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Art and Sustainability: Beyond, behind, and into environmental art

Written by Silvia Tafur
Saturday, 31 January 2009 00:00

I will talk about sustainability not only in terms of preserving resources and improving human relationship to nature, but also concerning human relationships among people from different cultures and backgrounds. The first step is to accept that humans are not owners, but part of these resources we have to care for. Thus, environment becomes a unifier, in which those who care for a better quality of life work together to create solutions.

In arts, as in other fields, caring about sustainability implies the collaboration of various disciplines. In business, too, there’s a designer behind everything: from toys for children to guns for wars. So they’re responsible for a good amount of the images and sounds we are exposed to. As a counterpart, a need for better quality of life over economic growth is reflected in the appearance and consolidation of different types of art which try to bring about social transformation.

A good example of this is the nomadic artist, whose oeuvre is not fixed but changes according to the place where it is presented. We could say that a painting can also travel; we can talk of itinerant exhibitions, but in the case of nomadic art, the presence of the artist is what makes possible this mutation of the same piece, especially in performance. Another solution for artists who want to spread their work is net art, which usually becomes collaborative and interactive. The mutual influence among artists, social workers, environmentalists and employees in other fields such as education, law, science, and so on, has permitted the possibility of creative exchanges in all aspects of life and society. Creative solutions for everyday problems are the main objective when art is inspired by daily life, like in the case of the Sustainable Everyday Project.

However, besides dispensing with a place like a gallery or a museum, there are other solutions that have been given by artists’ initiatives. There is environmental art. According to Lynne Hull, environmental artists are those who interpret nature, interact with environmental forces, re-envision our relationship to nature, or reclaim and remediate damaged environments. One of my favorite examples is Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who worked on architecture as a tool of social transformation. Not only his work, but also his life remains an example.

Learning to work with nature as a stakeholder and satisfying individual interests at the same time is a difficult task at the beginning, but later turns into a discovery. In fact, some decisions become easier to make. We can consider minimalism, Arte Povera, and all the changes in art, as images and actions reflecting social transformation.

In fact, social art (or art for social transformation) shares and sometimes crosses certain boundaries with what is called environmental art. And it is there that I find sustainability.

Many artists work with some potent materials. A great portion of the materials we used in my faculty daily were acids, corrosives and flammable products like sprays and so on. Some of them are still used now and most of them are obligatory. Recently, though, some of these materials have been replaced by healthier ones, but there’s a lot of research pending.

What happens to sustainability when digital art and electronic art have become so popular? Both electronic and digital art have contributed to sustainability in remarkable ways by being able to connect art to millions of users and even make pieces work depending on the users. This means a step forward in making art reachable for the masses. Taking care of the environment is usually related to recycling, which is considerably important in both biological and electronic waste. But making your work depend on unknown human action is to gamble away your individuality and trust strangers to rebuild your identity.

A significant problem in virtual space is often the lack of respect we can observe in the comments left in YouTube, for instance. Territories are divided in such an unfriendly way, that all society follows this model, and virtual space runs the risk of following the same destiny. Territories have become the bone of contention and the battlefield at the same time. Nothing is left for anybody. The web is a great tool, but a physical network is also a must.

Here, I will write about a series of artistic pieces dedicated to the research of Rimac River in Lima, Peru. Two professional painters and an anthropologist made a 20-day trip from the origin of Rimac, the main river in the city, to downtown Lima, one of the most polluted areas. There, for example, you see how the garbage truck belonging to a district goes to the neighbor’s district and drops the garbage there, next to the river. Unfortunately, things like this happen in all levels of human relationships. During their trip, they wrote a journey diary in a blog, made drawings along the way, created a video, and finally, presented an exhibition in Lima last December.

Regarding nomadic lifestyles, a Peruvian friend of mine, artist David Paredes, who lives in France, has dedicated years to presenting his performances about migration, identity, and social tension. He performs both in galleries and open-air, depending on the theme. He explores the psychology of his personal and collective experience as artist and as migrant. Using photos and videos for support, he spreads his work on the web. Like him, many artists, musicians and writers prefer to use public spaces including internet to avoid intermediaries. Thus, they can get direct feedback and interact with users, fans and the public in general.

Finally, I want to remind you of the situation we live in now in Peru and a great part of South America, where mining is an important source of money and work in detriment of the health and rights of the communities that surround the exploited areas. Cases like the drift of mercury and the consequent poisoned children happen frequently. The pollution caused by plumb or arsenic in places like La Oroya, is well known by the population. However, these problems are cast aside by the authorities. Our polluted air, water, and soil are some things most people have learned to live with while some others do still resist and try to change it.

Living in a city sometimes is an excuse people use for ignoring problems like the ones I just mentioned. A horrible and shameful example of abuse has recently been discovered by the appearance of photographs that prove the torture of people who were protesting against British-owned Majaz mining8. Now the case is internationally known and is still being processed and followed up by the press.

Once more, I come back to the problem of property and division of territory. In Peru, the civil code says that you own the land but not the underground. In practice, people whose communities are affected by mining frequently have harm caused when the private enterprises enter their territory. That causes huge loss for both enterprises and community. Due to lack of regulation, communities tend to reject mining where it is imposed on them.

Nowadays, Linux-based systems, free software, and licenses like creative commons permit a major cultural exchange. What’s more, systems like couch surfing or hospitality club, together with volunteer programs all around the world, give more opportunities for people to help each other, share their lives, and learn from one another in a free and deinstitutionalized way. Also, from the perspective of law, there’s a creative way to modify governance systems through earth jurisprudence, which includes human life and our earth as a whole.

Art is not isolated from these international problems, but takes part in providing solutions. Creativity is what makes people able to cope with reality and resolve issues.