Lines in the sand 2013: Nature First

It would be difficult to find anyone willing to argue that the preservation and care of the natural environment is not an issue of either some importance at the least, or of dire urgency, if we are to heed the warnings of climate change and all that goes with that - fossil fuel emissions, CFCs, deforestation. Yet how do we, in reality, prioritise nature? To argue for "nature first" is to suggest that we ought to think about putting the natural environment at the lead of all we do, that perhaps, even, we can live our lives through this prioritising. Yet many of us live in worlds that cushion us against a raw brush with unmediated nature. We are gadget crazy. There is a gap, perhaps, between what we spend our time with and what we would like to admit is important. We may, for example, spend between eight and twelve hours a day with gadgets, leaving very little time, between sleeping and working, to consort with the natural environment, to feel, really, a part of it, which takes time.

As an art and environment conversation, I would like to begin to address this question from the perspective of creative practices: How can creative practices be approached in a way that allows nature to lead OR recognises that nature must lead? A sub-question to this would be: How do we do this without being prescriptive? While it is always possible, desirable, for art to elicit a shift in consciousness - Mark Dion -  or an emotional turmoil - Louise Bourgeois or a reminder of a lost nerve - Berlinde de Bruyckere these affects are given in ways that are non-prescriptive. They invite us to look and feel, and then...something happens. As Gilles Deleuze has said, famously citing Paul Klee, art creates sensations, not representations. Sensations cannot be didactic but they can be more powerful than this: they can compel us to move. 

How to open up this place in creative practice, where nature's voice is loud and clear, has been a question that has confounded me, not without glimmers of insight, for a long time. For me it has been a question of how one can be in control without taking control, or how to allow the forces that drive creative activity, forces that are generated through the natural world, to rise up. How to avoid cliche. In some ways, this is not so much a question of the interface of nature and culture, but re-igniting the nature that is inherent to the impulse to create.

I would love to know your thoughts on this: How can nature be "first" in creative practices?

Mark Dion, Neukom Vivarium