans project pointsto the relevance of Flix

Guattaris theorisation in his book The Three Ecologies,

1989, which argues for a transversal approach thatjoins subjective, social and environmental registers ofecology into an ethico-aesthetic practice, the renewedconceptualisation of which is accomplished in thework of theorists such as Swyngedouw, Luke andGuha.58 Included in Normans drawing is a model of aSolarised Hydrogen Powered Public Space ResearchVehicle. As the accompanying caption expl ains: thereclaimed film production unit ha s been converted

to hydrogen power creating a zero emissions cleanenergy vehicle, enabling two researchers/artists tostudy and observe public spaces across A merica,including parks, squares, mall s, streets and markets.Onboard sleeping and kitchen areas al low for longroad trips and visits. The work area consists of a library,archive and study station with remote internet access.

T. J. Demos

Nils Norman, The Geocruiser , 2001



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Filming and recording instru ments are stored onboardas well as a temporary exhibition and fi lm screeningsetup. An outer solar skin converts light to electricity,

powering all onboard electrics. There is also a weatherstation and viewing/surveillance deck.

Yet, while Normans similarly utopian TheGeocruiser a refurbished coach running on bio-die-sel, fitted with solar panels and containing a commu-nity library and a greenhouse was in fact fa bricated,the artist typically disassociates his practice from suchpractical realisation: Im more interested in the ideasand research rather than the vehicle itsel f, Norman

explains. The vehicle is just a fra ming device throughwhich to view the content: uses of public space andthe history of US utopian experiments in agriculture,economies and communal living.59 Importantly,insofar as Normans work defines si multaneouslya critically realist and c reatively utopian practice,it registers the ultimate limitations of any primarilypragmatic approach, whether of restorationist ecol-ogy or sustainable aesthetics, and t his, final ly, is where

the employment of irony and playfulness becomepolitically important for many of todays practitioners:for its conceptual, anti-pragmatist emphasis reveals

an awareness of the ultimate impossibility of a loca lsustainable practice within a globally unsustainablesystem of ecologies.60

Extrapolating from this last point, even whileexhibitions dedicated to sustainabil ity, such as BeyondGreen, may themselves be unsustain able from the per-spective of global warming, exhibitions focusing on artand ecology nonetheless remain urgent at t his time. Tocontribute to the ongoing public engagement with the

politics of sustain ability, to advance creative propos-als for alternative forms of life ba sed on environmental

justice in a global fra mework, and to do so until suchart exhibitions can somehow meet the requirementsof a just sustainability t hese are the imperatives for acontemporary environmental art. For its part, RadicalNaturepromises to provide a provocative contextin which we can consider further these challengingquestions concerning art a nd ecology.

1 Tim Flannery, The WeatherMakers: How Man Is Changing

the Climate and What It Means

for Life on Earth, Atlantic Monthly

Press (New York, 2006); ElizabethKolbert, Field Notes from aCatastrophe: Man, Nature, and

Climate Change, Bloomsbury(New York, 2006)

2 On the IPCC and for an accountof the recent science and politicsof climate change, see RobertHenson, The Rough Guide toClimate Change, Rough Guides(London, 2008)

3 Of course, this list is incomplete.Also of note are the following:Ecotopia: The Second ICP

Triennial of Photography and

Video, at the International Centerof Photography in New York, 200 6;Greenwashing: Environment,

Perils, Promises, and Perplexities,

Fondazione Sandretto ReRebaudengo, Turin, 2008;AfterNature, New Museum, New

York, 200 84 Bruno Latour, Why has CritiqueRun out of Steam? From Matters ofFact to Matters of Concern, CriticalInquiry, Winter 2004, pp. 225 48

5 Gro Brundtland, Our CommonFuture: World Commission on

Environment and Development,

Oxford University Press (Oxford,1987), p. 43. Compare the morebio-centred definition of theRegional Ecosystem Office inthe US: In an ecological context,sustainability can be defined as theability of an ecosystem to maintainecological processes, functions,biodiversity and productivity intothe future, REO Information Center

Definitions. Northwest Forest Plan(NWFP) definition of sustainability(http://www.reo.gov/general/definitions_r-s.htm)

6 Gro Brundtland, Our CommonFuture, p. 8. For further criticaldiscussion of the Stockholmconference, see Green PlanetBlues: Environmental Politics

from Stockholm to Johannesburg,

eds. Ken Conca and Geoffrey D.Dabelko, Westview Press(Oxford, 2004)

7 For a discussion and critiqueof the economic imperatives ofgreen government, see TimothyLuke, Environmentality as GreenGovernmentality, in Discourses ofthe Environment, ed. ric Darier,Blackwell (Oxford, 1999)

8 Erik Swyngedouw, Circulationsand Metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures




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and (Cyborg) Cities, Science asCulture, 15/2, June 2006, p. 115

9 Gayatri Spivak, Megacity, Grey

Room, 01, Fall 2000, p. 14; citedin Emily Apter, The Aestheticsof Critical Habitats, October, 99,Winter 2002, p. 21

10 Erik Swyngedouw, op. cit., p. 11511 Of course, this handful of references

is only a sampling. For furtherconsideration of environmentalart and global justice, see YatesMcKee, Art and the Ends ofEnvironmentalism: From Biosphere

to the Right to Survival , inNongovernmental Politics, ed.Michel Feher, with Galle Krikoria nand Yates McKee, Zone Books(New York, 2007)

12 See the very helpful Short Historyof Eco-Art Exhibit ions, in SueSpaid, Ecovention: Current

Art to Transform Ecologies,Contemporary Arts Center, et al.,

Corte Madera (California, 2002) ,pp. 13 4 36

13 Barbara Matilsky, EnvironmentalArt: New Approaches to Nature,Fragile Ecologies, Queens Museumof Art (New York, 1992) , p. 36

14 Ibid., pp. 3 415 Cited in Barbara Matilsky, op. cit.,

p. 4016 James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look

at Life on Earth, Oxford UniversityPress (Oxford, 1979)17 Neil Smith, Forward, In the

Nature of Cities: Urban Political

Ecology and the Politics of Urban

Metabolism, ed. Nik Heynen, et al.,Routledge (London, 2006),pp. xiiixiv

18 On this history, see also GreenPlanet Blues, op. cit.

19 Barbara Matilsky, op. cit., p. 3820 Ibid., p. 44. Also mentioned is

Robert Morriss attack on eco-artfixes of industrial degradation,which he addressed at the SeattleArt Museum in 1979 on the occasionof the exhibition Earthworks: LandReclamation as Sculpture: sites

scarred by mining or poisoned bychemicals now seem less like theentropic liabilities of ravenous and

short-sighted industry and more likelong-awaited aesthetic possibilities,p. 47

21 As Robert Smithson explainsin a 1972 essay, The range ofconvergence between Site andNon-site consists of a course ofhazards, a double path made up ofsigns, photographs and maps thatbelong to both sides of the dialecticat once, in The Spiral Jetty, inRobert Smithson: The Collected

Writings, ed. Jack Flam, Universityof California Press (Berkeley, 1996),note 1, p. 153

22 See Norbert Wiener, Cyberneticsor Control and Communication

in the Animal and the Machine,The Technology Press (Cambridge,1948) ; and more recently, SteveJoshua Heims, Constructing a

Social Science for America: TheCybernetics Group, 194653,MIT Press (Cambridge, 1991)

23 Many of these artist s are mentionedin Jack Burnham, SystemsEsthetics,Artforum, September1968. Recently, there has been aresurgence of interest in this periodof art, ecology, systems aestheticsand cybernetics in the work of

David Joselit, William Kaizen, YatesMcKee and Luke Skrebowski.24 Jack Burnham, Systems Esthetics, in

Jack Burnham, Great Western SaltWorksEssay on the Meaningof Post-Formalist Art, GeorgeBraziller (New York, 1974), p. 15

25 Gregory Bateson, Ecology andFlexibility in Urban Civili zation,1970, in Steps to an Ecologyof Mind: Collected Essays

in Anthropology, Psychiatry,

Evolution and Epistemology,University of Chicago Press(Chicago, 2000), p. 502

26 Ibid., p. 50527 Gregory Bateson, Awake! Radical

Software I, 5, 1972, p. 33

28 See Hans Haacke, UnfinishedBusiness, ed. Brian Wallis, NewMuseum of Contemporary Art

(New York, 1986) , p. 10629 Haacke did, however, addresssocial ecology in other projects,specifically his polls, even ifthese also proposed a limitedand rudimentary inclusion ofthe audience-participant. Onthe relation between Haa ckesearly ecological works and hislater systems-aesthetic, see LukeSkrebowski, All Systems Go:

Recovering Hans HaackesSystems Art, Grey Room, 30,Winter 2008, pp. 54 83

30 Arlo Raymond, Media Ecology,Radical Software, 1/3, 1971, p. 19;cited in William Kaizen in Stepsto an Ecology of Communication:Radical Software, Dan Graham,and the Legacy of GregoryBateson,Art Journal, Fall 2008,

p. 8731 See David Joselit, Feedback:

Television Against Democracy,MIT Press (Cambridge, 2007)

32 Cited in William Kaizen, op. cit.,p. 100

33 As William Kaizen observes inibid., p. 87

34 Arlo Raymond, op. cit., p. 1935 Gyrgy Kepes, Art and the

Ecological Conscience, inArtsof the Environment, ed. GyrgyKepes, George Braziller (NewYork, 1972), p. 72

36 See Yates McKee, The PublicSensoriums of Pulsa: CyberneticAbstraction and the Biopolitics ofUrban Survival,Art Journal, Fall2008. McKee deserves credit forretrieving Pulsas activities fromhistorical oblivion.

37 Pulsa, The City as an Artwork,inArts of the Environment,op. cit., p. 212. In the same volume(pp. 222 232), Robert Smithsonpublished The Spiral Jett y.

38 Pulsa, op. cit., p. 21739 Ibid.

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40 Gyrgy Kepes, Art and theEcological Conscience, inArtsof the Environment, op. cit., p. 9

41 Pulsa, The City as an Artwork, inArts of the Environment, op. cit.,p. 221 ; Yates McKee, The PublicSensoriums of Pulsa, op. cit., p. 65

42 Yats McKee, Art and the Ends ofEnvironmentalism, op. cit., p. 557

43 Timothy Luke, Environmentalityas Green G overnmentality, op. cit.,While Luke focuses on the Clinton/Gore administration in the USduring the 1990s and its conjoining

of environmental initiatives withstrategic economic goals, his readingof environmental governmentalitymay yet gain a new relevancy,despite being interrupted duringthe intervening Bush years andits regression towards resourcecolonialism in the name of nationalsecurity. On American primitiveaccumulation in the context of

the recent war in Iraq, see Retort,Iain Boal, T. J. Clark and JosephMatthews,Afflicted Powers:Capital and Spectacle in a New

Age of War, Verso (London, 2005 )44 The best-selling book The Limits

to Growth argued that acceleratingindustrialisation, mountingpopulation growth, growingmalnutrition and the depletion of

natural resources defined a naturallimit to global growth. See TheLimits to Growth: A Report for

the Club of Romes Project on

the Predicament of Mankind,eds. Donella H. Meadows et al.,Pan (London, 1974); also see GreenPlanet Blues, op. cit., pp. 1722

45 Timothy Luke, op. cit., p. 14646 Madhav Gadgil and

Ramachandra Guha, Ideologiesof Environmentalism, in Ecologyand Equity: The Use and Abuse

of Nature in Contemporary

India, Routledge (London, 1995).McKee discusses Guhas ecologyof affluence in Art and the Ends ofEnvironmentalism, op. cit., p. 548

47 Also see: Ecovention, CincinnatiContemporary Arts Center, 2002;Land, Art, RSA, London, 2006;

After Nature, New Museum, NewYork, 2008; and Green Museum,online site.

48 Stephanie Smith, Beyond Green,in Beyond Green:Toward aSustainable Art, Smart Museumof Art and Independent CuratorsInternational (Chicago and NewYork, 2005), p. 14

49 As Murray Bookchin observeselsewhere, the danger with such

social constructions is that a mythicHumanity is created irrespectiveof whether we are talking aboutoppressed ethnic minorities,women, Third World people,or people in the First World inwhich everyone is brought intocomplicity with powerful corporateelites in producing environmentaldislocations. See Murray Bookchin,

Remaking Society: Pathways toa Green Future, South End Press(Boston, 1990); cited in GreenPlanet Blues, op. cit., p. 9

50 Stephanie Smith, Beyond Green,op. cit., p. 14. On the biospheresee McKee, The Ends ofEnvironmentalism, op. cit., p. 54 7,and notes 18 20. See als o Tony Fry,Design Futuring: Sustainability,

Ethics, and New Practice, Berg(Oxford, 2008)51 For Neil Smith, political ecology

provides a powerful means ofcracking the abstractions of thisdiscussion about the metabolismor production of nature. Rootedin social and political theoryit is also grounded in ecologyand has an international scope.When complemented by anenvironmental justice politics,which is less internationally focusedand less theoretical but morepolitically activist in inspiration,political ecology becomes a potentweapon for comprehendingproduced natures, Niel Smith,

Foreword, op.cit., p p. xii ixiv.52 Erik Swyngedouw, op. cit., p. 11853 For such a proposal, see Herman E.

Daly and John B. Cobb Jr., For theCommon Good: Redirecting theEconomy Toward Community,

the Environment, and a

Sustainable Future, Beacon Press(Boston, 1989)

54 Stephanie Smith, Beyond Green,p. 14

55 Ibid., p. 1356 Nils Norman, interviewed in

Beyond Green, op. cit., p. 91.

Consider as well Joshua D ectersreading of Hkanssons practice:By proposing a new mode ofinter-species socialisation that isfundamentally constructed, fictiveand imperfect, Hkansson defersfrom offering pragmatic solutions, orthe next paradigm model. Instead,his practice asks to be understoodas an allegory that illuminates the

complex circumstances of speciesestrangement in general. JoshuaDecter, The Return of Dr. Doolittle:Henrik Hkanssons Inter-speciesCommunications, Siksi, XII, 2 , 1997,p. 73; cited in Ecovention, op. cit.,p. 80

57 Norman, quoted in Beyond Green,op. cit., p. 91

58 Flix Guattari, The Three Ecologies

(orig. publ. 1989), trans. Ian Pindarand Paul Sutton, The Athlone Press(London, 2000)

59 Norman, interviewed in BeyondGreen, op. cit., p. 91

60 For more discussion of Normanspractice, see T. J. Demos, The CruelDialectic : On the Work of NilsNorman, Grey Room, 13, Fall 2003,pp. 3 3 50



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