In contrast to the "green tech" start-ups presenting at the Terraform 1 summer conference, a number of artists have come to give their perspective on the environmental crisis.
As an Art School graduate, I feel a certain affinity to this way of working. Further, there seems to be a general movement towards the theoretical stance that the only appropriate response to the ecological crisis is, in the words of Felix Guatari in The Three Ecologies, "an authentic political, social and cultural revolution, reshaping the production of both material and immaterial assets".
This point of view highlights the historical disjunction between art/design culture and environmental health. In Weak Work, Charles Waldheim writes, " Among the results of this disjunction of intellectual and practical commitments has been that we are collectively coerced into choosing between alternate urban paradigms, each espousing exclusive access to environmental health, social justice, or culture relevance."
How then do different artists navigate the current ecological zeitgeist within the realities of working as an artist in New York City, the capital of global finance, advertising, and marketing?
One of the first artists to present was Kim Holleman, who, in addition to an extended biography that emphasized her interdisciplinary background and interest in auto-construction, talked mostly about her project, "Trailer Park".
According to the artist, "Trailer Park" was conceived as a play on the term trailer park. The intervention itself is similarly playful and ironic, with the interior mimicking a traditional urban park aesthetic.
In her presentation, she extended her idea to the thousands of FEMA trailers made redundant due to off-gassing interiors.
According to her artist statement, Kim Holleman "blend[s] art, science, eco-systems engineering and architecture."
On one level, (that of "high design") "Trailer Park' is a clear failure. The ironic interior that is the crux of the project has the Post-Modern feel of Disney World and the suggestion of broadening the scheme to include derelict FEMA trailers is ill considered for obvious reasons.
Aesthetic and theoretical criticisms aside, you can't complain about someone retrofitting a trailer into a park. Unfortunately it seems like the price of working in the New York art/design world is opening yourself up to those criticisms, or as Waldheim says, forcing to choose between cultural relevancy, social justice, and environmental health. (When in fact all are inextricably linked)
Natalie Jeremijenko perhaps was more adroit at this sort of navigation, and it must be said the quality of her work is very high.
Although, when she struts in with her high-heeled nurses Halloween costume, you can't help wondering if being provocative cheapens or distracts from the issues at hand. She is successful in the New York Art World, but her work is clearly to that end.
Her "No Park", for example, is a great intervention that could be realistically applied to streets throughout New York. However, she contextualizes it as a snarky sort of guerrilla intervention for an art gallery. Maybe this is because otherwise it would become a boring, unsexy rainwater retainment swale?
Aesthetic and theoretical criticisms aside, you can't complain about someone retrofitting a trailer into a park. Unfortunately it seems like the price of working in the New York art/design world is opening yourself up to those criticisms, or as Waldheim says, forcing to choose between cultural relevancy, social justice, and environmental health. (When in fact all are inextricably linked)
Natalie Jeremijenko perhaps was more adroit at this sort of navigation, and it must be said the quality of her work is very high.
Her "No Park", for example, is a great intervention that could be realistically applied to streets throughout New York. However, she contextualizes it as a snarky sort of guerrilla intervention for an art gallery. Maybe this is because otherwise it would become a boring, unsexy rainwater retainment swale?
I asked her if she saw herself as a designer, attempting to come up with solutions for the environmental crisis, or more as a journalist who serves as a catalyst for change by bringing awareness to certain issues. She responded by saying that, as an artist, she is inherently dismissed or alienated, and therefore liberated to do things that others can't. I sympathize with this, and I think her work is some of the most relevant "art" I've seen in a while, but I'm still curious about her decision to choose a way of working that requires such a degree of pandering and spectacle... Basically, if the issue is environmental health why choose Manhattan, and not Detroit or New Orleans?
...will continue with this theme with Vito Acconci's departure from video art and the Waterpod Project's ejection of "embarrassing burning man people" from their biosphere-esque floating utopia...
