‘Examples of ascertainable ecocide affecting sizeable territories include the deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest, the proposed expansion of the Athabasca Oil Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada and polluted waters in many parts of the world, which account for the death of more people than all forms of violence including war‘ – Polly Higgins, Eradicating Ecocide, 2010, p.63

The above statement is a startling statistic at odds in how we may conventionally view war. Yet acknowledging the enormous and accelerating violence and destruction to humans, non-human species and our sustaining habitats as war is a critical step if we are ever to halt such activities. It is this key concept that drives UK lawyer Polly Higgins in her work to make ‘Ecocide’ legally recognised by the United Nations as ‘5th international Crime against Peace‘. This would mean it would have the same status as  genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression. Polly and her organisation are working towards presenting these new laws at the upcoming June 2012 Earth summit and she has recently made an urgent call, particularly to the women of the world, who are often most affected, to understand this concept and to spread it amongst their communities and to bring it to the attention of their political leaders.

Polly Higgins and indigenous activist Raven Courtney earlier this year working to spread news about ecocide in Canada and North America

Ecocide, as Polly describes in her award winning book ‘Eradicating Ecocide – exposing the corporate and political practices destroying the planet and proposing the laws needed to eradicate ecocide’, is a relatively new term. It was first used to characterise the massive and ongoing environmental devastation that occurred in the Vietnam war with the widespread use of toxic defoliants to destroy local forests. Today it is a term that is growing in agency as the world is beginning to recognise the grave and now imminent global peril that humanity and other species face due to the mostly uncontrolled, unsustainable and ultimately suicidal behaviour of our local and global businesses and corporate industries. Ecocide literally means the killing and destroying of our habitats, and is derived from the Greek word oikos meaning ‘house, dwelling place, habitation, family’ and the suffix ‘cide‘ from the French and Latin words to ‘kill or slay’. For the purposes of international law and building on definitions of ecocide from previous war crimes, Polly defines ecocide as ‘the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished’.

Building on her extensive knowledge of international environmental law, Polly has over a number of years built a very strong, credible case to firstly explain the history and the current situation about why legal compromise, recommended environmental policy and regulation all continue to spectacularly fail in preventing environmental destruction, as seen in the recent Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She likens the need to legally criminalise ecocide to the effects such similar laws that criminalised and led to the abolition of slavery. Polly’s aim is to eradicate ecocide at its roots, outlawing ecocidal activity in all business activity to the point that business is forced to radically change and move in the opposite direction. As she says ‘ we need business skills to be applied elsewhere and very fast..’

Youtube: Polly Higgins organised a successful mock ecocide trial in London in 2011 with leading human rights lawyers

While I’m often pessimistic about environmental actions and politics in general halting what I see as the unstoppable consequences of a society that promotes unlimited economic growth and profit over everything else, I have been encouraged by Polly’s work and the historical and recent examples she presents where such legal changes have made a difference. There are certainly enormous challenges in getting such legal changes adopted and then enforced. However, it is possible and one country, Ecuador, has in 2010 already enshrined these values into its national constitution. Perhaps this is because it is in Ecuador that the largest criminal prosecution against corporate ecocide, against the ‘big oil’ company TEXACO, has succeeded with a $27 billion of damages awarded to 30,000 Amazonian peoples (the 18 year struggle for this landmark case is the basis of the award-winning documentary Crude (2009)). Polly also emphasises that penalties should not focus solely on monetary compensation but recommends strongly that costs be directed to restoration of damaged environments – to form a restorative justice process.

So if you have a few minutes, please visit Polly’s website www.thisisecocide.com, packed with information and suggestions on how to spread the word about ecocide and its need for its to be recognised at every level, locally, nationally and internationally as a crime, not just against the environment but against peace. Do share this article , particularly before the June 2012 United Nations Earth Summit at which Polly will be presenting this groundbreaking work.

Mon 14 May 2012:  ‘The Occupy Movement demands a law of Ecocide!
“We demand the creation of international environmental standards, mandatory for countries, companies, corporations, and individuals. Ecocide (wilful damage to the environment, ecosystems, biodiversity) should be internationally recognised as a crime of the greatest magnitude.”  You can also sign AVAAZ petition on ecocide to be recognised at Rio+20 here

Update: Mon 30 Apr. 2012: Polly Higgins is launching a new book ‘Earth is our business – changing the rules of the game’, due out May 16 2012.

_________________________

What follows are Polly’s 10 reasons why Ecocide is a crime against Peace

1. stop ecocide and we stop the mass destruction of the planet;

2. ecocide is proposed as an international law which applies to all people and all nations;

3. which will rapidly become a national duty of care as well when each country has to put in place parallel laws;

4. governments, corporations, organisations, and any person who has rights over a territory will have an over-riding legally binding obligationto ensure their actions do not give rise to damage, destruction or loss of ecosystems;

5. action can be taken against any human person, not the fictional person (the corporation). As an international crime against peace, no-one escapes liability;

6. we already have the international court structure in place to prosecute ecocide. The International Criminal Court was created in 2002;

7. ecocide creates a strong legal burden of responsibility to ensure prevention;

8. restoration will take precedence over simple payment of fines;

9. the Law of Ecocide will ensure a shift from personal interest to public, environmental and society interests;

10. Peace.

Ecocide sends a powerful global message to the world, not just to those involved in business or during war, to take responsibility for the well being of all life.

This article also appears on hercircleezine.com and ecoartfilm.com

Eileen MacDonagh with her Ogham Stones 2012, VISUAL Carlow: photo Cathy Fitzgerald

‘THE QUARRY   This is where it all begins.  I love going there to see the stone in its most natural state.  Quarries are my cathedrals,  even when its raining I always come home uplifted.’ Eileen MacDonagh, 2012

Over the last year or so I have been very privileged to have been invited by one of Ireland’s leading sculptor’s, Eileen MacDonagh, to document her work process by film and photographs for her retrospective exhibition LITHOsphere. The exhibition opens today 5 Feb and continues until May 7 2012 and I’ve been editing madly for the 1/2h film I created for the show (I’ll post some of the links to film clips below).

I really admire the attention to working with physical materials in Eileen’s stone practice; it echoes an earlier time when art was more deeply connected to the material world. In contemporary art, there has been a move, and I would say a dangerous loss of connection to the fabric of material life of both the bio and lithosphere – much contemporary work has moved to virtual digital methods. And then there are elements in Eileen’s work that serve to trigger profound reminders too; particularly in her  astounding 8m forest of her new breathtaking installation Cathedral and her new Ogham Stones.

Eileen’s ‘cathedral‘ forest towers above one; these papier mache forms reminiscent of highly remarkable and endangered baobab trees, many species of which are on the island of Madagascar. In recent weeks I’ve seen disturbing reports that we are losing our large trees all over the world. Centuries of relatively rapid forest loss over all continents and further degradation of forested areas by industrial forestry methods, ever encroaching intensive agriculture,  changes in climate, and competition from other invasive species  are having profound and irreversible effects. I know not everyone will be thinking about ecological loss when viewing Eileen’s work but I can’t help relate how forests have always been the ‘shadow of civilization’; how we treat and relate to our forests tells us much about the state of our so called civilization. Interestingly, the cathedral project highlights another important aspect of forests: Forests are not just trees but a complex web of relationships and Eileen’s forest similarly grew from a complex web of community interactions of people working together in the local area (see the Vision of Persistence clip below which shows many of the local volunteers involved).

Eileen’s new Ogham Stones are reminders too. In ancient Ireland, stone pillars around the country were marked with carved, indented lines on the edges to describe the species of trees in the surrounding and then much forested regions of Ireland. In the  stone cleave markings in Eileen’s work process, I see references here to trees too. (In my previous article about forests and Joseph Beuys I commented on Beuys marking his community tree planting with stone pillars too).

I am only referring to some of the works in this large exhibition; along with the 8 m forest in which you can walk through, there are over 50 tonnes of stoneworks on display. LITHOsphere opens today and continues for 3 months at VISUAL, the centre for contemporary art in Carlow. Please also see the Visual site for talks by Eileen over the coming months, I know the first talk on 19 Feb 2012 will be a talk and walk around all the pieces in the gallery and the work that went into making them. There are details of the second talk about ‘Sculpture in the Landscape’ also at VISUAL on 24 March at 3pm, both talks are €5.

A shot I took at twilight when Cathedral was being installed; installation by Eileen MacDonagh, 2012

Here are the links to some of the film clips that I created for Eileen’s work, they show the wonderful community work behind the development, creation and installation of Eileen’s Cathedral.

Internationally, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) still classifies clearfell (clearcut) monocrop plantation sites, like the one above pictured, as a ‘forest’

‘I thought again of our fundamental inversion of all relatedness, of how we nearly always ask the wrong question -What can I get from this?–and so rarely the right one–What can I give back? Even when we try to learn from others, it is from the same spirit of acquisition: What can I learn from this forest ecosystem that will teach me how to manage if for maximum resource extraction? Rarely: What can I learn from this forest community that will teach me better how to serve it?‘

Derrick Jensen, A Language Older than Words, 2000, p. 319

Last December on the 30th celebration of the Irish Green Party and in the last few weeks of the UN International Year of the Forest, I presented on behalf of the forestry policy group, a comprehensive new sustainable forestry policy for Ireland. It was accepted that day!!! The policy development had taken several years with the input and hard work of a small number of committed members. It had involved wide consultation with forest and other environment/ natural heritage groups, professional foresters and policy makers from here and overseas.

My own personal involvement in policy development was propelled for a number of reasons: over several years my partner and I, with the help of a local sustainable forester, have been transforming our very small 25 year old conifer plantation into a permanent (non clear-fell) forest using Close-to-Nature continuous cover sustainable forestry methods. This is because I have a strong belief that we need to create radical new ways of relating to our natural environments, if we and those environments that support us all are to thrive in the long-term. I have spent considerable time too on a long term art & ecology project of which my forest is central to my work.

I also wanted to help introduce policy that would finally address the appalling irresponsibility of current Irish policy that ignores the devastation that we inflict on other human and natural communities when we continue to allow the importation of timbers and wood products from countries where unsustainable logging, often still from old growth forests, are occurring. As hidden behind the everyday headlines of economic collapse we are now living in an unprecedented age referred to as the age of the 6th great extinction. This Anthropocene age is where our own species actions alone are dramatically altering the very fabric of our finite biosphere. Around the world, the degradation of natural environments, the way we interact with our supporting land bases, has and continues to lead to unprecedented species, habitat and much cultural loss. This age of extinction, where we are losing 200 species every day,  mirrors the ecocidal growth-at-all-costs politics of our hyper-consumerist industrialised societies, the now globalised dominant cultural model that fails, in a mixture of blind ignorance and short-term profiteering, to understand the limitations and sensitivity of environments that supports all life. For example, short-term returns obscure the fact that clear-fell forestry that relies on serial plantings of monocrops, will lead, in 4 or 5 rotations, to severe soil degradation and ever reducing timber volumes. Such practices also limit and disrupt other species and dull the social and cultural values of our forests in the meantime.

On a global scale, we know our forested areas are critical in regulating our climate and storing carbon and are the most important habitat for most terrestrial species, but do we relate that every effort should be to grow more now, to sustain and create more resilient and diverse  (uneven aged and mixed species) permanent forests? Diverse forests, for instance, will be crucial to counter the effects of changing climate with its increased likelihood of tree disease. On a national scale and when other fuel costs are set to keep rising, local fuel independence provided by well managed, selectively harvested permanent forests must be part of the equation to support local economies and communities fuel requirements not to mention improving local  biodiversity. I now also understand why leading sustainable European foresters see such potential in transforming much of Ireland’s pioneer conifer plantations to permanent forests. I’ve long known we have the best tree growing conditions in Europe but I can now see that we have too long focussed solely on short-term economic returns of forest plantations forgetting the intrinsic ecological and cultural wealth that our ancient biodiverse Irish Forests once provided. In some small measure I hope ideas in the new Irish Green Party forestry policy will help enable a new expanded vision of permanent forests potential to circulate more widely in Ireland and elsewhere.

New Zealand old growth forest, South Island, photo Cathy Fitzgerald 2003

I am very fortunate that my thinking and practical knowledge about forests has come from both long associations with leading people from Crann (an Irish forest group), ProSilva Ireland and ProSilva Europe (sustainable forestry organisations) and from living within a small forest. In recent years on study tours I have experienced the vibrant mixed species, permanent forests in Hungary, Slovenia, Austria and the Netherlands that are managed carefully for ecological, cultural, as well as economic benefits. Fifteen years ago, when I first came to Ireland from New Zealand, I worked on a Crann Leitrim project and witnessed the largest Forest Service supported county-wide planting of broadleaf woodlands amongst local farmers and those interested in doing something different with their land. My friendships with leading forest practitioners from then continues to this day and some years ago I had the good fortune to go back to Leitrim to make a small film of the ‘local project’ as it had been called, where I interviewed the new woodland owners and the vibrant mixed woodlands that I had seen planted not many years before. Such projects were so important in practically illustrating the need for new policy then. We have come a long way in that broadleaf tree planting and increased afforestation are now well supported but we still have so much to learn that planting any species as crops is shortsighted and will never lead to longterm wealth or real forests.

Cathy Fitzgerald and her dog Holly in their small Hollywood forest Co. Carlow, Ireland 2010

On the practical side, my own observations of the small forest in which we live has been invaluable. Our tiny, 21/2 acre forest-in-the-making, comprising of 25 year old conifers undergoing periodic selective harvesting, now supplies us with over 70 tonnes of firewood every three years!  We have had to start selling firewood to our neighbours to cope with our clever, fast growing forest.  And as the integrity of our small forest remains intact, since we do not clear-fell, we have more and different birds every year and incredible range of fungi too. More valuable ash and some oak trees are self generating and growing quickly in the shelter of our large conifers (they’ll grow quicker and straighter in such company without us having to waste energy to prune them too). So from my window I can see our small acreage is a more vibrant community where the real wealth is embedded and accumulating in the diversifying, aging forest! Such forestry does require a long-term, slower mindset. Its one that attempts to respect all aspects of what makes a forest (which is very complex and dynamic when you think of it) and with it, thinking of new ways of relating to its living inhabitants so all thrive and survive. Its a type of slow-forest, interdependent management where one seeks to carefully observe and understand rather than quickly exploit and move on. So thinking and working in forests has for me been an important means to think about some very real aspects of deep sustainability in the wider context too. Where deep sustainability refers not only implementing measures for our own benefit but measures that ensure all aspects of a forest thrive. By the way, our small 2 1/2 acre site is now listed with a growing number of other sites around the country on the new Coford research database of forests undergoing transformation, or as they refer to it, being managed by implementing low impact silvaculture systems (LISS).

From a completely different view, as an artist I have long being fascinated and in turns equally concerned by what has created contemporary culture’s short-sighted ecocidal perspective. I have been influenced and inspired by artists and writers before me.  However I am often shocked and at a loss how too few artists today examine our relation to the living world in any depth. Perhaps my previous working background in the biological sciences means I have always been drawn to and feel more able to engage with ideas and concerns about our increasingly growing ecological crises. I have of course always been drawn to artists that have related to forests too.

I suspect that many members of the Green Party and the public in general would be unaware that some of the early formative material for the first Green Party in Germany evolved from ideas from the leading 20th century German artist, Joseph Beuys. Beuys was a  founding member of the first Green party and later unsuccessfully stood as a Green Party candidate for the European Parliament. A highly charismatic, self-professed shaman-like figure, Beuys was an outspoken artist attracting considerable media attention for his ideas about the central and essential role of art in society. He considered all members of society active agents in shaping society (he’s widely known for his claim that ‘everyone is an artist‘ and also that truly healthy societies support and understand that ‘art = capital’).  Beuys also had a deep understanding that a healthy environment is a necessity for healthy societies.  As an arts professor he had controversial ideas that the arts must be freely available to all, opening his classes to un-enrolled students. Although very popular with students and other artists such controversial ideas eventually lead to his dismissal as Professor from the Dusseldorf Arts Academy.  Though his political ideas about society, education and the environment were instrumental to the newly forming Green Party, his involvement in politics was not to last either, as he was frustrated by the slow democratic process of the new party and in hindsight, his own eccentric character seemed ill suited to connect with the general public. Even so, he carved a considerable public profile for his works and ideas, and to this day he is highly regarded in bringing art out of institutions and galleries to create projects that combined community actions, what he termed ‘social sculpture’, to address eco-societal concerns in the wider public domain.

While it is difficult to condense Beuys’ work into a short article, his final large scale project, 7000 oaks for the International Documenta Arts Exhibition in Kassel (1982) city left a lasting legacy for the German city and contemporary art. Creating a huge mound of 4 ft high basalt stone pillars outside the entrance of Documenta, he stipulated that each of the 7000 stone pillars could only be moved to be placed alongside a planted oak, both of which were to be put in the environs of Kassel city. After considerable city-wide debate, communities and individuals working with local government and other community institutions carried out his forced urban tree planting project over 5 years. Though initially greeted with much skepticism this new type of community art project eventually gathered wide and popular support and has been replicated in other cities. Beuys instinctive understanding of relational community art practice has also been immensely important to contemporary art.

Beuys’ idea of the oak each being planted along with a stone pillar also presented an intriguing means to project this artistic endeavour well into the future; the pillars act as permanent markers of the townspeople actions to future generations, reminding them of the long-term thinking and environmental actions of its previous citizens. Such deeply symbolic practical actions encompassing long-term thinking for society is much needed now but not only in our cities. In fact Beuys sought to have this project replicated all over the world. An important legacy of Beuys work continues now through the Social Sculpture Unit in Oxford and last year when I visited I heard that over 80 art and forest projects from around the world were connecting with their University of Trees network project. Of course, when you think of it, we have our own standing stone reminders in Ireland. Our ancient Ogham alphabet carved on our standing stones all tellingly describe our then high regard for our native forest species, each letter corresponding to a native tree or shrub. It might be that Beuys had remembered this as he a deep interest in celtic Ireland too.

A Slovenian permanent forest - where clearfelling (clearcutting) has not been performed for 64 years!

Postscript: when I started writing this article a week ago I received a short Skype message from a leading sustainable close-to-nature forester in Tasmania. He had discovered and enjoyed looking at my short, birdsong narrated film I had created about our forest practices, called Transformation but noticed an error under a photograph I took of fabulous permanent forests in Slovenia where I had noted that clearfelling in Slovenia has been illegal these past 25 years. He wrote, ‘Just noticed the comment under the photo from Slovenia. Clearfelling in Slovenia was ended in 1948! That is 64 years of changed thinking and planning and operating”

… I hope we too reach such longterm forestry practice in the very near future both here and Ireland and beyond.

Further Reading

Strangely like war: the global assault on forests by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan (2005), see also A language Older than Words, Derrick Jensen (2000)

Forests: the shadow of civilisation by Robert Pogue Harrison, 1992.

Beuysian Legacies in Ireland and Beyond: Art, Culture and Politics by Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes and Victoria Walters, European Studies in Culture and Policy, Lit Verlag, 2011

Note: This article was first published on HerCircleEzine.com on 20.1.12 and on my www.ecoartfilm.com site too.

In 2009, I attended the inaugural international conference of Culture|Futures, that brought many cultural practitioners and cultural organisations  from around the world who are involved in highlighting the role the arts will have in helping humanity envision moving to an ecological age.  It was held alongside the 2009 United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, and I had the good fortune to meet two of the editors and contributors of this new publication Culture and Climate Change: recordings (2011). The editors of this new small blue book have drawn together their own observations and hosted a series of public seminars and invited contributions from other leading commentators, building a substantial critical framework for the area:

‘It has been fascinating to watch the subject develop, but we also shared feelings of frustration. We’ve noted some confusion about how to ‘place’ the (cultural) work and about how it relates to science, policy, and the creative arts. We’ve sometimes found ourselves taking part in unproductive debates about whether particular responses to climate change should be defined as communication, activism or artistic experiment. And yet, looking beyond labels, we were aware that there was already a rich history of cultural response to changing physical environments, and that contemporary work might connect  to that tradition in many different ways’ Culture and Climate Change: recordings (2011) p. 7-8

This week, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17) and Culture|Futures meet again in Durban, South Africa so this publication is a timely and thought-provoking series of in-depth discussions to encourage critical awareness of the value of cultural responses to our much changed biosphere.

‘These discussions consider how humanity is making sense of an extraordinary new body of knowledge. Knowledge of climate change raises huge philosophical and cultural questions about who and what counts—now and in the future. We want these recordings to help artists, writers, filmmakers and others to understand the context in which they are working and to place their own work in relation to that of others.‘ Joe Smith, Senior Lecturer at the Open University

For newcomers to this area, the new Culture and Climate Change: recordings book and down-loadable pdf draw from the excellent podcast series of the seminars held in late 2010. The podcasts are available on ITunes U here.  The new book, however, has additional essays, collated resources and a ‘Timeline’ of ‘cultural climate’ works over the centuries. This ‘Timeline’, beginning in 12th century, seeks to acknowledge that significant cultural works and projects have always appeared that have reflected or responded to our earth’s changes and which have also contributed meaningfully to wider society’s understanding of its environment. Looking back at such cultural works also helps reveal the changing relationships or limited perspectives we have had to our environments too; they often highlight humanity’s naive and incomplete understanding of the earth’s limits and its interconnected and fragile complexity. On the ‘Timeline’ for 2011, I see listed Herzog’s recent film, ‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’ , an absorbing documentary that looked at cave paintings created 30,000 years ago of animals that roamed across southern Europe.  To those that have seen the film, the cave paintings show how early man presented a remarkable glimpse of large numbers of wildlife in Europe unaffected by our species, a rich biodiversity that in our almost exhausted industralised world seems hard to imagine.

The Culture and Climate Change: recordings were organised by the UK Open University Open Space Research Centre and supported by the UK Ashden Trust  which has a leading Internet resource site for performance and the environment. The recorded discussions brought together artists, writers, film-makers, scientists, academics and journalists with a comedian, a choreographer, a campaigner, an entrepreneur, and an architect. The discussions, each in front of a live audience, were chaired by Quentin Cooper, presenter of BBC Radio 4′s ‘Material World’ programme.

These were four areas covered in the Seminars:

A History : What is the history of cultural responses to climate change?

Publics: Culture, Democracy and Climate Change:  How has popular culture approached climate change?

Anatomy: An Anatomy of Cultural Responses to Climate Change: How do we analyse and categorise the responses of artists?

Futures: Climate Change, Culture and Time:  How do cultural contributions shape our thinking about the future?

In the additional essays in the book version, there are convincing arguments, many echoed in the growing international Culture|Futures programme (again bringing key cultural practitioners and cultural policymakers together again in Durban), that put forward that the arts have a significant role, often overlooked in all the political negotiations, the workings of science and in much of contemporary arts practice itself, of offering a mental ‘openness’, a crucial means to help wider society engage and imagine possible new futures. Renata Tyszczuk, in writing one of the key essays in the Culture and Climate Change: recordings – a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Sheffield, calls for much more improvised creative thinking. She argues that ‘climate change opens up compelling new questions and invites ambitious and imaginative approaches to rethinking the world’—a call to those in the arts to engage and envision new possibilities ‘for living on a fragile—and for humans— dynamic earth’.

note: I first published this post on HerCircleEzine here

Museum of Nature, 2004 by photographer Ilkka Halso

This is my 100th post on my art & ecology notebook site – amazing! I’m as shocked as probably you are and its made me realise that I have created quite an archive of the different means where arts and ecology intersect.

new ecoartfilm site

What started out in 2008 as a small personal notebook has grown - it initially was a place to put inspiring art & ecology projects and resources that I came across in one place and also a means to house the beginnings of my own long term art & ecology project. From a small rural location the site has allowed me to gather and make visible projects that often fall outside the mainstream agendas of many galleries and it has allowed my own practice to travel to many unexpected destinations.  For newer readers my artistic work is about creating small audiovisual works that touch on the small forest that surrounds our house that we are transforming from a monoculture conifer plantation into a permanent mixed species forest. Mostly my own work is about how we engage with ‘nature’ in general and its led me to pursue the idea of whether audiovisual video works can be used in a  more ecocentric way, if that is possible (if you are interested my  research on this topic can be found here).  My art & ecology site been quite an odd jumble of  things and early posts were a bit random, but my readership has steadily grown even though my posts can appear a bit infrequently. Thank you for all the comments along the way too – you have no idea how this small site has enabled my work to develop and connect with others!

new archive page

Anyway, to mark this blogging milestone I’ve spent a little bit of time and created an illustrated Archive page  and  a new dropdown Category section on the home page where you can easily see all the art

disciplines for instance that I have written about; from film to dance, to music to policy papers on culture and sustainability. You are more than welcome to share any of these posts along.

Some of you might also be aware that I wrote a research paper on networking the arts to save the earth earlier this year. It was a whopping 8,000 words, designed to reach out and comment on how cultural practitioners of all types could best use online social media networks. Social media is something I’ve worked with for several years in a past job where I helped develop a  large online arts community.  A lot of the paper was me trying to figure out the potential or not of social media, amongst all the hype and suddenness in which these

a new article

technologies have now appeared in our lives, and examine their value for art & ecology practitioners. The paper seemed to have struck a nerve – I expect it was probably the  fact that many working in this field are both isolated geographically but also isolated on the fringes of contemporary art practice.  A much shortened form of the article was printed in the Aug 2011 Irish Visual Arts Newsheet. It was then picked up by one of the editors as a feature article on the international

site HerCircleEzine.com -  an online site that for the last 6 years has been dedicated to women’s socially engaged practice. I was surprised and delighted -  to tell the truth the research paper had been turned down originally for an academic journal (not that I was too surprised about this as it was my first attempt) but of course, a paper on social media, should be circulating on social media not stuck in some academic journal. I’ve created a resource page of the many various art & ecology networks too – please feel free to tell me about other networks not listed. There’s more too, I’ve also been asked to write a regular column on the HerCircleEzine site about art & ecology and my research practice, starting in November which I must say is a bit daunting as if you examine the site you’ll see the articles written are of a very high standard. 

Hollywood - smallest close-to-nature forest in Ireland (pictured: Holly at the forest entrance)

You might have also noticed the blue forest image above – the Museum of Nature created by Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso. I found this image intriguing; its from a larger body of works by Ilkka called Restoration (2004). While I don’t like the idea of putting a forest in a cage I could identify with this artist’s interest with forests. I have also come across a  number of artists who describe their art & ecology works as ‘restoration’ environmental projects. It’s not a term I use for my own forest project; while restoration of sites is obviously important I think much more needs to be addressed. Undoubtedly we can learn much from restoring sites/habitats, but for me,  I think there is something more interesting in transformation; transforming the ideas and practices of how we relate to nature (a tricky area when one begins to examine it though) and hence, transforming how we behave on this one finite earth. You might be wondering why I’ve added this paragraph at the end of this post – I was saving the best for last . My tiny forest, nick-named ‘Hollywood’ has been getting some attention. ‘Hollywood’ is now listed on the new Irish database for forests that are being managed in a permanent way – its the smallest plantation undergoing ‘transformation’ to become a forest, in Ireland. We manage the forest following close-to-nature principles ( a low impact management system that follows nature’s own dynamics). As it is an ecological type of forest management it means that the forest is sustainable not only for our use (we get firewood, birdsong, oxygen, sanity etc from it) but as it will never be clear-felled; the overall biodiversity, soil fertility and carbon-sink values on the site will only ever increase.

Funny, how this writing about transformation has slipped into this post, as I often have a lot of difficulty in talking about my creative work – in fact, I think its much better presented by the forest itself (click on the image below if you can’t see the film).

If you have any comments, do write in!

transformation 2011

Related articles

• Can art and ecology networks save the earth?…… Online resources and links (ecoartnotebook.com)
• networking the arts to save the earth (ecoartfilm.com)

Image left: Bidon arme (Loaded Drum), 2004 Romuald Hazoume right: Treebike – image from the International freecard alliance for World Environment day, 5 June 2009

An exhibition that I stumbled upon accidentally a few months ago has stayed with me. On a visit to the Irish Museum of Modern in April 2011 I came across African artist Romuald Hazoume’s very thought provoking and surprisingly enjoyable installations of ‘masks’, sculptures, documentary film and photography work.

"Mon Général", 1992 by Hazoume

Romuald Hazoumè, one of Africa’s most important visual artists, creates playful sculptures and masks made from discarded plastic canisters commonly found in his native Benin (a small country neighbouring Nigeria)  for transporting black-market petrol (known as kpayo) from Nigeria. As can be seen in his image (above left) these jerry cans are expanded over flames to increase their fuel-carry capacity, sometimes to excess resulting in fatal explosions. Hazoume’s work richly references mask making culture from his African heritage to commenting on his country’s predicament of being caught up in the day-to-day and often unacknowledged misery of the global fossil fuel industry.  His work is engaging on very many levels and to a wide audience; from children who love the use of his found objects to adults that can see the political concerns in his work, to others who see a continuation of identity expressed in local materials made into masks.  ‘Hazoumé has used the cans as a potent metaphor for all forms of slavery, past and present, drawing parallels with the vessels’ role as crucial but faceless units within commercial systems, dangerously worked to breaking point before being discarded (Tate Modern, 2007)

From across this side of the planet my own work attempts to touch some of these concerns too. My long term project the hollywood diaries to transform our conifer plantation to a permanent forest has real long term energy returns as we are very shortly to discontinue use of oil for our home heating (a common and increasingly expensive form of domestic heating in Ireland) and use our never-ending supply of forest thinnings. In fact, I was startled to learn recently from my forestry contacts, that our ongoing selective harvesting to keep the forest vibrant and encourage the native tree seedlings to flourish, will mean that we’ll have 70 tonnes of wood every three to four years from our small two acres!! Crikey!

The image on the above right, Treebike, is a pointer to this month’s global day of cycling, Moving Planet lead by Bill McKibben and his global 350.org organisation to invite us all to get on our bikes this Sept 24th, 2011. I’ve always been amazed at the huge response to these events and how often the arts help mobilise such activities.

Here’s the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ztEgLXSiek – as in the past you can goto 350.org and join in the fun but its also a serious campaign too

‘Circle September 24 on your calendar–that’s the day for what we’re calling Moving Planet: a day to move beyond fossil fuels…

But we won’t just be cycling or marching–we’ll also be delivering a strong set of demands that can have real political impact.”

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Note: some of you might be aware that I have returned to art college to undertake in-depth research on experimental film and ecology in the last year – if you want to follow along, my research site is www.ecoartfilm.com

I’ve recently created a small film sketch on how our small conifer plantation  is being transformed, comments welcome!!

http://vimeo.com/27704065

Was just reading the following quote from a book The Care of Creation (2000) and thinking about this ecopoem entry into last weeks British Talent show that has gone viral on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyYizYZKFtU

”When the greatest beasts before whom our ancestors shrank in terror is in danger of extinction, when the very biodiversity of the planet seems to depend on the implementation of a political treaty, the only thing to be in awe of is the dizzying power of human culture…. our problem today… is that our awe has given way to an exploitative and managerial approach to nature.”

I loved Olivia’s courage to present her ‘passion, which she knows is out of fashion’ but I couldn’t help but feel though that many in audience while applauding this audacious poetic gesture fail to see the bigger crisis that extinction is pointing to, ie that extinction doesn’t only apply to snakes!(I saw the polar bear image above earlier this week and thought, yep, the polar bears have got it – a friend of mine has it as his avatar on Facebook )

Other contributors to Care of Creation printed back in 2000, from scientists to theologians state that ‘the ecocrisis is so serious that scientists and political solutions alone are unlikely to address it satisfactorily’… which some of us are beginning to realise. One of the contributors quotes an earlier writer, Hamilton in 1993, who argued, ‘it is not the ecologists, engineers, economists or earth scientists who will save spaceship earth, but the poets (even small ones), priests, artists and philosophers’.

Here’s another creative work which dovetails Olivia’s piece above, don’t you think.

we are all connected

Olivia gets where science often fails and where artistic performance excels…. ‘if I say their Latin names will you listen more?’

“Artistic work has become prey to anyone needing to decorate a wall, a building or for tourism. We don’t consider artwork to be a form of research…in schools, painting has become a nice distraction instead of a method of learning and to see what is” Cornelia Hesse-Honneger [Pictured: Harlequin bug near Three Mile Island, USA
The Scutellum is curved and its yellow ornament is asymmetrical. Watercolor, New Cumberland 1991]

Note: a warm welcome to readers in the US and Canada and beyond – I was delighted to hear that my posts from this site are now being syndicated by the US led Centre for Sustainable Practice of Arts – I’m now a ‘knowledge partner’ for them (gulp!) Thanks Ian Garrett and team there for such a great resource for us all.

The recent events in Japan have given us all much to think about. The tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami to Japan’s peoples and its lands is hard to contemplate and coming so soon after the New Zealand earthquake, in which some of my relatives endured, made it seem closer to me personally. If you haven’t done so already, please give what you can to the Red Cross.

While the devastation on Japan’s population and landscape will be a scar that will take a long time to heal and shouldn’t be overshadowed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear situation there, I was reminded of an artist’s painstaking work over many decades making visible the effects of low level radiation on our natural world. I had the great pleasure to invite leading Swiss art and ecology artist, Cornelia Hesse-Honneger over to Ireland for a Carlow Visualise exhibition and workshop in 2005. It was my first time as a curator but Cornelia was very generous and helped us to arrange many of her key original works to our small museum space in a rural town in Ireland, Carlow [Visualise was a series of exhibitions that led up to new International Visual Arts Centre in Carlow].

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s work offers a startling and thought–provoking vision of the effects of low level radiation emitted by nuclear power plants. Her first paintings caused a sensation in Europe, not long after Chernobyl, where her work appeared to strongly indicate widespread evidence of deformations in insects in areas that scientists had claimed were not affected by nuclear fallout. Cornelia’s work came to international attention in the late 1980s when her artworks indicated that low level radiation, from the fallout of the Chernobyl disaster but also from the normal workings of nuclear power plants, contrary to nuclear scientists’ views, was and continues to have an effect on the environment. Her work is at once beautiful and unsettling – the image above of an insect, painted in a scientifically and painstakingly accurate manner over 6 weeks, displays abnormalities on its back that are associated with low level radiation.

Cornelia is in a unique position to highlight this issue as she was a highly respected and trained zoological illustrator of 25 years, who worked at visually recording laboratory-induced insect mutations, the type of mutations caused by low level radiation. Cornelia’s detailed watercolour artworks and supporting data, highlighted in a significant international career that spans the last two decades, has endeavoured to engage people and scientists to look again at the consequences of low level radiation that is continually escaping nuclear plants, let alone nuclear accidents. Her series of artworks are instantly intriguing, one can only marvel at the technical execution of her watercolours, skills that are rarely seen in contemporary art practice. Combined with her subject matter and her on-going research into the effects of low-level radiation on flora and fauna that makes this work highly compelling.

Cornelia’s work is also interesting in that is combines both an artistic practice and ongoing scientific investigations. Of personal interest to her is the need to re-examine how artistic practice is often sidelined in favour of intellectual, rational endeavours. Of particular note is that in 2008 (see link here for my post from 2008), I received a copy of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s latest publication through the post from herself?  What she had sent was very significant publication in her long career art science ecology career. It was a reprint of a peer-reveiwed, published paper in a science Journal, the Journal of Chemistry and Biodiversity that adds a disturbing legitimacy about her work ‘Malformation of True Bug (Heteroptera): a Phenotype Field Study on the Possible Influence of Artificial Low-Level Radioactivity, Chemistry & Biodiversity:2008 Vol 5 (4) 499-539.

You can see more of Cornelia’s work here and for textile readers, Cornelia’s paintings have attracted much interest from the fashion industry which she particularly enjoys – there is a book about how her work entered the world of fashion design. (Note: I based some of my art thesis in 2000 on Cornelia’s work, Science and the Eclipse of the Earth, that was later republished in the Irish magazine CIRCA in 2001, you can read the full article here)

Cornelia’s artistic investigations have taken her to Sellafield, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as well as the nuclear plants in her native Switzerland and across Europe. Of particular interest to an Irish audiences is that some of the artworks that she composed during a stay are from the Sellafield area in 1989 (she collected insects while she was here in Ireland by the way… I don’t think she ever stops). And in a wider context, viewing Cornelia’s work raises questions against a debate that is rising again, that nuclear energy may be an answer to the imminent fuel crisis. The debate about nuclear energy is complex and has raised many questions. In the last few weeks and I found the following excellent articles by UK cultural/museum and education consultant Bridget MacKenzie, ’Agonising, Agonism and Nuclear Power’ and by Irish journalist John Gibbons Fukushima a godsend for anti-nuclear bandwagon.  John writes often about post carbon societies and climate change on his excellent thinkorswim.ie blog.

Just a final note, I read an interesting Guardian article by Jessica Lack yesterday, reviewing artists trying to engage with ideas re: the recent gulf oil accident ‘Can art help us understand environmental disaster?’ The article reviewed some recent contemporary artists work but what I found fascinating was the anger in many comments left under the article about how contemporary art trivialises tragedies. Have a look – for all involved in art and ecology, I think it showed that some contemporary art practices are often misunderstood, or seen as irrelevant, rightly or wrongly by the general public – is this a problem. What do you think?

We children have the goal to plant one million trees in each country of the world. Therefore we are planting trees by ourselves at home and we collect donations to plant trees in other countries. Each tree is a symbol for Climate Justice. 130 children have promised already to plant one million in their countries (pictured one of the child ambassadors for their Plant the Planet Trillion Tree  project with Mary Robinson, former UN Commissioner for Human Rights, now leading the Mary Robinson Climate Justice Foundation).

Today is the start of Ireland’s national Tree Week Mar 6-12, 2011. You can organise something in your community by downloading the poster here. National Tree Week in Ireland has always been a small enough affair  though hopefully this year being the UN designated International Year of the Forest more attention will be paid to forests vital role for our atmosphere, our waterways, biodiversity, local economies and livelihoods of so many of the world’s peoples.

For my own part I submitted a couple of my short films to the UN organised global Forest Film competition. ‘The UN Forest Film Festival is a key part of the UN’s 2011 outreach efforts, and will enable  to raise global awareness of the importance of forests, their relationship with people and the planet we share, and consequently, to inspire a sense of personal responsibility and stewardship for a greener, more equitable, sustainable future’. Films were submitted from around the world and the best, mostly big production blue-chip documentaries, were screened at the launch of this years International Year of the Forest launch at the UN Headquarters. A really great thing is there is now a PDF listing of all the forest films submitted and anyone in the world can see the list, contact the filmmakers and show the films in their own area. Celebrate the Year of the Forest by hosting an International Forest Film Festival in your neighborhood. For more information, email Leslie Goodyear, Leslie@jhfestival.org.

However, while some of these films were shown at the official launch of 2011 UN international Year of the Forest something special happened when 11 year old Felix and his friends stole the limelight with a passionate speech and ambitious project to get the world to plant a Trillion Trees this year!! While Yann Arthus-Bertrand‘s new 7 min narrated documentary showed beautifully composed helicopter shots of faraway forests aimed to engage viewers (including shots of NZ’s great non-deciduous beech forests) young Felix, with his pleas for us all to remember that he and his companions  will be living in the future of a largely and dangerously un-forested world, caught my attention more. I think the posters of his Plant the Planet -Trees for Climate Justice are great too- there is such a sense of urgency that action for forests needs to happen in much more rapid ways. All of Felix’s posters for example – show him and his fellow children putting their hands over leaders mouths, effectively showing that we should all stop talking and start planting. Felix also has a great social media campaign too engage global audiences http://www.plant-for-the-planet.org, check out his site, his social media links and forward to your friends this week!

See Felix’s speech here

If you can’t plant trees this week consider donating to Felix’s global effort here – its a great resource site that can inspire us all, particularly for schools. Also, spring is just around the corner and I’ve noticed that there is a great Irish State forest website listing each counties forests walks (with Google maps to download)  and new forest bicycle tracks. So get out and enjoy while remembering our forests importance for Felix’s generation. By the way, if you are interested in learning all about transforming conifer plantations into permament Close to Nature managed forests, ProSilva Ireland is having its first 2011 Forest Open Day  in Lismore Sat 16 April 2011, with visiting  Hungarian Close to Nature foresters, see details here

‘We, as many others, have been concerned about the world we live in and climate change ever since we started the Bliain Le Baisteach project over 10 years ago. In fact, most of our work has in some way been reflections and explorations of our relation to and understanding of nature, expressed as multimedia artwork and performances’, Softday (2010)

I’m really delighted to have this guest post from Margaret Mc Lauglin on another of the remarkable Lovely Weather Culture and Climate Change projects in Ireland (Softday’s video-sound piece was my favourite at the opening). Margaret completed a BA in Fine art (hons painting) in Galway-Mayo Institute of Techonology.  Margaret proceeded onto the National college of art and design, Co. Dublin where she is currently completing a masters in ‘Art in the contemporary world: theory pathway’.  She is passionate about the environmental and has written on this subject before  though never published.  Along with an interest in her surrounding environment, and painting, she is interested in participatory art.  Margaret has worked at the Regional Culture centre, Letterkenny in the participation room and currently volunteers at Exchange (now Fish bowl) in Templebar, Co. Dublin.  Margaret continues to paint whenever she can.  Her subject matter often deals with intersections to the land(fences etc) through use household/acrylic/oil paint on canvas/wood/paper.

It’s Saturday 16th October 2010 and I’m standing in Mooney’s boatyard , Killybegs, Co. Donegal for the first time, even though this is the area where I grew up.  It is a space where I feel that I’m not supposed to be entering but I’m here today to watch a sound performance by two artists; Sean Taylor who is an art-scientist and Mikael Fernstrom, a computer-scientist; a collaborative partnership called Softday. Today they are about to realize a project that they have been working on for several months.  The project entitled Marbh Chrios which in translation from Irish means Dead Zone. This was an Artist’s Residency that was part of the Donegal County Council’s Lovely Weather Art and Climate Change Public Art Programme (2009-10). This project was co-curated by the Regional Culture Centre’s John Cunningham and Leonardo’s Annick Bureaud.

The Softday artists were one of five artist/s taking part in Lovely Weather Art and Climate Change project.  Other artists include Peter d’Agostino (USA), Seema Goel (CAN), The League of Imaginary Scientists (USA) and Anthony Lyons (UK). Below is the a fantastic documentary of all the projects directed and edited by Maria Mulhall and produced by Jeremy Howard and the Regional Cultural Centre under the Sharing Stories Project (funded by the International Fund for Ireland).

Softday have been engaging with issues of climate change and its global effects for the past 10 years. They have worked on projects such as Blain Le Baisteach,  which translates as ‘a year of rainfall’ (2000) – a soundvision project focusing on the  fluctuating annual rainfall patterns in Ireland; Coisir an Tsionainn which translates as ‘The Shannon Suite’ (2003), focusing on the four-year life cycle of the wild Atlantic salmon and the following effects of over fishing and pollution on the species.  Next was their Nobody Leaves till the Daphnia sing (2009) which looked at the contamination of domestic drinking water in Galway and West Limerick.

But today I’m about to witness their newest project; Marbh Chrios: Dead Zone.  Dead Zones are areas on the sea bed with too little oxygen for most marine life to survive. The artists worked with Met Eireann, The Marine Institute of Ireland, Dr Brendan O’ Connor of Aqua Fact International, Dr. Robert Diaz and Dr. Rutger Rosenberg, who have conducted the most comprehensive scientific studies of marine Dead Zones in the world and have identified two contested Dead Zones in Killybegs Harbour and Donegal Bay.  Along with Softday’s performance came a pamphlet with dead zone information so I am now informed of the background of their research, the meaning of a Dead Zone, and the unfortunate fact that my local area has two dead zones!!  Softday described the Marbh Chrios Dead Zone work as  a computer-generated music composition, constructed using eight years of related marine data mapping two ‘contested’ marine dead zones in Killybegs Harbour and Donegal Bay. (A specially designed USB artefact in the shape of a fish containing a video and audio from the performance was recently launched in the Contemporary Music Centre’s new Platform for Performance space on 9 February 2011 and you can see an interview here ).

Proceeding the performance, the Softday artists had collated sound information which they later turned  into algorithms, visualisations and sonifications. These algorithms, visualisations and sonifications were then carefully put together.  A projection of digital images was set up to be played throughout the entire performance.  The Boatyard was set up for a community performance of Softday’s compostions and included the local :

• Youth Orchestra
• a Ceili Band
• and a Marching band that were later to appear (you can catch glimpses of the project in the video above)
• 

<p> As the space started filling up with eager spectators, an acoustic composition ‘Cuir glaoch ar Ghatar’ (distress call) was performed by the Softday artists to set the tone.  Onlookers were both apprehensive and excited. Viewers were ushered to one side paralleling the orchestra and the artists which were wearing white lab coats, which highlighted the crossover between art and science. They then performed their second composition called ‘primordial soup no. 1’.  Some of the locals were unsure what to make of the music, which was a mix of electronic sounds.  This was followed by the traditional band playing Bathu Phrioclais ‘Drowning at Bruckless’, followed by Vattuskrack ‘fear of drowning’, a composition by Softday.

At this point a door to the boatyard opens and St. Catherines marching band pound forward,  passing the spectators, performing to marine themed songs; Ta na Baid, Fisherman’s blues and  the Boys from Killybegs.  They stay in the position between the artists and spectators for the duration of these songs, and then proceed to march out the opposite exit.  The door closes and the deadly silence consumes the space once more.  The spectators assumed a somber mood.  The orchestra, which have been in our view the entire time, then began to sound softly and become more and more dominant until the duration of the song was complete.  Boatyard workers were harmonizing with the orchestra, through the use of the machinery in the boatyard. It’s mainly the sound of a saw that was resonating.  This was followed by Softday’s compilation, primordial soup no. 2. I look around the room, people start to mill out of the facing door.  The show is complete. Speeches are made and the artists and viewers go their separate ways.

After the show I wanted to know more about these dead zones and from talking to a few of the spectators they were equally intrigued.  I approached Mikeal Fernstrom, Softday artist, shortly after the show.  He described that ”Sean or I had been to Killybegs before when we started this project in October 2009.  We took the approach of explorers of an unknown land, and happily went about the place during several expeditions. It took some time to get the inside stories from people, but at this stage we have so much material that we could probably do a couple of more Marbh Chrios works! One of our main data sources was the M4 buoy, located approximately 45 nautical miles (83 km) west north-west of Rossan Point, Co. Donegal. We analysed 8 years of data from the M4, including hourly readings of air temperature, sea temperature, wind speed, gusts, wind direction, wave height, wave frequency and barometric air pressure – a total of 648,800 data points”.

Mikeal also sent me on some interesting observations while working on the Donegal project:“it seems to be impossible to buy really fresh, locally landed fish.  The stuff sold from the fish van“ (a merchant selling fish along the Killybegs pier) “is from Castletownbere! It seems that all fresh stuff is loaded up on foreign trucks at night and exported. He commented on the local music too.  “Everytime there’s something going on, Fish festival, Bank holiday, etc., the St. Catherines Marching Band plays, followed by a couple of local, very good, rock bands.”