Ecology and Ideology: In Search of an Antidote in Contemporary Art

Corporate, independent and underground are common terms for distinguishing between types of film production that are increasingly applicable to divisions within the world of contemporary art. The Barbican’s recent ecological blockbuster Radical Nature illustrates some of the drawbacks of the ‘corporate’ approach, claiming to be ‘the first major exhibition to trace the post-war history of artists’ engagement with ecology and environmentalism.’ The show provides an eclectic and under-conceptualised overview of work from the last forty years and along with the inclusion of architectural projects, which puts the stress on functionality, the selection of big names closely follows the shared criteria of the art market and the museum, with a strong bias towards artists from the West. It’s hard not to read the exhibition Radical Nature as an attempt to cash in on public concern for ecology, with the subject of ecological radicalism in art treated much the same as any other umbrella theme from tourism to eroticism. The same perfected machinery of presentation goes into motion, with no consideration of the implications of ecology for art institutions. Missing here is the basic insight, which informed the practice of many artists from the 1970s onwards, that ecology is a ‘subversive science’ due to its far-reaching ramifications for all spheres of human society. The mammoth programme of side events from talks to food tastings, verges on over-production, which, as Felix Guattari noted, is from an ecological perspective equally damaging whether it’s a matter of material or immaterial goods.

Sustainability has become a buzzword of politics and commerce, and with its spread from the field of environmentalism into society there has been some dilution of its radical implications. Ecological sustainability is also mentioned with increasing frequency in discussions of contemporary art and there is a parallel lack of awareness of the history of environmental thought, which in many accounts begins and ends with the early 60s classic of poetic, anti-pollution literature, The Silent Spring. If we begin with an understanding of sustainability derived from green capitalism, then the widespread belief amongst critical theorists that sustainability was invented by big corporations to create new markets for environmentally-friendly products seems a logical conclusion. Unravelling the confusion between ecological sustainability and greenwash, in other words between the solution and part of the problem, requires revisiting theoretical debates within the field of ecology, in order to open up our understanding of sustainability and its relevance for both society and contemporary art.

The writings of Felix Guattari may offer a counterpoint to the current simplification of our understanding of sustainability and, in his concern for the mental sphere of human subjectivities, have particular relevance to the interests and potentialities of contemporary art. The Three Ecologies, published in 1989, anticipated many of the issues facing the globalised world of today, and laid the blame squarely at the doors of ‘Integrated World Capitalism’ for an ‘ecological disequilibrium’ that threatens the ‘continuation of life on the planet’s surface’. Guattari usefully differentiates between three ecological ‘registers’, the natural environment, the social environment, and the level of mental ecology, in order to convey the interrelatedness of ecological and social issues. The first environmental register applies in the context of contemporary art to the material burden of an artwork on the natural world, from the resources used in its production to potential damage caused to ecosystems, the amount of waste produced and the complex implications of showing, transporting, publicising and storing the work, in other words, to all the measurable components that contribute to the ‘life cycle’ of an artwork in its relationship to the natural environment. Much discussion both of ecology in general and the relationship of art and environment remains on this level, and is associated with art projects that are designed to combat pollution or publicise environmental campaigns.

The second Guattari register deals with the social dimension and could refer in an art context to the social nexus around the production and use of the work, including the level of potential exploitation and the question of whether an artwork empowers or alternatively objectifies living subjects. Contemporary art frequently speaks to the social register, not least in the concern for a reflexive awareness of the ethical implications of art projects and the social position of the artist. When it comes to the third register of human subjectivities, Guattari asserts that in order to confront capitalism’s effects in the ‘domain of the mental ecology of everyday life’, society should look to the working methods of artists. It is on the level of the third register that art has potentially the most radical implications for ecology and the potential to offer an antidote to the ‘mental pollution’ that is arguably as important an ecological factor as the poisoning of the rivers or the consumption of carbon.
The more sustainable possibilities available within the independent sphere of contemporary art can be recognised in the work of Crakow-based artist Janek Simon. Born in 1977, he first studied sociology and psychology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, before gravitating towards contemporary art in 2001. Some of his projects have dealt directly with the phenomenon of ‘aesthetic recycling’ as practiced by collectors of objects and rubbish, such as his show ‘Cracovians Like it Clean’ at Warsaw’s Zacheta Gallery in 2005 which was constructed entirely of cans, plastic bottles and other detritus and referred to the forms of futuristic architecture, as well as the fascination with glitzy consumer packaging in a newly capitalist Poland. Many other works deal with the theme of ecology only indirectly, while the aspect of sustainability can be located in the artist’s approach. When asked at the most recent Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art about the implications of ecology for his own artistic practice, Simon replied that he would not change anything, as although he does not deal directly with environmental issues, the aspect of caring for the earth is already implicit in his work.

Janek Simon’s art has often involved approaching technological artefacts to reveal the hidden social significance of the seemingly neutral world of the modern machine. He once trawled the internet to teach himself how to make a digital watch at home, in order to demystify scientific knowledge and the remote processes that produce the decor of our post-industrial world. His installations often consist of DIY objects that ransack the archive of obsolete technologies, from space invaders to 90s DJ culture and the lost world of HTML internet, to disarmingly anarchistic effect. His independent approach draws on the Central European tradition of the sociability of the late communist neo-avant-garde, which combined a disregard for official ideology with indifference to the values of the art market, a tradition that may be symptomatic of artistic communities in any decentred cultural context rather than unique to Eastern Europe, and the legacy of which for contemporary art remains strong, even after two decades of transition to global capitalism.

Sustainability, in its corporate and ‘green capitalist’ guise, is in danger of taking on some of the negative characteristics of an ideology, and in this way, of contributing to the problem of ‘mental pollution’.  The strength of contemporary art is that it does not approach sustainability as an ideology and has no sympathy for what Murray Bookchin described as ‘militant recycling’, understood as technocratic attempts to coerce people into feeling personally responsible for the ecological crisis, rather locating the fundamental problem in alienation from nature and ultimately hierarchies in society. Any approach that diminishes people’s freedom to travel or their access to culture therefore threatens the enrichment of ‘human personality and sensitivity,’ at a time when the collective answer to ecological crisis lies within the creativity of communities and the liberation of human subjectivities.
Maja and Reuben Fowkes
www.translocal.org

Janek Simon, Device for releasing smoke signals, 2009

Janek Simon, Chinese mini-piano that plays an old Chinese song, 2009