Organic projects & regenerative public art practices: Indigenous & decolonial

 

bark with woodpecker holes of a very old and tall (>40 feet) chokecherry tree, Prunus virginiana, Ruckle Provincial Park, Salt Spring Island 2018 February 19 * This exceptionally old tree was probably cultural modified a century ago: today with signs of classic Salish lopping to grow horizontally for more fruit production and easier harvesting.

an outline for a series panels and workshops 2018- 2022

PDF: BROCHU-INGRAM 2018 Organic projects

 

Organic projects & regenerative public art practices:

Indigenous & decolonial

Panels and workshops are proposed as part of ongoing work on the live tree in public and other site-based art works, and related studies, spanning media such as drawings, photography and video as inherently multi-media works, is proposed as a topic for case studies, analysis, and theorizing in terms of the following narratives and schools of practices: public (and private) space and pressures for environmental justice; collaborative and performative production practices; indigenous, colonial, globalisation, decolonial and migration theory; diversifying notions of gender and sexuality extending to new views of ‘nature’ beyond those articulated by ecofeminism, queer theory and queer ecologies; divergent experiences of traditional knowledge and science as part of empirical investigations extending to artist practices; and multiple experiences of environmental crises. These theoretical, activist, and institutional prisms are proposed for two reasons. Nearly every contemporary outdoor and public work has a relationship with at least one of these conversations. And all of these conversations, as they relate to living plants as art objects[i] and cultural currency, are contentious and unresolved suggesting that the tree, as an awkward moniker of an aesthetic of collaborative survival, may well become a recurring symbol in twenty-first century visual culture. Secondly, all of this interest in trees, as or part of complex works of site-specific art, is occurring during the most rapid and massive loss of trees and forests in human history. The inclusion of or focus on living trees in contemporary art involves diverse experiences including anxiety, nostalgia, paralysis, and hope – while not escaping neoliberalism and new forms of cultural ‘greenwashing’. Further theorizing is warranted.

 

 

introduction

In nearly all of human history, visual art objects have been inert and relatively permanent. In the twentieth century, visual art shifted from a focus on easily monetized objects to include assemblages and site-specific installations[ii], including and sometimes centred on living things most notably trees. In the same period, the movements that coalesced as “relational aesthetics” has recast collaborative, cultural production practices as art works in them selves. In these organic projects and living sites movements, vegetable gardens have been ephemeral and ‘use’ of living animals and insects has been largely ill-fated. But trees have had a better run of nearly a half-century with aesthetics and social practices[iii] far different than the short-lived landart[iv] movement that more often effectively killed rather than fostered local ecosystems.

Trees in site-based, public art warrant investigation both as linked to a wide set of cultural movements and as a signifier of a range of transformations of contemporary visual art refocusing on site, collaborative and relational aesthetics, and re-centred narratives on challenging social inequities. And works with trees often touch on the following global conversations both inside and outside the art world:

  1. indigenous, colonial, and decolonial theory and aesthetics increasingly in the context of globalizations and migrations;
  2. public space (and private and privatising space) and pressures for environmental justice;
  3. collaborative and performative production practices;
  4. diversifying notions of gender and sexuality extending to new views of ‘nature’ extending beyond ecofeminism, queer theory and queer ecologies;
  5. divergent experiences of traditional knowledge, science and empirical investigation; and
  6. multiple experiences of environmental crises and responses through ideals of community sustainability.

The inclusion of living trees in site-based area has come at a time of rapid change where cultural products have diversified and valuation systems have often been further integrated with capital flow. Living trees defy one system of monetisation, focused on the purchase of art objects, while is rooted in a massive cultural economy of public art and space: design, installation, maintenance, and use.

Trees in site-based works also provide opportunities to explore a number of shifts and trends in cultural production, and political economies, in the twenty-first century.

a. from static works to interventions – Installation and maintenance of living trees involves a complex set of practices and collaborative relationships that extend from the artist(s) to the community often mediated by governments and economies. At times, living trees in contemporary work blurs the lines between permanent work and intervention. And when a tree dies from neglect, vandalism, or environmental degradation, this ‘event’ becomes part of the continuity of the cultural work.

b. expanded notions of multimedia and archives – The living tree in site-based works typically involves a series of studies and proposals that in turn form a body of multimedia work that begins to appear more like an archive. So at the core of the proposed work is how notions of ‘multiple-media works’ and ‘archives’ shift have evolved and how the lines have blurred with the use of living material. The tree become a kind of indefinite monitoring device for respective public space where the archive is indefinite as a kind of field station or ongoing research site.

c. expanded uses of (bio)technologies as culture – Environmental art practices, including use of live material, borrows from a range of technologies and technical cultures such as landscape architecture, urban design, and environmental sciences, making a new, and broader, form of (bio)bricolage in visual culture. The parameters and limits of this pot-pourri as ‘art’ and cultural production have been under-theorized. In particular, this environmental turn in material culture, since landart, has generated new visual semiotics that warrant further exploration.

d. tree significations and semiotics – Symbols as universal, and often as ambiguous, as live trees have conveniently plastic meanings and in the twenty-first century typically have one or more relationships to the six broader cultural dynamics and themes, that are sometimes contradictions, outlined earlier[v]. Today, these discussions and debates are drivers within much of contemporary visual culture outside of the commercial art market. But a large portion of public art in the late twentieth century has been used as an extension of urban planning and design.

e. trees and ecological practices remain largely marginal in public art theory – Both criticism and pedagogy for site-based, ‘environmental’, and ecological practices and respective works remain poorly developed.

f. parallel public art (bio)worlds – Today there are parallel milieux, schools, and academies of production of site-based environmental and public works between often technically poor and scientifically ‘sketchy’ works rooted in contemporary visual arts cannons, on one hand, and projects more comprehensively designed and executed but that are typically bland and kitsch and more closely regulated through municipalities, land markets, and professional institutions of landscape architecture, architecture, and urban design.

g. criticism for site-based visual works as organic projects – The criticism around contemporary works with living material has been lax and poorly developed. Aside from a small number of works, notably by Sonnfist and Beuys, trees are planted, descriptive articles are published that rarely involve critiques, and the works are integrated into blander urban design economies – until officials lose interest in maintenance and the trees tree and the associated works forgotten. With all of the uses of trees, critical (and better documentation) frameworks are warranted.

h. curating organic projects – Site-specific works with living trees often defy conventional curating (and ongoing evaluation and use) warranting use of a wider array of exhibition, archival, and interactive techniques – inline with some more general trends in contemporary art.

This proposal is organized by the following problem statement and then description of central questions to organize five years of investigations. Research methods and frameworks for theorizing are outlined.

 

hazelnut (Corylus cf cornuta) on Salt Spring Island 2018 February 18

 

 

problem statement

Over the last century, trees have gone from being subjects for representation in visual art, while providing wood and paper for fabrication, to increasingly being living parts of contemporary works. In other words, aspects of agriculture and arboriculture cultivation are becoming practices in contemporary visual culture. Examination of this ‘environmental turn’ or ‘organic project’ allows us to anticipate a range of practices seeping into art production, curating, and criticism. But questions remain about the importance of these expanded notions of production, collaboration, and critical examination that have been only partially prefigured by landart and relational aesthetics[vi].

 

Is the half-century of trees in site-specific, multimedia works simply a fad and a gimmick or some new development in contemporary culture and visual language spanning both Western and a range of eastern and indigenous aesthetic cannons? Are trees in site-based art more of a form of landscape architecture or urban design than contemporary visual works? What is the relevance of such architectural fields, that sometimes position themselves as contemporary art but rarely attain the necessary credibility or creative innovation? Do trees in public art signal an integration of a range of principles and technologies, originating in agriculture, horticulture, and arboriculture, as practices for contemporary visual art? Are a small number of symbolic trees in public art works just a poor substitute, a mild or ritualised response, to destruction of entire ecosystems? How do the activities around, and respective information generated by, the installation of a site-based work, with a living tree, transform notions of public space, environmental monitoring, and the artistic archive?

 

questions & investigations

When are the uses of living trees in contemporary, site-based art entirely rhetorical and when do they touch on aesthetic discourses involving new (and recovered) material practices in art production? When do living trees in site-based art function as part of larger, multimedia works and how do these living elements function within aesthetic canons such as representation, documentary, and abstraction? When is use of living material used to realign and challenge aspects of public (and private) space and respective political economies? When do living trees in site-based projects and interventions touch on explorations of indigeneity, colonialism, postcolonality, and more contemporary migrations? How do notions of individual and collaborative production shift when other living beings, even ones that are only vegetative, are involved?

To organize these many questions, a range of works will be explored through six of the early twenty-first century conversations, social and cultural movements, and schools.

 

  1. How are living trees in site-based works used to both highlight and obscure the histories of places, communities and respective social inequities? What is the relevance of indigenous, colonial, and decolonial theory and aesthetics (increasingly in the context of globalisation and migrations)?

 

  1. In relation to discourses on public space and pressures for environmental justice, how are trees used to expand, and sometimes to constrain and privatise, enjoyment by local human populations?

 

  1. Within the expanding milieux of collaborative and performative production practices, how are the planting and protection of trees organized in relationship to local political economies and social movements?

 

  1. In the huge field of diversifying notions of gender and sexuality, we are seeing new views of ‘nature’ extending well beyond those articulated by ecofeminism, queer theory[vii] and queer ecologies[viii]. How do the complex manifestations of gender, often seen with trees, further expand our understandings of biology more generally? And what divisions of labour in these collaboration still persist?

 

  1. Today, use of trees in art production spans divergent experiences of traditional knowledge, science and other forms of knowledge. How do living trees highlight the unevenness of bodies of knowledge and how they are transmitted?
  2. Today, there are multiple experiences of environmental crises and divergent responses through ideals of community sustainability. When are trees in site-based works used as talismanic symbols and other times prescriptive, exploratory and even adversarial strategies – relation to perceptions of such crises?

 

An underlying theme in these examinations of trees in these site-based works is that the meanings of the use of these organisms in art are often so complex and ambiguous that the trope of tree-in-art-as-trees-disappear-in-the-world allows for inclusion of multiple themes and statements.

 

research methods

Field investigations will first examine a score of pioneering works with living trees:

1977 Alan Sonfist in Manhattan and subsequent projects[ix];

1982 Joseph Beuys in documenta 7, Kassel[x];

2008 Ron Benner’s expository gardens with indigenous perennials[xi];

2010 Los Angeles’ Fallen Fruit collective[xii];

2011 Jimmie Durham’s apple trees at Kassel with one recently vandalised[xiii];

2012 Duane Linklater conceptual sites with native trees in the Hudson Valley [xiv]; and

2012 The San Francisco Bay Area’s Guerrilla grafters[xv].

Another ten works that are in-progress, in different locales around the globe, would be investigated particularly for the art practices and production processes. One of these case studies would be a self-reflexive study of KEXMIN field station’s work with re-establishing orchards of Salish fruit trees (often closely related to Eurasian cultivars)[xvi].

 

In describing and evaluating these works, a wide range of information sources would be explored including the following:

  1. physical description of site-based art work over time;
  2. description of installation, interventions, performances, and ongoing use (including participant observation and semi-structured interviews);
  3. context over time (the neighbourhood and political economy);
  4. management, maintenance, modification, vandalism;
  5. interviews with knowledgeable critics; and
  6. comprehensive review of the writings on, including the criticism, on the work.

 

analytical frameworks & theorizing

Analysis of this work will go back to the various questions outlined above focusing on a small number that emerge in the investigations. The following will be some of the bodies of theory used to guide analysis and conclusions:

  1. overviews of public art and other site-specific works (sites, media, public enjoyment, controversy theory);
  2. overviews of landart and more recent environmental themes;
  3. aesthetic responses to environmental crises (including climate change[xvii]);
  4. Foucauldian discourse analysis focused on the evolution of aesthetics, practices, and institutions with some links to late post-structuralism such as Deleuze and Guattari’s 1980 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia;
  5. theory on transformations in visual art production including the French “La sociologie de l’art” theorists;
  6. new materialisms[xviii] and some less visceral forms of ‘deep ecology’ theory;
  7. Northwest Coast visual and performative cannons (with which I grew up) including historic and contemporary innovations; and
  8. political economy and related class and governance theory especially related to public art and space (and related stakeholder analysis) in the context of globalisation and theories of appropriation, valorisation, and decolonisation.

 

 

notes

[i] Lippard, Lucy. 1997. Six Years: The Dematerializaton of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

[ii] Kwon, Miwon. 2004. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge: MIT Press.

[iii] Viegener, Matias. 2015. Speculative Futures: Social practice, cognitive capitalism and / or the triumph of capital. in Informal Market Worlds: The Architecture of Economic Pressure. Peter Mörtenböeck and Helge Mooshammer (eds.). Rotterdam: nai010. http://mviegener.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Viegener-Matias-Speculative-Futures-Social-Practice-Cognitive-Capitalism-andor-the-Triumph-of-Capital.pdf

[iv] Kaiser, Philipp and Miwon Kwon. 2012. Ends of the Earth: Art of the Land to 1974. New York: Prestel.

[v] neo-colonial versus decolonial 2. public / privatised space 3. collaborative and performative production versus atomised production 4. gender & sexuality: binary and heteronormative versus multiple genders and queer 5. traditional knowledge versus contemporary science 6. crises: solvable versus inevitable

[vi] Bourriaud, Nicholas. 2002 (1998). Relational Aesthetics. Simon Pleasance and Fonza Woods translators. Dijon, France: Les Presses du Réel. & Bishop, Claire. 2004. Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics. October 110 (2004): 51 – 80.

[vii] Ingram, G. B., A.-M. Bouthillette and Y. Retter (eds.). Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance. Seattle: Bay Press.

[viii] Ingram, G. B. 2010. Fragments, edges & matrices: Retheorizing the formation of a so-called Gay Ghetto through queering landscape ecology. in Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics & Desire. Cate Sandilands and Bruce Erickson (eds.). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. 254 – 282.

[ix] Sonfist, Alan, Wolfgang Becker, and Robert Rosenblum. 2004. Nature, The End of Art: Environmental Landscapes. New York: Distributed Art Publishers.

[x] Beuys, Joseph. 1982. 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung) / 7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration. Kassel, Hesse: documenta 7.

[xi] Benner, Ron. 2008. Gardens of a Colonial Present / Jardins d’un Present Colonial. London, Ontario: London Museum.

[xii] Goodyear, Dana. 2012. Eat A Free Peach: Mapping “Public Fruit.” The New Yorker (March 12, 2012). http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/eat-a-free-peach-mapping-public-fruit

[xiii] karenarchey. 2015. Jimmie Durham documenta13 work destroyed in Kassel. conversations e-flux (July 2015). http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/jimmie-durham-documenta13-work-destroyed-in-kassel/2036

[xiv] Duane Linklater. 2012. Untitled (a raspberry garden for 21st. St.). In conjunction with Bard Centre for Curatorial Studies and Family Business Gallery as point of a pointed poetic response to President Barrack Obama’s little known apology to Native Americans in 2010. http://www.duanelinklater.com/index.php?/raspberry/

[xv] http://www.guerrillagrafters.org/category/politics-of-the-graft/

[xvi] http://gordonbrentingram.ca/KEXMINfieldstation/2017/06/10/salish-fruit-tree-species-of-the-gulf-san-juan-islands/ & https://www.gordonbrentingram.ca/presqueperdu/index.php/2016/10/23/nearly-lost-re-introducing-images-of-vancouvers-native-salish-fruit-trees/

[xvii] Bunting, Madeleine. 2009. The rise of climate-change art. Guardian (London)(2 December, 2009).

[xviii] Dawson, Ashley. 2015. Radical Materialism Introduction. Social Text: Periscope (2015 March 8 Radical Materialism issue). http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/radical-materialism-introduction/ & Cole, Andrew. 2015. Those Obscure Objects of Desire: The Uses And Abuses of Object-Oriented Ontology And Speculative Realism. Artforum (Summer 2015): 318 – 323. https://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201506&id=52280