Introduction to Eco-Visionaries and rationale for the fieldwork
Findings from the Ars Electronica fieldwork in September 2019 revealed a mixed set of practices in the electronic arts field, ranging from work sensitive to environmental concerns, to that more inclined to prioritise other digital issues such as surveillance and AI. In contrast however, the Eco-Visionaries exhibition presented a potential opportunity to investigate non-commercial, citizen-focused and artistic practices that prioritised and focused on specifically environmental issues. The rationale for visiting this exhibition, was therefore as a contrast to the Ars Electronica exhibition. The exhibition was presented at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between the 23rd of November 2019 and the 23rd of February 2020.
Site visit 16-17th January 2020
While the Ars Electronica exhibition was on a vast scale over multiple sites in the city of Linz, the Eco-Visionaries exhibition was on a more focused scale. The main site visit was conducted on the 16th of January 2020, with a subsequent follow-up visit on the following day. The exhibition was organised into three galleries, each exploring facets of the environment/society relationship. The works are therefore analysed in the contexts of their thematic location in the exhibition as a whole
Findings
Gallery 1 – human transformation of the environment
This gallery is concerned with informing publics of the extent of global environmental crisis. The works in the first gallery ‘reveal how the environment is being transformed by human activity on a global scale. They examine some of the many different issues commonly encompassed by the term “climate change”, making visible the underlying political, economic and social complexities behind them’ (on-site description). There were eight works in this gallery, broadly connected with the theme of human transformation of environments.
Key works in this gallery include Domestic catastrophe No. 3: La Planète Laboratoire by HeHe (2018). In this work a globe is contained in a glass vitrine that is filled with murky water, making the globe difficult to view. This installation is accompanied by a rendition of The Swan by Saint-Saëns, played on the theremin – a haunting early electronic instrument. The work aims to represent ‘humanity’s slow response and apathetic attitude towards the climate-change emergency’ (on-site description).
Domestic catastrophe No. 3: La Planète Laboratoire by HeHe (2018)
Another work in this gallery dealt with the problem of invasive species, and resulting native species decline. Tue Greenfort’s work Tilapia represents how invasive tilapia fish were introduced into Lake Victoria with the aim of increasing production of fish. However, this introduction caused the decline of the native species, while also shifting the overall ecological balance of the lake. The work consists of prints made of the bodies of the endangered fish, thus ‘evoking a living fossil on the brink of extinction’ (on-site description).
In terms of visualising pollution data, Nerea Calvillo’s In the Air data visualisation project (2019) is a visual installation that graphically represents various aspects of air pollution in Madrid. On the backdrop of a time-lapse video, time-based data is mapped, showing both areas and times of day when different pollutants are at varying levels. The aim of the project is to visibilise and democratise this data, and ‘to create awareness of the uneven distribution of pollution for environmental justice’ (on-site description).
Nerea Calvillo In the Air (2019)
A key work in this room was from Unknown Fields, a collective of artists working on environmental issues. Their work, The Breast Milk of the Volcano (2017) investigated the supply of lithium as a key component in batteries. This lithium is stored in the salt flats of Bolivia, and subject to aggressive industrial extraction processes. The film weaves two narratives together, that of Bolivian myths and legends of how the salt flats are the ‘breast milk’ of the volcanic mountains surrounding them, and that of the industrial extraction processes. The video work is accompanied by a lithium battery which places a miniature of the volcanic mountain in a jar, to symbolise the mythic origins of the salt flats. The video is at once informative and evocative, using high definition visuals showing both the beauty of the landscape, and the scale of industrial extraction of lithium.
Gallery 2 – alternative futures for humans and non-humans
As described on-site, the works in the second gallery moved from revealing human impact on the environment to ‘speculate on alternative futures for human and non-human beings. They present different scenarios, sometimes with dystopian visions, provoking us to imagine how the lives of animals, plants and humans might be radically transformed by global warming’ (on-site description). This was the smallest gallery, with four works in this room, variously concerned with aspects of survival on an increasingly distressed planet.
A key work from this gallery was by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, titled The Substitute (2019). The subject matter is of the northern white rhinoceros, which is about to become extinct, since the last male died in 2018, leaving only two females in existence (on-site description). This work uses archival material to reconstruct video of the species. The projection shows the rhino walking in space, but ‘fluctuating between a pixelated rendering and a lifelike animation’ (on-site description). It therefore makes the idea of extinction visible in showing how as species go extinct, all that is left of them are traces and incomplete archives by which we can know them.
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, The Substitute (2019). Showing the pixellated representation of the rhino built from archival footage.
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, The Substitute (2019). Showing the higher definition representation of the rhino built from archival footage.
3.3 – intervention with empathy
The works in the third gallery ‘present alternative ways of intervening in the landscape that go beyond mainstream sustainability strategies. These interventions propose forging a more empathetic relationship between humans and the natural world, putting nature’s needs before our own’ (on-site description).
A key work from this room was Soil Procession by Futurefarmers (2015). This piece was a documentation of a citizen-engagement work where ‘a procession of farmers carried soil from their farms through the city of Oslo to its new home where soil offerings were spread out and a Declaration of Land Use was signed’ (on-site description). In the context of this project, the ideas of rural soil being moved to an urban location displays a sympathetic understanding of connection between urban and rural, the idea of a nature/society ‘metabolism’, and citizen engagement through interaction with multiple stakeholders, in this case farmers and an urban organisation concerned with food production.
Soil Procession from Futurefarmers on Vimeo.
The theme of intervention and speculative practices was in evidence in the work Biogas Power Plant (2017) by Portuguese artists SKREI. This work is a speculative design project that prototypes an ‘individual biogas production unit which could use domestic waste to create and store energy to make houses self-sufficient’ (on-site description). This is in response to the statistic that ‘one year’s worth of the average urban borough’s domestic food waste could generate enough electricity to power a local primary school for over 10 years’ (on-site description). The unit could feed energy into the national grid, but would in itself be a stand-alone device. This piece showcases how speculative design practices can offer alternative discourses into key environmental issues such as that of energy transition and waste.
The Green Machine (2014) by Studio Malka Architecture is a speculative architecture project that imagines a future whereby the Sahara desert can be turned into an oasis that can ‘exploit the rich resources of the desert and to provide food, water, housing and energy for a local community’ (on-site description). The project uses the aesthetic of a rusting oil well to imagine a model of an autonomous vehicle that transforms energy use from destructive fossil fuels to a more sustainable use of land, renewable energy and water.
3.C. City: Climate, Convention, Cruise (2015 – including drawings for The Dolphin Embassy 1974-1978) is another example of a speculative design project. This work imagines a floating city ‘designed to facilitate dialogue and debate between humans and other species, blurring the boundaries between ecology and infrastructure, public and private, the individual and the collective’ (on-site description). The water and energy needs of the city are also accounted for by using algae and water collection techniques. The work is presented in drawings, including that of The Dolphin Embassy, by the artist collective Ant Farm in the 1970s. This project was ‘a proposal for a floating communication station used to develop long-term human/dolphin interactions in the wild’ (on-site description).
The work win><win by Rimini Protokoll (2017) was installed in a room off the main gallery 3, and as such is the last work that the audience sees at the exhibition. This is significant as its description notes that is ‘disturbing’ and ‘questions our assumptions about which species are best prepared for the threats of global warming’ (on-site description). This stands at odds with many of the works presented in the third gallery, which were more centred on alternative futures, and speculation about interspecies coexistence. In this piece, audience members enter a room containing two curved benches facing a circular mirror. There are headphones, which commence a narrative, asking questions around audience members own subjectivity. The piece moves on to describe the increasing population growth of a species of jellyfish, due to increased water temperatures. The narrative is dystopian and foretells a future where ecosystem collapse means that only the jellyfish survive.
Exit of exhibition. While not an art piece per se, it is of note that upon leaving the exhibition, younger audience members had the opportunity to answer the question ‘what is your eco-vision’. The answers from children were not of positive visions of future transition and transformation, but of desperation, with captions such as ‘Save our Planet’ and ‘SOS’ featuring. This is important to note as the environmental issues we face are not only multi-scalar but inter-generational also, and this exhibition considered that dimension.
