Sustainability and visual arts - Essay Example

?Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY AND VISUAL ARTS Sustainability and Visual Arts Sustainability and Visual Arts Introduction Nature has had a long history of influencing art, one that has extended from the masters bringing their palettes into their gardens to the contemporary earthworks of Andy Goldsworthy and others (Spaid, 2002). However, in order for art to continue to be influenced by nature there must be nature to be influenced by. In a society where the population and urban landscapes are every burgeoning, Susan Leibovitz Steinman creates new landscapes out of urban devastation to promote sustainability and environmental education. Unlike other artist, who work in sites that can be difficult for the average viewer to experience firsthand, Steinman works in the heart of cities. In Mandela Artscape (1998 - 2002, West Oakland, California) (see Figure 1), Steinman literally worked in the middle of the street, at the crossroads of industry and ecology. This project involved regrouping West Oakland community members to reclaim a part of their town that had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1989, by turning the site into a creative, interactive, and environmentally friendly work of art. (Steinman, 2012). Figure 1: Mandela Artscape (Source: http://www.steinmanstudio.com/publicart/mandela/sitewide_bg.html) Steinman is not the first to transform the horrors ofa natural disaster into a reclamation project. In 1964, the "Great Good Friday Earthquake," the second largest recorded earthquake at that time with a magnitude of 9.2 on the Richter Scale, struck Anchorage, Alaska. One-hundred-and-thirty-one people perished, towns were buried, and tsunamis tore across the area. The only possible positive outcome of such a terrible natural catastrophe is the proactive and innovative reaction of the survivors (US Geological Survey, 2004). The Anchorage Earthquake Park (figure 2) is the result of one particular reaction. The goal of this park was to reclaim a destroyed area and to educate people about the earthquake. There are bike paths, cross-country ski trails, picnic tables, and most importantly, information panels. In 1973, Smithson congratulated the people who reclaimed the Anchorage site through the creation of a park, stating that this action was "an interesting way of dealing with the unexpected, and incorporating that into the community"(Smithson in Holt 1979: 192). Figure 2: The Anchorage Earthquake Park (Source: http://www.igougo.com/journal-j34852-Anchorage-The_Seward_Highway_Americas_Most_Scenic_Byway.html) The significance of Steinman's work, and that which distinguishes Mandela Artscape from the Anchorage Earthquake Park, is the interactive nature of the creative process, as people from the community were involved in every aspect of the project. It is also this element of engagement with the public that differentiates Steinman's work from others. Promoting Sustainability Steinman is critical of Western capitalist society. She is involved in many groups that have emerged as a response to the problem that the consumerist ideology presents. The Women Environmental Artists Directory (WEAD), for example, is an artist-produced, non-profit, national and international organization that Steinman and Jo Hanson founded in 1996. The WEAD lists over two hundred artists, all of whom adopt an activist approach to raising environmental awareness through art. Themes involve site, community and habitat specificity, an educational agenda, public participation, and works that are often temporary - many ideas that overlap with the new genre public art ideology (Hanson and Steinman, 2012). Steinman is also involved with a group called "eco art network" Similarly, the mandate of this group is to create ecological works of art that promote sustainability and environmental education (Ecoartnetwork.org, 2012). Consumerism is a basic concern for artists involved in environmental art, sometimes referred to as "ecoart." As stated by artist Ruth Wallen, "much ecoart is motivated by a recognition that current patterns of consumption and resource use are dangerously unsustainable. Instead of focusing on individual gain, ecoart is grounded in an ethos that emphasizes communities and interrelationships" (Hanson and Steinman, 2012: p. 1). The criticism of consumerist culture has been rampant throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beginning in the 1960s with authors such as Rachel Carson, concern for the environment directly related to our lifestyles in the Western world has been significant for many people including scientists, artists, theorists, and the general public (Guattari, 2000). Felix Guattari (2000) discusses the fact that social, mental and environmental ecologies are all interrelated and are being destroyed due to world capitalism. Similarly, artist Suzi Gablik (1994) criticized the fact that "manic production and consumption, competitive self-assertion, and the maximization of profits are all crucial to our society's notion of success" (p. 74). She argued that it is these qualities that are leading to global destruction (Gablik 1994). Furthermore, author Timothy Luke (2003) addressed the problem of consumption in the urban environment of the global city, and condemned the fact that alternative, less polluting ways of living are generally ignored. One of the main problems with the consumerist ideology is the reliance on disposables and the emphasis placed on newness. The sheer availability of disposable objects encourages people to disregard sustainable practices of using and re-using objects, because they know that there will always be more products that are 'easier' to purchase than to wash and reuse. A consumerist culture is in danger of drowning in more goods than could possibly be consumed, and ignoring the detrimental consequences of this endless consumption. In All Consuming Images (1988), author Stewart Ewen emphasizes this point by stating that: The ever-mounting glut of waste materials is a characteristic by-product of modem 'consumer society.' It might even be argued that capitalism's continual need to find or generate markets means that disposability and waste have become the spine of the system. To consume means, literally, 'to destroy or to expend,' and in the 'garbage crisis' we confront the underlying truth of a society in which ongoing market priorities and enormous productive capacities have engaged human needs and desires, without regard to the long - or even short-term viability of life on the planet. (p. 236). An important factor concerning disposable goods is that people are often unaware of where these objects go, and feel no sense of connection to their waste once it is out of sight. This is why works such as Steinman's are so important. In Art, Space and the City (1997), author Malcolm Miles discusses the importance of environmental artists and describes their work as "a response to the urgency of the threat of a world overwhelmed by its waste; a deluge produced by the 'invisible' aspect of global capitalism" (p. 187). Steinman shows people that their waste still exists and actually takes up space - space that is running out. Mandela Artscape Through Mandela Artscape, Steinman and her collaborators physically transformed an abandoned part of West Oakland into an area that could be used and appreciated by the residents. This project was located on a site that is embedded with collective memory. In 1957, the Cypress Freeway was built in West Oakland despite adamant opposition from residents. They protested that the freeway cut through their community, and separated them from the rest of the city. In 1989, the freeway collapsed in the Lorna Prieta earthquake, taking the lives of forty-two motorists (Figure 3) (Spaid, 2002). The residents fought to ensure that the new freeway would be built elsewhere, won the battle, and renamed the site 'Mandela Freeway', after Nelson Mandela. The land, however, remained deserted for ten years, until Steinman organized an urban regeneration project by creating a park with used freeway materials and native California plants (International Sculpture Center, 2012). Figure 3: (The collapse of Cypress Freeway in 1989 Earthquake) The idea for the project began while Steinman was teaching art courses in a West Oakland school, and heard people in the community expressing their frustration about the desolate space where the freeway used to be - a length totaling one and a half miles. Steinman wrote a proposal to enhance two acres of this land, which she presented to teachers, students and parents, as well as other community members. They were thrilled with the prospect of becoming involved with such a project. Steinman submitted her proposal to the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and received their permission to proceed on the condition that it would be a temporary work. The temporary nature of Mandela Artscape allowed for it to act as a model for other groups to follow (Ressler, 2003). Mandela Artscape was both a memorial for the motorists who were killed in the earthquake and a symbolic reconnection of the city of West Oakland, which had been divided in half by the freeway. Steinman received four grants from various organizations that support environmental art projects, amounting to a total of thirty-two thousand dollars, and Caltrans contributed much help-in-kind by donating materials, time and labor. The participating community members joined Steinman in planting three thousand native California plants, as well as a grove of cypress trees as a memorial to the victims of the earthquake. For the successful construction of this ecologically sound project, human strength and industrial machinery had to collaborate (Spaid, 2002). Objects from the Caltrans junkyard were used, and as stated by writer Sue Spaid, "metal frames that typically hold freeway signs became trellises and gorgeous salvaged blue water pipes lined a native grass patch like a river" (2002, p. 58). Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Catherine Bowman also described the pride that West Oakland residents felt due to their involvement in Mandela Artscape. Even passing motorists honked their horns in support of the project while people were working on the land (Bowman, 1998). Steinman and participating West Oakland residents turned a desolate space in the city into a green haven for people to enjoy. Summary Mandela Artscape stands as an example of positive regenerative work that benefits the cityscape in which it is located as well as residents in multiple ways: aesthetically, the project involved transforming an abandoned and hopeless site into a green space open to the entire West Oakland community; socially, the five-year period in which Mandela Artscape existed led to the creation of jobs, as well as the voluntary involvement of different people from the neighbourhood; educationally, participants learned about the plants being used, as well as how to work on a communal project; and environmentally, the use of found objects and recycled material encouraged a sustainable interaction between living and creating. The underlying element of engagement makes Steinman's work unique and powerful. References Bowman, Catherine. (1998). Planting a Dream: A garden created on the site of the old cypress freeway is helping heal a West Oakland neighbourhood." San Francisco Chronicle: East Bay and the Region. A 19 - A20. Ecoartnetwork.org, 2012. Information Retrieved January 12, 2012 from http://www.ecoartnetwork.org/wordpress/about/ Ewen, Stewart. (1988). All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books. Gablik, Suzi. (1994) Connective Aesthetics: Art After Individualism. In Lacy, Mapping the Terrain, New Genre Public Art. 74 – 87, Bay Pr. Guattari, Felix (2000). The Three Ecologies. Translated by Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton. London; New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press Hanson, Jo, and Steinman, Susan Leibovitz (2012) eds. Women Environmental Artists Directory, Brochure. Information Retrieved January 12, 2012 from http://weadartists.org/artists/ecoart-characteristics International Sculpture Center (2012). Information Retrieved January 12, 2012 from http://www.sculpture.org/portfolio/sculptorPage.php?sculptor_id=1000451 Luke, Timothy W. (2003). Codes, Collectives, and Commodities: Rethinking Global Cities as Metalogistical Spaces in Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture and Urbanism in a Digital Age. Edited by Linda Krausse and Patrice Petro. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Miles, Malcolm. (1997) Art, Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures. London and New York: Routledge. Ressler, Susan R. (2003). Women Artists of the American West. McFarland & Company. Smithson, Robert (1979). Entropy and the New Monuments." in Holt, The Writings of Robert Smithson: Essays and Illustrations. New York: New York University Press. Spaid, Susan. (2002). Ecovention, Current Art to Transform Ecologies, Contemporary Arts Center. Steinman, S. (2012). Artist Web Page. Information Retrieved January 12, 2012 from http://www.steinmanstudio.com/publicart/mandela/index.html US Geological Survey, (2004). 40th Anniversary of 'Good Friday' Earthquake Offers New Opportunities for Public and Building Safety Partnerships. Retrieved January 12, 2012 from http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=106 Read More