Abstract ( a vision for art & ecology )
photo by John Naccarato
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The focus of this paper’s inquiry is in the connection of art to the environment and its multiple living systems. In studying specific artistic groups and individuals who integrate a response to land into their practice, I intend to reveal examples of critically engaged, creatively fulfilling, holistic models of what role humanity has within the natural world.
The scope of the interviews I will conduct with such artists will be within a 500 km radius of Montreal, the aim being to form alliances and community for my own research into land acquisition and art production in the future. In comparing their theoretical positions to models that exist internationally within the contemporary art world, insight will be gained into the way in which their alternative disciplines and media are drawn from the natural world (weather, light, seasons, bio-regional specifics). The main question of the paper centres around what relationship to land entails. I will interview curators and a director of a land collective, and draw on inspiration from such artists as Ana Mendieta, Ocean Earth, Hans Haacke, Agnes Denes, Chris Drury, Richard Long, The Green Guerillas, Mel Chin, Helen and Newton Harrison, Alan Sonfist among others, and will focus on work that is reaching for a more direct, non-mechanical connection to environment.
The paper will be around 20 pages in length, and will be available online by May.
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You speak of art in relationship with the world, art that points out the world to viewers, as if there is a world for us to be cognizant of, to notice, to relate to. And, as if there is some bond between us, a covenant, that could be restored. Who knows what art could come of this. It is such a young, perhaps even new, idea.
This opposes the self-referential idea of art encapsulated by the increasingly petty concerns of the people of our culture, as if we were not just the center of the universe, but the entire universe.
Yes, there is something else out there, something our lives depend on. It promises to be a vital art– something people could use.