Developing an Effective Eco-Social Art Practice

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Developing an effective eco-social art practice Talk for Burren School of Art students, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare, Ireland, 30 November 2014

Cathy Fitzgerald: eco-social artist | researcher


!   Summary video [next slide]: from my ongoing Hollywood forest transformation project 2008 – diverse material /learning developed through video work, photography – !   unfolding reflection / new story of alternative ecoforestry

practice developed through a critical, cumulative open blogging practice (Ihlein, 2014)

!   How did I start; motivations, diverse skill set, deep listening, mutuality

!   Articulacy is crucial! Why developing a guiding theory-method framework for long-term ecological art practices is important for the art and ecology field

Outline of talk

How did I start my slow art practice?

!   Since late 1990s, I have admired the pioneering practice of US artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, with their long-term eco-art explorations of lands, forests and watersheds.

!   Reviewed their practice and journal articles for my under-grad thesis

!   See new book detailing their tranversal practice over 4 decades: The Time of the Force Majeure: After 45 Years Counterforce is on the Horizon (2016)

How did I start?

It was not until much later in 2008, when I had gained skills across different fields, that I considered I had the potential and possibility to explore this way of working, this even though I had lived within in a conifer plantation since 2001.

Soft social skills as important as artistic skills: I see myself embedded in eco-social communities Thus, effective long term eco-art practice

require skills of mutuality, deep listening/looking, reciprocity, to build trust with others working in non-art domains ( I work against the idea of the solitary genius artist)

See Mutuality Matters! TED–talk and books by Kare Anderson

social skills (continued): recognising that creativity does not only reside in art practice is vital; art is just one way of knowing, others’ diverse knowings are equally valid


I call such practices ‘eco-social art practice’ to emphasise that they have potential to change practitioners’ and audiences’ social and mental ecologies, as well as transforming environments

my eco-social art practice is a gathering of skills, lifeworld experiences and actions.

My life world experience, disciplinary, artistic and digital skills

worked in research biology for 10-years

amateur forester these past 8-years

involved in Green Party since 2004

amateur filmmaker since 2002

developed comprehensive online community-building skills since 2007

8-year background in research science:

!   helps me decipher scientific knowledge; contextualise my forestry work against background of planetary boundary science – which shows industrial culture is creating a systemic crisis

!   working in teams; understood knowledge/creativity can often develop faster with group input

!   under-stand and can ‘copy’ scientific methods in more artistic ways

!   also understand the challenges of working in science/professional fields – I have some appreciation of how foresters and others scientists’ work, their constraints and their worldview.

Science experience:

amateur forester – learning from leading foresters since coming to Ireland 21 years ago:

involved with Crann (1996-7, 2005-6) and ProSilva Ireland (since 2009) – Irish Forest NGOs

Forestry experience:

!   have been on continuous cover forestry study trips to Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, UK and around Ireland, with leading foresters and others interested in permanent forestry alternatives

!   by volunteering to look after close-to-nature continuous cover forestry websites in Europe (2010-2015) and (Ireland 2009 –ongoing), I am in the center of conversations, learning and new training developments for an alternative, non-clearfell, mixed species forestry

Politics – learning from former Green Deputy Leader and TD Mary White:

I was Carlow/Kilkenny group secretary 2004 – 07; now Green’s forest spokesperson

politics

!   understood the other side of politics, the day-to-day work;

!   grass-roots campaigns

!   the glacial work in developing new policy: slow, consensus, gathering expert information

!   drafted national forest policy during my PhD; was fortunate that my theory supervisor was Dr Paul O’Brien, also active in Green politics – his advice: “go for it!”; theorise your work after

!   developed a political ‘voice’ to introduce motion to support developing law against crime of ecocide (2013)

artistic skills: in photography, video, new media:

ecocriticism field (developed from Literary Theory): really important to critically reflect on my and others’ cultural workings of nature

online community building skills:

MA in virtual realities, also managed a online community of 1300 creative practitioners for South East Artlinks professional development programme (2007-10)

‘connected learning’ model

!   is useful to understand the under-explored potential of online social media to collate, be a scaffold for the virtual ecologies my work develops – the writings, policy work, photography and video

!   similar to socially engaged artist/researcher, Lucas Ihlein (2014), I see blogging as a creative practice essential for eco-social art practices over long time periods – collating artefacts and enabling digital conversations with myself and others – an open, multi-media, networked practice

‘connected learning’ (Ito et al., 2013)

Model is useful to understand the potential of accelerated, supportive, peer-to-peer, peer-to-mentor; I see it as a powerful development of the visual diary. Also, you can build an audience as you develop your practice.

Jensen summarises my approach: What do you love… what does your landbase need to survive?

Author of: A Language without Words, The Myth of Human Supremacy, Strangely Like War: The Global Assault On Forests, EndGame etc

Maintaining a practice: science knowledge is important but deep knowing, love of place and keeping it fun, ensures you won’t burn out

“I am willing to bet that even the survival of the species or the well-being of your grandchildren isn’t the real motive for your environmentalism. You are not an environmentalist because you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t act.

You are an environmentalist because you love our planet.”

Charles Eisenstein (2013)

Articulacy is important! A clear guiding theory-method framework may help the marginalised art and ecology field, which has struggled to convey such practices’ complexity and value

‘Articulacy has a moral point, not just in correcting what may be wrong views but also in making the force of an ideal that people are already living by more palpable, more vivid for them; And by making it more vivid, empowering them to live up to it in a fuller and more integral fashion.’

Charles Taylor, cited in Dean Moore, 2016

When others confirm we are living in a sociopathic society…

Sociologist Charles Derber, 2014

…I looked to psychotherapist Guattari’s lifetimes’ work on the theory and applications of

transversality and his last writings of ecosophy and chaosophy to deepen understanding of ecological art practices Transversality: a means to describe the potential of assemblages of practices between individuals-collectives, weaving together lifeworld (lived) experience and disciplinary knowledges to create new, life-sustaining values / practices /policies.

The late ecosocial activist-

therapist-theorist and new

media enthusiast, Félix

Guattari (1930-1992)

Guattari’s ecosophy !   we need to advance “the three

ecologies”, the mental, social and environmental spheres together, speaks to the aim and potential of long term eco-social art practices priorities

!   I call ecological art practices “eco-social art practices”, to underline that these practices are not only about environmental restoration or resilience, but act politically as a form

of creative resistance

Guattari understood through applied therapeutic practice and his lifelong political activism, why and how capitalism, particularly

globalised capitalism, and the western worldview is sociopathic and why we need to advance the “three ecologies”, the mental, social and environmental spheres together to advance effective societal change

Elliott (2012) briefly applied transversality and Guattari’s last writings of ecosophy and chaosophy to ecological art practices While not examining eco-art practices specifically, Iain Biggs (2014a,b,c, 2015) analyses in applying transversality to deepen understanding of multi-constituent, art-led practices are also important Guattari’s writings explain why such practices are inevitably entangled and driven by aesthetic, ethical and political processes

Guattari argues the means to advance resistance to capitalism lies in micropolitical assemblages that operate transversally, that ‘softly subvert’ the status quo

So my transversal practice aims to softly subvert the stranglehold of unsustainable, industrial monoculture forestry

Through Guattari we can learn that sustainability is contingent, emergent Rather than a one-size fits all sustainability directive, enacting sustainability is an ever-evolving state that is enriched deep knowings of place, democratic participation and different ways of knowing the world.

So, Guattari’s ecosophy identifies the target, main components and potential of transversal practices

2) A methodology approach for eco-social complexity action research is not a prescriptive model but a reactive pathway, each step allows plenty of opportunity for creativity and serendipity, action and reflection. Accessible as it is already widely used and understood in education and health fields.

The five dimensions of action research (Reason et al., 2009)

A means to articulate the main method stages of eco-social art practices

This is what you might have encountered If you had asked what my practice was at the start of my Hollywood forest project …

action research… identifies and characterises my activities in a recognised cycle of stages


practical challenges:

In articulating my practice action research identifies and orders a repeating cycle of method stages, from worthwhile purposes to….

Employing the practical skills and learning of continuous cover forestry from forestry contractor, Sean Hoskins

Action research helps me identify and value many ways of knowing (experiential, lived, traditional, Indigenous knowledge)

Being-in-the-forest experiential knowing reminds me and others of the complex interconnections that foster a thriving forest – industrial forestry ignores this interdependent complexity

Action research also embraces propositional, theoretical and scientific knowing

Artistic knowing is essential in action research for sustainability, to

translate

experiential knowing and overall,

to weave other ways of knowing into cohesive and engaging projects (artist and action research academic, Chris Seeley, 2008-11, 2014)

!   Hollywood forest is a home to others

participation and democracy stage: action research acknowledges different

voices, non-experts, different knowledge holders, even non-human entities

participation and democracy stage: may lead to new knowings and new life-sustaining policies

New sustainable forest policy

action research prioritises an emergent communicative space for exchanges and learning

Inviting and sharing views with foresters, landowners, carpenters, art officers, artists, curators, tree lovers: Hollywood forest, 2014

Action research therefore confirms what pioneers of long term ecological art practice, the Harrisons, have long argued:

that the most valuable outcome of their multi-constituent practice is ‘conversational drift’ : how questions, new images, texts, diverse perspectives, develop a communicative means for envisioning new values, possibilities, practices and policies for a specific context and environment

Importantly,

action research’s recognised terms, overcome the confusion such exploratory practices create and encourage peer-to-peer learning

And, in these urgent times, we need a recognised means to compare effective practices and to encourage more creative engagement with eco-social concerns.

SUMMARY: through my research I argue that the guiding: Guattari ecosophy - action research framework significantly improves the articulation of long-term eco-social art practices

best means to develop and maintain transversal practices and compare effective strategies employed by others Potential for such a non-prescriptive framework to advance understanding of transversal practices for the emergent art & ecology field.

audio-visual ebook and print-on-demand version, coming soon!

Sharing the guiding theory-method ecosophy - action research framework:

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Developing an Effective Eco-Social Art Practice

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