Catalyst: Art, Sustainably and Place in the work of Wolfgang WeilederIntroductionProfessor Simon Guy

; Architecture/Nature as CONCERNS

As sustainability enters the mainstream, becoming the accepted goal if not always the practice of governments and architects alike, it seems to be slipping through our fingers. No longer an alternative route out in the cold, green architecture is, as a result, ever more elusive and difficult to define (Castle 2001)

John Dewey… “Art is not the same as the art-object”.

“The great appeal of pragmatist aesthetics for anyoneinterested in architecture, is that it takes everyday experienceas the basis from which to extrapolate…most often what we

need from a building is for it to give an appropriate frame and support for our everyday habits”.

Andrew Ballantyne, Architecture Theory, 2004, p.33

“Instead of seeing progress as a matter of getting closer to something specifiable in advance, we see it as a matter of solving more (local) problems one at a time”.

Richard Rorty Achieving our Country, 1998, p. 28..

Pragmatic Aesthetics

fallibalism, a commitment to the continual review and revision of projects.

As Hickman explains, Dewey thought that the

“history of human progress is a history of men and women coming together to form communities of discussion, inquiry, and activity and then constructing new tools: new ideas and new habits of action that are based upon careful experimentation.”

(Hickman 2001: 52).

“Regime of Explorative Engagement” – Laurent Thevenot.

CIties as experimental projects

I have a political opinion and I’m a political artist. . . I do not

explicitly say that, but I hope that my work will shape things or that

I can influence the world and make it a better place through my

work.

Wolfgang Weileder, June 2011

demolition serieslambda prints, diasecvarious sizessince 2009

“Transfer invites us to engage with a view of architecture as a flow of practices both of construction and consumption. This opens up a space for a different conversation about architecture in which design and development is a process of building networks and enrolling actors, agencies, technologies, materials, legislation, etc. to collectively produce a stable material artefact” (Guy 2006: 65)

STILT HOUSE Singapore 2011TEAM EUROPE

Professor Wolfgang Weileder The University of NewcastleProfessor Simon Guy The University of Manchester

Dr. Oliver Heidrich The University of Newcastle

1930s

Current day

Aquadyne: drainage panels that are manufactured from mixed waste plastics (22cm x 35cm x100cm). 

The total amount of recycled plastic waste used in the installation is 850kg. That is the equivalent of 28,220 plastic bottles.

Saves approximate 2 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (compared with landfill)and about 1.5 tonnes (compared with incineration)

Shipping 1 tonne (2000 Pounds of material 7000miles is creating 0.26tonnes of CO2 Plus 0.05 CO2 for trucking it within the UK (300 miles)

Stilt House hub to hub, ArchiFestSingaporeAquadyne, system scaffolding2012

– How far can a temporary public artwork physically manifest debates about sustainability between diverse stakeholders and can it act as a catalyst for further dialogue?

– In what new ways can public artwork animate community involvement in advancing or exploring sustainability issues?

– What is the range of environmental concerns mobilised in the debates around art and sustainability, and why?

– What is the potential legacy and impact of temporary artistic interventions?

Partners:

The Jetty-Project Team:

Funded by:

Dunston Staiths, c. 1970

Example image

Image courtesy of Tom Yellowly, Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust

“And if you think of Brick, for instance,

and you say to Brick: “ What do you want Brick?”

And Brick says to you

“I like an Arch.”

And if you say to Brick

“Look, arches are expensive,

and I can use a concrete lintel over you.

What do you think of that Brick?”

Brick says:

“… I like an Arch” Louis Kahn, Conversation with Brick, 1971

Respecting Materials

Drawn by Graham Bowden, University of Manchester

Mapping Sustainable Art

Legacy

Neighbourhoods Public

Art

Materials

RBAU

Golden Plover

Saltmarsh Gardens

Reclaimed TimberClean Tyne

Gateshead Council

GVOC

TWBPT

RednileAmber Films

Arts Council England

English Heritage

Big Local

Clasper Village

Gateshead College

Test Dept/ AV FestivalStaiths South

Bank Northern Architecture

Dunston Staiths

Newcastle College

Lay4er

Engineers

Dunston & Teams

HLF

Mawson KerrEcology

Scaffolding

Made using Gephi: gephi.com

Made using Gephi: gephi.com

What could the Staiths be? Have your say…

You can’t miss the Dunston Coal Staithes. Iconic, massive and in need of tender loving care.The Tyne & Wear Building Preservation Trust has secured nearly £1 million worth of funding to bring it back as a visitor attraction. But exactly what should that be?

Let your imagination run wild and post your ideas in the comments

Book Contents

Foreword Tim Ingold

Prologue Simon Guy

PART 1: PROPOSITION

Placing Jetty Simon Guy and Angela Connelly

Reflections on the Jetty Project Wolfgang Weileder & Simon Guy

Mapping Sustainability Concerns Simon Guy and Angela Connelly

PART 2: DISRUPTION

Producing a Public Artwork Edward Wainwright

Experiencing Anew Simon Guy & Angela Connelly

Location: The Art of Making Place Marianne Wilde

PART 3: RECLAMATION

Icon of a De-industrialised Site Malcolm Miles

An Open Work Ludovica Niero

Recuperation Michael Tawa

Coda Simon Guy

The cosmopolitical proposal

(…) requires no other verification than the way in which it is able to ‘slow down’ reasoning and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilizing us.

Isabelle Stengers, ‘The Cosmopolitical Proposal,’ in: Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Eds), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge [MA], 2005, p. 994

The Cosmopolitical Artist?

Weileder considers himself to be a political artist. More precisely, he exemplifies what, following Isabelle Stengers, we might term a cosmopolitical artist; the added prefix refers to ‘the unknown constituted by these multiple divergent worlds and to the articulation of which they could eventually be capable’

Translation

• The jetty project highlighted how the energy of coal transformed the massive mobilities of industrialisation,which translated into massive planetary mobilities of micro particles and CO2, now translating forms of ecological engagement into political momentum.

• Jetty also allowed translations between social theory and research, art, anthropology, history, art, different perspectives like the sustainability paradigms we mapped, communities and academics, past, present futures

Momentum -

• Jetty draw out how many people and actors have worked tirelessly making the jetty project possible, not in a concerted teleological project but as an emergent coalescence of shared interests.

• The multiple dimensions of that gathering - from the aesthetic attractor qualities of the structure itself and the cone, gap, bridge to the practical relevance of it for the birds and the passion for heritage - mapping those attractions, movements and their gathering and momentum.

• A commitment to ‘Commonality’ (Laurent Thevenot) through the visual…

Mobile methods –

• Jetty followed a mobile, inventive approach, tracing how actants moved with each other, with the structure as it is now, its past, futures, how we as researchers were moved by it and things along the way, and moved to make/do what the project team did and how this played out for the many actors involved.