There is a previous detailed post on charcoal and how it can be made. However issues of sustainability in relation to charcoal production were not picked out and as sustainability is so important, I have decided to re-visit my posts on various art materials and to develop eco-narratives around them.
First of all there are considerations in manufacture if you are not making your own charcoal. Watch this video on how a specialist charcoal supplier makes charcoal ready for art supply shops and similar outlets. On the one hand it's very good to hear that they source their willow locally and that they work in relation to a specific location so don't have to have raw material shipped in and that they have managed to keep their workers in employment over a long period of time, which suggests that they are good employers. On the negative side they have to transport their charcoal to all the various art shop outlets, so their carbon footprint is probably going to be at its worst in relation to distribution rather than manufacture. Some charcoal producers state that that their artist quality charcoal is made from Natural Willow cut offs that would usually be discarded, and some like the Dorset Charcoal Company, set out in detail how they manage their charcoal production ecologically. In their case a mobile charcoal burner system allows the company to respond to the changing needs of their local woodland and they are seeking to be beneficial to local woodlands and wildlife. Visit their site to find out more about how to spot charcoal made from unsustainable tropical wood sources. However, no matter how good their carbon footprint, there will always be distribution costs, which is why you might consider making your own at home.
Most charcoal is actually made as fuel for fires. This is still a vital source of heat for cooking in Africa and there are both good and bad practices going on. Sustainable charcoal production requires owners of natural woodland to maintain forest cover over time, rather than converting it to other land uses, such as large scale agriculture. However sustainable production is more likely to be achieved in woodlands with secure tenure with formalised management and harvesting plans designed to maintain the broad ecosystem functions of the forest or woodland. For instance in Niger and Senegal the adoption of formalised, community-based wood fuel production has resulted in an increase in the diversity and health of the forest stock (de Miranda et al., 2010). However in other areas of Africa unsustainable harvesting, has contributed to widespread forest degradation and deforestation, particularly in the vicinity of concentrated markets, such as large urban areas (Chidumayo and Gumbo, 2013). A very brief look at charcoal production in its wider context quickly raises issues about localised and global production and the maintenance of interconnected forest or woodland ecosystems. These issues are of course related to the production of charcoal for burning, but the maintenance of healthy woodlands and forests is of significance to everyone, and whether charcoal production is for fire or for drawing, it can either be done sensitively and in co-operation with an understanding of the local eco-system, or not.
If you are to use charcoal and want to make a point about why you are making it yourself, you could indicate how you are thinking about sustainable resources in a wider context. You might consider issues such where willow is grown in relation to where you are? How should you harvest it if you want to ensure it is not depleted? Perhaps you might research what other wood is available to you locally and in what form does it come, (old bits of furniture, wood picked out of skips, branches and twigs from local trees etc.). Test local trees for types of charcoal, some will make for a reddish brown mark, others darker browns or light blacks and some will be scratchy and break into tiny pieces and others very soft. If you are making a charcoal oven, could this be part of the idea? Could you set up a sustainable charcoal production facility? Perhaps making charcoal of various sorts for the local arts community. In doing so you could help others become more self-reliant and make them more aware of how charcoal is made. Could you oversee your charcoal production as part of a local interconnected woodland ecosystem? It is important to think about this, because over 90% of all charcoal consumed in this country comes from overseas, predominantly the endangered tropical rainforest and mangrove habitats of South America, West Africa and South East Asia. In addition to the damage caused by unsustainable forestry practices in these regions, is the negative environmental impact arising from the consumption of fossil fuels transporting charcoal so far around the world.
David Nash
One artist in particular has deeply explored the relationship between ecology and charcoal, and that is David Nash, who is also exhibiting at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at the moment. Using fallen trees, Nash has made sculptures and charcoal drawings that explore environments and ecosystems as points of intersection between nature and art. As he says, “trees take just enough and give back more”. Drawing is central and constant in Nash’s practice. It is an alternative way of learning about and understanding his subject, of finding form for ideas and recording and responding to perceptions of his environment. He uses hand made smoky willow charcoal to create intense blacks, these he will soften or accompany with softer warmer colours made from ash or oak; bold swathes of colour are achieved by using pure pigment dug out from the ground, mixed with burnt wood and ashes and wiped onto his drawings with bare hands. He uses local streams in which to dissolve ground down homemade charcoal alongside various natural pigments, which then become his inks, his ideas are often driven by the particular qualities of certain trees and their environments. His drawing Ash Dome (2007) was created using ash charcoal and earth taken from the surrounding ground, and he uses diagrammatic drawing to demonstrate the aesthetic associations and familial links between various aspects of his ecologically tuned ideas.
Ash Dome: david Nash
Working directly with fallen twigs and other 'pick-up' elements of a natural habitat might be even more ecologically friendly. For instance every stick can be a drawing implement. When you make marks with sticks you will find them expressive and they will help you achieve a much wider range of line quality. If you have no ink to dip the sticks into, just collect local soil, add water and draw using dirt. You can if you have more time extract colour from leaves. This video will show you how. Then when you draw both applicator and pigment will have a conceptual relationship.
How to extract colour from leaves
The German artist Nils-Udo works directly with fallen leaves and branches to create site-specific works. From delicately arranged petals scattered on the surface of a pond, to huge nests formed from twigs, leaves, and wildflowers, like Nash he tries to use what he finds in an environment such as a woodland or park, heightening our awareness by making interventions designed to make us wonder. His artist statement reads: “By installing plantings or by integrating them into more complex installations, the work is literally implanted into nature. As a part of nature, the work lives and passes away in the rhythm of the seasons.”
Nils-Udo
A charcoal burner's mound
The form of the nest like work above is heavily influenced both by birds' building activities and by the size of charcoal burner's mounds.
Nils-Udo: Project proposal for a motorway service area
Nils-Udo's drawings are proposals for interventions often in urban spaces, whereby planting is used to soften the impact of the harsh edges of places like motorway services stations. The question though is of course is he just hiding or making more acceptable something that we should be confronting, such as the still too high levels of car use and associated carbon emissions?
Once you have made a charcoal drawing or a drawing using soil, it may need to be fixed. Van Gogh used to use a skimmed milk spray to fix his charcoal drawings and Spectrafix Degas Pastel Fixative, also uses milk-protein. I try not to advertise brands, but in this case it is ecologically far more sustainable than toxic fixatives that operate like hair sprays. Most of us at one time or another will have used hair spray to fix a charcoal drawing, but remember the clear liquid spray is made of polymers that cause it to create a film over what you spray it on, be that hair or your charcoal drawing or an insect. Don't forget, hairspray was originally created to kill insects back in the 1940s, it was one of many chemicals developed after World War Two, that relied on advances in toxic chemical production because during that war there had been research into chemical warfare, just in case the other side decided to use poisonous chemicals to attack unprotected populations. Instead of people it was then decided to use these chemicals on the natural world; Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring' highlighted the issues surrounding the following unrestricted developments in using chemicals like DDT to control insects, pointing out that in the end those chemicals did indeed and still do, poison humans too. Spectrafix, not only avoids toxic chemicals it also facilitates layering, as it can be used to both fix and restore the friction you need to rework or refresh markmaking on an overworked surface, so that additional layers of charcoal can be applied.
When considering sustainability there are always more questions than answers, but if we don't consider these, we might at some point wake up to a dying planet.
Of course paper is also a material that is often made in unsustainable ways. I will be putting up a post on the issues specifically related to paper and sustainability in the near future, but in the meantime there are several other issues to think about in relation to paper, and you can read about those at some of the links set out below.
References
Chidumayo, E. N., and Gumbo, D. J. (2013). The environmental impacts of charcoal production in tropical ecosystems of the world: a synthesis. Energy Sustain. Dev. 17, 86–94. doi: 10.1016/j.esd.2012.07.004
De Miranda, R. C., Sepp, C., Ceccon, E., Mann, S., and Singh, B. (2010). Sustainable Production of Commercial Woodfuel: Lessons and Guidance from Two Strategies. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
A practitioner of Mesmerism using Animal Magnetism
Annunciation: Fra Angelico
In Renaissance times lines emanating from a radiating point were sometimes used as a symbol of invisible religious or occult forces and more recently fanned out, broken or dashed lines have been used as symbols of invisible rays or unseen effects such as magnetism, electricity, x-rays, mesmerism and nuclear radiation. These lines can carry all sorts of ideas, some of which haven't been accepted as scientific concepts but which non-the-less impinge upon our collective imaginations as being necessary to a more esoteric understanding of the world, and the invisible emanations that effect it. For instance the concept of the 'aura'; a luminous radiation surrounding a living creature or object.
A representation of a body aura
Contemporary 'aura' photographs
In the comic book world superheroes are often depicted as emitting rays of energy, the DC character Captain Atom being typical of an anthropomorphisation of an invisible energy.
Captain Atom
Grant Morrison in his book 'Supergods' sets out to explain that these comic-book heroes are not simply characters but powerful archetypes that can be traced back into history, art, and various world mythologies. In this case I'm simply pointing out how visual languages are shared across cultures and times, especially when there is a common issue to communicate.
Many of us have had that feeling that someone is looking at us. As if vision involved an outward-moving influence from the eyes, this is technically called emission or extramission theory and has historically been associated with the evil eye.
Rays emerge from the eyes in emission theory
Although auras and emission theory have been debunked several times by modern science, ideas of this sort still seem to have a hold on our collective imaginations. For instance the theorist Rupert Sheldrake has argued that the external projection of images or force of seeing is a reality, he imagines perceptual fields that extend out beyond our body receptors, these fields connecting the seeing individual with what is seen. (Sheldrake, 2004) Sheldrake argues that the formation of these fields depends on changes occurring in various regions of the brain as vision takes place. These fluctuations are influenced by inbuilt responses to expectations, intentions and memories. Sheldrake's theories are related to the work of Velmans, (Velmans, 2000) who suggests that image projections take place in a way that is analogous to a field phenomenon, as in a hologram; however Sheldrake takes the idea further, suggesting that the perceptual projection is not just analogous to but actually is a field phenomenon.
Sheldrake is influenced by an awareness of fields in other areas of scientific thinking, magnetic fields in particular have influenced his ideas, and field theory is central to many of the ideas that underlie quantum mechanics. Sheldrake suggests that minds extend beyond brains through fields, negating the idea that our conscious experiences are totally passive. Quantum mechanics suggests that our conscious experiences enter into the dynamics of real world situations in ways not fixed by physically described aspects alone. (Stapp, 2011) Even though Sheldrake's ideas are still regarded as very speculative, what he describes does have a certain intuitive rightness about it.
Sheldrake states; 'When someone stares at another person from behind, the projection of the starer’s attention means that his field of vision extends out to touch the person he is staring at. His image of that person is projected onto that person through his perceptual field. Meanwhile, the person stared at also has a field all around herself. I suggest that the starer’s field of vision interacts with the field surrounding the person stared at. One field is influenced by another. This field interaction is detected through a change or difference in the field around the body. Just as the field around a magnet is changed when another magnet is placed nearby, this field interaction is directional. The interaction may be weak, and need not be experienced consciously by the person stared at. But, if the interaction is strong enough, the person stared at may respond by turning around, without thinking and without knowing why.'
Sheldrake goes on to explain how perceptual fields are related to biological fields embedded within the organisation of developing biological organisms and their nervous systems, and that these fields underlie processes of biological morphogenesis. As an artist my attention was immediately raised, as morphogenesis is the coming-into-being of form, and therefore it is a process that lies at the heart of the all creation. These invisible forces seeming to extend out into everything. In my imagination, the lines drawn to illustrate the invisible powers of mesmerism, beginning to intersect with those of the eyes' emissions and other visions of invisible forces.
Descartes: Vortices
Descartes' idea of materialistic spirits that move through the body and through vision was related to the theories as laid out in his "Cosmogony", in particular, that the entire universe was filled with elements of different sizes which shifted around each other. At the centre was the sun, which was made up of the smallest kind of element and the bigger ones circled around it. This notion of vortices was also used by Descartes to explain forces like magnetism. The idea of the vortices suggested that the fixed stars were actually part of a contigious universe of systems like our own rubbing against each other, in many ways the idea of gravity, as introduced by Newton, replaced Descartes' ideas but once again we have a vision of invisible fields influencing each other and this time tightly curved dashed lines are used to visualise the idea.
Magnetism
When you place a bar magnet on a smooth surface and add iron filings, the magnetic forces will produce a physical diagram, the iron filings making their own drawing of the invisible forces at work. I have looked at these forms before in the post on Faraday's lines of force, and the more I think around these illustrations of invisible forces, the more it seems to me that they have been central to our understanding of unknown forces for thousands of years.
Aten, the sun god reaches out with his rays of light
From the rays of the Egyptian sun God Aten, literally reaching reaching out to the earth below, to the rendering of 'God Rays' in contemporary CAD software, the sense of a spiritual other can be made visual by linear effects.
Maya tutorial: God Rays
Energy emanating from a centre
If the lines of energy are bent, as in gravitational pull, we can visualise energy and its relationship to mass.
Henry Moore: Shelter drawing
Henry Moore uses this idea in his shelter drawings, the space lines, or rays, are bent as they reveal the mass below. This is I think I very powerful metaphor, as it takes the idea of lines of invisible energy or spirit and relates them to the solid physicality of 'reality'. As we all now know, 'reality' is a sort of illusion and the closer we get to it, the more it disappears and at certain magnifications atoms appear, then the elements that make up atoms and finally the energy fields that underpin everything come into some sort of mathematical appearance, something not actually seen but understood as being there.
A few images from a sequence whereby inner and outer images of a body are entwined
In my own drawings I'm looking for a way to connect or entangle both inner and outer body space, an awareness of what goes on inside my body and what goes on outside it, how it is perceived from outside and how it perceives. By thinking about line and then going on to think about other basic visual elements I can gradually build a language that in my mind begins to cope with the various elements of a fluid idea. For instance the dissolving of matter into water so that various solutions are formed is another, for myself, important metaphor for the constantly moving events that are life. As one element combines with another hybrids are formed and as they emerge they can become the building blocks for a private language concerned with visualising the nature of a fluid world, a world where there are no fixed boundaries and where identity is always in a state of flux and reality is never fixed.
So finally what am I getting at? Bergson used the concept ‘élan vital’ to describe a force inside all living beings that motivated them to continue, what we might call 'the life force'. Bergson was suggesting that life itself was a creative process, something that Prigogine calls a self-organising dissipative structure, driven by non-equilibrium flows of energy. I.e. the active forming process is a self-organising one, one that reflects the possibilities in the organisational structures of life itself. For an animist, (animism perceives all things: animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, even words; as animated and alive) this ‘élan vital’ it could then be argued is something that runs through everything, not just living things and that all materials have the potential to be formed into others, they just need to be in interaction with whatever they find themselves in contact with. It is as if the entire universe is filled with elements of different sizes which shift around each other and as they do they effect each other and cause changes to occur, as these changes happen, hybrids, combinations and all sorts of alternative forms come into being, a constant process of metamorphosis, a process that is the élan vital’ that runs through everything. It is this situation that in my own work I would eventually hope to visualise; however it will only be through a synchronisation of myself with the voices of others, such as the materials I use, the landscapes I walk through, the plants I observe and the other animals I talk to, that I will be able to succeed.
Charm for a fluid reality
References:
Morrison, G (2012) Supergods: Our world in the age of the superhero London: Vintage Sheldrake, R. (2004) The Sense Of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind London: Arrow
Stapp, H. P. (2011) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer London: Springer Press
Velmans, M. (2000) Understanding Consciousness London: Routledge
The key part of this text is for myself this diagram and the explanation below.
From photosynthesis via evolution to culture
Inhomogeneity, a Scientific Equivalent of Élan Vital: Naoki Sato
Bergson has put forward a concept ‘élan vital’ to describe biological force inherent in all living beings that drives all living processes including evolution. This key notion should, therefore, be understood to mean ‘driving force of life’ rather than ‘vital force’ or other words that reminds us of vitalism. Élan vital is sometimes misunderstood as an expression of vitalism, but it is based on numerous scientific results obtained until the beginning of the 20th century, although Bergson was a philosopher but not scientific researcher. Bergson was the first advocate who argued that evolution is a creative process, which was supported later by Monod. Various putative equivalents of élan vital were put forward by various physicists. Schrödinger presented negative entropy as a driving force of life, but there were various confusions regarding negative entropy. Brillouin correctly paraphrased negative entropy as a notion that we call entropy deficit or inhomogeneity in the present article. He also showed the equivalence of negative entropy to information. Prigogine was an eloquent proponent arguing that life is a kind of self-organizing dissipative structure, continuously driven by non-equilibrium flow of energy. The book of Nicolis and Prigogine described in detail their view of self-organization in metabolism, cellular differentiation, evolution and ecosystems with numerical simulations, but they did not consider the entropy of various biological processes. Kaufmann elaborated the concept of self-organization especially in evolution, and he considered that evolution, and therefore, life is not just a mechanism.
If as artists we are to embrace sustainability we will have to re-examine the practices that we call art. This isn't something new and I have looked in the past at how the word 'art' has changed its meaning over time. The stem 'rt' from the old Indo-European language root meant, 'the dynamic process by which the whole cosmos is being created.' A powerful idea that suggests 'rt' and its successor 'art' are much more to do with being involved with unfolding events than making objects, a concept that celebrates the interconnectedness of everything, rather than something just about painting and drawing. Perhaps our society needs to think again about the way art is used or perhaps we need to revisit a much older tradition. Art under capitalism has become about the exchange value of objects, unfortunately the news media now concentrates on the amount of money that an art work achieves at auction and rarely on how art might be used to add value to society. In 2017 the Wall Street Journal reported that the painting 'Salvator Mundi' by De Vinci had been bought for $450 million by Saudi Culture Minister Prince Badr bin Abdullah. A figure so huge that it is almost impossible to begin thinking about what this means. In a time of war, migration of displaced peoples, global warming and planetary wide instability, somehow the putting of so much money into an art investment seems not just futile but criminal, a sign that something has gone wrong with our idea of value.
So it is perhaps time to look at alternatives, of ways of approaching art in such a way that its relevance to our collective understanding or feeling about the world goes beyond whether or not a drawing or painting is suitable to be shown on a gallery wall.
In connection with my earlier posts on sustainability and the linking in of artists associated with eco-awareness, I'd therefore like to add another strand of practice, and in doing so perhaps open out alternative models that some of you might find useful or at least thought provoking.
The term ARTocracy, a sort of 'how to do it' brand name, was first used by Nuno Sacramento and Claudia Zeiske in their 2010 book of the same title. The book systematically shows how creativity could be applied through a sensitive interconnecting of people, context, processes and outputs, all of which it is argued will need to work together if we are to develop more sustainable communities.
The book is about the organisation of collaborative projects and it is designed to raise awareness as to how projects get off the ground. It provides practical guidance about funding, communication strategies, education and the making of art in community contexts, and in particular it looks at the balance between artistic quality and social consequence. I thought this was interesting because these issues go deep. For instance I remember being told very early on in my career that I was to avoid being didactic. I.e. that I should not intend to teach or give moral instruction through my artwork, if I did my art teacher told me, it would not just be detrimental to its aesthetic value, it could actually stop it being considered as art. Years later I was to meet Joseph Beuys and the first thing he said to me was that he was a teacher and that his artwork was designed to educate and provide a moral framework for others. Beuys used the term 'Social Sculpture' for his work, a term he used to describe an expanded concept of art, in particular to advocate art's potential to transform society. The fact that Beuys was co-founder of the German Green Party, illustrates how deeply he wanted to integrate politics and social awareness into his practice. In 1982, which was the year he was in Leeds; for documenta 7 he proposed to plant 7000 oaks, each one paired with a basalt stone. The 7000 stones were piled up on the lawn in front of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel with the idea that the pile would shrink every time a tree was planted. The project, seen locally as a gesture towards green urban renewal, took five years to complete and it eventually spread to other cities around the world. If you stand outside the Henry Moore Centre in Leeds and look slightly to your left for an oak tree, you will see one of those Beuys oaks still standing next to its basalt stone.
I thought it useful to begin with ARTocracy simply because it is subtitled; 'Art, Informal Space and Social consequence: A Handbook for socially engaged practice', and we all need to start somewhere and this is a handbook. The first premise it establishes is that the town is the venue. I.e. the place you live is going to be where you develop an audience, find participants, seek content and be a place to both make and present or exhibit work. Your art practice is in effect embedded into the society and particular locality in which you find yourself. This is a very different approach to the idea of the artist as outsider, or cool observer of reality. It also questions the role of the artist as individualist or 'genius', looking at the artist's role as cultural activist, rather than artistic producer, exploring how an artist can energise people and local communities, rather than provide images for contemplation. Art processes it is suggested can be employed to untangle and overcome real-life challenges, defuse conflict, solve problems and open up new possibilities. Sometimes though its good enough just to help people see what's there.
Socially engaged art practice is collaborative and participatory and how you involve people in the work is central to the process. You can involve people and communities in debate, collective action and social interaction. The term 'new genre public art' is another way of thinking about it, a description that was coined by Suzanne Lacy, who wanted to find a way of making public sculpture that wasn't putting up statues of high achievers onto pedestals, as she wanted to show how 'ordinary people' could participate in collective decision making.
City conversations: Suzanne Lacy
What Kind of City? is the title of many of Suzanne Lacy's conversations, she has visited Leeds in the past, and this question was the title of her presentation at the art gallery. Lacy has also engaged directly with drawing in her work. She undertook a collaborative project with the artist Andrea Bowers called appropriately enough; 'Drawing Lessons'. This was a nine-day installation at The Drawing Centre, New York, during which artist Andrea Bowers attempted to teach Lacy to draw. Each day for nine days, Bowers offered Lacy lessons, which were also open to the public. Working together under the scrutiny of the audience, Bowers and Lacy explored the questions, in work and conversation, that they engage with in their individual practices. This really interested me, because I am convinced of the power of conversations as being central to social integration and sensitive action. The project served as a platform for extended conversations with curators, union organisers, people who attended from the area and other artists who draw or do performances. The conversations reflected on feminism, performance art, drawing, and socio-political issues of concern to the artists. For example: what are the roles and problems of representation in public art practice? How do artists reconcile activist and field-based practices with the necessities of production for the gallery and museum? What is the relationship between first and second generation Feminism? What is the role of venue, object, and style in the identification and evaluation of art?
Suzanne Lacy and Andrea Bowers 'Drawing Lessons'
The pulling down of the Colston Statue in Bristol last year, raised many issues about the role of both artists and public statues. If the making of statues is problematic, then what can artists do when they work in public? One project I remember in particular that helped me to think about the possibilities for making art-work in this area was, 'Where The Heart Is' by Graham Fagan. As part of his work with the community of Royston in Glasgow, he discovered that the one thing most people enjoyed or could appreciate was gardening and in particular many people liked roses. Fagan purchased a new rose that had no name, originally known only by a code, JC30518/A. It was named through a consultative process across the entire area of Royston. A pupil from St Roch's Primary School eventually selecting the winning name. Cuttings of the rose were then given to any local people that wanted one and its lovely pink blossom and fragrant scent was the following year to be seen throughout the area.
Graham Fagan: 'Where The Heart Is'
Graham Fagan: Local children's images of the rose
Fagan's work was part of a much larger project. It is interesting to look at how it all fitted together and at how many approaches to community development were used. Check the overall project out at the link below.
So what's this got to do with drawing you may be asking? I have written about how drawing can be used to facilitate conversations in several ways. For instance as a way of developing stories around and for a community. See:
Barker, Garry (2017) Drawing as a tool for shaping community experience into collective allegory. In: Collective and Collaborative Drawing in Contemporary Practice. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 192-215. lau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/17315. My contribution to the book on Collaborative Drawing in Contemporary Practice, is mainly centred on how drawing can be used as a focus for conversation and how different types of drawing facilitate different types of conversations. For instance, I'm currently drawing ideas for a permaculture garden, but the real issue is that this activity will facilitate conversations and these will explore whether or not permaculture ideas can be used within wider contexts of sustainability, in particular whether or not perception and interoception can themselves be shaped or inflected by a permaculture awareness. I'm also developing a paper for an architectural magazine that brings together permaculture with perception and looks at how permaculture principles such as 'Observe and Interact' or 'Integrate Don’t Segregate' can be applied to the way we think about architecture.
Marjan van Aubel
But of course there are other approaches to thinking about how to operate sustainably as an artist. I'm always interested in how ideas can be visualised and made real. This is what so much of drawing has always been about. The problem is that we categorise things in such a way that some ideas are seen as design and others as art. If we take away the distinction, we simply have people visualising ideas. Marjan van Aubel is a wonderful example of how to do just that, in this case her ideas use light fittings in a not dissimilar way to how nature itself harvests the energy of the sun via photosynthesis. She demonstrates that there are alternatives to existing paradigms and exciting new ways of thinking about solar energy that reflect how energy is collected and used by biological entities other than ourselves.
Olafur Eliasson: Sketch for 'Beauty'
A lot of eco ideas seem to emerge from Scandinavia, perhaps this is because the winters are so cold, and you therefore need to think carefully about how you will survive them. 'Beauty' is a typical work of Olafur Eliasson. You walk into a dark room and a fine mist is falling illuminated by a single light bulb. As you walk around the room from some angles you can see a rainbow. You also see a hose pipe that the water falls from, you see the things creating the rainbow at the same time as the rainbow. You are having an experience, and are conscious of having the experience. As you are made self-aware you go out into the world with that awareness and will hopefully make future decisions more thoughtfully.
Beauty
Eliasson is interested in the connection between an experience that might take place in a gallery and the way it might affect your behaviour when you leave that gallery. Olafur Eliasson is an artist who also uses design skills to solve projects, which again highlights the artificial divide between the two disciplines. His team at Studio Olafur Eliasson consists of craftsmen and specialised technicians, architects, archivists, art historians, web and graphic designers, film-makers, cooks, and administrators. Eliasson and the studio also work with structural engineers and other specialists and collaborate worldwide with cultural practitioners, policymakers, and scientists. His climate change activism has inspired many and his approach suggests that as an artist you can both make things and be engaged in community activism. He is able to make art from the poetics of a situation, as well as from an understanding of the ecological condition of it, as well as from the constraints of physical materials and the possibilities that they offer.
Thomas Hirschhorn: Too Too - Much Much
Thomas Hirschhorn is another artist that has responded to the problem of how to avoid the 'statue' issue, he uses everyday and found materials such as plastic sheeting, cardboard, aluminium, packing tape and magazine images to create environments for change. The process of making remains clearly visible and becomes a metaphor for the individual and collective struggle to establish local democracy or to build a space within which people could debate ideas. People are implicated in Hirschhorn's work, viewers are obliged to reflect upon that which they may have hitherto been able to ignore in their daily lives, by having to take part in conversations, often with others who they would not normally meet or engage with. Hirschhorn's practice facilitating conversations, as much as making metaphors for change.
If I was going to cite one example of social sculpture that sparked my imagination it would be the work of Pedro Reyes, who for the artwork 'Palas por Pistolas' (2008) collected 1,527 weapons from residents of Cuiliacán in Western Mexico, which were exchanged for electronics. The artist then melted the weapons down into shovels, which were then used to plant 1,527 trees. This is real alchemy, the transformation of guns into shovels a beautiful metaphor as well as a real intervention. Reyes is also interested in drawing as a way to communicate ideas, the work 'Collective Hat' is a very funny as well as conceptually interesting work.
Pedro Reyes: Collective Hat: pleated palm collective activity
Reyes puts it like this:
Wittengstein stated that if we were to imagine a book which contained only the truth it would have to be entirely composed with jokes. I think in jokes you are led to the truth so quickly that the only way to handle the shock is laughing. Not all jokes produce laughing, there are also slow-smiling jokes, visual puzzles and graphic puns, some jokes are diagrams.
You may remember this one...
...a Mexican riding a bicycle. They are often a child's game but in fact very abstract and concrete depictions of social or spatial situations, like this one...four Mexicans sharing a table:
The design process in architecture is concerned with drawing the object, but we often lack tools to draw the social interplay. How do you map individual actors? How do you represent collective entities? This figure below for instance...
I drew this diagram of a collective sombrero and it became the blueprint for a sculpture. It was one of my early participatory sculptures. I took it to different plazas in Mexico city and asked people to wear it. What happens is very curious, for me it represents a paradox of democracy, the huddle has to deliberate endlessly where to go, and they have to walk very slowly not to stumble.
Pedro Reyes
'Collective Hat' reminded me of Lucy Orta's work. In the piece below for COP 26 Orta states, 'the ripple and the chain of solidarity clearly manifested our interdependence', and I can see clearly what she is trying to visualise, the fact that we are as in Reyes work all connected in some way. I do though personally respond more to Reyes because he realises that it is also funny, our situation so stupid, that we need to collectively laugh at ourselves before perhaps we decide to make some changes.
