What's Next?

Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art

Linda Weintraub

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781783209408
• eBook ISBN: 9781783209415
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

By paying tribute to matter, materiality and materialisation, the examples of contemporary art assembled in What's Next? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art challenge the social, cultural and ethical norms that prevailed in the twentieth century. This significant frontier of contemporary culture is identified as Eco Materialism because it affirms the emergent philosophy of Neo Materialism and attends to the pragmatic urgency of environmentalism.     

In this highly original book, Linda Weintraub surveys the work of 40 international artists who present materiality as a strategy to convert society's environmental neglect into responsible stewardship. These bold art initiatives, enriched by their associations with philosophy, ecology and cultural critique, bear the hallmark of a significant new art movement. This accessible text, written for students and a wider readership, is augmented with interactive opportunities that actuate eco material attitudes and behaviours. They invite readers to engage in this timely arena of contemporary art.

ARCHETYPES OF MATERIAL USE & DISUSE

Dirt

The bold assertion that this chapter is relevant to every living person is easily justified because it addresses the fact that, as corporeal beings, we cannot avoid contact with the planet’s substances. Material interactions are inescapable for us and all other living entities. We are all implicated in the fate and disposition of living systems because we consume resources and produce wastes. Nonetheless, humanity possesses the unique ability to consciously alter the manner in which we manage these material interactions. We are endowed with the ability to design these interactions and control whether they result in environmental disturbances or benefits. Human behaviors and their outcomes are determined by cultural traditions, historic precedents, and ethical principles, which compete for our compliance with personal ambitions, desires, and discontents.

This chapter tackles this unwieldy topic by identifying seven archetypes of human–material interaction. Archetypes are patterns of thought and behavior that exist as shared, cultural motifs. Because they can be easily conceptualized, archetypes are useful tools for assessing humanity’s past relationships to materials, reflecting upon current modes of material conduct, and crafting material interactions that optimize the well-being of future generations. Each of the seven archetypes represents a particular category of material interface. Objects can be treated like pets, sacred objects, hazards, specimens, aesthetic stimuli, resources, and merchandise.

All but the last emerged early in human history. Merchandise is unique to the current era of mass production and global exchange. Working and playing, observing and acting, consuming and producing, indeed all human behaviors are constituted out of infinitely varied mixtures and proportions of the interactions represented by these archetypes.

Each archetype is presented from three Eco Material vantage points:

Cultural Engagement: The environmental impact of that archetype’s human–material interaction.

Cultural Disengagement: The environmental consequence of human disposal of the objects representing that archetype.

Art Engagement: A single artwork exemplifies the environmental engagement and disengagement with each of the seven archetypes.

In order to facilitate comparing and contrasting, all seven artworks utilize dirt as their medium. Furthermore, all the applications of the archetypes’ themes are dirt-related. Dirt was selected because it factors into a wide range of environmental appraisals of materiality. Soil cushions our falls, sequesters our toxins, and mediates on our behalf between minerals and organic matter. It also grows our food, although fertile soils are becoming increasingly rare. In truth, this shrinking resource has never been abundant on our planet:

• ¾ of Earth is water and ¼ of Earth is land.

• ½ of land is available for human use.

• ¾ of land available for human use is too rocky, too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold for food production.

• ¼ of land available for human use is available for food production.¹ It is the source of sustenance and well-being for all forms of life.

The artworks presented in this chapter awaken awareness of the underground universe that typically exists out of sight beneath multistory skyscrapers, paved highways, and parking lots. Dirt manifests the seven archetypes by appearing in these artworks. It appears as compost, hallowed ground, contaminated soil, underground rubble, repository for hidden treasures, indicator of place, and fertile growing medium. Readers are invited to explore the rich vein of imaginative opportunity provided by dirt as they consider which behavioral archetypes are responsible for assaulting soil with nasty concoctions of sewage, pesticides, herbicides, industrial effluents, medical waste, spilled oil, and chemical substances; and which enrich and protect it.

Pet Archetype

Cultural Engagement: Imagine the state of the physical environment if the relationship humans have with pets was applied to bees, forests, reefs, streams, cell phones, shoes, cars, plastic containers, soils, and all other forms of materiality. Pet owners are protective caregivers. They are attentive to their pets’ needs and strive to prolong their pet’s physical and mental well-being. Such consideration is granted even though it means routinely conducting tasks most of us would otherwise avoid, such as cleaning up messes, tolerating inconvenience, and sharing personal resources. Furthermore, the time required to perform these duties is factored into each day without complaint. Ultimately, affectionate rapport transforms these tedious tasks into acts that yield deep personal satisfaction. Thus, if pet interactions became the model for all humanity’s material relationships, caretaking would replace careless disregard, health would be monitored and maintained, protection would be provided, and grief would accompany loss.

Cultural Disengagement: Pets are attended to with care and consideration when they die as well as when they are alive. Thus, if all our material possessions were treated to pet end-of-life protocols, they would not be discarded as litter, and they would not be dumped in trash destined for a landfill. However, the environmental benefits might be reversed if laying an unwanted object to rest was accompanied by the extravagant ‘pet-aftercare’ paraphernalia available in the marketplace, such as luxury cremation urns, coffins, and grave markers.

Art Engagement:

Compost

Amy M. Youngs

Amy M. Youngs (b. 1968, Chico, California, United States) is an artist currently based in Columbus, Ohio. She creates biological art, interactive sculptures, and digital media works that explore interdependencies between technology, plants, and animals. Youngs has exhibited her works nationally and internationally at venues such as the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre in Norway, the Biennale of Electronic Arts in Australia, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1999, she received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2001, she joined the faculty at the Ohio State University, where she is currently working as an associate professor of art.

Amy Youngs treats soil as a pet by nurturing the worms that break down organic materials and transform them into an enhanced fertile growing medium. She created an artwork that is aptly titled Digestive Table because it includes a place for her to dine with her worms in the midst of the soil they co-created. Youngs applies to worms the cross-species conviviality that humans normally cultivate with cats, dogs, and parakeets, despite the fact that worms offer little in the way of companionship. They don’t greet Youngs at the door; or take walks with her in the park; or sleep at the foot of her bed. Nonetheless, they are amiable pets. Worms require little caregiving; they are inexpensive to maintain; they never need grooming; they don’t need veterinary attention; they don’t require behavioral training; and they make no noise so they don’t bother the neighbors. Youngs highlights an additional benefit offered by few other pets: worms are service providers. They transform rotting organic matter into rich productive soil by processing leftovers from their owners’ meals, transforming pizza crusts and apple cores and used tea bags into sweet-smelling compost that is so valuable as a growing medium it is often described as ‘black gold’.

Youngs acknowledges that expanding caregiving to worms is complicated by ‘their power to repulse us.’² She comments, ‘There is a lot of cultural work to do if we are to develop symbiotic relationships with them.’³ There is also a lot of practical work to do to overcome the fact that worms require underground habitats that are not congenial to humans. Mutually alien environments make it difficult for humans to bond with their pet worms. Youngs developed several strategies to enable these divergent species to dine together. For example, she attached an opaque bag to the underside of the table to provide the dark, moist environment that worms prefer for dining. At the same time, she provides humans with a well-lit dining environment, an attractive table to place food upon, and a stool to sit on while eating. Since feeding is an essential pet-care pleasure, she inserted a cavity into the top of the table for the immediate dispatch of leftover foods to the worm bag as ready-made ingredients for their next meal. This built-in receptacle converts the chore of waste management into the pleasure act of feeding a pet.

Next, Youngs installed an infrared camera inside the worm bag to provide a communication channel between these divergent diners in their contrasting territories. The images are transmitted to an LCD screen that is inserted into the top of the table, enabling Youngs to observe the worms’ munching on her scraps, a virtuoso waste-disposal performance, as ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PREFACE: How Materiality Shaped This Book
• INTRODUCTION: Where to Begin?
• ECO MATERIAL ALLURES & REPULSIONS
• ARCHETYPES OF MATERIAL USE & DISUSE
• ECO MATERIAL OPERATIVES
• ECO MATERIAL TOOLS
• ECO MATERIAL CREATIVITY
• ECO MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY
• WHAT'S NEXT?
• SUGGESTED READINGS