The question that runs through this conversation is: How do artists talk about the environment? This inquiry arose through a conversation with an environmentalist who was at pains to understand the point of art at all, beyond a decorative function. There is a clear dimension to the purpose of the sciences, likely, I would suggest, because purpose is at the heart of scientific rationalisation and it is therefore assumed that purpose drives all research and endeavour. In an ethos of binary logic, the rejection of purpose reads as purposelessness, so that if art cannot hold up under such scrutiny it is without purpose. In fact I would argue that to enlist in the service of purpose is to be heartily tied up with its opposite and that there are other ways of conceiving and engaging with the world that do not put purpose centre stage. I believe, now, that this is the reason I stumbled to respond to the environmentalist who had struck at the heart of my entire operational method: I live the world through art.
While that claim is rather awkward and not an entirely adequate assessment of things, it does bring together three words that do remarkable things when they come together: Live, world, art. The French philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy speaks about art as the creation of a world, and is one of many contemporary thinkers who question the role of representation, or what representation can be or mean, in language, art and other "meaning making" practices. Why mention representation? Because to talk about something is to represent it. My current interest in the relationship between art and environment is on a non-representational level. Is this even possible? Gestalt psychologists would say that even to look is to begin to make interpretations (which are representations). (This is why James Gibson, writing in the 60s and 70s is an interesting voice to resurface. More later).
Without going too far at this stage I propose that, to the question How do artists talk about the environment? my first response would be to deal with that word "about". In fact, let's just leave it out entirely and suggest a possibility of talking with the environment; a possibility of conversation, so that rather than standing back and analysing, interpreting or otherwise getting a grip on the world, I want to suggest a continuity between world and the beholding subject. Of course there is a long precedent to this notion from the early phenomenologists and more recently thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, but we really don't have to go there - unless we want to (and sometimes we do). But it is one thing to know this theoretically and another to feel it, to really sense this co-extension - the world and I unfolding, emerging together - and then to perform this act of becoming through art.
These are my first thoughts on this question, though they have been developing for a while now. I am intrigued to know how other artists would respond to this trigger. Perhaps we can do away with the question and just throw out some words without any grammar binding them at all: Art, environment, world, talk...HOW?
Hi Sharon, Thanks for posing an interesting question. One of the aspects of art which I love is it's ability to communicate, engage and respond to individual experiences, it's not set in concrete, it doesn't have to be proven. Art reflects, questions and observes the world around us...and most, if not all, of that is environment; not just the natural elements, but everything around us. Environment is not just nature, but maybe I'm getting off the topic.
ReplyDeleteArt speaks about environment through experience, art allows for each viewers individual experiences and response, no wrong or right. Art allows for the bringing together of many disparate ideas, sometimes it can join dots in intriguing ways, present fresh ideas or confirm deep held beliefs we have.
For me communication is at the heart of art, I don't think it's any less or more purposeful than science, simply another form of thinking.
If I may borrow a quote from Janet Laurence (Art and Australia, 48 No1. 2010) "I think it's important that viewers make their own journey and experience it as a space of reflection and interpretation. Art, if it engages, can linger in the mind the way that pure information can't.
As artists make work addressing environmental issues it finds a place in the culture. So while artists might not have the capacity to directly effect change, they can certainly contribute to the political sphere by reaching people in more inviting and imaginative ways than scientists or politicians can".
Thank you for your thoughts Nicola. I think the point about the way art "lingers in the mind" in a way that information can't is really very interesting and perhaps a clue as to how art is a special language. It is a language always in the making, meaning arising not through a semiotic system, but through the active process of sharing, and emerging with and within the world - all sorts of environments. As you point out, "environment" is everything around us. Definitely not off topic! Let's keep this conversation going.
DeleteI understand (phenomenologically if you like) your line 'I live the world through art' - I 'know' my world through my senses (all of 'em)
ReplyDeletebut to add to your words (and nicola's) - there are many ways of knowing - (as gardner's theory of multiple intelligences asserts) art is a form of knowledge (neither inferior nor superior to things like scientific inquiry) art is also a way of learning/understanding (again - not superior, not inferior... but different and complementary)....
on a separate note - I was recently reading 'what is art for' by ellen dissanayake - she asserts that art is about 'making special' .... and that the need to 'make special' is a fundamental biological drive amongst humans (from our earliest ancestors).... I think in that 'making special' we make sense and meaning of our world....
Hi Ronnie, thank you for your thoughts. I think your point about art as a way of knowing is so important. It is an observation that crosses paths with what I was trying to say about the premium placed on purpose: the understanding made through art is not necessarily mediated by an idea of an external rationale, but through an awakening of senses, and in ways that are sometimes unfamiliar, unexpected...
ReplyDeleteAs for your separate note: I am just so overwhelmed that you mention Ellen Dissanayake. This is a name I have been trying to recall all year. I read some of her work - anthropology, art etc. - several years ago and wanted to locate it again, but could not remember the name. So, Thank you! This idea about making special is something I remember reading and it also struck me as an interesting observation, a complex idea put in very clear terms.
Hi, really interesting comments and discussions, and I would like to wade in as someone who has worked both as a scientist-briefly- and as an artist. I hope I am not going too far back in the topic Sharon if I return to your comment about purpose not being put centre stage in art. That wonderfully spatial representation of yours (Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Purpose!) made me ask the question: where is 'purpose' located when we make or view art - because I have no doubt it is there, even if dressed in several disguises, or nothing would ever get completed, or exhibited.
ReplyDeleteBut purpose for the artwork itself? 'Making special' or 'making focus' for further engagement seems a good description. Clearly the purpose in showing an artwork to the public is much more like that of setting out to have a good and rich conversation, allowing those other participants to take part as fully as they can or decide to. In that sense, a viewer needs purpose, to acknowledge the work as art and to engage with it. Not so for science, where maybe it doesn't matter whether non-scientific participants have purpose or not at the level of a scientific discovery.
And the making process for many artists-there being so many different ways to make art-is clearly associated with a strong purpose to see/be part of/respond to/know/understand/re-view the world in ways that complement rather than replicate or compete with a scientist's purposeful stride towards scientific truth or scientific fact. For speed, brevity or misunderstanding, some people may be tempted to leave out the qualifying word 'scientific' before truth and fact, but that would not be consistent with best scientific practice.
Can it be that part of the value of artistic practice is that 'purpose' is a significant player, but in a communal and social way that has more to do with how we actually live? I think certainly to do with how we can get along with and consider others, not forgetting our environment...
These elaborations on the notion of purpose are central to the discussion. Could we say that there are some "things' that are manufactured for a purpose that exists before the "object", and some things that emerge with their purpose? Purpose is revealed as the artwork enters the social sphere, and is repurposed as it is beheld anew and as it inhabits different spaces.
ReplyDeleteI am interested in what James Gibson had to offer regarding an ecological basis to perception, in which inhabitants and environment can be characterised as distinct, but at the same time, neither one can be fully understood without the other. He wrote about "affordances" in that the million and one features on the environment "afford" particular uses to those that inhabit it and purpose comes at the intersection of, say, bird and tree, or human and chair. Outside this interaction, purpose dissipates, or is resurrected for the termite or, indeed, the wood chopper. Apparently the African violet on feeling the vibrations of the bee's wings, responds by opening up to offer her pollen. I think this is a superb example of mutual affordances, and of the "counterpoint" that Von Uexhill speaks of as operating in natural systems, coming close to finding rhythm, central to so much cultural practice, as pulsing through nature. I think that when a work of art becomes detached from the maker - by becoming art - it is then a part of the environment, that we can enter and interact with.
So, yes, Curator, I think you are spot on: purpose in art communal and social...
James Gibson's idea of 'affordances' where interactions, depending on context and need, take place is interesting, and it leaves open the possibility of interactions happening in inventive and new ways. The mis-use, mistakes, misapprehensions and failures of affordances as interactions sounds negative but sometimes surely allow the development of new behaviour or qualities; new and different behaviours & qualities, not necessarily 'good'.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking of artworks as, at their best, affording the kind of interactions with viewers that hands the question of art's purpose (distinct from its content or meaning)to them, to re-purpose if they can. Art shares purpose or intention around as a matter of course. Artworks are always dependent on context, on environment. Artworks provoke or focus thought and so help in understanding how to live with the world.
Science - back to that difference because recently I too have had a couple of scientists asking me what the purpose of art is, Sharon - helps us to live longer, more comfortably, healthier, (although the long term results of science's products are not always desirable) but art, it seems to me, helps us to understand why we are bothering to apply the scientific products and findings to our lives.
I love the idea about mis-use, mistakes, misapprehensions and failures as having a productive dimension, allowing the possibility for the environment and subject to emerge in new and challenging ways. And, yes, these kinds of affordances are central to encounters with art. To move within the environment with a fixed notion of its layout and affordances, is to move in a country of representations. In the way that a map fixes terrain into a series of roads and ways, borders and boundaries, features, landmarks and neutral ground, always already there, is to offer the land as a single representation. The land almost comes "after" the map. In this conception, it is easy to imagine that the only consequence of altering the land is to alter the map. But in the active, living landscape, constantly emerging through affordances and cultural enactment, there is much more at stake. Here is a meeting point for science and art. But I think, Curator, that you have summed up the differences between science and art in a very convincing way. I would add, while the one looks for an end purpose and an original impetus, the other enacts a synchronic purposefulness.
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer: The thoughts expressed in this post are the product of both long reflection and stream of consciousness mapping, and open to tangents and changes.
Making special, what a lovely idea, thanks Ronnie. I've been pondering the 'How' of this conversation and it keeps coming back to feelings for me. The way I talk about environment is by expressing how it makes me feel. It begins in the environment with conscious awareness, engaging all my senses (Couldn't agree with you more on this one Ronnie)being in the moment, without articulate thinking but completely feeling. When I talk about environment in conversation or in art it is these feelings and senses that are evoked, drawn upon and for me, cherished. I feel completely alive in the moments of full immersion in environment. Perhaps the how reflects on intangibles.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts too Curator, at first when I read your comments on science - helping to live longer, more comfortably, healthier; I at first thought this reference was to art. I made this connection because health is an area where art is now often integrated. Hospitals and health facilities are seeing benefits in providing comforting surrounds for patients (in a physical sense) and through activities (mental well being).
Thanks Nicola for your wonderfully evocative description of losing yourself in completely feeling your environment, which may be the kind of connectedness that is needed to provoke changed behaviour in ecological terms (and an example of the 'beyond representation' Sharon referred to in the beginning of this post?). A 'how' question then in a larger sense is how your sense of connectedness is passed on for viewers to find their own sense of connectedness via your artworks. That of course may or may not be your focus, but it seems that 'feeling connected' is an important step in getting people to care about the environment, and so if art does/can make this contribution, it would be great to have some insight into how that happens. I'm not suggesting it would be an easy or neat explanation... and perhaps this is related to the health benefits of art, which were first explored I think by artists such as de Maistre and others in Australia in the 1920s after the first world war. The fact that art as effective therapy is still not completely mainstream practice almost a hundred years later may be a measure of the difficulty of explaining or 'proving' the benefits of art to those who understand it only as decoration rather than as a deeply fundamental drive to being human. (thanks for that from Ellen Dissanyake, Ronnie.)
ReplyDeleteI do believe that artists work more thoughtfully and fluidly across apparently separate areas of knowledge than people in many other fields do. But it is difficult to explain clearly what-and how-that happens, when asked. And does art provoke and expand that same sense of fluidity in those who engage with it as well as those who make it? I'd like to think so, because that seems to be important for how we live.
Your disclaimer Sharon is timely, and reminds me to say that I am in the process of thinking these issues through as I write, so please excuse possible irrelevances and muddle along with inevitable tangents and changes.
Your example of the map is a good one, and does make clear how important alternative or creative ways of using and making maps are. I think we must perceive all things through frames of some sort, even if our senses are the frames.
And right on cue when I was writing about the possibility of making nonsense, the statement above SHOULD read: "so please excuse possible irrelevances and (my) muddle; along with my inevitable tangents and changes." Sorry about sounding as if I was suggesting that you muddle along - though mud is such a maligned thing!
DeleteNicola, I also love the way you express your experience of the environment through all senses, feeling and being completely alive. When you create, would you call it a response, an interpretation, an interaction...? I ask because I think there is a very interesting place where pure sensation meets reflection, but before reflection becomes fixed in interpretation. Does that make sense? I think the question of the viewers is an interesting one, because no matter how incisevely we as artists find a way of entering into the environment and engaging with it rather than drawing from it etc. the viewer will still, most often be standing back and seeing the work at a kind of distance. I find this bothersome. I can understand why installation practice, art within the environment, and performance and performative approaches are so relevant because they invite a different sort of viewing. Having said that, I still think there is a place for profound contemplation within galleries, although in larger institutions, there are possibly too many stake holders to suggest that creating a place for the sacred could form part of their charter.
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