Archive for ‘ On My Mind ’

Ruptures In Technoculture

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

TECHNOPHILIC SOCIETY

& INTERVENTIONIST PERFORMANCE

 

Image from BOT I PERFORMANCE PROJECT, 2011, Praba Pilar

 

INTRODUCTION

 

IN FEBRUARY OF 2010, AN ARTICLE APPEARED IN WIRED Magazine on the further militarization of bioengineering.  The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) included an item in its 2011 budget for the creation of a militarized living organism, titled BioDesign.  The article noted:

 

Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch… The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to ‘produce the intended biological effect.’.”[1]

 

BioDesign, and related military projects merging humans with machines, represent a critical juncture for humanity in the definition, meaning and creation of life, and the harnessing of technology in advanced technological societies for the creation of living weaponry.  What regulatory agencies, with which ethical mandates, will determine, regulate and manage the creation of new life forms through advanced technologies?  The US military?  Monsanto Corporation?   Novartis?  Who currently has, and who should have, the power to determine if this is a valid pursuit for humanity?  Will BioDesign follow the same patterns as nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, where we end up with uncontrollable loads of toxic pollution and the possibility of mutually assured destruction?  Is this the world we want to live in, where we create new life to engage in killing?  Is it even a world we can accept living in?

The military and large global corporations have elevated the technological to a position outside of the knowledge/experience base of the public-at-large, all in the name of “progress” and of a “better living standard.”  “They” – the technology corporations who have created 29 Superfund Sites in Silicon Valley –  know better than “we,” the public-at-large, do.  This positivistic view is technophilia, and the United States is a fully technophilic society. The scope of advancement is so extreme and rapid, developments emerge with a dizzying velocity, their dangers are subsumed into an unrelenting progress narrative.  We have surpassed the slippery slope and moved into a dangerous ignorance of the life and death stakes at large.

I have generated art works for the last decade and a half that resist, contest and oppose unethical aspects of emerging forms of technological control and domination.  Through my performances, installations, writing, protest, direct action, web sites, image making, radio appearances, public service announcements – all under the banner of art – I have tried to bring attention to technological advancements which affect us all, and introduce new modes of resistance and opposition that rupture technological determinism.

 

I. THE HEXTERMINATORS

 

 

Image from original website of Hexterminators, now at http://prabapilar.com/pages/projects/artactivist/index.html

 

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF emergent technologies came in 1998, while I was creating art projects with documented and undocumented immigrants and farm workers in the Salinas Valley.  While working with the Farm Workers Union on the Five Cents for Fairness campaign to improve the living and working conditions of strawberry workers, I received a stunning email describing the negative aspects of a new technology that was soon to be commercialized:  seed-sterilizing technology.

Written by Geri Guidetti, the email began:

 

There have been times in human history when the line between genius and insanity was so fine that it was barely perceptible. In the world of biotechnology and food, that line has just been obliterated. Announcements made over the past 90 days suggest that an ingenious scientific achievement and subsequent, related business developments threaten to terminate the natural, God-given right and ability of people everywhere to freely grow food to feed themselves and others. Never before has man created such an insidiously dangerous, far-reaching and potentially “perfect” plan to control the livelihoods, food supply and even survival of all humans on the planet.[2]

 

Guidetti was referring to seed-sterilizing technology, which prevents harvested seeds from being replanted, since seeds are rendered sterile in this process.  This represented a threat to the worldwide practice of saved-seed farming.  At the time, the Rural Advancement Foundation International[3] (RAFI then, recently renamed as the ETC Group) estimated that 1.2 billion farmers depended on saved-seed farming for their food supply.  They renamed this technology “Terminator Tech.”

My research revealed an insidious wave of consolidation within not only the seed industry but what became the life sciences industry.  I was concerned with the links between the corporations controlling agriculture, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals – and how this was turning into the corporate mega-structure of life sciences.

The urgency of this issue was profound.  There was a limited window of opportunity to ban the Terminator from commercialization.  I immediately began an ARTactivist campaign in San Francisco to bring attention to the issue of the Terminator, forming the Hexterminators with the Mexican artist Gerardo Perez.  The name of the group came out of an artistic desire to attack irrational corporate greed with an irrational weapon: the hex.  We put a hex on Monsanto Corporation and the Terminator through art interventions.

We recruited artists within the Latina/o community, EarthFirst! activists, students from multiple universities, agro-scientists, science policy educators, web designers, media artists, musicians, videographers, and others in San Francisco to do direct action, street theatre, agit-prop, art installations, radio appearances, television public service announcements, lectures, presentations, invisible theatre, theatre productions, web interventions and multiple interventionist projects.  The group eventually grew to 25 people involved and at various levels of engagement over a three year period.

 

Images of Hexterminator Actions

 

Dressed as superheroes, we took to the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley to pass out information and pamphlets.  We invaded supermarkets and did our own labeling campaigns on genetically engineered produce and milk products.  We trespassed, committed civil disobedience and teamed up with the Biotic Baking Brigade to throw a vegan pumpkin pie at the CEO of Novartis Corporation.

In February of 1999, Monsanto Corporation came to San Francisco to present genetically engineered cotton for the “From Field to Fashion” conference at the St. Francis Hotel. The Hexterminators teamed up with BayRAGE for operation fabRAGE:  Fabulous Resistance Against Genetic Engineering, to disrupt the proceedings and indicate opposition and resistance to their products.  We worked quickly on a six-page booklet modeled on Glamour Magazine, outlining the numerous environmental damages of Monsanto products, specifically focusing on seed- sterilizing technology.

The operation had two parts: internal dissent and external protest. The Monsanto representative was scheduled as the first speaker after lunch, so half of us, dressed in business attire, quietly entered the conference during the lunch hour and quickly placed the booklet on every participant’s chair.  As the Monsanto representative took to the stage, he held up our booklet and began, “I’d like to address the issues raised in this booklet.”  At this point the other half of the group broke into the hall, in glamorous gowns and did a noisy and raucous protest against Monsanto, stripping off our gowns and chanting:  “GMOs, we won’t eat them, we won’t wear them.”  We left as security arrived, and our collaborators quickly took to the microphones dispersed through the room and began challenging the Monsanto representative based on their history outlined in our booklet.  Monsanto lost control of the presentation and was put in a defensive position throughout their allotted time.

As part of our strategy was to disseminate information widely, the next morning I was scheduled to be on the Terra Verde radio show on KPFA with a Monsanto representative, to discuss opposition to Terminator Tech.  Monsanto immediately canceled, which gave us the opportunity to accuse them of not wanting a dialogue, and instead to invite a representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists to talk about the specific problems with Terminator Tech.

The performances were manifold at this event.  Hexterminator artists, normally superheroes, performed as corporate representatives through costuming, language and presentation of self.  It allowed us entry into the event as participants, to disperse our literature and vocally oppose their products.  This inside strategy was very damaging to Monsanto’s image.  Simultaneously, through the outside protest, we were able to disrupt Monsanto’s presentation directly.

These performances, utilizing very limited funds and materials, used innovative tactics to bring attention to seed- sterilizing technology while rupturing the image of the well-funded corporate giant Monsanto Corporation.

 

II. LOS CYBRIDS: LA RAZA TECHNO-CRITICA

 

COROLLARY TO THE TERMINATOR THREAT WAS A different kind of technology-related explosion in my hometown of San Francisco which had a tremendous economic impact: the Internet boom.  Low income families, artists, the homeless, all watched while our city was transformed in two or three short years by capital infusions from the tech sector.  Who was affected?  Low income families, immigrants, children, friends, colleagues, were driven into an exodus from San Francisco to escape the sky-rocketing rents and costs.

Fellow Latino artists John Leanos and Rene Garcia approached me in the summer of 1999 to create a project around the Internet boom.  Our questions were the same: who was benefiting from the boom and who was being pushed out?  We created a troupe, Los Cybrids: La Raza Tecno-Critica, to create performances, murals, street theatre, and panel discussions to raise these questions in dialogue with our communities and beyond.

 

Images of Los Cybrids installations, murals, performances

 

I will focus on our performance at the Internet 2010 Conference held at El Rio, San Francisco in 2000.  Our disruptive performance brought us national attention, as a writer from Salon Magazine was in attendance, and immediately published a national article on our presentation which was reproduced and distributed intensely throughout the Internet.

The intent of this conference was to bring together progressives, non-profit technology directors and media groups from the Bay Area to stake out our claim to the Internet in the future.

John, Rene and I entered El Rio paramilitary style.  John held our thesis in a bomb proof metal suitcase handcuffed to his wrist.  Rene and I guarded him and his suitcase, frisking the attendants and confiscating their cell phones.  Dressed as security guards, we were visibly prepared to take on anyone that tried to steal our materials.  We were last on the panel, and John sat down with the suitcase, while Rene guarded him from behind.  They both interjected mutters and shouts during the other people’s presentations.

The first person on the panel was Danny Schecter, executive editor of MediaChannel, a media organization in Boston.  He extolled the virtues of the Internet for progressive organizing.  Next up was a Brooke Biggs, producer of MoJo Wire, from Mother Jones Magazine, who went on at great length about wanting the Internet to still be available to non profits in the year 2010.  There was a tone of despair in her presentation.  Next up was Davey D from KPFA radio, the progressive station from Berkeley.  He explained, in great detail, how to put up a website.  Next was Tiny, aka as Lisa Gray Garcia, editor of POOR Magazine, who insisted that non- profits get a piece of the pie.  Finally, it was our turn.

John put the suitcase on the table and carefully removed our thesis.  He read our thesis, which was the beginning of our Manifesto.  He expounded excitedly and volubly on our vision, to destroy the Internet through viruses, blowing it up.  Rene and I chanted “The Internet Must Be Destroyed, Blow It Up, Disconnect, Downgrade, Unload” in the background.

The audience was startled, taken aback, exploding into laughter and applause and argumentation.  Salon Magazine rushed out to write up the story, Schecter accused us of nihilism, Davey D was deeply offended, and Biggs wouldn’t even look at us.  As moderator Larry Bensky asked John for our web address for further information, John yelled:  “We don’t have a Web site! Get the fuck off the Web!”

The purpose of this performance was not to represent our genuine experiences, as we were as dependent on emails and the web as the next activist artist and we did, of course, have a website.  The performance presented a vision of the world that stood outside of a totalizing technological matrix in order to disrupt the celebratory rhetoric.  It presented our unpopular views at the time when the Internet and information technologies were vulnerable to the advancing armies of global capitalism in a war to promulgate an American-dominated global monoculture.

As Cybrids in constant performance mode, we used costuming, staging and radical theatre to present an anti-capitalist perspective from the center of the Cyber Empire, i.e. Silicon Valley.  Our performance was designed to startle, to rupture, to disrupt, to present a completely unrealistic vision in order to change the frame of the debate and underscore the militaristic and capitalist roots of techno-culture.

I argue that this bizzare performance at El Rio in 2000 was effective in multiple ways beyond its shock value.  This performance would not be effective in 2010.  In the context of the recent near miss of year 2K and the popularity and newness of the Internet at that time, there was room for alternative views.  The Internet was not as ubiquitous in 2000, and there was a space for radical hybrid cyborg Latina/os to provide a counternarrative to the underlying myths of progress and reification of progress narratives.

 

III. THE CHURCH OF NANO BIO INFO COGNO

THE CHURCH OF NANO BIO INFO COGNO, Praba Pilar

 

AND ON THE EIGHT DAY, Praba Pilar

 

CODE, Praba Pilar

 

The First Supper of the Singularity, Praba Pilar

 

IN 2006 I INITIATED AN ONGOING MULTIDISCIPLINARY project on the messianic rhetoric surrounding emerging technologies.  Presented at universities, conferences, art galleries, museums and the Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory, it is a project that utilizes satire to critique technophilia directly.

 

Church service at Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena, Praba Pilar

I will focus on my street performances in New York City in April of 2011.

The cultural anthropologist Eben Kirksey, of the City University of New York Graduate Center, invited me to present the Church of Nano Bio Info Cogno in both performance and installation form in April of 2011.  He arranged for me to present at the opening of the MultiSpecies Salon at the CUNY Graduate Center, at the Cosmopolitics Conference, and on the Manhattan streets between 34th and 35th Streets and Fifth Avenue, half a block from the Empire State Building.

Standing on the streets in full reverential robes as a religious leader, I interacted with the locals and tourists who streamed by at a rapid clip.  Presenting songs and stories of my religious conversion to full-on technophilia, handing out tracts of Church doctrine, chanting catechisms about technology, I read from the divine messages in Ray Kurzweil’s Age of Spiritual Machines, and stridently argued for a fully uploaded consciousness beyond the meat-ware, wet-ware and into the computing cloud.

The audience was constantly shifting, at different times aggressive, confused, supportive, overwhelmed or contradictory.  I had long discussions over the two hours with singularitarians, methuselarians, and others who view our body as not much more than a faulty biological machine, separate from the mind and consciousness.  Some discussions focused on military deployment of technology, while others focused on the lack of access by the general population to beneficial technologies.  Most of the audience members I spoke to were ignorant of the pace and impact of technological development.

The performance used the language of positivist science, of their singularity, to disrupt technophilic society, and introduce these problematic and dangerous ideas to a broader audience.

 

IV. NO TIME FOR COMPLACENCY

 

I CONCLUDED WITH THE WORDS OF HUGO DE GARIS, a long-time researcher and developer in the field of artificial intelligence and currently director of the Artificial Brain Lab in the School of Information Science and Technology at Xiamen University, China.  As he notes in an article in Forbes Magazine:

“This will be the worst, most passionate war that humanity has ever known, because the stakes–the survival of our species–have never been so high. Given the period in which this war will occur, the late 21st century, with late 21st century weapons, the scale of the killing will not be in the millions, as in the 20th century (the bloodiest in history, with 200-300 million people killed in wars, purges, holocausts and genocides) but in the billions. There will be gigadeath.”[4]

 

It is urgent that individuals in the United States begin to disengage from the hegemonic framework of emerging technologies and engage the ethical dilemmas through an informed criticality.  As my friend Mitchel Cohen used to tell me, “meet me at the barricades.”

 

Praba Pilar

 

RESOURCES:

Praba Pilar:  http://www.prabapilar.com

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition:  http://svtc.org

ETC Group:  http://www.etcgroup.org/en

Council for Responsible Genetics:  http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/

Union of Concerned Scientists:  http://www.ucsusa.org/

EarthFirst! Journal:  http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/

 

[1] Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included, WIRED Magazine.  February 5, 2010.

[2] Food Supply Update: June 5, 1998.  Seed Terminator and Mega-Merger Threaten Food and Freedom.  Geri Guidetti

 

[3] The Rural Advancement Foundation International  has consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and UN Biodiversity Convention (CBD) and also has a long history with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

[4] “The Coming Artilect War,” by Hugo de Garis, Forbes Magazine.  June 22, 2009

India: Beauty of Water

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

A VISITING ARTIST’S WORKSHOP

Kerala, India


 

 

 

I.  A BEGINNING IN KERALA

 

IT IS OCTOBER 2008 AND I AM THE SOLE woman in a group of ten accomplished artists and art students in the backwaters of Kerala in the south of India. I do not speak the Malayalam language. Everyone knows English, yet we are shy, and my accent is difficult for the students especially. I am trying not to be too US-American, although no respectable woman from this area would be in a situation like this.  I cannot drink the water nor eat much of the food, and I have no reasonable access to restaurants or stores. Nevertheless, we spend five deeply gratifying days together, making collaborative, ephemeral art in an estuary, the highlight to date in my ecoart career.

By road we are 12 miles north of busy, commercial Cochin, on the island village of Cheriyam Thuruthu. Here the Arabian Sea meets Vembanad Lake and many great rivers of Kerala. Artist-lecturers Shijo Jacob and Sunil A.P. have made all of the logistical arrangements with students Amal M., Aneesh V., Manjunath K.P., Pavel Suresh, Prajeesh P.P., Shijeesh K. and Shyne K., of the Raja Ravi Varma College of Fine Arts in Mavelikara. Our gracious host, Antony Caral, is also an artist keen to explore with us. Many people have supported the trip during its development, some of whom come and go during the week.

Two years earlier I had started a small non-profit arts organization called Beauty of Water, with a mission of generating collaborative art experiences on the theme of appreciation for water in communities around the world. I wanted the artmaking to be culturally situated yet collaborative from conception through completion. I pictured an exhibit traveling the globe some years hence (a component of the overall vision that I have since let go of), with community-created art pieces from eight countries showing different responses to the theme of appreciation for water. The whole idea seemed fun and simple. I started in India because friend there supported me while Beauty of Water matured enough to take its first steps.

 

 

 

My first year in Kerala was spent forming relationships with artists and cultural creatives in the mountains, villages and cities of this artistically and water rich state. People I met initially assumed I was well connected, knowledgeable, and had a lot of funding, none of which was true. When they came to see that I was conducting a grand experiment, seeking collaborators rather than granting works, authentic connections formed with those whose interest remained. Adventurous colleagues began sharing a sense of excitement for the possibilities that a collaborative approach to an environmental theme might bring, even though Beauty of Water had no finished work yet to point to.

Latha Kurien Rajeev was one of my first friends, and what an extraordinary woman she is. Film producer, curator, wife of a celebrated film director, mother of two bright children, and art lecturer at the College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum, are only a few of the items on her resume. Latha and I dreamed up fantastic ideas for Beauty of Water projects, strategizing and straining for months. We wanted to work with local funders and leaders, and hoped to inspire a groundswell of interest. Those we spoke with received our ideas with encouraging positivity, yet nothing moved into a production stage. Still, we were generating curiosity, and our efforts were well invested.

 

II.  MULTI-FACETED LEARNING SERIES

 

 

 

ONE MORNING IN EARLY 2008 I MET WITH N.N. Rimzon, artist and Principal at R.R.Varma College. We sat at a popular ayurvedic restaurant in Kerala’s capital city of Trivandrum while I proposed a learning series. To my delight Rimzon immediately nodded with understanding. Fifteen minutes later the plan was in place. I was invited to come to Mavelikara and start collaborating with the staff at the college.

We had no money. Just as in the USA, there was precious little funding for this public arts college. Through an accounting glitch I had thought that Beauty of Water possessed a thousand dollars more than the mere six hundred that was actually in the bank. Ignorance is bliss! We went forth assuming everything would fall into place… and for the most part it magically did.

Faculty members Shijo Jacob, A.P. Sunilkumar, and Preeti Joseph came up with a structure that fit with the school schedule, and recruited participants. We started the learning series in July and worked in a loose format through September, bringing in four visiting experts and taking one trip. Latha taught about conceptual art and ecoart, and touched on ancient land art in India created long before the term ecoart was in use. Saratchandran, sadly since deceased, screened one of his films documenting the successful struggle against a Coca Cola bottling plant in a region to the north of us in Kerala. Earth-focused contemporary artist Rajan Krishnan delighted students with tales of his artistic path. And scientist Dr. PS Harikumar grounded the series in basic information about water issues Kerala faces, including privatization, industrial contamination, human consumption of heavy metals from polluted water, and more. A majority of the student population voluntarily participated, with 40 to 140 showing up for each lecture.

One day we visited a Ramsar-protected freshwater lake, Sasthamkotta, with 25 students. When some of us arrived late to the site, we found Shijo and Sunil facilitating a brilliant, spontaneous piece that evolved into a performance, integrating a longstanding children’s tradition involving small paper boats. The visual effect was stunning, and participants seemed reverent and happy creating this ritual. Here we began to relate to water viscerally, personally, and as a group.

 

III.  BACK TO THE BACKWATERS

 

 

 

THE BACKWATERS WORKSHOP WAS THE CULMINATING component of the learning series. During our first night onsite I sensed that everyone was quietly excited. After traveling by bus, train, and slim wooden boat Antony paddled for us, carrying loaves of bread, chapatti dinners, a few art materials, cameras, my laptop and secret stash of snacks that later got co-opted by ants, we gathered in Antony’s living room, barefoot and eager, ready to figure out why we were here.

Each student shared something, translated for me by Shijo or Sunil, or in shy yet expressive English. Several said that they had been unclear about Beauty of Water, the learning series and larger project. They could not previously relate to it, had not thought about water much, and did not understand the point of the work. Over time, though, an understanding had emerged and they were beginning to integrate the experiences and lectures. They were expanding their sense of the meaning of water.

I revealed my plan to offer activities meant to help us get out of our thinking minds and into sensory perception and beyond. I felt that we needed to gain information and energy from this place through non-cognitive means, integrating findings with art making, discussion and reflection. I shared more about why I was doing this project, and my thrill in starting this work with them. Each of us, I am quite sure, finished the evening still holding a different idea about the week ahead. Both tired and stimulated, we eventually turned in.

I was honored with a remote room on the second floor of Antony’s home, where I had the gift of solitude and tree tops: gentle breezes flowing through palm fronds. The air was humid and soft, and cool enough for blue jeans each night. Floral scents filled the air. I was warned to bring my shoes inside so the goats would not claim them as a midnight snack.

A half-minute walk away on an earthen path brought me to the production site, kitchen and sleeping quarters for all seven students. A local man named Jacob cooked all of our meals for five days (for which I paid him a total of $45). Here at the water’s edge the land was alive with plants, birds, crickets, and animals I could hear but not identify. Still, it was exceptionally serene, owing to the backwaters themselves and the lifestyle built around these waters. With a constant in and out flow of the water, mosquitoes did not breed.

 

 

 

On our first morning Sunil had a brilliant idea for a phenomenological study of water: we took Antony’s half-shell, pre-made fiberglass boats out for a float. Those with stamina and balance performed pole-pushing to move us along while the rest of us experienced subtle motions of the water. Later Antony suggested body art pieces, after which Manjunath commented that he felt his body being a part of art rather than something he uses to make art. Shyne etched into the skin of Shijeesh’s back, creating a fish imprint. When it sprinkled, Manjunath noticed water on the hairs of his arm becoming beads of light.

 

 

 

Time rolled tenderly from day to night. Small boats were cut from banana tree stalks to hold candles and float on the estuary, recalling rituals honoring water found elsewhere in India and abroad. Shijo called back the paper boat concept we had done at Sasthamkotta Lake, this time with brightly colored papers. An enormous paper maché fish appeared one morning, suspended over its own reflection; later it was lit from inside, swaying under a misty full moon. Water hyacinth filled Antony’s boats which were towed by oarsmen in the wooden canoe, a poetic enigma. A group story game produces this dreamy tale: “I run out and go to the railway station. My train passes over the rivers, seas, valleys, etc., finally reaching an island. At that time a beautiful bird takes me and goes into heaven. I see heaven close up. After the journey I return to the college but nobody, no friends, recognize me. I walked on my hands upside down. Then everybody recognizes me again. I see a light again and I go to the railway station to start a journey again. Then I realize it’s a life cycle. I just passed the lifecycle within a few minutes.”

 

IV.  UNDERBELLY

 

 

 

FRICTION POKED THROUGH AMONG LEADERS. Shijo, Sunil and I shared a goal of empowering the students and sparking their creativity, but we had different ideas about how best to do that. Eventually we made agreements. I felt honored by their honesty and exhilarated by our ability to stick with our purpose, even through painful moments.

Group discussions were uncertain fare for me. I felt it was critical for everyone to be empowered to contribute, and I encouraged people to speak in Malayalam so that they could be more comfortable and fluid. But this meant that I did not know what was happening much of the time. Ever intending cultural sensitivity, it was difficult to know how to proceed. I hoped for an exchange of ideas and participatory decision making, and held space for this to my best abilities… yet who was I to advocate this style?

I found out later that I came across as sharply critical of others when advocating for my style of collaboration. I also came to learn that many of the ideas for art pieces came from the leaders and students produced them. Credit for creative input arose as an issue among adults after the workshop, and I received harsh criticism on this topic. It is certainly true that we would not have had a workshop without the work of my colleagues, start to finish. I continue to wonder how to have done things better.

It is hard to know what role spoken language played in these challenges. I have learned, though, that any time one is in leadership, even shared leadership, condemnation happens. I did my best to receive negative feedback openly while remaining attentive to the deeper truth that was being birthed.

On top of these complications, daytime heat and humidity drained me. Jacob cooked extraordinary meals but I was missing vital nutrients. I did not want to be greedy or wasteful, so I did not advocate for boiled water as often as I needed it, either. Each day I became weaker, eventually barely able to move around. Sharing these woes is cathartic. I did not have an outlet at the time.

One night I awoke to find a hand-sized spider blocking my path to the bathroom. I love nature, grew up in the woods, and deal with most fears like a grown up. But spiders are in another category. With deep shame and a dubious sense of pride I managed the spider situation on my own, and went on with life.

One morning while I still had energy, I took a walk offsite. The trees at Antony’s were wonderful, providing shade from the sun and shelter from the rain, yet I yearned for open sky. Out on the mud roads the backwaters and rice paddies were flat. The horizon was low, and though the air was hazy, vast green and blue strokes of land and sky revitalized me. Local people in this rural neighborhood gazed at me in wonder. A six foot tall white woman in jeans was utterly foreign. (Things are changing so fast in India that this would likely not be the spectacle that it was in 2008.) I retreated to the trees.

 

 

 

My heart was heaviest on the day we created the boat filled with paper boats. While visually this is one of my favorite pieces, and I am grateful that Shijo envisioned this, I cried dry tears (depleted adrenals) at the end. Some of the acid-bright paper was left in the water as people wandered away. I insisted that each piece get fished out and saved to be burned later, sorry to have any waste or impact, which seemed to be seen as ridiculous. I grapple with this stunning art piece still.

On our last day we started early, after a deep and peaceful sleep. Students completed their final piece, a paper maché water vessel with bright fabric water flowing toward the backwaters. Women still carry most of the water in this area, and the vessels are beautifully shaped. This piece evoked the feminine, a quality I was particularly appreciative of at this point. The immense significance of the week’s happenings had dazzled me. Even depleted of energy I was soaring. Beauty of Water had come through the birth canal. We had played like children with the water, and our collaboration was real.

 

 

 

With smiles and contented sighs we journeyed back to our non-workshop lives, changed forever, at least I was. It took me months to restore myself physically, but I will never forget these bright souls with whom I had the extraordinary opportunity to collaborate.

 

V.  BEAUTY OF WATER

 

 

 

BEAUTY OF WATER WAS CONCEIVED IN 2006. I had reached my forties free of kids or a partner, and lengthy corporate and public sector careers were behind me. I was ready to create new meaning. I had a Master’s Degree in Human and Organizational Transformation from the school of Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation at the California Institute of Integral Studies, which was both as visionary and as impractical as it sounds. With finite personal savings and contributions from a handful of cherished private donors, I hoped to grow Beauty of Water through ongoing, organically formed partnerships.

Somewhere in the early days I connected with Shelley Sacks and began learning about Joseph Beuys and social sculpture, as well as community art and ecoart. These fields clearly informed Beauty of Water, even though I had and still have to catch-up to become knowledgeable about their underpinnings. My own arts training was informal, and centered on improvisational movement and theater, where collaboration is commonly explored.

I also learned along the way of the work of Betsy Damon, as well as that of Jackie Brookner, Basia Irland, Xavier Cortada, Lillian Ball, Aviva Rahmani, Maya Lin, and many others who are working with water, often in collaborations with communities. Many of these brilliant artists inspire as well as remediate, directly healing our habitats and our relationship with the planet. [Please see the Beauty of Water “Inspirations” page for more: http://beautyofwater.org/inspirations.html]. I bow to these artists and all who make a sacrament of their work. Thank you.

In forming Beauty of Water I have held the belief that people’s actions and behaviors arise from collective consciousness, which speaks through imagery and form. Art comes from and goes to this place, as does culture. With this in mind, it seems to me that we can choose what we want to put our imaginal energy into, and doing so is a powerful act. If we cultivate life-affirming creations, and bring these into manifest form, we work as shamans. These are not original ideas. I am sure that many have written about this and explained it better. Anyway, I have hoped that Beauty of Water could be healing for individuals, groups, and the Earth, seeding collective consciousness with intention.

Water is a metaphor for oneness. Beauty of Water aspires to engender the exhilarating sense of oneness that is the fabric of existence, whether we notice it or not. I distinguish this from interconnectivity, which is also fascinating and intrinsic, yet conceives us as discreet entities. Oneness is noticeable when we blend with others on an energetic level – that delicious sense of being a part of something greater: a group that tunes in and does something that serves the whole; spot-on unchoreographed dance; team plays; other kinds of community activities when everyone is humming. Why not in fine art processes?

Beauty of Water aims to bring attention to water in positive ways, refreshing and re-activating our primal intimacy with this element. Much focus on water is on water problems. I think it would be good to bring joy, excitement, appreciation, and oneness back into focus as well, so that we get happy when we remember water. I hope Beauty of Water can help animate these principles and passions.

 

END NOTES

All Photos by Liza Behrendt except for the first photo and section IV photo, by Shijeesh K.

Journeys and Visions

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

China, Tibet, and Florida




Betsy drinking healing waters, Aba County, China



I. WATER IS MY TEACHER

ALL ECOLOGIES ARE RELATIONAL. ALL LIFE FUNCTIONS use basically the same elements — air, water, earth, and energy in many forms. Our connective tissue is so complex that we understand only a fraction of it, but in contradiction to this, nearly everything in our society is arranged in controllable boxes.

Ecological art by definition challenges many assumptions about art, and as such, it challenges the structures in our society. This piece will be about my journey and vision, and the vision of artists as change agents in re-establishing the connectivity that is integral to both human and biological ecologies.

Ecology is always inclusive and art is primarily exclusive. Eco art challenges perceptions of genius, of singularity and individualism. It challenges structures that ‘control’ culture and the economic imperatives of our culture. Above all it challenges us to become as alive and ever evolving as eco systems ourselves.

In my nearly fifty years of art making, I made some decisions that defined my path. The feminist art movement was formative in my early years in two ways. First, it was a movement for inclusion and social equity. Second, it expanded possibilities of art and art making with new mediums, materials, and forms.

In 1985 with the casting of a dry river with hand-made paper, I realized I knew nothing about water and so adopted water as my teacher. Water is the connective tissue of eco systems and all living things. Water nurtures all without discrimination. The next decision I made was that my art would have as small a footprint as possible. I initiated river clean-ups and staged public events that directed attention towards garbage and water resources. My work would be functional and in service to eco systems.

I adopted an attitude of inclusion when I was young which became sufficiently integrated into my beliefs that when I received a small grant from the Jerome Foundation, I used the funding for a workshop with artists and scientists to begin collaborations for the restoration and conservation of their eco systems. The workshop became the foundation of possible art works and activities by the community. This is my artwork and the product is the community initiative. The director of the foundation pointed out to me that I had used this funding uniquely.

In 1991, I conceptualized artists, scientists and citizen collaborations for water quality and quantity. Keepers of the Waters became a project of the Institute for Releasing Initiative, my not-for-profit. Soon Keepers began a variety of community-based projects to educate the public and begin activities to restore or preserve their water systems. When in 1993 in Minnesota I proposed a down stream project inviting collaborations with artists for the Mississippi River, I was accused by the largest funding organization of being a communist. I only mention this because it is an indication of how frightened some in power are of real equity in social/media processes. Unwilling to change my approach to suit funding for ‘art’, I found myself at a crossroads without funds and about to abandon my work with water.

A phone call from an unknown source of support (the Flow Fund, I later learned) carried me through. The support was to direct a public art project for water quality in China. There, 25 artists collaborated effortlessly. The Chinese system is informed with a different ontology than the US system. Collaboration is embedded in their system. We prize the individual above all, whereas in China the individual is less important than the group. An elegant mean between these two is my ideal. The process of designing and implementing the Living Water Garden was a complex collaboration in a system which I did not understand, yet it happened; and we are all still celebrating our relationships from those two years.

Artist cooperatives and initiatives are a big part of artistic communities in the US, yet we hear little about these thriving foundations of creativity. Artists are leading collectives of all sorts from urban gardening, grey water treatments, habitat restoration, and WEAD, to mention a few. Still I find the tension between individualism and collaboration looms large because we are staring straight into the values of materialistic capitalism — box it, price it and possess it and, above all, own it. Eco systems are complex, unpredictable and evolving.

Right now I am engaged in a number of projects and have chosen three to describe. While appearing quite different from each other, they all represent aspects of how I work.



II. TIBET


Monks cleaning up their water source, Muli Monastary, Sichuan, China


Constructed wetland, Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China


WITH A TIBETAN MEDIA ARTIST, I HAVE BEEN documenting the Tibetan water culture since 2007 in a project called Resources: Saving Living Systems. This rich upland culture is undocumented and vanishing in the wake of globalization, extraction and industrialization, as are most other sources of fresh water. We photograph and film each site and talk late into the night with villagers and monks. We discuss possible sustainable systems and hope to begin implementing integrated systems for wastewater, electricity, rainwater harvesting and farming. The goals and benefits of the project are:

  • To bring attention to upland waters which are rapidly disappearing worldwide.
  • To bring to consciousness the importance of water quality — most of our waters are acidic. In acidic waters diseases can grow. Healthy waters are alkaline. Healthy waters are understood to have restorative, invigorating and even healing properties. Wishful thinking is that this will help to preserve upland water quality.
  • To provide a foundation for relationships to implement integrated sustainable solutions.
  • The most significant benefit that I see is reconnecting urban Tibetans to their culture and supporting rural Tibetans in their practices of protection and celebration, while providing new information about potentially useful technological innovations.
  • The images and histories for this project are the foundation for artworks, films and books.



II. FLORIDA


Eco Art Treasure Coast meeting, Stuart, Florida: Brenda Leigh, Mary Segal, Jennifer Sylvia, Jessie Etelson, Gail Kosowski and Betsy Damon


Learning about the mangroves with Maggie, local environmental activist, who in the 1970’s made sure that Martin county had sustainability in its city planning.


CURRENTLY I’M INVOLVED AS THE FIRST MENTOR artist on Eco-Art South Florida, in a yearlong project, conceived by MJ Aggerston, to spread eco art through the five counties of South Florida. This project, Eco Art Treasure Coast, is based in Stuart, Martin County, on the Indian River lagoon, the largest fresh water lagoon on the east coast. The project is an invitation to care about local eco systems. It is inclusive and is designed to inspire initiatives in the local community with broad based collaborations. The six artists who joined the project form a loose group and have begun to collaborate with each other and community groups.

I challenged them to begin by integrating art and science. Nine months into this project, they are creating floating islands to provide shade and nutrition to a saltwater aquarium, and, on an Audubon site, they are doing bank restoration and installing riparian habitat. Rainwater harvesting and urban gardening are also some of the projects the group is working on. A recent collaboration is focused around plastic. This is a seacoast town, so discovering the vast vortices of plastics in oceans and the millions of sea life killed by plastics created a flurry of ideas and activities. Additionally the constant flow of heavily polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into the lagoon has us nearly paralyzed as the Army Core controls this annual abuse. However, we may start to address this with proposed designs of outfalls and in-situ treatment systems. The greatest impact is that the once skeptical public is becoming aware, active and hopeful.

Consistent with my philosophy, every artist was invited to start on an art-science project. To begin I introduced them to the strategy of “the conversation” and a local marine biologist/activist assisted with the art/science collaborative possibilities. However, each artist had to find their way with their particular skills towards this complex new idea and there were various challenges including building relationships. I noticed that each artist had to challenge their own limits in various complex ways. This has been a particularly messy process with numerous stops and starts. Artists can be central to community as vision makers. That is what we do. I am spending 8 weeks in the community as the mentor. The artists receive a small compensation, and also a workspace and some funding for materials.



III. SEATTLE


Living Water Drop Fountain, Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China


Flow Forms, Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China


AFTER THREE YEARS, I AM COMPLETING A PUBLIC art project with 4Culture in Seattle. Fifty- eight damaged acres are the site of King County’s first release of effluent to enhance a wetland. Many agencies have been involved. In the process, it was decided to return it to a wild place and remove the flood control berms. I did not easily find ways to interact with the various agencies. Although I would like to think that my insistence on process and real eco system design influenced them, I do not know for sure. Eventually I decided that my work would be educational and relate directly to the needs of the local community. I made a 14 foot diameter granite compass with a Living Water Drop sculpted in it, a 24 ft pole to measure floods composed of 12 beads, 6 in glass and 6 in stone, which references a spine and is topped with a raptor roost, and designated seating from glacial boulders with etched images and the words ‘Reveal,’ ‘Restore,’ and ‘Revere.’



IV.  HERE I AM, WATER

HERE I AM TWENTY THREE YEARS AFTER MY FIRST CLEAN UP, and clean-ups are still leading the way. I love sculpting and opportunities are more frequent now than 20 years ago. The public understanding of living systems is increasing, and with that, more and more opportunities for the integration of art and science on many levels are now apparent.

Art and artists are integral to the human community. The human community needs to re-establish an equitable relationship with eco systems. I often see the initiative to make ‘art’ as art actions, big and small. These are efforts to reconnect to ourselves, others, and the world. Each act is a bold act for that person. Like newly hatched turtles heading back to sea, we encounter many predators and wrong directions until we make it into the oceans to swim and, even there, the chances to survive are slim. Our nascent attempts, whatever they be, and in whatever medium, such as counting plastics used in the kitchen, inviting stores to recycle, working to preserve a small water system, and creating a front yard garden, are important. When an individual says, “this is my artwork,” it is so and gives that person a platform to reclaim real relationships in both social and biological ecology. This is where and how artists are major leaders and change agents. And any act that connects a human being to their ecologies, social and biological, is a step towards humanizing our society.

We’ve been dramatically separated and severed from our eco systems by the imperatives of a material world that is dominated by shortsighted economic strategies. Can we as artists become so bold, so enmeshed in evolving systems that lines become blurred? Can art become this messy, complex project of relationships – like an eco system?

The invitation to be an eco artist must be one to join in as a creator for creation. This invitation has no imperative except to do no harm to biological systems or fellow humans. One tree, one composting toilet, one garden, one action at a time, welcomes a magnificent plurality of activity. The aesthetics will emerge with new ideas, visions and images. This may be messy at times, revolutionary in its cooperative nature and perhaps unstoppable in essence.

Early I defined my art activism life as one that actively participates in eco systems – to restore, revitalize, conserve. However, in recent years, I have found it might be too narrow a definition. It was a literal approach; and the eco system per se is much more complex, invisible, poetic, harsh, spirited and still mysterious.

As I have became more visible I found myself being defined and being asked to define myself.

Often I am asked what do you do? I reply, “I am water. I work with water.”

Next questions: “What do you make? Are you an engineer? What is the art?”

“The art is water,” I reply. “The art is any action to do with water.”

Finally, I am water. I act, I try, and that is what I do. I invite you to join me.

Feminist Ideas Then & Now…

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Vinelhaven Maine & NYC

Feminist ideas then & now are linked/changed expanded/contracted? How things have changed in ecoart since that panel in 1999….or what internet and other extended forms of communication since then have changed the field.


In 1999, at the dawn of the conservative decade,for the College Art Association conference in Los Angeles, Jo Hanson, Susan Leibovitz Steinman and myself co-chaired a panel: “OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM, INTO THE MAINSTREAM: The State of the Art of Environmental Art.” Panelists (with their affiliations at the time) included Tim       Collins, Reiko Goto (both now in England), and Bob Bingham (who did not present), collaborators at the School for Creative Inquiry, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; Joyce Cutler-Shaw, Artist in Residence at the UC San Diego School of Medicine; Erica Fielder Mendocino,A ; Lynne Hull, Ft Collins, CO; Kathryn Miller, Pitzer College, Claremont CA; Beverly Naidus, Shelburne Falls, MA (now at University of Washington at Tacoma); Baile Oakes, Westport CA; Patricia Sanders, Newark CA (now in Utah); and Roy Staab, West Allis WI.

It was one of the largest panels ever assembled for CAA, held in one of their largest rooms and generated a lively discussion afterwards. Then, notably, we had to strain to balance the panel with sufficient men.

The e-preparation for that panel had enduring consequences. It launched the ecodialog list serve, http://www.ecoartnetwork.org/ which now includes more than 100 ecological art practitioners world wide. We engage in closed critical dialogs on issues related to ecological art and outreach. In addition to the original 1999 panelists, the ecodialog grew to include, among others: Tricia Watts and Amy Lipton of ecoartspace.org; Don Krug at UBC Vancouver; David Haley In the UK; Shai Zakai in Israel; Betsy Damon working in China; Sam Bower, director of greenmuseum.org; Norwegian film maker Eva Bakkeslett,; Jackie Brookner; Helen & Newton Harrison; Jan van Boekel; and writers such as Suzaan Boettger and Linda Weintraub.

There are many more men involved in the field, but it is still dominated by (under or non-paid) women, most of whom remain critically under-represented in the mainstream. The mainstream is still in love with Andy Goldsworthy and still confuses Eduardo Kac with work that is environmentally activist. The media doesn’t help here. Everything from an assembly of rocks on the beach with a kitsch reference to Robert Smithson to body work is designated ecological and a convincing argument can be made that it is. What we needed in 1999 and still don’t have, is a really thoughtful, informed critical analysis of the contemporary field, that recognizes the unique contribution of feminist artists.

But in 2009, when Susan and I attended the CAA conference in Los Angeles, there were so many panels on ecological and environmental art, many including interesting practitioners I had never met before, that I couldn’t attend one of the most important of those panels. I was presenting my own work as an ecological artist on Ellen Levy’s panel, “Proof” at the same time as a panel that very much interested me and included close colleagues, also presenting on ecological art. The panels were attended by a movable feast posse of (women) ecological artists in town for the convention, all from the ecodialog, including Tricia Watts, Carol Gigliotti, Ruth Wallen, Ellen Levy, Andrea Polli, Lillian Ball as well as Susan and myself. We gathered steam and drew others into our wake. But we also noticed that the term, “ecological art” is being transformed out of our control, not just in terms of familiar green washing, but to be drained by curators of the pesky activist element.

In the Obama age, things look environmentally brighter in the short run. The desperate urgency I felt during the Bush era is slightly muted. I see many more people, especially young people, from 350.org to people coming up, as Eve Mosher, doing interesting work. There are more men engaged and many of those men are respectful of the contributions of women. But I also see that testosterone still seems to gain over the more transparently collaborative approach of women.

Still, the genre has grown sufficiently that it is possible to define genres within the genre. An example of the latter would be those who work as social activists, as Beverly Naidus vs others who collaborate intensively with scientists, as myself. What is common to all the artists under the umbrella I personally approve of, besides high professional standards, is a commitment to a green agenda and a distinctly activist interest in policy matters that advance that agenda. There is great talk now of the value of collaborative teams and innovation but I have yet to see that applied sustainably to ecological artists, the very group best equipped to contribute effectively to those advances.

[All artwork by Aviva Rahmani, 2002]