A Search for Sustainable Public Art

2022 A Search for Sustainable Public Art Academic Advisors: Professor Troy Ouellette and Professor Oliver Kellhammer, Major Research Paper, August 26, 2022 MALCOLM GEAR Table of Contents Chapter One …………………………………………………………………………… Introduction……………………………………………………………………… What is Public Art? ……………………………………………………………… What are the Characteristics That Identify Public Art? …………………………. What do we know about public art? …………………………………………….. Agonism and Antagonism As Strategies for Sustainable Public Art …………… From the Aesthetics of the Garden to Depictions of Pollution: A Prelude to Environmental Art in the Twentieth Century …………………………………… 1 1 6 8 9 18 33 Chapter Two ……………………………………………………………………………. 38 Philosophy and Sustainable Public Art ………………………………………….. 38 How do we heal an abused planet? …………………………………………….... 42 Sometimes Good Intentions Fail an Unexpected Result ...……………………… 45 Two International Sustainable Public Art Projects ……………………………… 46 Architect Adrian Blackwell ……………………………………………………… 59 Artist Noel Harding ..……………………………………………………………... 62 Do Artists Profit from Irresponsible Art? If So, What Does the Public Lose? …… 66 Where Have All the Butterflies gone? ……………………………………………. 70 Chapter Three …………………………………………………………………………… Regeneration to Begin the Healing ………………………………………………. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….. Five Hundred Years into the Anthropocene …………………………………….. 74 74 84 87 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………… 90 Image List ………………………………………………………………………………… 94 Image List Image One. Koh, Germaine. GroundWaterSeaLevel. Vancouver, British Columbia, 2014. ……………….. 12 Image Two. Koh, Germaine. By the Way. La Torre De Los Vientos, México City, 2000. …………………. 26 Image Three. Koh, Germaine. By the Way. La Torre De Los Vientos, México City, 2000. ………………... 26 Image Four. Gear, Malcolm. Elevated Wetlands. Artist: Noel Harding. Don Valley, Toronto, Ontario, 1999. 64 Image Five. Kellhammer, Oliver. Ravine Damage, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1992. ………………….. 78 Image Six. Kellhammer, Oliver. Restored Ravine, Artists: Janis Bowley and Oliver Kellhammer. Vancouver, British Columbia. 1992. ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 79 Abstract This paper explores international and Canadian public art contexts and installations within the last fifty years. Public art requires public places for installation, visibility, and democratic discussion. This text will extend its scope to include a historical overview of the divide between public and private property. In light of this, the notion of agonism will be central to my argument regarding public space, dissent, protest, critique and collaboration. As artists and philosophers recognize agonism, in art, as critical to how public art functions, this paper reviews its powers to question and contribute to ecological regeneration as urban public spaces are shrinking from growing commercial pressures. Ultimately this text will support the usefulness of artist interventions and agonism in the struggle to enhance and support the planet's ecology and discuss the crucial role public property plays in shaping our relationship with the earth. Five Keywords: sustainable, public art, agonism, environmental crisis, and copyright. 1 A Search for Sustainable Public Art Chapter One Introduction The first Earth Day began with an idea conceived by founder David Einhorn. Ever since April 22, 1970, marking the start of the modern environmental movement, its anniversary has been celebrated by people worldwide on the same date with events highlighting how vital our planet is to the survival of humanity and all living species. Over fifty years ago, artists quickly recognized the significance of the oncoming ecological crisis and began to transmit their concerns within their art. The goal of Earth Day is to raise awareness on protecting the environment from further decline regarding safeguarding all planetary life. As the 1970s progressed, scientists, architects, academics, and artists became progressively worried about the toxic effects of pollution in the soil, suspended within the ocean’s waters and in the particles floating in the atmosphere. As a result, scientific instruments began measuring ozone damage caused by refrigerator coolants, the rising CO2 admissions from the transportation sector, and the burning of tropical rainforests. The latter process increased mono-agriculture and pastures for livestock grazing, reducing topical forest capacity to store carbon and release oxygen. Within the past fifty years, an ecological-friendly trend has gained momentum in sustainable public art internationally and in Canada. This trend contributes to a growing consensus toward the essential importance of sustainable public art that draws our attention to the ongoing environmental crisis with creative solutions to remediate past ecological damage. The planet’s ability to supply resources for humanity’s survival is being exhausted rapidly by expanding populations. Governments need to plan, organize, and change to protect the 2 environment with all the convincing evidence presented by the scientific community. A recent study by the World Bank suggests that: “Today, some 55% of the world’s population – 4.2 billion inhabitants – live in cities. This population trend is expected to continue, and by 2050, with the urban population more than doubling its current size, seven out of ten people will live in cities”.1 As people migrate to larger urban centres, it strains the existing infrastructures and a need to rethink urban spaces with ecology is ever more pressing. Communities have traditionally relied on free access to public space to interact and express their political and social issues. Architects know that public spaces are essential to gather, discuss issues affecting the present and future, celebrate identity, protest, and reform communities. However, where do people go when streets are congested or public spaces and urban assets become privatized? Artist and Architect Adrian Blackwell devises unique approaches to many of the problems faced within public using art as a catalyst for change.2 This text will elucidate his ideas on his two installations in separate locations in the same city during the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art. Blackwell leaves behind the dated monuments of colonial power to focus on art projects involving the creation of inviting places to sit. A place for community members to consult, learn, and participate in issues or celebrations on equal bases and not forget history’s past. This is a turn away from the ‘Urban Development Overview.’ World Bank, 20 Apr. 2020, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview#1. 2 This is an example of removing colonial seating hierarchy from public gatherings. The Model for a Public Space [knot], is Blackwell’s solution to opening public discourse through structure creating opportunities for a public forum on issues of public interest. https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/adrian-blackwell-model-public-spaceknot/. Another creative response to the lack of public space is Danish art collective n55, with an innovative sustainable pedal power library with a bench to sit and select a book from the street curb. https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/adrian-blackwell-model-public-space-knot/ https://www.n55.dk/ 1 3 monumental art of the past and is a progressive move forward and a trend to protect, appreciate, and include green spaces for all inhabitants in growing urban regions. The Search for Sustainable Public Art is organized for the reader in three chapters with an introduction, theories on sustainable public art and examples in Chapter One. Chapter Two contains the creative explorations of sustainable public art in various forms, including gardens. Finally, Chapter Three reviews a regenerative project and summarizes information gathered in the search for ecologically friendly art to understand what sustainability is in the present and future—asking whether it is an effective tool in fighting global warming. This paper will not ignore contributions from outside of Canada in sustainable public art that are historically significant, like Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille monument – The Library of Babel and Pierre Huyghe’s Untilled.3 Still, the focus will be on Canadian artists turning to the garden as art within the body of this paper which either succeeded in helping to heal the planet or others who may have not. The research continually asks questions and searches for answers to demonstrate the vital importance of sustainable public art for the community and environmental movement. Forward-thinking artists like Ian Baxter, Ron Benner, Adrian Blackwell, Noel Harding, Oliver Kellhammer, Germaine Koh, Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Camille Turner, Mike MacDonald, Ron Strickland, and Peter van Tiesenhausen are leading examples of artists practicing sustainable art in Canada, and their unique approach supports the remediation of the landscape that supports and 3 Rather than selecting one sustainable approach, there will be a variety, and the Bataille Monument does maintain a responsible model of sustainability. Hirschhorn also had other installations like the Gramsci Monument, the last of a series of four installations honouring thinkers and writers. The Bataille Monument was located on the grounds of a housing project in Bronx, New York. Hirschhorn, Thomas. “‘Bataille Monument’ (2002).” Thomas Hirschhorn, 2002, www.thomashirschhorn.com/bataille-monument/. 4 protects non-human life.4,5,6 What can we learn from these artists that have shifted from monumental art to the unmonumental that celebrate and respect the environment and value the land that all life depends on for survival?7 Public art has the power to influence individuals and communities and encourage national consensus to design and create public spaces with inclusive and inviting features for citizens to gather and engage in discourse. Well-designed sustainable art’s goal is to respect the land, plants, insects, birds, aquatic life, and all creatures, great and small, that help maintains the ecological balance on our precious endangered planet.8 There has been a noticeable trend with media reporting negative community reactions to monumental art on public land repeatedly under 4 Baxter’s work involves the public participating by inviting them to add their technological trash to make the experience educational, creative, and sustainable. Toxins and heavy metals must avoid landfill sites. Public participation is critical to reducing pollution at home and the workplace. Baxter&, Iain, et al. Iain Baxter: Products, Place, Phenomenon. Art Gallery of Windsor, 1998. 5 Noel Harding’s work is an example of good visibility with a creative answer to unused public land to draw our attention to daily environmental issues, making wetland recovery a critical point for change. Not all Harding’s efforts were successful. The Windsor Green Corridor was a planned urban redevelopment with Harding and a visual arts professor at the University of Windsor Rod Strickland as coordinators. The multi-faceted disciplinary collaboration envisioned a “regenerative green zone” that never materialized and is worthy of further research. Harding, Noel. “Elevated Wetlands.” Elevated Wetlands, LandLAB Environmental Design, 2 June 2016, landlab.com/project/elevated-wetlands/. 6 The pair Indigenous pair L’Hirondelle and Turner’s performance is unmonumental art performed aboard a ship on the St. Lawrence River, taking visitors on an ecological tour and noting the environmental damage to Indigenous lands and traditions. The excursion is a completely temporal space intent on disrupting entrenched histories and raising awareness of the rising water levels from global warming on the St. Lawrence River, drowning and killing sugar maple trees once harvested for their sweet sap). Willard, Tania. “Surfacing, Voicing and Signaling Freedom in Relational Performance: Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Camille Turner’s Freedom Tours.” Public (Toronto), vol. 32, no. 64, 2021, pp. 23–31, https://doi.org/10.1386/public_00069_1. 7 N55 is a Danish collective of designers, artists, and specialists who realized that minor changes like recycling locally make substantial changes globally that work to save the environment. Source local products and produce and avoid international businesses that have no interest in developing a fair way to distribute raw materials globally. We are not reusing waste from food production and processing it to produce cooking biogas and solid waste converted into fertilizers. Instead, N55 educates the public with a “closed-loop system for local and independent food production from waste” (News), an alternative and enhancement to local food production. https://www.n55.dk/NEWS/omninews.html. Artists, Collective. “n55 NEWS.” News, Mar. 2012, www.n55.dk/NEWS/omninews.html. 8 An excellent example of people making a difference comes from British Columbia with a Buddhist Monk leading the effort to save an old-growth forest by purchasing the land from a forestry company. It took years of fundraising to preserve the forest and creek running through it to become a park and common lands enjoyed by all and owned by no one. Mandel, Charles. “Long Fight to Save a Beloved British Columbia Forest Ends with Victory.” Canada’s National Observer, 19 Dec. 2021, www.nationalobserver.com/2015/08/06/news/how-ruthozeki-helped-save-forest-immortalized-tale-time-being. 5 attack for representations of colonial and imperialist heroes and ideologies no longer historically correct and valid.9 Citizens repeatedly feel traumatized from the presents of colonial monuments still in public for viewing and misrepresenting history.10 In contemporary society, this could be a turning point in civic art to promote responsible inclusiveness, creativity, and sustainability, shifting away from the colossal and adopting the advantages of the unmonumental in public space.11 So, what is unmonumental public art, and how can it help inspire action for a more sustainable community? The short answer is that the practice of unmonumental art involves a green approach with minimum ecological impact. The unmonumental fades away or is nonpermanent and sometimes bio-degrades or is created from ephemeral materials. It often inspires generations to care for the environment by acting as a catalyst for public meetings and social gatherings.12,13 9 Two interesting local examples of monumental public art are of the same hero, General Brock; the first example is in a park overlooking the border between Canada and America, separated by the Niagara River. It has General Brock standing on top of the towering pedestal and is not very warm or approachable. The monument constructed of stone, cement, iron, and bronze is meant to last centuries out living the original political justifications. The second example, recently made, sits in front of the University of Brock; it is a giant bronze of General Brock without the pedestal meant to be approachable. Yet, the scale seems overwhelming. Both sculptures give no thought to the land and our Indigenous allies. https://www.niagarafallstourism.com/play/historic-sites/brocksmonument/ 10 “Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II statues toppled in Canada amid anger at deaths of Indigenous children” (Cecco) are recent examples in Canada that indicate a failure in past practices that require immediate rethinking to avoid the same errors today and in the future. 11 Monumental art is usually outdoors and made of stone and bronze to commemorate war or colonization that cultures outgrow or are historically incorrect and deem no longer suitable with decolonization replacing past perspectives. 12 Unmonumental arts are usually outdoors, composed of materials that break down in time without ecological damage, respect the land and non-human inhabitants, and do not celebrate war or conquests of peoples and land. 13 A local example recently removed from the grounds of Rodman Hall in St. Catharines by Indigenous artist Mary Anne Barkhouse, titled, Settlement/Regency, is a hybrid unmonumental installation. The 2014 artwork is a smallscale bronze sculpture of two local animals, a badger, and a coyote, and it comes with a story. Barkhouse “challenges viewers to reconsider traditional colonial concepts of territory in favour of a broader understanding of the intertwined relationships and interdependencies among the land, people, plants, and animals. This project has profound resonance for all people in challenging times when our frail relationship with the natural world is compromised” (Barkhouse 20). These are uncertain times, and Barkhouse underscores the importance of working together. Storytelling in public art can be a powerful tool for perspective, discourse, and reflection within communities on our relationships with nature and people (Barkhouse). 6 7 What is Public Art? Community representatives select committees to choose and commission public art, which can take form in any medium. Public art requires artistry and knowledge of materials, an understanding of environmental demands, and the skills to create public discourse on the day’s critical issues. Installed both indoors and outdoors, either permanently or temporarily, the art must be publicly accessible physically and visually. Themes for public art embody universal concepts and avoid commercial designs or notions of personal interests. Public art is the product of a community process and selection, commissioning, and maintaining an artwork in a public setting. However, as the philosopher Hilde Hein says, it is not public art unless it has a social purpose. In an evolving world, she points out that “today’s public artworks still have conceptual links with such traditional art forms as the medieval cathedral and the mural and temple ruins of ancient Mexican and Latin American civilizations.”14 As Hein indicates, the conceptual links are a familiar history with colonial roots that continue to tell a bloody history storied with the slaughter of millions of Indigenous Peoples worldwide by imperial nations’ global expansion aspirations. The independent arts in public and private realms created by graffiti and street artists are not within this project’s scope. These are unofficial or unsanctioned artworks outside the public art selection process genre but are no less significant. Nevertheless, this paper will focus on public art located on public lands temporarily or permanently that have undergone a selection process with community involvement. Hein, Hilde. “What Is Public Art?: Time, Place, and Meaning.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 54, no. 1, 1996, pp. 1–7, https://doi.org/10.2307/431675. 14 8 What are the Characteristics That Identify Public Art? Common features that identify public art are accessibility, community collaboration, location within the public realm, community engagement, paid public funding, upkeep and maintenance. Another essential characteristic is that the content usually relates to the community and introduces concepts that remain open to individuals and society to decide how artistic work will function or remain in the future. Artists have often collaborated with community leaders, organizations, and residents with the support of specialists, including architects, designers/fabricators, construction workers, historians, and others to allow works to evolve and relate to the environment in which they are placed. Traditionally, monuments used long-range materials to endure the elements and resist exposure to external influences over prolonged periods. Other identifiable public art involves physical integration into the landscape, facades of buildings, and pavements’ surfaces, with other examples including bas reliefs, petroglyphs, digital lighting, and murals. Furthermore, other public arts are temporary installations that last no longer than coloured smoke remaining in the sky or the fall-at-any-moment of balanced rocks.15,16 Finally, art can remind the public of past, present, and future threats. More recently, artists have increased our awareness of environmental catastrophes that include: rising oceans, pollution, devastation through conflict, deforestation, and soil degradation, amongst many others. 15 The following link will lead to a performance artist that uses coloured smoke in their work. https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/judy-chicagos-forever-de-young-air-sculpture-colors-golden-gateparks-sky. 16 This artist uses available rocks to balance and create temporary sculptures. https://gravityglue.com/portfolio/stone-balance/. 9 What do we know about public art? First it exists within the public realm and can be on private or public property. The size or scale matters not; it can be abstract or realistic, made in any material installed temporarily or permanently. Public art intends to reach everyone in the local community where it has a bearing on their lives. Community ethics and morals change over time, and temporary installations would accommodate the changes in opinions as the need arises. Art can be a powerful tool because it attracts attention and creates controversy, but no one artwork ever appeals to everyone and furthers the notion of agonistic or antagonistic processes that are a sign of a healthy and changing community. Functioning public art should acknowledge its citizens and involve the community in shaping art into an outward expression of community identity. The process, designs, and materials change over time and reflect current trends, cultural advancements, and sustainable practices with public involvement alongside professional expertise. According to Hein, the long-lasting qualities of public art speak to communities’ values and convictions found in public places where people regularly gather to commemorate similar values and beliefs. But the author says Modernism has reversed the values by glorifying the artist and transcending the public.17 In this sense, is public art failing to meet the community’s needs? Hein is likely to be correct simply because public art has conditions to fill, and no one artwork will meet every requirement. Furthermore, she says, the “narrow definition of public art equates it with art installed by public agencies in public places and at public expense.” Finally, public art no longer foregrounds the collective spirit and turns it into an ideal medium for “great effect promotionally “Modernism, with its glorification of the individual, has reversed that order, investing person hood with uniqueness and regarding the social as a derivative aggregate. Its representation of art, correspondingly, gives pride of place to that which is irreducibly personal. The aesthetic of modernism has yoked art with subjective consciousness and expression, and with a new construction of freedom based on the possession of libertarian rights.” (Hein, 1). 17 10 and oppositionally by all political persuasions.”18 Therefore, Hein understands the importance of antagonism used in public art as an oppositional force to counterbalance hegemonic powers with opinions from all persuasions. Would sustainable art not be of immense value to open community dialogue on the climate crisis? This paper will investigate artists that open discussion using pedologic installations on environmental issues that inform, re-envision, and educate the public. Art sets positive examples in changing public art by avoiding the practice of creating monumental artworks commemorating colonial conquest to critical topics on environments and equality for life in communities today. Artists have begun to ask the public to consider the rights of all life to exist within a shared and healthy environment for all. Visibility and accessibility are critical to defining public art, and location is an integral component. Is there placemaking for protest and dissent on public grounds, and what role would art play? Before attempting to answer such questions, it might be helpful to start with why public land or common lands have been important to communities and why traditions are essential to continue in the future. Property law expert Professor Carol Rose describes common property before Modernity. With the privatization of property, parcels of land were set aside for peasants to feed their livestock and grow food. However, during the Industrial Revolution, property ownership changed with the belief that “Exclusive property rights prevent wasteful overuse of resources and stave-off the familiar Tragedy of the Commons that can follow open access”.19 She goes on to suggest that, “Exclusive property encourages optimal investment in resource development since the gains and losses from that investment come back to the owner.”20,21 Unfortunately, 18 (Hein, 2-3). Rose, Carol M. “Romans, Roads, and Romantic Creators: Traditions of Public Property in the Information Age.” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 66, no. 1/2, 2003, pp. 89–110. (Rose, 2). 20 “Tragedy of the Commons.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Aug. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons. 21 (Rose, 2). 19 11 privatization leads to intense extraction of resources from mining to the fisheries with the single goal of profits before environmental considerations. The concept of common property and solutions are currently “being employed to help solve important resource policy problems in the twentieth century. Groundwater and fisheries may serve as illustrations”.22 Moreover, “with the longest coastline in the world, Canada has a wide range of interests in the sea and a substantial stake in the new law of the sea. It, therefore, played a leading role in shaping the convention”.23 Could governments use this knowledge of common property to manage public lands, art, and beyond Canada’s borders to improve the environment for all its inhabitants? According to Carasco, one of the disputes was concerning the Northwest Passage with Canada’s assertion that the strait is not in international waters. Therefore “transit passage” after “Canada announced its decision to exercise full sovereignty in and over the waters of the Arctic Archipelago” ended disputes by claiming and maintaining sovereignty. To do this, Canada required reforms in the Law of the Sea, including effective enforcement methods, a significant drawback to progress until properly implemented with human and technical resources. Canada’s announcement of full sovereignty began with protecting formerly unregulated passage through the strait and protecting sensitive Arctic land, air, and waters already damaged by rising global temperatures, pollution, and overfishing. Could the claim of sovereignty extend to public lands and all living things within that domain, including migrating species? Should it not be the public’s right to expect responsible environmental management to remain healthy? Can public art help with the ecological crisis? 22 Ciriacy-Wantrup, S. V., and Richard C. Bishop. “‘COMMON PROPERTY’ AS A CONCEPT IN NATURAL RESOURCES POLICY.” Natural Resources Journal, vol. 15, no. 4, 1975, pp. 713–27. 23 Carasco, Emily F. “Law of the Sea”.” 16 December 2013. The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/law-of-the-sea. 17 May 2022. 12 And how can the public be aware of a decline without real-time data? Artist Germaine Koh has grappled with this idea. One of her works resulted in GroundWaterSeaLevel. In this situation, the artwork informs the public in real-time representing climatic change in the immediate local area resulting in the rising sea levels. The increasing level is continuously displayed with changing LED light colours expressing current conditions in an ongoing process that can be monitored by passing motorists informing the public of changing decline in the environment.24 Image One. Koh, Germaine. GroundWaterSeaLevel. Vancouver, British Columbia, 2014. In contrast to the above work by Koh, we will ask questions about the value of art movements celebrating consumer and celebrity culture. Two well-known examples that come to mind are Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. This paper investigates whether these artists and their works accelerate the crisis or protect and value the planet and all life. Have museums played any supporting role by exhibiting art that might contribute to the decline in the planet’s health? And 24 Germaine Koh explains the technologies used project in greater detail on her website. Koh, Germaine. Germainekoh.com, 2014, germainekoh.com/works/groundwatersealevel. 13 what about art spectacle and entertainment? Has it replaced thoughtful reflection on community, land, and an appreciation of all life? The toxic effects of pollution have been with us since the beginning of the industrial revolution, with a noticeable impact on air quality in the 1800s, with artists painting smog-filled skies of London and Paris with burning red skies. By the middle of the twentieth century, the arts and sciences began warning industrial and world leaders of the impending and ongoing crisis for over half a century. Every species feels the effects of pollution in the age of the Anthropocene. Human industrial activity is altering the Earth forever from destructive practices in resource extraction of metals, lumber, fish, and animal species beginning during the worldwide colonial expansion in the last five centuries. The pressure on the planet’s resources and ability to recover is enormous; for example, in 1970, on the first Earth Day, the world the population was 3,700,437,046, and in 2022, it has risen to 7,794,798,739 or more than doubled in fifty years consequentially resulting in plant and animal species going extinct at an alarming rate.25 Five hundred years after Columbus landed in the Americas, the total number of species lost was nine hundred26. Today the number of threatened species is underestimated because researchers are not quick enough to evaluate threatened species without more resources.27 The centuries of colonial expansion have been difficult for Indigenous Peoples, suppressing and stripping away their rights as citizens worldwide. “World Population Projections.” Worldometer, www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-populationprojections/. 26 On the website Our World in Data provides a detailed graph with the total number of species gone extinct since 1500 to 2020 with sub-group numbers by species. Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Extinctions.” Our World in Data, 15 Apr. 2021, ourworldindata.org/extinctions. 27 (Ritchie). 25 14 In Canada, the government confined First Nations Peoples to reservations so that the colonizers could claim the natural resources as their own without regard for the healthy balance maintained by the Indigenous Peoples. First Nations have lived more symbiotically with the environment for centuries using the Seven Generation Plan before colonization.28 The warnings have been ongoing and increasing as more than fifty years have passed. Humanity cannot remain on the same trajectory, but there is much to do to reverse the trend, and public art can help. In the book, Critical Path, Thinker and Architect, Buckminster Fuller, one of the early influential midtwentieth century thinkers on humanity’s ecological dilemma, warned the political and economic powers in the 1970s and 1980s. In this work he stated that “Those in supreme power politically and economically as of 1980 are as yet convinced our planet earth has nowhere nearly enough life support for all humanity”, and statistics support his warning29. For example, in 2022, “Each day, 25,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, die from hunger and related causes. In addition, 854 million people worldwide are estimated by the United Nations to be undernourished, and high food prices may drive another one hundred million into poverty and hunger”.30 Over the past fifty years, the planet’s atmosphere and ocean temperatures have been rising, causing the glaciers and polar caps to melt at an alarming rate resulting in evermore frequent extreme weather occurring, causing forests to burn and land to disappear from rising oceans as glaciers melt. Species and vegetation are vanishing that Indigenous Peoples depend on for survival, the planet’s health and humanity are in trouble, and we must ask ourselves; how can we help? Fuller had sounded the alarm for a couple of decades and, by the early 1980s, identified 28 Douglas Cardinal is Canada’s first Indigenous architect. He writes about the Seven Generation Plan, where the plan of seven generations: three past generations to gather information on how to navigate and manage the land and its resources for three future generations from the present. Kiddle, Rebecca, et al. Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture. First edition., ORO Editions, 2018. 29 Fuller, R. Buckminster (Richard Buckminster). Critical Path. St. Martins Press, 1981. (Fuller, xxiii). 30 Holmes, John. “Losing 25,000 to Hunger Every Day.” United Nations, United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/losing-25000-hunger-every-day. 15 global warming and the ecological crisis as Earth moved into a critical point in the planet’s history. In the introduction to Fuller’s 1981 book, he predicted that humanity is moving into an ecological crisis without precedent. Buckminster Fuller was not the only person to come forward with a warning of a deepening problem. There is also the groundbreaking pioneer Conceptual Artist Agnes Denes, who works in various mediums. Her work, Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982) was a temporary installation commissioned by the Public Art Fund in downtown Manhattan’s Battery Park. In this intervention, Denes transformed a two-acre lot into a field of growing wheat, which she remediated. She went on to describe it as ‘eco-logical’ as a critique of rationalist logics that damaged the earth and depleted resources.31,32 The concept began with a similar installation in 1968 titled Rice/Tree/Burial, Eco-Logic, Sullivan County, New York, which art historians have acknowledged as the first ecologically concerned site-specific performance art. Completed in 1977-1979 the artist recreated the Rice/Tree/Burial in Artpark, Lewiston, New York. Denes planted the half-acre location with rice which absorbed the toxins from the former industrial dump site on which it grew.33 The Wheatfield – Confrontation project was in an empty lot next to the World Financial Center. Denes’ first step was to clear garbage and rocks from the two-acre site, and after receiving two hundred truckloads of soil, the artists and volunteers dug 285 furrows before planting wheat seeds. The crop produced a thousand pounds of wheat at harvest but required four months of maintenance. “Agnes Denes.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Aug. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Denes. Rawes, Peg. “Aesthetic Geometries of Life.” Textual Practice, vol. 33, no. 5, 2019, pp. 787–802, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2019.1581685. (Rawes, 796) 33 American activist/artist Mel Chin uses the ability of plants to absorb toxins from contaminated industrial sites and harvest plants to extract the toxins to clean the soil. Chin, Mel. “Mel Chin.” Art21, Art21, art21.org/artist/melchin/. 31 32 16 Author Peg Rawes’s 2019 article34 describes the work of both, Fuller and Denes, with similarities observed in Spinoza’s philosophy in Denes’s drawings and Fuller’s designs showing different physical and mental relations. Both examples help develop an environment that produces well-being and agency in individuals, societies, and the world, emphasizing complex geometric ties in human, environmental and planetary life. The Rawes article is an exploration of two examples of twenty-century thinker’s illustrations, Agnes Denes, and a series of world maps by Buckminster Fuller after concluding, “Spinoza’s aesthetics is also a theory of ecology” attributing “the power to organic and inorganic entities (i.e. nature)”.35 Rawes learned that “For Spinoza, aesthetics is simultaneously intrinsic to our corporeal or bodily experiences and in our mental powers of reasoning. Also, because these can be positive or negative experiences of subjecthood, we may consider the text to be a study of the connections between aesthetics and the power of agency or wellbeing in the individual” and suggests that the aesthetic experience can define the capacity of life or existence.36 She used Spinoza’s suggestion that aesthetics speaks to the individual earthly powers and the intellectual appreciation of beauty. Rawes introduces Spinoza’s geometry as one of two separate reasoning modes with geometry’s inherent connection with the concept of the ratio or “the relational power of reasoning” and “is particularly good at showing the value of aesthetic of experience for life.” The other is the power of human emotion and continuing with Rawes Spinoza’s study of a variety of aesthetic experiences supporting: “A theory of agency which has considerable affinity with contemporary debates about the individual, and by extension, with questions of societal wellbeing”.37 In her Rawes, Peg. “Aesthetic Geometries of Life.” Textual Practice, vol. 33, no. 5, 2019, pp. 787–802, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2019.1581685. 35 (Rawes, 787). 36 (Rawes, 787). 37 (Rawes, 788). 34 17 analysis, she explains how Spinoza extends aesthetics into the natural world, beyond the individual and society, including humans, animals, or inorganic substances. Interestingly, Rawes furthers Spinoza’s notion that aesthetics are sympathetic to “…cultural, environmental, and political aims of contemporary art practices which express artful political, social, and environmental reasoning (e.g., architecture and ‘spatial’ practices, including landscape design and land art, which explicitly critique human and environmental relations)”.38 No country or people are immune from climate change, and it threatens all nations with mass migrations from loss of land as the coastlines disappear and shift. We are witnessing dramatic changes with more to come if we do not reduce pollution and rising temperatures. The statistics are bleak for the future. Emily Potter cites Brindal’s 2008 forecasting that “Climate change is slated to turn two hundred million people into refugees worldwide by 2050”, and in Canada “Today, 521 plant and animal species are considered at risk under Canada’s Species at Risk Act”.39,40 Can artists influence this ecological crisis using sustainable public art? David Schorr describes how artists depicted air pollution in the past, which helps researchers today understand art’s value in environmental issues in terms of historical impact.41 38 (Rawes, 788) Brindal, Emma. WiseEarth Education. 2013. http://wiseeartheducation.com/. 8 June 2022. 40 Parker, C. “Species at Risk.” David Suzuki Foundation, 28 June 2022, https://davidsuzuki.org/project/species-atrisk/. 41 Schorr, David. “Art and the History of Environmental Law.” Art and the History of Environment Law, 2015, cal.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cal/article/download/26073/19209. 39 18 Agonism and Antagonism As Strategies for Sustainable Public Art The search for what constitutes sustainable art is an ongoing inquiry. As part of this investigation this research paper will attempt to unpack the concrete examples from Canadian artists, art collectives, and scholarship that have a bearing on this question. Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe explains the value of the agonistic approach to public art in her 2008 article.42 Antagonism in public art helps present questions to the public that needs answering. One of those questions is why public art is essential to democracy and politics. Theorist Edward Herman’s symposium document supports Mouffe’s antagonism theory when media is being controlled with financial resources of the dominant hegemony for the political and monetary benefit at the loss of government-funded not-for-profit media programming with the following: “Public space on a global scale is undergoing privatization in media and communications at the time same in the non-commercial media and forums are shrinking it’s in public programming and the nonentertainment messages challenging the dominate discourse with ‘agonist’; perspectives”.43 Combined with Herman’s account of the public sphere, Belgian Political Theorist Chantal Mouffe explains the value of public art in her 2008 article to support its importance. To illustrate this, we will begin with an American experience with media in the public sphere. Herman says that the USA is the most influential nation in the entertainment and media industry, and the rest of the world can learn from their industry. Herman continues, the Federal Mouffe, Chantal. “Art and democracy: Art as an agonistic intervention in public space”. Open 14. Art as a Public Issue 2008, pp. 6-15. 43 Herman, Edward S. The Global Erosion of the Public Sphere: Symposium 01.25 September 1998. Web, 27 June 2022. 42 19 Communications Commission (FFC) “… and proponents placed almost exclusive stress on its public service potential as an educational tool and means of political, religious, and cultural enlightenment”.44 The FFC believed advertisers should be under control because they represented an economic threat to non-commercial programming, but it did not go as planned. A quote from Herman’s paper describes commercial interests replacing public programming by less than straight forward means, “But by a quiet coup, carried out between 1927 and 1933 the commercial stations and networks, with the help of the regulatory authorities, displaced the many early educational and religious stations and took control of broadcasting” followed by a commercial regime with control ratified by Communications Act of 1934.45 In the act, Herman points out that broadcasters “In 1934 the broadcasters did pledged to provide ample public service programming, and as noted, the FCC in 1946 promised that broadcasters would meet public service responsibilities through ‘sustaining programs,’ as a condition of license renewal”.46 Herman’s research reveals that advertising dollars favoured commercial stations and networks, and public stations “sustaining programs” cost increased, but not in funding. The experience of seventy years has taught the U.S. the consequences of the “incompatibility, and the disastrous effects of commercialization on the public sphere”47 Public programming fell to 2% by the 1970s, with “the entire spectrum of public service offerings was far below that provided by public broadcasting systems in Canada, Great Britain, and elsewhere in the West”.48 Profits soared to 30-50% of revenues for station owners. Herman describes the pressure public broadcasting were under from the competition displaced with entertainment and programs, 44 (Herman). (Herman). 46 (Herman). 47 (Herman). 48 (Herman). 45 20 “Under advertiser pressure, and the force of competition, not only did entertainment programs tended to lighten up, undue seriousness, depth of thought, and backgrounds devoid of lavish and upscale décor”.49 Edward Herman outlines the consequence of the Communications Art of 1934, “The shrinking numbers of documentaries tended to deal with non-political and noncontroversial matters like dogs, restaurants, travel, personalities, and the lives of the rich. Politics in the media became marginalized and trivialized, with the news itself transformed into a form of entertainment (“infotainment”).”50 In 1967, public broadcasting introduced public funding mainly because the commercial broadcasters wanted to be free of as Herman says, “any public service responsibilities and were pleased to allow its shift to stations” and “paid for by the taxpayer”.51 He went on to suggest that, “The power of public broadcasting became apparent during the Vietnam War for example, despite its heavy greater degree of political independence and courage in allowing dissent, despite its heavy reliance on government support.” U.S. commercial networks did not make any critically serious “documentaries on the War, during the early War years they barred access to outside documentaries,” the Herman article indicates. Furthermore, television networks followed government guidance “During the Vietnam War, for example, despite the growing opposition to the war at home and throughout much of the world in 1965 through 1967, network television toed the official line and avoided as much as it could airing the pains of the war and dissenting opinion. a great deal of its sponsored entertainment was jingoistic.”.52 Mass protests in major cities barely received network coverage, primarily because of built-in constraints and 49 (Herman). (Herman). 51 (Herman). 52 (Herman). 50 21 “Apparently, the constraints built-in to the commercial operations by ownership and advertiser interest makes them less bold and more subservient to establishment political desires than an institution literally on the government payroll but granted some degree of autonomy”.53 Herman believes conservatives did not like autonomy and, “Because of this independence, conservatives dislike public broadcasting (as well as community broadcasting), and regularly urge that it be defunded and pushed into the commercial nexus.” The conflict between the public and hegemonic forces that Chantal Mouffe characterizes interests as a battleground without reconciliation and furthers concludes that, “Artistic practices can play an important role in subverting the dominant hegemony in this so-called ‘agonistic’ model of public space, visualizing that which is repressed and destroyed by the consensus of post-political democracy.”54 The philosopher Mouffe adds her opinion on the role of the artist: “I personally think that artistic practices can play a role in the struggle against capitalist domination, but to envisage how an effective intention can be made requires an understanding of the dynamics of democratic politics; an understanding which I contend can only be obtained by acknowledging the political in its antagonistic dimension as well as the contingent nature of any type of social order.”55 The public media was economically struggling worldwide, while retail spending increased from $33 billion to $335 billion between 1973 and 1995. As Herman suggests “With all that money exchanging hands the relationship between media and advertisers has been long-standing and close”.56 Are we seeing corporations and advertisers manipulate the public media for political and economic gain? Would it not be in the community’s interest to counterbalance the 53 (Herman). (Mouffe, 6). 55 (Mouffe, 7). 56 (Herman). 54 22 manipulations with oppositional antagonism? Edward Herman points out that commercial media have the resources to purchase and commercialize the “public sphere” with a political bias supported by political conservatives. At the same time, “Noncommercial media depends on money provided by subscribers/listeners, donors, or the government”.57 The U.S. model has influenced ideology, politics, and the economic sphere globally. He furthers his argument by saying, “The U.S. model is being extended globally, partly because of U.S. power, leadership, and plan, but more basically because it represents the advanced, if not full, product of the extension of market principles and processes to the media and communication industries. The plan element encompasses the attempt by the U.S. government, and sometimes its allies, to encourage private enterprise, open economies, and market-based media systems throughout the world, to pry open markets, and to destabilize and overthrow non-marketfriendly governments.”58 This is important to other sectors regarding the arts because what is seen in the public eye are only things that are commercialized and privatized rather than projects that are of a critical nature or works that inspire communities to think more holistically. As Herman remarks, “U.S. goals and strategies were implemented by means of U.S. economic and military aid, military and police training programs, economic and political pressure, support given to indigenous forces serving U.S. aims, and sometimes more direct interventions, as in 57 58 (Herman). (Herman). 23 Guatemala in 1954, Nicaragua in the 1980s and Cuba still in process today. There is a clear official record of intentionality in the pursuit of these goals, which cannot be dismissed as a product of "conspiracy theory." .59 He outlines the dangers of an American monopoly by the amounts of commercial media purchased by international broadcasters replacing domestic content with made in America entertainment; “The mainly U.S.-based global firms that now cross many borders, providing films, TV shows, and “news” to media firms everywhere, are all intensely commercial, seeking to attract audiences and advertisers by offering attractive entertainment”.60,61 Chantel Mouffe believes that the agonistic approach might be useful when she writes that art in public “denies the possibility of a non-adversarial democratic possibility and criticizes those who, by ignoring the dimension of ‘the political’, reduce politics to a set of supposedly technical moves and neutral procedures.” Edward Herman indicates there is a need for greater public debate and critique in the public sphere because of the global advertising and embedded value intrusions, which, help in the global advance of consumerism and neoliberal ideology. He continues with warnings that the U.S. model, today, is advancing consumerism and neoliberal ideology and continues with, “But the dynamics of the market has its own internal momentum, operative within the United States itself (and still working there today) and extending globally at an accelerating pace by the force of cross-border media investment and competition.”62 He goes on to say, “However, hegemonic ideology is gaining ground with the successful downgrading of the idea of public goods and a public service responsibility of government, and with the help of 59 (Herman). (Herman). 61 (Herman). 62 (Herman). 60 24 financial pressure on governments have constrained the growth of public service and welfare budgets.”63 The result of funding reductions are in lock-step with the lack of support in the arts as it relates to neo-liberal embrace of stockholder gains over any long-term benefits, including those outlined by environmentalists, Herman believes public broadcasting is retreating globally with, “The commercial media are eager to occupy that space, and conservatives want them to have it because of the structured political bias and other effects of commercialization on the "public sphere.”64 There is a warning that the global market system and media pose a threat by allowing democracy to be subverted. So how can societies reverse the global trend toward privately and corporately owned media and acquiring public resources? One example of returning common property once considered the public domain is the airwaves that transmit critical information on community issues and events, as well as challenges in the political realm. Artists like Benner and Koh have interesting public art projects that challenge the concept of art and the dominant hegemonic discourse with “agonistic” discourse on environmental issues transmitting ideas within the public sphere.65,66 The next step in this paper is comparing the two sustainable Canadian artists, Germaine Koh and Ron Benner are both conceptually engaged within the public sphere in transmitting concepts in sustainable methods and mediums. Both Koh and Benner’s installations are contemporary and sometimes located in parks, near roadways and 63 (Herman). (Herman). 65 Benner’s investigation into food cultures’ history and political economics resulted in his public pedological installations that educate and help form a solid connection to food history and present-day conditions and an example of sustainable art in public space. http://www.ronbenner.ca/. 66 Koh’s GroundWaterSeaLevel informs the public in real-time about the rising sea levels with “[t]he lights, slowly but constantly changing over time, represent actual climactic conditions in the immediate area. The green band represents the soil moisture level at the foot of the poles, while the blue band represents the flooding and ebbing tide level in the adjacent Burrard Inlet. Both levels correspond to the actual conditions measured by physical sensors installed in these locations. Continually changing, the piece’s slow modulation will remind us of, and return us to, the pace of natural processes”. https://germainekoh.com/works/groundwatersealevel. See Image One) 64 25 gardens. Benner’s work features plants species in his gardens from before and onwards to the colonization of the Americas, and as Koh’s remarks her installation is a, “Site-specific intervention for La Torre de Los Vientos, Mexico City. A live audio feed monitoring cars, was processed in real time to resemble gusts of wind, and this transformed sound simultaneously retransmitted as a localized FM radio broadcast using an existing station’s frequency, as an alternative traffic/weather report”, an unfiltered locally transmitted free back.67,68 This project took place 2000. Koh, Germaine. “By the Way.” Germainekoh.com, 2000, germainekoh.com/works/by-the-way. 68 See Images Two and Three. 67 26 Image Two and Three. Koh, Germaine. By the Way. La Torre De Los Vientos, México City, 2000. 27 Who is Germaine Koh, and why is her environmental art important? Koh is a Vancouver-based conceptual artist focusing on daily activities in ordinary locations with familiar things. The identified characteristics of Koh’s practices are neo-conceptual art, environmental art, and minimalism. Koh is also an active curator with a long history of exhibitions and installations in Canada and internationally. In an interview with Rhizone.org, the artist explains her practice. “I would characterize my work as a whole as an attempt to be attentive to the poetics of daily life by focusing on those phenomena that shape everyday experience, often slightly below the threshold of notice (and, yes, value).”69 She has combined found and discarded objects and encourages active participation in projects such as Sightings (1992-1998). These activities make Koh an active environmental artist challenging the status quo using everyday objects, and her works make an interesting comparison to Ron Benner’s engaging works. In comparison Benner is an internationally recognized Canadian artist in a longstanding practice in the political economy of food cultures within pedological installations. Curator, Melanie Townsend describes Benner’s dislike of agriculture engineering where, after a year of study at the University of Guelph, he ended up in opposition to bioengineering and left the program where “[He] began a career in art merging his interest in plants and art.”70 After deciding to leave school, Benner travelled and began his food research and its politics. Townsend emphasizes that “Benner’s installations are part of a continuum in a journey to understand how plants are named, used and consumed; how and why plants became a coveted good of the colonizing enterprise in the past and an indispensable resource of the market economy of the present.”71 Furthermore, she continues that, “It has shaped a unique body of garden installations comprised of plants, “Germaine Koh.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 July 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Koh. Townsend, Melanie. Ron Benner and Ecology of Limitation. Barbara Fischer, and Mireya Folch-Serra. Ron Benner: gardens of a colonial present = Ron Benner: Jardin d’un presént. London Ont: Museum London: Print, 2008. 89-99. 71 (Townsend, 25). 69 70 28 photographs and textual elements that question and critique industrial agriculture, ‘embedded’ anthropology, eurocentric knowledge and the global economy.”72 This is a visual worldview where the bodies of water become nodes that connect to the similar and diverse, historical, and contemporary events and information found at or near the various sites in Canada, the United States, Cuba, Panama, and Peru. First exhibited in 1991, Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal which generated projects, including the museum London installation in 2005, As The Crow Flies, where Benner combines historical locations with cultures in a struggle with injustices between those in control and the controlled. Artist Andy Paton remarks that, “Benner goes outward, out of the studio, out of the city, his country, even his continent, following the corn in its dissemination around the world from its birthplace in Central America”.73 This remarkable artist has received dedicated support from colleagues, garden centres, and granting institutions. He appreciates the financial assistance because many projects would have been difficult to complete without the money and resources. To paraphrase Curator Gerald McMaster in Ron Benner: gardens of a colonial present where the Indigenous scholar describes Benner’s travels to learn the different local ways globally and recognizes the effectiveness of each location’s expertise, especially ancient gardeners.74 Many aspects of Benner’s work are not a part of the monumental artworks we normally see in public. It is sustainable and respects the land and non-human life by offering a place for animals, insects, birds, and plants in the urban setting that reminds us about the history and journey that food takes to feed and nourish us. 72 (Townsend, 11). Paton, Andy. Ron Benner and Ecology of Limitation. Barbara Fischer, and Mireya Folch-Serra. Ron Benner: gardens of a colonial present = Ron Benner: Jardin d’un presént. London Ont: Museum London: Print, 2008. 8999. 74 McMaster, Gerald. “The power of the earth.” Barbara Fischer, and Mireya Folch-Serra. Ron Benner: gardens of a colonial present = Ron Benner: Jardin d’un presént. London Ont: Museum London: Print, 2008. 139-143. 73 29 “Benner goes outward, out of the studio, out of the city, his country, even his continent, following the corn in its dissemination around the world from its birthplace in Central America,” Paton points out.75 Benner’s interest in the colonial past to present began a process of education and a rewriting of colonial histories, for example: “The potato, a native of the South American Andes, was still treasured despite being erroneously blamed for a 19th-century famine that killed a million people. It is not a coincidence that a famine occurred at the same time in British-ruled India, killing three million people”.76 Between 1970 and 1979, when not travelling to investigate plant origins, Benner worked at a full-time job as a railroad conductor/brakeman, providing him with the funds to finance his art production until 1980, when Benner resigned and worked to support his art production and additionally received assistance from a variety of granting and fellowship organization.77 Benner, like Koh, is dedicated to art, contributing solutions to the environmental crisis with thoughtful projects that permeate their practice creating agonistic relations that counter predominant ideologies. The primary focus is to compare one work from each, Benner’s garden installation at the Museum London, titled As the Crow Flies and Germaine Koh’s titled By the Way. As mentioned earlier Koh’s site-specific intervention comprised live audio and video feeds transmitted by FM radio at the La Torre Los Vientos (Tower of the Winds). More specifically, it involved a 15-meter-tall cone-shaped structure by Gonzalo Fonseca one in a series of concrete structures erected in Mexico City for the 1968 Olympiad. In this environment, a highway surrounds the monumental structure with on and offramps, with the rumble of traffic reverberating inside the concrete conical walls creating a 75 (Benner, 148). Benner, Ron. Ruminations on a Process. Barbara Fischer, and Mireya Folch-Serra. Ron Benner: gardens of a colonial present = Ron Benner: Jardin d’un presént. London Ont: Museum London: Print, 2008. 145-155. (Benner, 151). 77 (Benner). 76 30 disorientating experience from the lack of placement with only the overhead oculus to ground the visitor. Koh’s intervention identified the passing commuters of the site as the most frequent visitors. The artist then designed an effects unit for processing the audio feed to resemble gusts of wind corresponding, in real-time, to each passing car. The processed audio is retransmitted as a localized FM radio broadcast borrowing the frequency of an existing radio station known for its frequent traffic reports. The traffic volumes altered throughout the day are continuously changing, and the motorist can tune in by radio to listen to the transformed traffic sounds into gusts of wind in real-time. It is a dramatic transition and reflection created by Koh on pollution and sustainability, which she says is located, “In a city marked by congestion and pollution; they might provide a quiet opportunity to image a more open space and condition for passage.”78 This is an art intervention that identifies and uses existing structures and ambient noise pollution and then processes the noise into gusts of wind to reshape the sound pollution into a more desirous organic sound providing a reflexive context. Koh’s intervention is broadcast on a borrowed FM frequency delivering the transformed sounds to the public, providing an alternative to automobile noise. From start to finish, the concept requires no public land and is not permanent yet will leave an impression of green space, fresh air, and sustainability for those who tune in to listen. Koh identified an opportunity to alter the soundscape for motorists in real-time to reflect on the radio-transmitted sounds of automobile exhaust into gusts of wind. Benner also uses sustainable transmission in his installations, but unlike Koh’s intervention designed for human consumption and is not inclusive of nonhuman life. Moreover, instead of using the airwaves, Benner uses the natural forces of nature, such as the wind and 78 (Koh). 31 water, to transmit seeds naturally and in sustainable processes to educate visitors on food politics, their origins, and the journey of plants as food during colonization. Professor Andy Paton indicates in Gardens of a Colonial Present that Benner is not getting the credit he deserves by saying, “Ron’s work is in large part, ‘grown’ rather than ‘made’ it doesn’t make the same sense to applaud the artist for his skill.”79 Another interesting aspect of the artist’s research that Melanie Townsend points out is that, “He wanted to know from where Europeans left and where they landed because seeing the actual physical places would allow him to visualize the involvement of cultures with one another. It would also allow him to perceive and convey the transmission of local customs and traditions with the international, cultural, environmental, and political contexts.”80 There is a 2020 video on YouTube titled Museum Stories: Ron Benner, a documentary interviewing Benner at his installation on the grounds of Museum London, explaining the concept and features, which explains some of the intricacies of the work.81 The project began in 2005 with Benner visiting Museum London at the invitation of Melanie Townsend, the Curator. Benner explored the Museum grounds and found a derelict reflecting pond. He offered to repurpose the concrete feature. In the video, Benner explains that the installation is about water and his goal is to turn the pond into a swamp. At the north end of the swamp are plants native to the northern regions, and gradually the plants change further south in the pond to become increasingly tropical. Benner understands there are random and human influences in the plant’s 79 (Paton, 93). Townsend, Melanie. “Introduction.” Barbara Fischer, and Mireya Folch-Serra. Ron Benner: gardens of a colonial present = Jardins d’un present colonial. London, Ontario: Museum London, 2008. 11-15. Print. 81 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDdJP2YJOiw Benner, Ron. “Museum Stories: Ron Benner.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 Apr. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDdJP2YJOiw. 80 32 journey through the waters and above in the earth’s air currents. The garden has native and nonnative species of plants from the distant country of Peru and others. He explains that between 1984 and 1991, a project called As the Crow Flies began to investigate what is directly south of London, Ontario, in places that hit the water on the map and a total of five locations.82 The installation uses diagrams on panels for visitors to review and become familiar with the layout and concept. Benner takes five 1980s photographs from five separate locales and permanently installs the pictures in a southern progression. He has been adding other things for over fourteen years, like identification markers providing information and identifying each specific species’ origin and economic value. Humans, through time, have recognized plants’ valuable properties such as medicinal powers, food crops or their aesthetic value, all of which translate into monetary value. This installation educates and connects the people to plants and nature on public land, providing a learning environment and discourse on their experiences visiting the installation As the Crow Flies. Rather than demolishing the monumental, landscaped feature, a reflecting pool, he turned it into a sustainable pond to educate the community and return public land to nature. An unmonumental installation transforms and transmits plant seeds in water, soil, and air in the most sustainable manner. Like Koh’s work, it’s important to have these within urban context as places of rest and reflection. Urban contexts are essential to maximize the impact in populated areas where nature is subdued to make spaces for dwelling and corporate enterprise. 82 Benner, Ron. Ron Benner, www.ronbenner.ca/. 33 From the Aesthetics of the Garden to Depictions of Pollution: A Prelude to Environmental Art in the Twentieth Century Later in this paper, we will revisit the unmonumental as a significant way to reach the public while asking why artists are choosing to create sustainable art and why communities are choosing to commission unmonumental public art. But, before moving forward, let us look at Author and theorist David Schorr’s 2015 article on how art played a historical role in documenting pollution’s damaging effects. Schorr’s research suggests environmental problems existed, but there were no environmental laws before the twentieth century. Artists who noticed pollution before the 1970s primarily painted their observations at the time when humanity first saw air pollution created during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the furnaces of the industrial revolution. Schorr’s article indicates that art provides “…evidence of historical attitudes towards environmental issues, but…also has some value as of the physical environment in history”.83 Schorr explains his approach to sourcing art to test the limits of the history of environmental law using environmental-legal phenomena and for insights and knowledge not normally available for exploration, “Against which environmental laws develop (or did not), next, indications in the art of the effects of environmental laws, and finally environmental law as depicted in art.”84 Author Schorr explains why he uses art as evidence of historical attitudes on environmental issues. “In this article, I would like to use art mostly as evidence of historical attitudes towards environmental issues, but I believe that it also has some value as evidence of the physical environment in history. As Peter Brimblecombe writes: Surroundings must influence the way in which an artist paints, no matter how much he may wish to paint mental images rather than the physical world. A picture will contain much of the artist’s personal view about the environment, but we can also expect to find some aspects that are an objective portrayal of reality. 3(3) 3 Id. at 290.” (Schorr, 323). 84 (Schorr, 324). 83 34 Western European and North American air pollution was a fact in the landscape painting genre before 1970 in the industrialized West, with history’s best painters fascinated by air pollution, with Turner, the French Impressionists, and the American Works Progress Administration among the noteworthy. Today the public associates the French Impressionists with nature, but there was also a strong attraction to the modernization of landscapes with industrialization. Claude Monet’s Impression, Soleil levant (1872-73) is a painting of a sun rising in the Le Havre harbour with smokestacks belching out CO2 into the sky and staining the sunlight with hazy air pollution. The same picture inspired the art movement’s name, the “Impressionists.” Nineteenth-century London had a city skyline cut with chimneys and smokestacks everywhere, with smoke spewing out the tops. Monet painted cityscapes with smoke plumes rising from the fires in the homes and factories that covered the city in soot and a cloud of smog. Schorr includes examples of Monet and Pissarro’s landscapes paintings depicting activities of steamships, locomotives, and chimneys, all belching their toxic plumes of smoke into the gloomy polluted air. To Schorr, the images are valuable documents and sources of insights and knowledge that might otherwise be unavailable to us.85 Artists painted the effects of air pollution in cityscapes; nevertheless, Schorr includes a passage from Charles Dickens’ book Bleak House that opens with a description of a world of wheezing people crowded on docks with their visibility blocked out by a stinging polluted fog to the eyes and lungs.86 Many artists produced landscape paintings in Paris and the surrounding industrialized Seine Valley, including both the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and the Author asks “Are these depictions of Argenteuil artist’s attempt to depict different facets of reality, a 85 86 (Schorr, 324). (Schorr). 35 celebration of industrialization, or a critique and warning of the threat posed by modern pollution to the aesthetic of nature and country”.87 Schorr asks an interesting question about the intent of the nineteen-century artists, particularly Pissarro’s smokestacks, “Do these artificial trunks, with their smoky plumage, represent the regrettable, modern defilement of the French countryside, or are we meant to see in them the march of progress?”88 Moreover, he believes it is possible that in some cases, the paintings with smoke plumes rising from chimneys were seen not as pollution but as signs of progress and the forward march of modernity. Schorr believes that art helped draw the public toward understanding the causes and sources contributing to the growing awareness of environmental pollution. Schorr asked one critical question: Why did environmental laws not gain momentum in the 1960s and 1970s? As he suggests, pollution was not a big problem seen by the public, and the paintings may have exaggerated the seriousness of the pollution and, in turn, slowed the need for legislation to stop pollution. Still, Schorr suggests, “In the first half of the twentieth century, air pollution seems to take on a progressively darker cast both literally and figuratively”.89 The author points out that the German Expressionists often used air pollution as “…an inseparable part of their generally bleak world” (2015). In the same period, American art also begins to engage in pollution as a political problem, eventually becoming a legal issue. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River burned in Ohio, and the Santa Barbara oil spill also symbolized environmental disasters indicating weak legislation, non-existent environment protection laws and relaxed enforcement. Industries’ abuses were wildly out of control.90 One image that stands out from 1970 is the photomontage poster for the first Earth 87 (Schorr, 330). (Schorr, 333). 89 (Schorr, 335). 90 “The 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/articles/story-of-the-fire.htm. 88 36 Day, depicting the U.S. Capitol (Washington) drowning in a sea of smoke and congestion.91 Furthermore, another equally, if not more important, artwork is the iconic Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring with a view of Planet Earth from space, which informs the viewer how fragile and beautiful the planet is. In the 1970s, Schorr indicates that historians credit artists and activists with spurring the modern environmental movement and points out, “It might be argued that the recent failure of global society to deal effectively with climate change is at least in part the result of the difficulty in translating the problem into a visual medium.”92 Schorr sums up “that environmental law is always enacted or fails to be enacted) against a background of societal and cultural attitudes to the environment and perceived problems.”93 According to Schorr, artists’ stylized art is not dependable from a scientific perspective. Still, he says that art has value as a tool for understanding the environmental consciousnesses of the past.94 American and European artists celebrated and tolerated pollution in the past. Still, as he says, “The changing cultural attitudes to environmental issues, as reflected in art, can supply a historical explanation for the direction and pace of environmental law’s historical evolution”.95 We can see that artists and art history have contributed to art and a sustainable planet. Schorr’s article continues to explain how art has affected environmental law to help inform the public and as he states, “Art does not reflect the society and culture which serve as the background for law, it is created against a background of law. As such, it can inform us as to one of the most fraught issues in environmental law-the actual effect of the law on the ground (and air and water)”96. 91 (Schorr, 341). (Schorr, 341). 93 (Schorr, 341). 94 (Schorr, 341). 95 (Schorr, 341). 96 (Schorr, 341). 92 37 Interestingly, Schorr turns to Monet and his London paintings from 1870 to 1871 and again from 1899 to 1901, spanning the development of environmental laws in Britain. After comparing the pictures from his first visit to those from Monet’s second visit, he said the research provided “evidence of the failure of Victorian environmental legislation to achieve its goals, at least in the eyes of one influential observer. Schorr made similar conclusions based on paintings of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, on the effects of French environmental regulation, going back to a Napoleonic decree of 1810. And Schorr concludes that, “Art is useful tool for the legal historian wishing to move beyond environmental law on the books and evaluate the effects of environmental law on the ground (and in the air). As with any historical artifact, artistic ‘texts’ need reading critically considering their creators’ subjective views and political goals and may not always provide an accurate depiction of the physical effects of environmental law”.97 Monet’s nineteenth-century art and the mid-twentieth century in America depicted pollution proved useful in understanding the “effects of environmental law” or lack of results. Another question that Schorr asked is about the law itself, “Might works of art document environment law itself, exposing law we might otherwise not know about?” For example, an artistic image can serve as a background for environmental legislation or the failure of early legislation to solve the problem; it also alerts us to the very existence of air pollution regulation in mid-twentieth-century America and is useful on yet another level by, “…disclosing the legal and institutional form—local ordinances and smoke commissions—that the regulation often took in this period, thereby helping the modern historian bridge the conceptual and semantic gap 97 (Schorr, 344). 38 between today’s legal forms and those of the past.”98 Schorr does conclude that art can provide a valuable set of historical sources for understanding the cultural attributes toward the environment against which environment law did or did not develop and help to evaluate the effects of environmental law, especially in a historical context.99 Furthermore, as we continue to search for sustainable solutions to the climate crisis, we can see that artists have, and will continue to be, valued contributors to the discourse on sustainable public art. Chapter Two Philosophy and Sustainable Public Art What do contemporary philosophers say about sustainable art, and what can we learn from them? Part of this section will explore modern philosophers like Arnold Pacey’s perspectives and insights in helping us understand why the public, technological analysis, and political response have been slow to protect the overall environment.100 Pacey began in the 1960s with the introduction of snowmobiles to illustrate an argument associated with technologies. The notion “states that technology is culturally, morally and politically neutral – that it provides tools independent of local - systems which can be used impartially to support quite different kinds of lifestyle”.101 Indigenous cultures and countries depend on the snowmobile for their livelihoods, like the Canadian Inuit and Sweden’s Laplanders, to herd, trap, and hunt in winter. 98 (Schorr, 346). (Schorr, 344). 100 Pacey, Arnold. The Culture of Technology. 1st MIT Press ed., MIT Press, 1983. 101 Pacey’s example of the snowmobile is not ideal for sustainable art but works as a technology failing to meet the needs of people in favour of standardization and profits. 99 39 Furthermore, both countries use the snow machine for recreational use. There is a machine designed and equipped for tourists’ adventures on ice and snow, and the other is for remote areas and used for heavier work, but there is no machine for all uses. The Inuit, Pacey writes, are known for modifying and adapting their machines for local use. Pacey looks at the interconnections of activity surrounding the snowmobile from its practical uses, fuel, parts, and supplies for tourists’ travelling trails. The researcher points out that standardized machines neglect the needs of Indigenous Peoples. Technology is failing to meet the needs of the Indigenous to make greater profits from the standardization of marketing or the one size fits all approach. Pacey continues by saying that the technology practice of studies often neglects human content like personal values, including technical aspects or things to do with the machines like knowledge, techniques and “the essential activity of making things work”. Pacey uses a diagram to illustrate how technology externalizes discussions on organizational factors and cultural values. The technology practice is “not value-free and politically neutral, as some people say it should be”.102 Pacey points to Economist John Galbraith, who believes that technology involves more than a narrow definition involving value systems and complex organizations. Would it not be helpful to re-assess the impacts of technology more thoroughly before assuming we understand our relationship with the environment and other biological life? In the past, theorists have relied on the social control of technology with a focus on organization. However, social rules on technology have ignored other human content often neglected in studies, including personal values and individual technical work experience.103 Technical and organizational control include planning and administration, 102 103 (Pacey, 98). (Pacey, 98). 40 research management, and regulation to control pollution and other abuses, all equally critical to ecological management. Furthermore, Pacey describes the chapter as referencing the “cultural aspect of technology practice.”104 The author concludes that the general understanding of technology practice is not neutral and value-free. Pacey goes on to suggest that the definition of technology practice should not only include organized knowledge and scientific applications but also include ‘liveware’ or processes dependent on living orgasms involving technologies such as sewage treatment, biotechnologies, and brewing, including parts of the agricultural, nutrition and medical sector as well. Confusion and distinctions exist not only within administrations and scientific communities but also with economists “defining change of technique as a development-based choice from a range of known methods, and technological change as involving fundamentally new discovery or invention”.105 Pacey uses the practice of chemical water treatment to explain the action as a ‘technical fix’ and not a ‘technological fix.’ Further, saying “it represents an attempt to solve a problem through technique alone and ignores possible changes in practice that might prevent the dumping of pollutants in the river in the river first place.”106 Pacey’s observations may lead us to answer why it is taking so long to solve the environmental crisis with currently applied technical solutions. He also aims to strip away attitudes restricting how technology neglects cultural aspects in its narrow definition by excluding environmental and cultural considerations. Today’s technology mistaking excludes cultural and environmental deliberations creating a disconnection from the concept to practice. Public art can help by creatively illustrating interconnections between the environment, culture, and technology. Artists like Germaine Koh and Noel Harding represent renewal in reconnecting 104 (Pacey, 89). (Pacey,99). 106 (Pacey, 99). 105 41 art, science, and technology. These two artists and their art remind the public of the peril the environment and planet are in. Harding’s Elevated Wetlands demonstrates a solution to cleaning water using sustainable solutions, avoiding the failures of the past. Public art can make a difference. Technical fixes fail when equipment usage patterns are ignored. These problems must be addressed at the source of the problem to take corrective action. To further the notion of technology neglecting cultural aspects during machine design comes from East Indian villages using hand-pumps in the 1960s during a drought when it was necessary to drill the wells deeper to reach the available water with new hand-operated water pumps. Shortly after an estimated 150,000 pumps were installed, many failed, beginning as early as 3 to 4 weeks into use. Corrections were made to the pumps after engineers identified design and manufacturing faults, yet the pumps continued to fail. Eventually, after a careful examination of data, the cause of the problem was identified as a combination of engineering problems and administrative and management pump servicing issues also causing failures. Pacey points out that administrative and management arrangements for pump service did not prevent the pumps from continuing to break down. Another difficulty became apparent in many villages where no one “felt any personal responsibility for looking after the pumps.” 107 After adjustments were made to administrative and management services, pump performance improved. The water pump case is an excellent illustration of an integrated technological practice making a breakthrough when all aspects of the project came together and are imperative for public art to “function” in its environment by integrating the complexities of social, political, and environmental concerns. Engineers believed the solution was a machine problem from beginning to end, sometimes 107 (Pacey, 100). 42 referred to as engineering tunnel vision. The tunnel vision extends beyond engineering into policymaking and influences public expectations. Most people believe modern technology can fix anything with the hope that it will be the cure for pollution. Still, without social and cultural measures, pursuing sustainable solutions is an illusion. The countryside people, in this instance, expected the pumps to perform perfectly without maintenance or protection from damage. While studying case histories from individual pumps revealed both component failure in a social context that enabled suggestions on pump maintenance and reorganization, the causes for the breakdowns were discovered. Another concern is how the more practical issues hide any cultural aspects of technology practice, like the administrative problems concerning maintenance. Pacey uses a quotation by author C.S. Lewis to illustrate his point. “‘Man’s power over Nature often turns out to be a power exerted by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument” A commentator notes that “…this ‘and not the environmental dilemma as it is usually conceived’, is the central issue for technology”.108 How do we heal an abused planet? The journey to understanding sustainable public art involves finding ways to heal the planet that works using considered and thoughtful planning by the artist, integrated with design and engineering to manufacturing aftermarket responsibility and follow-ups. However, more needs to be done in our communities on the human planning level. Evaluating and learning Indigenous Peoples’ approach to healing and restoring balance to nature is critical in moving toward the ecological path to remediation. Two readings that will help our understanding of a sustainable approach to public art are the internationally renowned Canadian Indigenous architect Douglas 108 (Pacey, 102). 43 Cardinal’s contribution to a chapter titled Cultural Identity and Architecture.109 The second reading is by Indigenous Professor Theodore Jojola from the University of New Mexico. Both authors explain the Seven Generation Model using Indigenous insight based on generations of experience and observation, an essential ingredient for the long-term health and balance in Nature, incorporating respect and genuine long-term concern for all living things. The Firsts Nations Peoples believe that all life is sacred and celebrate the gift of life, including plants, animals, and all forms of life that give people the ability to flourish. The concept or philosophy is a far-reaching sustainable approach that values the importance of intergenerational collective management and building a mutually beneficial vision. The Seven Generation Plan consists of three generations before and three generations after that, using the “knowledge of the past informing the present and together it builds a vision towards the future”.110 Architect Cardinal asserts the need for First Nations representation in the layout and details of constructions, including choosing materials and design features for their Indigenous buildings. Cardinal continues with the importance of First Nations determining the materials best represent their environment, culture and traditions and honour the Indigenous history.111 The Seven Generation Plan has historically maintained the environment’s ecological health for all to share. Moreover, the architect goes on to say that land use should reflect the community’s values and customs and ensure that the people of today respect and protect the land, life, and resources for the future. Temporary installations provide opportunities for exhibiting art without permanently claiming the land’s use, permitting a return to nature and balance. This approach is one example where sustainable public architecture succeeds in considering the land on which it 109 Kiddle, Rebecca., et al. Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture. ORO Editions, 2018. Jojola, Theodore. “Indigenous Planning: Towards a Seven Generations Model.” Reclaiming Indigenous Planning, by Ryan Walker et al., McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013, pp. 457–472. (Jojola, 457). 111 (Kiddle, 94). 110 44 is placed. To illustrate this point more thoroughly, we will examine the artwork of Thomas Hirschhorn’s temporary building installation Bataille Monument (part of documenta 11 in 2002 in Kassel) to bridge this idea with notions of the unmonumental and to emphasize this even further through an examination of Oliver Kellhammer’s 1993 work “Healing the Cut – Bridging the Gap” will also be reviewed. Indeed, distinguished Indigenous Design Professor Theodore Jojola description of the Seven Generation Plan as construction that employs generational knowledge to make modifications and emphasizes that “the beauty of the process is that the seven phases of its construction endure time and place” and “Healing the Cut-Bridging the Gap” is a great example of giving back to nature and healing and could be under threat by developers in the future.112 Today land requires more time than ever to heal because of the deadly toxins manufactured by the petrol-chemical and nuclear industries with tragic long-term ecological damage. There is considerable damage already and continues from the European colonialization and exploitation of North America. As Jojola stipulates, “It has an unbridled tenacity to appropriate and harness everything and anything in the pursuit of growth, oftentimes for its own sake”.113 However, modernity has proven to be an unsustainable trajectory. Modifications are necessary to safeguard the planet and its inhabitants. A seven-generation plan will be of immense value for the environment if governments and corporations follow the Seven Generation Plan through their planning stages of projects that impact the environment, resources, and non-human inhabitants. 112 113 (Jojola, 457). (Jojola, 460). 45 Sometimes Good Intentions Have an Unexpected Result The inspirational Seven Generation Plan should be in long-range land management, including in developed urban areas, if laws encourage intergenerational thinking and sustainable planning healing the land. However, the continuing trend to remove and destroy established old trees in cities like Vancouver, replacing them with strip malls and monster homes, did not go unnoticed. Artists, activist groups, and individuals effectively protect precious plants, animal life, and city green spaces. For example, artist and activist Oliver Kellhammer recognized and intervened in a good-intentioned by-law failing to protect trees in Vancouver, British Columbia. He acted by writing letters of protest and making positive suggestions to solve the problem.114 Without intervention, by-laws could be passed into law by the municipal government damaging valuable green spaces with plant and non-human life in urban areas. The city’s by-law proposed that after 1996 any tree over eight inches in diameter required a permit requiring one of the following four conditions meant: “a) the tree is located within the building envelope; b) the tree is dead or dying; c) the tree is interfering with utility wires and can’t easily be pruned back; d) the tree’s roots are interfering with drainage or sewer systems”.115 114 Kellhammer is a Canadian artist, writer, activist, and researcher who creates botanical interventions to demonstrate nature’s ability to recover from damage and engages community interest and education on environmental issues. Oliver’s recent focus includes the effects of climate change on psychosocial conditions, detoxifying contaminated soils from pollution, reintroducing prehistoric trees impacted by logging, and creating biodiversity catalogues for brownfields. Oliver describes his work very well in this quote, “I try to create social justice and ecological justice through botany, in the sense that if you allow people the chance to create their own environment –and gardening is widely seen as an innocuous activity –it is a way to deconstruct the power relations that govern urban space”. Kellhammer, Oliver. “Oliver Kellhammer: Viva Virtual Visiting Artists.” ViVA, 2021, www.vivavirtualartists.org/oliver-kellhammer#:~:text=Recent%20work%20has%20focused%20on, School%20of%20Design%20in%20NYC. 115 (Kellhammer, 33). 46 The by-law also requires replacing the tree with a sapling two inches in diameter and ten feet high and consents to the removal of one healthy tree a year by the property owner.116 Kellhammer, an artist and activist, graduated from university with no intentions to merge with the institutionalized art world and instead chose to work within the community with activist groups to influence the community on issues of social and environmental importance. Professor Kellhammer was alerted and alarmed by a significant loss of large healthy trees replaced with saplings in the City of Vancouver and decided to write letters to community papers. The artist comments in his letter that the provision seems “poor compensation for the surrounding neighbourhood, particularly if a large healthy tree, not creating any problems and decades old, is felled only to be replaced with a sapling”.117 The comment strongly argues against the proposed by-law causing substantial urban mature tree loss. An unanticipated result of the upcoming bylaw was that it initiated a tree-cutting binge by developers threatening the established urban ecology from a well-intended by-law. There was a lack of planning and solutions, and criticism grew and snow-balled. As Professor Kellhammer suggests, “Where the tree by-law falls short is primarily in its lack of a ‘whole systems’ approach to the urban forest. Such an approach sees trees in the city as more than just signifiers of neighbourhood character or increased property value”.118 He explained, in a recent interview, that the benefits of established trees in an urban setting are the moderating city temperatures with shade and the cooling effect of moisture from transpiration, and absorbing pollutants and greenhouse gases from the air. In addition, tree roots Kellhammer, O. (1997). “New by-law fails to See the Forest for the Trees”. New City Magazine 17,4, 33-36. (Kellhammer, 33). 118 (Kellhammer, 33). 116 117 47 provide a conduit through which rain travels through the Earth, recharging the ground under the city concrete and asphalt, reducing run-off from storm sewers, silting streams, and reducing water quality for healthy fish spawning. The activist can be essential in protecting urban ecologies when under threat. In a discussion with Professor Kellhammer, he suggested that the by-law should be reviewed as a part of an entire system beyond its boundaries and coordinated with neighbouring municipalities on programs like reforestation. Vancouver’s east side Chinese and Italian vegetable gardeners are examples of food self-sufficiently, and sustainable city land uses that are opposed to large trees that block out sunlight to their small fruit trees and gardens, and accommodations to the by-law would protect the continuation of urban food self-sufficiency. Vancouver’s by-laws were accommodating a 19th-century European vision of the suburban landscape that was no longer relevant, but could the ‘whole system’ tree by-law balance the concerns of a multi-ethnic community and preserve the health and well-being of the urban forest?119 In the same interview with Professor Kellhammer, his answer came from the notion that tree planting needs to become rewarding for the property owner, and as he commented, “Tree removal reflects the real cost of planting a replacement tree somewhere else in the neighbourhood.” The proposal offers the property owner the option of replacing the mature tree with the sapling or, as he continued, “…paying the tree bank which would be responsible for planting a new tree nearby, in the same year”.120 Property owners planting extra trees receive a tax credit equivalent to the permit value for each tree planted and financed using the dollar intake from tree removal permits. The tree bank is responsible for increasing the number of trees in each neighbourhood. Property owners demonstrating a reasonable purpose for 119 120 (Kellhammer, 33). (Kellhammer, 34). 48 removing a tree will get approved or risk having the application vetoed. The by-law tree-cutting permit department should protect large landmark trees contributing to the neighbourhood’s atmosphere and ecology. The proposal by the interventionalist artist, Kellhammer is a balanced and regenerative approach to tree removal and regeneration in urban areas and a step forward in the renewal and healing of the urban landscape in our cities. Trees freshen the air by replacing carbon emissions with oxygen and removing pollutants, making cities more liveable and providing shade to cool cities for humans and non-humans alike. We will leave the sustainable practice of Oliver Kellhammer for now, to return later to another project by him in the last chapter of this paper. Let us discuss two international examples of creative approaches to placemaking in the public sphere and its method of recycling temporary installations.121 The first artist is American Thomas Hirschhorn, and his contribution to Kassel, Germany, documenta 11, followed by another installation by French artist Pierre Huyghe in 2012 during another documenta to understand different approaches to sustainable art. Two International Sustainable Public Art Projects Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument was inspired by the French philosopher George Bataille born in 1897, an influential thinker in philosophy, poststructuralism, and social theory.122 The Bataille Monument is one installation in a series of four dedicated to philosophical thinkers. The other three are Baruch de Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, and Antoni Negri. Hirschhorn took the thinking 121 Wikipedia defines the public sphere as a location where people gather to freely identify and discuss and exchange information and ideas as part of the political process with open debate. “Public Sphere.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Apr. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere. 122 Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument may not be an idyllic example, but all the same, it remained sustainable throughout the project. 49 approach normally associated with a fan from popular culture, therefore not academic in nature or an aesthetic representation instead, these works are conceptualizations of philosophy combined with everyday happenstance. His project is reminiscent of an obsessive fan collecting, copying, and pasting memorabilia and artifacts associated with the philosopher Bataille. The monument is temporary, and the makeshift approach reaches the community it was intended for but fails to reach the spectators’ interest as much. In this instance the Bataille Monument is committed to being sustainable, with community-orientated engagement without sustainability being the core message. The documenta event occurs every five years for one hundred days. The Bataille Monument’s location was strategically planned with care to extend and enable the temporary installation to reach a community not normally exposed to the spectacle of the documenta. After careful deliberation, according to author Simon Sheikh, Hirschhorn avoided Kassel’s central areas with historical significance, normally connecting the place with the city in a contextual manner. The disconnection from historical associations freed the artist to engage the community without the burden of historical context. Quoting from Curator Sheikh’s paper describes how Hirschhorn searches for a site, “I look for a place that relates specifically to my project, and permits my work to be mobile, in another city, in another country. These locations are places of passages. I try to work where people go for reasons other than artistic ones.”123 Does detaching the Bataille Monument from other documenta installations change the artwork into an antimonumental work? Compared to most other projects, the remoteness took time to visit, a commute requiring effort, with only an estimated five per cent visiting Hirschhorn’s documenta 123 His art installations are reusable and mobile in multiple nations reaching people art normally does not reach. Sheikh, S. (2004). Planes of Immanence, or The Form of Ideas: Notes on the (anti-)monuments of Thomas Hirschhorn. Afterall 9.9, pp. 90-98. (Sheikh, 96). 50 11. Still, it successfully separated itself from the city’s historical context. Furthermore, Sheikh rightly points out that Hirschhorn’s selection of a housing project for the installation connected the event to a local context while simultaneously creating a neighbourhood audience “And it did so by installing all the elements or spaces of traditional structures and thereby indeed constitutes a public sphere.” Sheikh suggests. 124 The monument was constructed on the property of a housing project, undoubtedly, a location where most people would not think of viewing art. However, Hirschhorn’s monument concept positions itself in the public sphere in four ways: 1) the everyday space is mundane without significance, and 2) public sphere spaces tend to connect the community with ease of access, accommodating qualities necessary to Hirschhorn’s construction. 3) the housing project is used for everyday living. It is not connected to an artistic location, 4) the final aspect is that the relationship is antagonistic and interacts with “the theme of the monument while, crucially, being interchangeable”, and here again, another author underlines the importance of agonism in public art.125 In Hirschhorn’s work, the monument’s nine elements within its construction begin with: “a public sculpture, a library, an exhibition (space), workshops/ meetings, a cafe, a television studio, a transportation system and a website, and a publication added after the fact”, and a tenth element added later.126 Sheikh describes Jurgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere as “formations for utterance and exchange, that each is a model of ‘the public’ as such, as well as being only one part of a larger whole”.127 The public includes places like clubs and cafes, the world of letters and museums equal but have contradictions and tensions in the bourgeois sphere increasing as postmodern culture becomes increasingly modular. Hirschhorn describes a changing public sphere with fragmented spheres 124 (Sheikh, 96). (Sheikh, 96). 126 (Sheikh, 96). 127 (Sheikh, 96). 125 51 vanishing and expanding relating to the whole and itself, and the spectator is no longer fixed or formally defined. Sheikh points out that there are also the ‘counterpublics’. What are counterpublics? It is a place of parallel formation in the public sphere “where other or oppositional discourses and practices can be formulated and circulated”. Suppose the classic bourgeois notion of the public sphere claims universality and rationality. In that case, counterpublics claim the opposite: the reversal of existing idealization of parks for the family and instead employed as cruising areas in gay culture.128 The observation is that citizens’ behaviour remains unchanged and altered in opposition to where acts typically are done in private without being questioned and challenged. Sheikh suggests that the installation could be viewed as a counter public using the same bourgeois ways and means in the public sphere. This public and counter-public model is not neutral or universal, with their formats reversed, adding continuity rather than discord. It is a mixture of high and low cultures, and it would not be an innovative idea to include all communities in the discourse during a climate crisis. The Bataille Monument is a temporary building disrupting the lines of the housing estate. Hirschhorn’s nine elements do not take on the institutional form one would expect. It is counter; the library is noisy, packed with videos and books all relating to Bataille’s philosophy, and the television studio is described in the same condition. The cardboard constructions directly counter the housing complex with its straight lines and rationalist structures, contrasted by the Monument and its grotto-like interiors with concaving cardboard construction. 128 (Sheikh, 96). 52 Philosopher George Bataille is famously against structuralism and discipline because they represented power and confinement mechanisms. As he asserts, “Architecture was something to be fought, to be destroyed Oust as monuments, with the revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison as the shining example.”129 Is this not an anti-monumental art project that protects land usage for future generations? Hirschhorn’s work is not architecture but an example of public formations and processes deliberately excessive and sufficiently complete to be ritual followed by its destruction and materials recycled by the community. Hirschhorn’s project also opens the possibility of community discourse in the housing complex on the common grounds underscoring the potential temporary land use for community activities. Hirschhorn’s monument goes further than anti-monument and agrees with Bataille’s critique of architecture. The Bataille Monument co-exists in the space of materiality and temporality. It is “non-hierarchically laid out as a plane of immanence, a space where subjects co-exist equally with objects.”130 I would argue that this is dependent on social interaction as well. Would not an anti-hierarchically layout provide greater equality for the community? Hirschhorn’s work and location remind the viewer that democracy fails through the existence of institutional measures and spaces and instead exists in the world of possibilities and temporary spaces. Sculpture in the hands of Thomas Hirschhorn forms ideas that avoid monumental architecture and permanence and instead create public art that bring communities together on equable terms to communicate critical issues of the day in public space without harm to the environment. There are some interesting facts about Hirschhorn’s community-inclusive approach to the installation described on his website, with a page dedicated to the monument. Construction of the 129 130 (Sheikh, 96). (Sheikh, 96). 53 building to house the nine installation elements took place on-site, employing 20 to 30 youth and other residents from the housing community. No one was an expert, none an art student or specialist in the arts and all learned an hourly wage; Hirschhorn refuses to use volunteers. Does this not include those who need and must work to be part of an art event? The artist believes it is better for art projects to question social issues broadly, including the environment and surroundings. Hirschhorn purchased four Mercedes-Benz cars to shuttle small groups to the site. Unfortunately, buying the vehicles was not a practical or sustainable solution with car maintenance, fuel cost, and low passenger capacity as the cars were constantly in for repair and not shuttling site visitors The purchase of the vehicles proved to be an unsustainable aspect of the project running against the initial potential of the remaining locally based and grassroots. Often there is unseen harm from residual waste from art public art events that damage the environment creating costs for future generations. Another essential aspect of the installation was the tear-down and distribution of materials and resources, which took three days, and all that remained of the work was Hirschhorn’s notes and records for the documenta archives in Kassel produced during the exhibition. After the project, Hirschhorn chose to have a raffle for all the assets left after the project, including tools, construction materials, audio/visual equipment, cars, furniture, and anything reusable, creating as little waste as possible and the land returned to the housing complex for all residents. On the last day, Thomas Hirschhorn invited everyone to a final dinner for the inhabitants to transition back to daily life. The installation appears to have been an example of inclusive public art installed in the public sphere.131 To clarify sustainable vs inclusive – sustainable means something that can happen again and is environmentally friendly and Hirschhorn’s monument used sustainable practice, but the event only happens once and was inclusive for humans only. 131 54 We next look at Pierre Huyghe’s contribution to documenta 13 titled Untilled using Art Historian Christine Ross’s article.132 A French citizen artist, Pierre Huyghe’s work includes interventions, sculpture, multi-media, film, and living systems but does not exclude other possibilities; the Untilled installation took place in Kassel in 2012, contributing to documenta ten years after Hirschhorn’s 2002 entry.133 Ross describes the Huyghe installation as a designed ecosystem with human and non-human interactions evolving consisting of a “quasi-garden—a garden-in-progress, not completely tilled; a critical state of affairs more than a mere cultivated plot of ground”.134 Untilled would remain for four months, with temporal events occurring in different garden sections. Interactions between life forms manifest themselves as symbiotic, mutualistic, and antagonistic throughout the garden. The unmonumental Hirschhorn installation focused on collaborating with a community of humans in a housing project without acknowledging the environmental crisis but did maintain sustainable practices and principles. What type of interactions did Huyghe plan to represent and take place within the installation? One human and non-human interaction in the garden occurs between a concrete reclining nude sculpture heated to body temperature with the head covered in honey and partially enclosed with a living beehive. Using bees in the installation sadly underlines the continued decline in bee populations and how dependent the plant and animal species are on bees as pollinators, especially humans, for bountiful harvests yearly.135 Other evidence of human interaction is the Ross, Christine. “Not Directed Toward Anyone: The Indifference of a Situation or, Perception Under the Influence.” Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art, 1st ed., Routledge, 2018, pp. 211–22, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315437132-18. 133 Bailey, Stephanie. “Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director.” Ocula the Best in Contemporary Art Icon., Ocula, 25 Sept. 2020, https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/pierre-huyghe-the-artist-as-director/. 134 (Ross, 211). 135 There has been much research on bee population decline, and most indicate climate and pollutants as the primary source of the problem. “What Are the Causes of Bee Decline?” Friends of the Earth, 17 July 2017, friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/what-are-causes-bee-decline. 132 55 impressions left on the earth from deep wheel ruts from a tractor or human technology and the footprints left by workers and visitors alike, leaving only imprints for nature to reclaim. Finally, Huyghe created an interaction by uprooting one of Joseph Beuys’s 7,000 oak trees from documenta 7 with soilless roots bared with the trunk left to decompose on the ground. Ross mentions that these are evolving interactions that question spectatorship, authorship, and the interactions between the making and perception of art. The essential thing to remember is that Ross stresses that “The dynamism of the garden relied on the situation not being fully controllable, not being fully observable, and not being simply perceived by humans”.136 Ross’s article says the installation is an evolving garden with the subject’s early relationship conditions set with the potential for porosity influencing each relationship’s chemical and biological reality. In this Anthropocene epoch, processes that take place in nature record human activities and environmental abuses, the primary cause of global warming. Ross supports Huyghe’s concept of decentralizing activity by emphasizing that humans are not the only influencer, and non-humans are influenced by human activity. People are no longer the only viewers of plants, dogs, and insects: Humans are viewers of all things non-human in the world with the illustrated installation examples. By using non-human elements in his work, Huyghe introduces an approach used by contemporary philosophers called speculative realism, committed to a notion explained by Philosopher Manuel DeLanda, describing humans with full mind autonomy dismissing the observable and unobservable and the anthropocentricity that the distinction suggests. The result of humanity ignoring the Anthropocene only accelerates the environmental crisis. Is Huyghe questioning human perception as the false owners of all that nature offers? Certainly, as the situation progresses, we learn that nature is indifferent to the human suffering that our 136 (Ross, 211). 56 Anthropocene is causing. Ross introduces and supports agonism’s contribution in the Pierre Huyghe public art installation by explaining, “These interactions were mutualistic, but also antagonistic, manifest as temporal events that had unfolded, were unfolding, or might unfold, and occurring in different sections or throughout the garden”.137 Could Ross’s notion of agonism be helpful when extended to ecological activism and aligned with environmental art? There is no doubt that Ross acknowledged the essential role of agonism in Huyghe’s project in promoting de-centralizing human control and influence on the environment and the effects on the ecology. In the same article, Ross comments on how the garden depreciates humans’ perception, introducing to the spectator a rethinking of humanity’s responsibility to the planet and nonhuman life. She states, “It raises the question of the productivity of redistributed human and nonhuman agency in the age of the Anthropocene in which human activities are postulated as the main cause of climate change. Perceptual redistribution can and should be seen as challenging the primacy of that causal role”.138 In the latter part of the 2000s, a perceptual shift took place in philosophy as an evolving response to Kantian limits in correlations. This philosophical shift assumes that the knowledge of reality is language-dependent. This concept is rooted in Kant’s philosophy that rejects the human capacity to know things beyond the mind of a human. As he suggests, “Speculative realism challenges the notion of correlation constantly attached to any anthropocentric philosophy or artistic practice whose epistemology affirms human consciousness, language, discourse, society, or culture as constitutive of reality”.139 How does Speculative realism change philosophy in the Anthropocene? With Speculative realism, new possibilities in thoughts outside the Anthropocene 137 (Ross, 211). (Ross, 214). 139 (Ross, 215). 138 57 mode can lead to questions on the accessibility of things or when the objects or something cannot be directly accessed. The acknowledgement and questioning of correlationism with Speculative realism disrupt the spectatorship relationship in Huyghe’s installation Untilled by blocking past modes of thinking in philosophy but also in the areas of social science, humanities, and art by permitting the agency of non-humans to play a significant role in recent history including technological development, globalization, and ecological crisis.140 By including non-human elements (or agents) within the work, what we conceive within it allows us to glimpse how biological life interacts with things that affect its conditions. Ross explains that Speculative realism discourages the less productive relationship of correlationism: it encourages and cultivates the Untilled installation with the capacity to organize itself beyond the visual components. The art installation generates a continuous flow between the garden entities of individualization emerging from concealment beneath characteristics of the individual elements. Moreover, Ross uses a claim made by Niklas Luhmann, a systems theorist, that a part of reality is the unperceived and unobserved made of environments of both virtualities and actualities. The properties are developed through choice and positioning, connecting elements that suggest past and present potential with cultural and biological interactions or work in progress. The installation is on the grounds of a compost facility in the park where organic matter is recycled. Spectators cannot perceive the unobservable composting activities that will transform the garden in three or more months. Even though visitors become observers, the installation is indifferent to their presents. The interactions between the bees spreading honey over the temperaturecontrolled concrete nude body signify the bees as a living organism within the structure. The spectators observe life and non-life interacting and hopefully conclude on the vital importance of 140 (Ross, 214). 58 non-human life to the health of the planet and humans. The garden is more than a spectacle because of the unobservable operations that remain invisible to humans and require respect from people as a self-established system outside human experience. You may ask yourself why nonhuman expertise is vital in art. Art like Untilled forces us to consider space, environment, place, and interactions between non-human entities to think about all the unseen organisms that support sustainable living for all life. The environmental crisis is teaching humanity not only to trust human knowledge but also to look at the reactions of unseen organisms to understand the complete health of the planet. The Ross article further describes Untilled as consistently favouring the site’s indifference to the spectator and going beyond correlationist to post-Anthropocene thinking, using strategies to achieve an atmosphere of speculative realism. In the same discussion of Huyghe’s work, speculative realism is that the ecologically vulnerable sections of the garden deny human visitors access to sensitive areas. The visitor might come under the influence of plants with toxicity, hallucinogens, and medicinal properties. A quote from the article by Karen Barad speaks descriptively about Speculative realism saying, “As feminist theorist of agential realism Karen Barad maintains, “[t]he point is not simply to put the observer or knower back in the world (as if the world were a container and we needed merely to acknowledge our situatedness in it)”; rather, we do not obtain knowledge by standing outside of the world; we know because ‘we’ are of the world.” Ross adds, “the observers are of the garden—of the world they observe—and their observation is a mediated one.”141 Ross continues the description of seeing the concrete nude and beehive 141 (Ross, 218). 59 activity as mediated materiality with the additional mediation with human visitors seeing the garden through the lens of a camera by “Mediating perception so that others may become visible” and “The perception of Untilled’s world—a quasi-garden (a garden-in- progress, not completely tilled; a critical state of affairs more than a mere cultivated plot of ground)— contributes to the dethronement of the human viewer, involved in an “interspecies relationship.”142 Will these types of installations help humanity rethink how we manage the Anthropocene? Architect Adrian Blackwell There may be other ways to address the pressing issues of the climate crisis. Architect Adrian Blackwell’s urban design relates corporeal space with economic and political forces that might help change behaviour through cultural bridging through discourse on equal footing. Blackwell’s two-part contribution titled Isonomia in Toronto was a part of the recent 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art. In this work, Blackwell contemplates the biological, political, and social influences of the spaces we gather.143 The biennial hosted cross-over events between Indigenous Peoples and settler-colonialist that brought artists, collectives, organizations, and institutions from all over Toronto together to reflect on the pressing issues in society by transforming the city and regions with art, performances and talks to introduce contemporary art practices on topics including inclusion, accessibility, and equality with a commitment to expanding our ways of seeing and listening.144 The installations review Toronto’s “shifting shoreline and changing 142 (Ross, 219). Aliya Pabani, Angela Shackel. “Toronto Biennial of Art Podcast: Short Format: Adrian Blackwell on Apple Podcasts.” Apple Podcasts, 11 Dec. 2019, podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/short-format-adrianblackwell/id1488944330?i=1000459320579. 144 The conversations mentioned in the article include Truth and Reconciliation. Blackwell, Adrian. “Adrian Blackwell Artist Archives.” Toronto Biennial of Art, 2019, torontobiennial.org/artistcontributor/adrian-blackwell/. 143 60 relationship with the lake over time”.145 Isonomia from Greek means equal political rights or the application of the law equally for all.146 Professor and theorist Blackwell had two locations for his work during the 2019 event. The first one is titled: Isonomia in Toronto? (harbour). Installed within the industrial building 259 Lake Shore Boulevard East, Toronto, built in 1945 and used by a chemical company producing charcoal, methanol, and formaldehyde by 1954, the factory was divided into two with a showroom and warehouse and remained in this configuration. Used by many businesses over the years, including car dealerships, and supply companies, there is no pre-planned future for the building, and it may fall into the hands of real estate development as a leftover from the industrial decline. Blackwell’s exploration of Insonomia enters the arena of colonial and Indigenous gatherings, places where they meet and converse along littoral shorelines and harbours. Locations where essential production and recreation take place and where all gathered for discourse and trade. The work expresses the critical need for equality during discourse on matters that concern Indigenous and colonialists especially shared concerns over the environment. Blackwell sets out to create a seating arrangement representing three hundred years in six levels at fifty years each, beginning with the pre-colonial period of the 1700s. The six steps start from the top and go down; each height exemplifies a half-century of colonial intervention in the lives of non-human and Indigenous Peoples during colonial appropriation of resources. Visitors are invited to sit on the lower tiers of the ash wood-constructed gathering place where all have political equality. The Isonomia in Toronto? (harbour) provides a space of discussion for 145 146 (Aliya Pabani). “Isonomia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 June 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isonomia. 61 Indigenous peoples with settlers in the ever-shifting influences of change and recognizes the need to react to environmental issues between Indigenous People and settler-colonialist before we lose more plant and animal species. It also provides a counter to colonial systems that endanger our shared ecology with the Indigenous Peoples and their Nations. Blackwell’s second contribution Isonomia in Toronto? (creek) is situated in the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga, Ontario (a part of the Greater Region of Toronto) and is an engaging three-hundred-foot-long soft sculpture made of canvas stuffed with poplar shavings for visitors to sit, discover, and discuss the “image of the shoreline of Etobicoke Creek also known as wadoopikaang in the First Nations language Anishinaabemowin (“the place where alders grow”) - stretches along its length, connecting land - and human pedagogies”.147 On the sculpture’s canvas surface is a sequence of five images of the Etobicoke Creek shoreline. The creek’s shoreline organically shifts and separates two purchases of confiscated land from two Indigenous nations. The Toronto and the Mississauga Purchase are divided by the Etobicoke Creek between the two large municipalities of Toronto and Mississauga. Blackwell’s Isonomia in Toronto (creek) installation opens communications in the public where all people have an equal place in the seating arrangement with all sitting at the same level without hierarchy for equality in discussions on critical issues.148 Why should sustainable public art provide seats for communication between people from different communities and ethnic backgrounds? The goal is equality in the political process for all concerned communities and their members.149 Reversing Please note that the original language is Anishinaabemowin. Blackwell, Adrian. “Adrian Blackwell at 259 Lake Shore Blvd E.” Toronto Biennial of Art, 2 Feb. 2021, torontobiennial.org/work/adrian-blackwell-at-259-lake-shore/. 148 (Aliya Pabani). 149 Author Seijdel Jorinde wrote in Art as a Public Issue about the importance of agonism in public art with the support of two other philosophers, “Both Jacques Ranciere and Chantal Mouffe emphasize the political dimension of public space and its fragmentation into different spaces, audiences, and spheres and in whose view forms conflict, dissensus, differences of opinion or 'agonism' are in fact constructive and do justice to many". Seijdel, 147 62 the ecological damage impacting the lives of the most vulnerable communities is essential; the Indigenous Peoples in Canada and worldwide suffer from the consequences of colonialization and its extension that accelerates global warming through various governing structures.150 Those who depend on healthy plant and animal resources, within their habitat, need stable and predictable weather to grow and harvest their crops. Now, they are finding it increasingly difficult due to climate change and continuing environmental decline. Critical discussions and search for solutions to the ongoing crisis require all communities to be included. Public spaces are visible platforms for public viewing and discourse. Artists and their art create opportunities for communities to voice their concerns on issues of the day like sustainability, especially within ever-shrinking public spaces in all urban areas. No longer are urban patches ignored as in the past artists see potential in using neglected public land to promote sustainability in the public’s mind daily. Artist Noel Harding Noel Harding’s collaborative work with Neil Hadley from 1999, Elevated Wetlands, an aboveground regenerative project located in a ravine in Toronto’s Don Valley, is another work that attempts to bridge the divide between public art construction and its place within green space. Standing in Taylor Creek Park next to the Don Valley Parkway close to the Don Mills ramp for the motorist to view this work creates an unsettling contrast where daily commuters trapped in Jorinde. “How Art and Its Institutions Reinvent the Public Dimension.” Art as a Public Issue, by Chantal Mouffe, No. 14, NAi/SKOR, 2008, pp. 4–5. 150 The following article outlines the effects of climate change on Indigenous Peoples, stressing the point that Indigenous Peoples have a close relationship and dependence on the environment and its resources. “Climate Change for Indigenous Peoples.” United Nations, United Nations, Aug. 2022, www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/climate-change.html. 63 traffic gridlock (next to the once heavily polluted waters of the Don River) see the work on a daily basis.151 Ironically, the Canadian Plastics Industry Association commissioned the sculpture, drawing attention to the significance of wetland ecosystems disappearing at an alarming rate and a creative solution from the collaboration.152 The project consists of super-sized hydroponic planters with polystyrene containers packed with recycled plastics filtering polluted water from the Don River using a solar-powered photovoltaic water pump to raise water to the highest sculpture filling it until the water cascades to the lower planters. As a result, the water returns to the river significantly cleaner. The photograph below was taken in 2022, over two decades after its installation. Harding, Noel. “Elevated Wetlands.” Elevated Wetlands, LandLAB Environmental Design, 2 June 2016, https://land-lab.com/project/elevated-wetlands/. 152 Wetland loss between 1982 to 2002 is 3,543 hectares per year or 70,854 hectares in total were lost or 3.5% of the pre-settlement wetlands or “354 large 10 ha wetlands per year for the last 20 years”. “Final Report Southern Ontario Wetland Conversion Analysis.” Final Report Southern Ontario Wetland Conversion Analysis - Cvc.ca, Ducks Unlimited Canada, Mar. 2020, https://www.cvc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/duc_ontariowca.pdf. 151 64 Image Four. Gear, Malcolm. Elevated Wetlands. Artist: Noel Harding. Don Valley, Toronto, Ontario, 1999 . The polluted water filtration system no longer functions (seen in the above photo). Still, the plant life around the installation is thriving, along with flora selected for the water purification system. The plants chosen for the sculptures were native to the Don Valley and have established themselves. There is an interesting back story to how this project came to fruition, beginning with a conversation between Noel Harding and Paul Cohen, a plastics manufacturing executive, which led to the creation of installation with the support of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association and its seventy company members contributing time, materials, and cash to become a positive symbol for the plastics industry.153 153 “It’s Official--Elevated Wetlands Is a Fait Accompli.” Canadian Plastics, vol. 56, no. 11, 1998, pp. 8–8. 65 The Don River glaciated valley has traces of First Nation history dating over five thousand years and, in the nineteenth century, the addition of a brickworks manufacturing facility built by colonialists for materials to construct industrial buildings and homes in Toronto. The ravine and valley are important historical sites for the Indigenous and colonial settlers. Both collaborators, Harding, and Landscape Architect Hadley, helped with the complex consultations with art, industry, and municipal planning. The partnership required significant work by all parties to create a purposeful artwork that remains playful with a message that collaboration does work between industry and artists and that wetlands need to be protected and restored and demonstrates an idea that could be scaled in size to make a real difference instead of the symbolic solution of today. One primary difference between most of the examples reviewed so far has been temporary installations on public land. Nevertheless, Elevated Wetlands is on public property, and this is a permanent, sustainable public artwork in a prominent location seen by approximately 135,000 vehicles daily along the 15-kilometre parkway.154,155 This location and others like it have the potential to positively affect the public perception of the seriousness of the global crisis. The Elevated Wetlands gets close to one million vehicles passing it every week, and it does engage the public to think about the environmental problem that is taking place today. Cheetham, Dr. Mark, and Dr. Mark Cheetham. “Noel Harding, the Elevated Wetlands.” Smarthistory, 6 Jan. 2022, smarthistory.org/noel-harding-elevated-wetlands/. 155 The City of Toronto. “Don Valley Parkway.” City of Toronto, 12 Aug. 2021, https://www.toronto.ca/servicespayments/streets-parking-transportation/road-maintenance/bridges-and-expressways/expressways/don-valleyparkway/#:~:text=Approximately%20135%2C000%20(weekday%20average)%20vehicles,on%20the%20Don%20V alley%20Parkway. 154 66 Do Artists Profit from Imprudent Art? If So, What Does the Public Lose? All must share responsibility but developed nations must accept greater responsibility for causing the crisis and do more to assist developing countries. A substantial amount of carbon dioxide comes from five nations, causing great suffering to the poorest nations from crop loss, flooding, and global warming with few to no technological advancement options and energy-consuming choices compared to more developed countries. The top five polluting nations in the world contribute fifty-seven per cent of air pollution. Looking at the big picture does not tell whether culture and art played a role in the consumptive history leading to the crisis today.156 Undoubtedly, the mid-twentieth century witnessed the rise of the art icon Andy Warhol and Pop Art changing our perceptions of culture and altering our understanding of the consumption of culture and products. The booming 1960s economy led the way toward mass production and consumer culture. Warhol made his point by mimicking mass production techniques to create and sell limited editions reproducing consumer-label brandings identical to Campbell’s Soup and images of celebrities such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Munroe in silkscreen prints. However, was Warhol warning the public that commercialism is a system that might take away their individuality or, worst, perpetuate consumption for its own sake? The unseen and unnoticed areas of consumption are mass manufacturing and systems of distribution that create pollution from the sheer volume and movement of things to distance markets, creating pollution, overconsumption, and environmental destruction, and this is only one facet of a much larger process of change we see in the Anthropocene. The 5 nations are China at 30%, USA, 15%, India, 7%, Russia, 5%, and Japan, 4%. “Top 5 Most Polluting Countries.” Sustainability for All, www.activesustainability.com/environment/top-5-most-pollutingcountries/?_adin=02021864894. 156 67 Twentieth and twentieth-first influencers might help us understand the role popular culture and art have had by diverting our attention toward consumption and forgetting to respect and preserve Nature. To be sure, Andy Warhol’s artwork seems to suffer from amnesia, with no traces of Nature in his work, only products from mass production. Nevertheless, should we forget that all consumer products originate from Nature? Damien Hirst has profited from his well-known 1991, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind and could be considered one of the early twenty-first-century influencers. Avi Brisman introduces an interesting notion of art crime or ‘green harms’ and employs a “harm-based” review in examining Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.157,158 Green harm or a harmbased discourse addresses violations occurring in animal rights, environmental ethics, and environmental morality or the exploitation and abuse of ecological systems that disregard animal life, water, air, and damaged land and its living legacy for future generations, including the result of military actions during the war and the new challenges of in the emerging areas of the monopolization of natural resources and illegal selling of nuclear material. Privatizing resources like water and other natural resources creates conflicts between rich and developing countries. Cruelty to animals is also included in harm-based activities, described as scientific experimentation, abattoirs, and slaughterhouses. Furthermore, the domination and spectacle of 157 Associated Professor Avi Brisman teaches at the School of Justice Studies at Eastern University with numerous publications, including the 2011 title ”Green Harms” as Art Crime, Art Criticism as Environmental Dissent, in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. Brisman, Avi. “Dr. Avi Brisman.” Brisman | School Of Justice Studies | Eastern Kentucky University, justicestudies.eku.edu/people/brisman. 158 Damien Hirst is associated with the Young British Artists of the 1990s. He is a provocative British-born artist working as a painter, assemblagist, and conceptualist addressing topics such as death, mortality, rebirth, and medicine. The 1991 work has the “harm-based” employed in examining Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, exhibiting a dead shark suspended in formaldehyde in a glass and steel tank. “Damien Hirst.” Encyclopedias Britannica, Encyclopedias Britannica, Inc., 3 June 2022, www.britannica.com/biography/Damien-Hirst. 68 animals for entertainment in zoos, aquariums, and circuses are also harm-based.159 Hirsh’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living does constitute ‘green-harm’. However, it is an exceptional situation being an artwork and spectacle and does not break any laws. Yet, scrutinization might help develop new perceptions of such art phenomenon and their value, if any, to a culture. Art collector Charles Saatchi commissioned the work, and Hirst purchased caught and killed Australian sharks by local anglers for this project. There were problems. The shark continued to decompose in the formaldehyde, and in 1993 the shark skin was removed, and the skin stretched over a fibreglass mould that did not produce the visible results desired. The work was sold in 2005, and the owner agreed to fund a replacement project. The same commercial fisher was hired to catch four more sharks, and the fifth specimen was free. The replacement specimen was preserved again in formaldehyde with a stronger concentration using ten times as much as the first time. Not surprisingly, animal activists immediately disapproved of the work and rightly so if we were to consider the alarming drops in shark populations in the past years.160 Humans are responsible for killing seventy-three million sharks a year to make shark fin soup. The overfishing of sharks has a cascading imbalance effect on the fish populations resulting in the smaller fish numbers dropping with declining fish catches for human consumption. Is Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living fuelling the hatred and fear of sharks? The animal rights activists would say yes, as wealthy collectors appear unsympathetic to the global decline of shark populations. Collectors, Brisman, Avi. “‘Green Harms’ as Art Crime, Art Criticism as Environmental Dissent.” Journal of contemporary criminal justice 27.4 (2011): 465–499. Web. (Brisman, 472). 160 Shark populations drop between 6.4% to 7.9% each year, or 11,416 sharks are killed every hour, 365 days a year worldwide. “Number of Sharks Killed per Year.” American Oceans, 2 May 2022, www.americanoceans.org/facts/sharks-killed-peryear/#:~:text=More%20specifically%2C%20an%20estimated%206.4,sharks%20killed%20worldwide%20every%20 hour. 159 69 museums, and galleries garner attention by exhibiting controversial artworks with profitable admissions and attractions as spectacles. In this sense, institutions do not act in the best interests of both environment and its inhabitants. Should museums support sustainable art and exclude artists like Hirsh to protect endangered species and the environment? The statistical numbers are staggering, and maybe if we want to make changes and create sustainable art, we might want to question the conduct of art institutions that facilitate works that are unsustainable and appear to damage to the environment contributing to global warming. Brisman asks an interesting question about the restoration of the shark tank. Would the replacement of all the components of the tank amount to repair or a whole new project?161 The author presents historians’ arguments that if the shark becomes a different work, it is no longer original, which makes sense. However, restoring such art might be immoral because the sharks are being killed to continue a concept contributing to shark deaths and the irrational fear of the species being slaughtered at an alarming rate. A counter to these artistic practices is where the unmonumental or responsive environmental works fit in to provide alternative sustainable approaches. More specifically, garden projects might provide a much-needed rethinking of urban and suburban space. Why are some artists so interested in representing death using the carcases of once living creatures instead of providing and maintaining healthy environments for nonhumans to celebrate diverse life? The next section features Indigenous Artist who has made it his mission to provide save endangered species. 161 (Brisman, 476). 70 Where Have All the Sacred Butterflies gone? Large-scale monumental projects get much public attention, but what about the projects that quietly heal an ecology and nurture species in distress? Indigenous Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald had cultivated twenty gardens, most planted on the grounds of galleries and museums to attract butterflies to heal our wounded interconnected planet by providing butterflies with connections to medicinal plants and healing. Plants have been essential for life on Earth from the start, with plants colonizing the world first, creating atmosphere and soil, making it possible for animals to evolve following vegetative life. Plants are some of the largest and oldest life forms that have ever lived on this planet. The relationship between plants and animals forms a partnership that intertwines the living histories on this planet.162 MacDonald spent the first years of his career creating antinuclear and environmental video tapes, collaborated directly with Native elders on land claims issues, and recorded the testimony of the British Columbia Gitskan Wet’suwet’en elders.163 Most of MacDonald’s knowledge has been self-taught using Native traditions with a blend of social and political consciousness. Like many Canadian artists, he is following a trend of becoming an artist/gardener. MacDonald tells John Grande in an interview in Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists that he sometimes thinks people view more butterflies on the web than in nature.164 MacDonald critiques societies that collectively produce digitized consumer services and products. MacDonald counters this trend 162 Ellis, J. (Ed.). (2019). Intertwined Histories: Plants in Their Social Contexts. "University of Calgary Press". (J. Ellis, 55). 163 Grande, John K., and Edward Lucie-Smith. Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists. State University of New York Press, 2004. 164 (Grande and Lucie-Smith, 214). 71 with gardens mimicking diverse life with a multitude of inhabitants building on historical origins and current physical reality for both human and non-human life. Butterflies in Indigenous tradition signify the spirits of medicine people, explained to MacDonald by an elder, adding that butterflies should be treated with respect.165 The artist developed an interest in recording butterflies and began growing plants that attracted their attention and enabled opportunities for study. During the interview, MacDonald expresses his concern to Grande that the city’s public spaces are degenerating. We, humans, need to slow down and reflect on those once-populated healthy environments with butterflies and native species. With a healthier environment, humans might have a happier and healthier existence.166 Who has not wondered at the beauty of a passing migrating Monarch population on its flight path to the Sierra Madres mountain system? Or have you ever experienced such a beautiful sight? Why do we see so few monarch butterflies today? American National Public Radio reported that the Monarch butterfly is now on the list of endangered species.167 Will future generations even see a Monarch butterfly? Tragically the species is now threatened. One of Mike MacDonald’s gardens taken seriously by staff is located at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, dedicated to their Butterfly Garden, made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Walter Phillips Gallery. The garden is protected from deer and elk with a metal fence for the survival of native species. In addition, the project educates the public on native plant species and encourages the planting of native species in home gardens for healthier butterfly and moth populations. Public gardens provide education and a healthy 165 (Grande and Lucie-Smith, 215). (Grande and Lucie-Smith, 218). 167 Press, The Associated. “Beloved Monarch Butterflies Are Now Listed as Endangered.” NPR, NPR, 21 July 2022, www.npr.org/2022/07/21/1112688105/beloved-monarch-butterflies-are-now-listed-as-endangered. 166 72 environment for non-human visitors and inhabitants. Mike MacDonald’s sustainable public art is not a monument but gives to the land and all its residents. Respect for butterflies comes from the traditional knowledge that native plants attract butterflies with medicinal, food, and dye purposes for humans.168 Not only are humans in need of plants so are the butterflies and other life. The destruction of the habitat is a loss for all life and severs the interconnectedness of all things. As reported in Intertwined Histories, traditional medicines from various cow parsnip parts at specific stages in the season are used to treat pain, colds, and cancer in salves, teas, and washes to reduce inflammation.169 The Banff Butterfly Garden was not an instant success; it takes time for a garden to establish itself and be attractive to butterflies and moths. Staff and gardeners required volunteers to help remove invasive species like buttercups and oxeye daisies from the garden annually to encourage thistles and dandelions to grow for the butterflies. The pollinators playing their parts like bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, and many other garden visitors are critical to the yearly success of the garden. Mike MacDonald’s vision provides sanctuary for plants, insects, non-humans, and humans; it is a powerful medicine for a world needing healing. Gardens created and nurtured by artists are starting to have effects and have had the benefit of a larger lineage. American artist Allan Sonfist began in the 1960s and has remained an innovator in public art, exploring processes and forms from his natural landscape research. Sonfist replants native vegetation and trees in cities that once thrived, reminding us how the land looked before cell towers, buildings, concrete, and asphalt.170 Sonfist creates art to bridge the gap between humanity and nature. His work helps increase public awareness of ancient, historical, 168 (J. Ellis, 59). (J. Ellis, 60). 170 “Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations and Solutions.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 239, no. 41, PWxyz, LLC, 1992, p. 118–. 169 73 and current phases in nature, all a part of living history, including geology. Time Landscape by Alan Sonfist began in 1965 with the planting of native species from pre-colonial times in New York City in a small area measuring twenty-five feet by forty feet in lower Manhattan. The plants were continually replanted until 1978. Time Landscape, when first planted, had three stages, starting with the grasses and the saplings to fully grown trees. The southern proportions of the plot had the youngest representation of growth, with a layer of wildflowers rising from the soil with birch trees and beaked hazelnut shrubs above. In the middle area was a small grove of planted beech trees from a childhood park Sonfist played in the Bronx. There were numerous plants in the miniature forest. The artist intended to create a memorial using natural materials in a non-monumental way, a place to reflect on pre-colonial nature and humanity’s post-colonial trajectory. Sonfist’s Time Landscape is a monumental work of Nature that takes decades to grow and develop from the resources supplied by the Earth below and the sun above. Art installations like Time Landscape return humanity to post-colonial times to remember and respect their beginnings and our reliance on nature. Sonfist supplied labour for the installation and organized the community to clean the site, plant, and continually protect the site to this day, which has been going on for over six decades as an intergeneration effort. The 10,000 square foot area in Manhattan is a time loop in the past among the skyscrapers creating a hole where the past can exist in the present and for future generations for visitors to see and experience pre-colonial New York City. Andrea Blum’s journal article on Alan Sonfist’s views on the topic of public art describes an erosion of traditional bronze sculptures commemorating historical events being 74 replaced with a history of our relationship with the land and Nature.171 War monuments remind humanity of the horrors and tragic losses from human conflict and conquest. Land art like Time Landscape is one example of an installation demonstrating humans’ positive healing interaction with the planet, with the intent to record and remember geological history. The towering glass, steel, and concrete buildings did not mute Allan Sonfist’s 1965 message from the installation; a tiny sun patch of earth between monoliths was taking root not only literally but also in the minds and actions of the next generation of artists. The task of reversing global warming is up to this generation and every other that follows. Sonfist’s dedication to recreating pre-colonial ecology inspired other artists to continue healing the planet earth using the neglected gaps in the urban landscape. Inspired by Sonfist’s work, Oliver Kellhammer not only focused on the regeneration of urban ecological environments and took the notion steps further by using copyright law to protect a regeneration art project for future generations titled Healing the Cut-Bridging the Gap (1993), and we visit Kellhammer and Janis Bowley’s successful proposal for the Grandview Cut Bridges public art competition in the last chapter.172 Chapter Three Regeneration to Begin the Healing One Canadian collaboration is not a trend but a good beginning. In 1993 Artists Janis Bowley and Oliver Kellhammer, who had worked collaboratively in the past, decided to do something different during a proposal call. The City of Vancouver project offered three separate locations to choose from for the artists. Their plan for the Grandview Cut Bridges Public Art Competition Blum, Andrea, et al. “From the Other Side: Public Artists on Public Art.” Art Journal, vol. 48, Dec. 1989, pp. 336–46. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.proxy.library.brocku.ca/10.2307/777019. 172 Professor Kellhammer informed me that Allan Sonfist influenced his artistic practice in his early career. 171 75 would significantly contribute to the regeneration and protection of nature and go a long way to redefining sustainable public art. In addition, the artist’s innovative use of copyright adds another layer of protection for the project from developers after the landscape regeneration for the future. Most other artists, landscape architects, and designers envisioned their submissions as opportunities to highlight talents, and concepts, in decorative art. Nevertheless, the two activists/artists saw an opportunity to have influence on the environment by regenerating the ravine with vegetation to make the gorge inviting for the return of non-human inhabitants lost during the bridge construction. The public art jury accepted the collaborators’ proposal but not for the ‘Grandview Cut Bridges Public Art Project’ as originally planned but for the ‘Victoria Drive Bridge’ instead, with city engineers balking after realizing the artists were trying to protect the regenerated forest through property rights. The artists did not know how long it would take due to complications from the inclusion of copyright protection extended to the landscape. Eventually, the City of Vancouver agreed to joint copyright with the artists. Professor Kellhammer has mentioned recent plans for a major development on top of the ravine and believes that the future of the ravine might soon get interesting from a legal and moral rights perspective.173 Not only was the proposal intended to encourage non-human life back into the region, but also included in the proposed plans was a provision for heavy-duty weather-resistant binoculars mounted on a pedestal to a specially constructed observation platform for pedestrians crossing the bridge to observe the regeneration and re-inhabitation of wildlife in the ravine taking place 173 As indicated in an email by Professor Kellhammer, there might soon be an interesting development regarding copyright protection for “the “‘Healing the Gap-Bridging the Gap” regeneration project. Received by Oliver Kellhammer, Please Check for Correctness, 17 Aug. 2022. 76 over time.174 This concept opened the door for emotional and spiritual connections in the cut for the community feeling the loss of the former greenspace. Healing the Cut-Bridging the Gap is an inspired sustainable public artwork that continues to engage, educate, and draw people into the discourse on the value of the loss of urban spaces, regeneration, and global warming.175 In the artists’ plan for the Victoria Drive Bridge, one of the three calls for proposals was to heal the remaining scarred landscape from the construction surrounding the bridge. Their creative approach was like Artist Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape in that it displayed what was lost when cities expansion removed habitat.176 The cut was initially excavated in 1910 to make way for a railway, and over time, the ravine returned to a lush, deciduous forest destroyed during the bridge construction process. However, this loss of green space created public controversy from destroying a sizable area of urban vegetation. The Vancouver community understood their loss and wanted the natural site to return. Regenerating the urban landscape would return the greenspace and encourage the former wildlife to the area returning the green space to both human and non-human inhabitants. Below are two images, one photograph from 1992 during bridge construction across the cut and the second after the regeneration. The community had good reason to question the loss of vegetation and natural habitat to make way for “progress” as the planet is undergoing global warming. The photographs below show a dramatic transformation in the landscape; the restoration took more time than 174 The type of heavy-duty binoculars mounted on an observation deck atop a skyscraper. Kellhammer, Oliver. “Healing the Cut-Bridging the Gap.” Oliverk, 1993, www.oliverk.org/art-projects/landart/healing-the-cut-bridging-the-gap. 176 Beginning in the 1960s, Allan Sonfist began replanting native vegetation and trees in city centres to bridge the gap between humans and nature and increase public awareness about ancient, historical, and current phases in wildlife and geology. Sonfist began planting Time Landscape in 1965 in lower Manhattan and continually replanted until 1978 with pre-colonial plant species as miniature forests among the towering skyscrapers as a reminder of what was once there. “Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations and Solutions.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 239, no. 41, PWxyz, LLC, 1992, p. 118–. 175 77 imagined. The artists’ proposal was accepted, but before regeneration could get underway, there was a serious threat to the project from concerns coming from city engineering staff about a provision in the copyright that protects the landscape from future infrastructure development in the ravine, which soon may be challenged.177,178 Unfortunately, with the delay, Janis Bowley was no longer available to help with the project. Additional erosion began to weaken the bank sides after numerous rainfalls while waiting for project approval. The concrete viewing platform accommodating mounted binoculars in the proposal had to be designed and constructed as the bridge was being built and may have saved the project from being scrapped. There has been no explanation as to why the project was approved. The cause of the delay was the copyright provision to protect the living forest in the same way it is offered to conventional artworks. The city staff may have realized the copyright would add protection to vanishing green spaces in over-developed urban areas needing protection. Providing vegetation and habitat for non-humans was an exceptionally step forward in regenerating lost habitat. This is a progressive development supporting sustainable public art by the City of Vancouver, and other municipalities should follow in protecting habitat. 177 Professor Kellhammer indicates there might be an interesting development regarding copyright protection for the Healing the Gap-Bridging the Gap regeneration project. Received by Oliver Kellhammer, Please Check for Correctness, 17 Aug. 2022. 178 In another email, Professor Kellhammer pointed out that two collaborators and the city co-own the copyright and are aware of the future problem if the development moves ahead. The Vancouver leadership have offered a vague innovative solution called ‘re-animating’, but recently, the project has been delayed for approval until after the scheduled municipal elections. Professor Kellhammer admits that it is not feasible for the activists to get involved in an expensive, protracted legal battle that the city would win using attrition to drain their resources for an eventual win. Received by Oliver Kellhammer, Addition Comments on the Future Development?, 23 Aug. 2022. 78 Image Five. Kellhammer, Oliver. Ravine Damage, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1992. 79 Image Six. Kellhammer, Oliver. Restored Ravine, Artists: Janis Bowley and Oliver Kellhammer. Vancouver, British Columbia. 2000. 80 The copyright for the entire regenerated landscape was new, especially for traffic engineers working for the city, fearing land use limitations. After four years of conversations, an agreement was eventually settled on, and Kellhammer began the restoration process with a significantly more demanding task. As the project was halted, exposed soil eroded. The condominium atop the ravine would have become vulnerable to landsides if the regeneration had not gotten underway, another benefit of the ravine regeneration. The first step in the strategy was to plant dormant willow and Cottonwood cuttings into the soil with greater cutting density in the more severely eroded areas and the dry regions rooted in the whips of Butterfly and Black Locust planted. Next, a dozen nest boxes with removal roofs for the occasional cleaning made from rectangular chimney flues after cutting holes in the wall. The birds’ role in the regeneration is to supply bird droppings to enrich the soil. The last step was to fashion a hole in the nesting boxes to attract Chestnut-backed chickadees, and the Violet Green swallow was fabricated. To Kellhammer’s surprise, a few birds began nesting shortly after installation, due to the limited nesting locations after bridge construction. The nest boxes proved to be quickly contributing to the health of the hillside. The ravine regeneration prevented erosion, and the greening of the cut started a long-term revitalization process. The plan was for the rooted cuttings with sprouted leaves to stabilize the slope from further erosion, acting as a living ‘band-aid’ in the rapidly eroding washed-out areas.179 The artist constructed dams horizontally with living cottonwood cuttings and vertical cuttings for support to trap the soil from further erosion. The trap soil became nurseries for seeds deposited by natural forces of wind and bird transmission. Seeds germinated and rooted, adding another 179 Gear, Malcolm, and Troy Ouellette. “Video Conference Video with Oliver Kellhammer.” 21 July 2022. 81 stabilizing layer to the ground. After being partially buried in time, the willow cutting also developed roots, contributing to soil retention. The processes were used to kick start the regeneration of the ravine and propagate habitat for plants and animals. For $20,000, the project is virtually maintaining itself with reserves earmarked to maintain the binoculars on the bridge viewing platform.180 This artwork succeeds as a sustainable public art protected by copyright and engages. It engages the community with a viewing platform to remind generations that we share our urban spaces with non-human species. The coyotes returned after the transformation proving greenspace regeneration is possible and acceptable to non-human species, with artists Kellhammer and Bowley showing more concern about returning the ravine to being a green space rather than choosing to demonstrate decorative artistic skills in the cut. More than fifty years have passed since Architect Buckminster Fuller’s warning of the challenges we would face. Artists like Bowley and Kellhammer have re-envisioned public art to become responsible, engaging, and, more importantly, led by example. Another interesting sustainable art event occurred on an ice floe near the arctic circle sponsored by the New York non-profit organization apexart.181 Goodbye, World is the exhibition’s title, starting with a call to curators with ideas dealing with the impending climate catastrophe causing public anxiety. An international jury chose two German Curators, Andreas Templin and Raimar Stange, with a remarkable eco-friendly concept of a biodegradable art exhibition in northern Sweden on flowing ice planned to melt away and sink to the ocean floor during the spring thaw. One of the ten bio-degradable installation proposals selected came from Gear, Malcolm, and Troy Ouellette. “Video Conference Video with Oliver Kellhammer.” 21 July 2022. apexart was founded in 1994 and is in Lower Manhattan, offering opportunities to emerging and established artists and curators while challenging fixed ideals on art, exhibitions, and culture. “Mission and History.” Apexart about Us, apexart.org/about-us.php. 180 181 82 Martha Rosler, an American multi-media artist working in public art and focusing on everyday life, often based on women’s experiences. Rosler’s contribution was an edible cake designed for animals and birds titled Pence in Space (Space Force) (2018/2020) focused on a new U.S. outer space military program. The cake symbolized America’s will to master the universe using art and technology to render the anthropocentric ambition ridiculous. The Curators’ plan did not include the documentation of the sinking of the ten installations formed into a circle on the ice floe waiting for Spring melt to drop to the ocean floor. The reasoning is based on sustainability, with curators preferring the camera planning left out to leave the exhibition quietly sink and remain on the seabed, leaving viewers to meditate on our planet’s future.182 The exhibition concept came from the apocalyptic notions of French philosopher Bruno Latour who suggested we should accept the apocalypse and situate ourselves within it.183 Author Paul Lynch who writes on Latour, explains this philosophical change in thinking.184 Lynch uses the story of the cave in Plato’s Republic, where the cave dwellers escaped the dark world and headed toward the surface and the sunlight to cast away the shadowy world of untruths. In recognizing and identifying the revelatory impulse of the apocalypse, ironically, “the apocalyptical turn rejects apocalyptic logic” and urges humanity to face the catastrophe to confront what is causing the calamity to see the serious dangers behind the threat.185 Humanity’s self-inflicted disaster requires our culture to slow down from rapid uncontrolled development and progress and learn to avoid engaging in apocalyptic logic. Curator Stange posits, “It would Stasinski, Robert, et al. “Martha Rosler on Ice.” Kunstkritikk, Artikel På Svenska, 11 Mar. 2021, kunstkritikk.com/martha-rosler-on-ice/. 183 Lynch, Paul. “Composition’s New Thing: Bruno Latour and the Apocalyptic Turn.” College English, vol. 74, no. 5, 2012, pp. 458–76. 184 (Lynch. 459). 185 (Lynch. 459). 182 83 be great if there were more eco-friendly works like On Ice.” However, he is skeptical that art addressing climate change will escape the art industry’s format and context for more sustainable public art suggesting it may not happen because “The art industry is too powerful” and cautions on one-way approach to address climate change in art.186 It is not easy for the artists who want to have a career, to escape the confines of the white cube of museums and galleries with their attached prestige and financial reward. Artists and collectives need the funding to survive from progressive organizations like the not-of-profit apexart. On Ice is a splendid example of apexart’s commitment to sustainable public art projects exploring innovative approaches to bringing the global crisis to the public with sustainable concepts that exclude energy-intensive processes in favour of more eco-friendly projects. The goal is to encourage and foster curated exhibitions respecting the landscape or environment and its inhabitants as a new model for museums and galleries. Environmentally responsible art that melts away in the spring returning borrowed resources to nature transformed only to leave the memories of the event in the viewers’ minds in the case of On Ice, and hopefully, more of these types of exhibitions will reoccur in the future with the land, sea, and air returned undamaged for future generations. Martha Rosler’s contribution to the exhibition is an unmonumental installation. Like many of the examples in this paper, it has a powerful message about national ambitions for expansion, including outer space and its exploitation which would continue to threaten humanity’s existence with energy-intensive technologies. A planet of countless organisms but with only one organism with ambitions to colonize the universe, the human species. Ironically, 186 (Stasinski). 84 Rosler constructed the cake from bird seed for the only aviators designed and born to fly in the air. Conclusion In this text, we have reviewed many international and Canadian artists like Ron Benner, Germaine Koh, Pierre Huyghe, Oliver Kellhammer, Mike MacDonald, Martha Rosler and Thomas Hirschhorn. We have learned that there are multiple approaches to sustainable art. We have also discussed the trend in Canadian art to work in gardens with nature, the land, and its inhabitants. Growing urbanized cities together with shrinking green spaces along with an impending environmental crisis is forcing the rethinking of city developed greenspaces for communities after the growing disappearance of public spaces disguised as project of modernity, progress, and expansion. Lands repurposed for commercial enterprise exclude the genuine possibility of public gatherings for discourse and protest on open, common lands. All too often, the remaining public land has remnants of the past strewn with monuments that remind us of colonial ambitions and conquered territories. The disappearance of public land in urban centres is a global problem. Reviewing how artists approach these questions allows for a wealth of knowledge to be passed to generations of people looking for inspiration and current ideas. One of the new tools used by artists today to protect the environment in both public and privately owned sector is the legal precedent of copyrighting land designated as a work of art and it is working. At least for now, as we have learned; referring to the use of copyright to protect the public art project Healing the Cut-Bridging the Gap with three parties named in copyright, two artists and the City of Vancouver leaves the possibility of further future development and 85 construction near and in the ravine with having the city influencing future copyright decisions on the project. But there are other examples of copyright issues with artists using it as a way to protect the land on which works are placed. In 1997, Peter van Tiesenhausen, an artist copyrighted his site-specific land art on his property in Demmitt, Alberta.187 The copyright protection has van Tiesenhausen holding back a powerful Alberta oil company from running a pipeline across an eight-hundred-acre territory.188 Oil companies usually run a pipeline wherever they want to get the product to market after a negotiated agreement is completed with the property owner using the oil company’s claim of right of way. The long-time resident has witnessed the environmental devastation following pipeline construction that amputates and transforms the land. To protect his property and land-based artwork, van Tiesenhausen hired a lawyer to draw up an intellectual property/copyright claim that stated that if an oil company disturbed any topsoil, it would violate the artist’s copyright. Ironically the artist agreed to permit the pipeline to proceed with construction if the first six inches of soil were not disturbed, which turns out to be economically far too expensive, and with copyright protection, the oil companies know van Tiesenhausen has a case. It has held the company back for fifteen years.189 The disappearance of public land and domain has played a significant part in art’s diminished role in public discourse. In this time of global consensus, art must actively promote creative, sustainable living solutions. It can draw attention to threats to our existence. Today, one of the world’s most critical issues is global warming, rapidly growing to the point that it is threatening the planet with unpredictable weather conditions capable of massive devastation. To “Peter Von Tiesenhausen.” Peter Von Tiesenhausen | Art Gallery of Alberta, www.youraga.ca/bio/peter-vontiesenhausen. 188 Dawes, Terry. “Alberta Artist Copyrights Land as Artwork to Keep Oil Companies at Bay.” Cantech Letter, Cantech Letter, 2 July 2020, www.cantechletter.com/2014/05/alberta-artist-copyrights-land-artwork-keep-oilcompanies-bay/#. 189 (von Tiesenhausen). 187 86 counter this, we have learned during the search for sustainability that it too can be a powerful tool in promoting protest and change with international artists like Pierre Huyghe and Canadian artists like Ron Benner and Mike MacDonald. As discussed, the insight that common lands began to disappear during the Industrial Revolution under a false assumption that privatizing land would protect it from overuse is still with us. The hypothesis was wrong, and the intense extraction of resources began in earnest with only one goal: profit.190 Canada learned as a sovereign nation to extend and regulate its borders to protect its resources from exploitation from other countries by using the Laws of the Sea. Could it not be possible to have laws to protect and add to common lands in both urban and rural areas of Canada? The actions taken by Canada in claiming Arctic sovereignty have been successful in protecting the environment from overfishing, accidental oil spills, and unregulated passage of ships through the Northwest Passage. It may be worth considering that through the analysis and production of public art, the questions about how we may proceed to protect the environment, and be set on a path to healing the earth, may be answered. An example of enframing might be useful in understanding humanity’s claim-over, manipulation and utilization of nature’s resources cited from the website The Philosophy of Educational Technology explaining, “Technology affects the process of ‘enframing’ and the ‘bringing forth’ of things. It affects the manner, scale, and rate of ‘enframing’ and, consequently, it affects those elements that make-up or participate in the ‘enframing’ process. From the website for example, steel is produced to be used in such things as the production of automobiles, and, although steel is not the automobile, it is, nevertheless, affected by the ‘coming into being’ of the automobile. Therefore, since humans can also be subsumed into the process of “enframing” as a unit of labour, technology not only has the potential to affect the human condition but, perhaps, the essence of what it means to be human.” McAllister, Jason. “Discussion 1: Enframing.” The Philosophy of Educational Technology, University of British Columbia, Oct. 2010, blogs.ubc.ca/philosophyofetec/discussion-topic-1-enframing-2/. 190 87 Five Hundred Years into the Anthropocene Throughout the last five hundred years of the Anthropocene, nine hundred species have gone extinct at an ever-increasing pace, with the Monarch Butterfly recently included on the endangered species list in 2022 and pressures on the ecosystem are enormous with a world population doubling in fifty years. These are global-scale problems needing to be solved fast. Traditional Indigenous Seven Generation Planning has been a powerful tool in maintaining ecology for centuries. It needs to be introduced into government management plans on public lands to protect their survival and health for future generations. Warnings from Buckminster Fuller’s book Critical Path are coming to be. Many projections made by scientists and researchers in the past fifty years have become a reality, with 10,000 children and 15,000 adults starving each day of the year. Artists like Agnes Denes drew our attention to the impending food crisis by planting a wheat field in Lower Manhattan in the artwork Wheatfield-A Confrontation, which helped show a way forward. The alerts from researchers and environmentalists attracted the attention of Architect and Philosophy Professor Peg Rawes. She found health and well-being linked and explained the inherent connections as valuable to humanity. The support of Philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s theory of agency suggests extending society’s power of aesthetics and human emotion to include inorganic substances and animals.191 Not only are plants, depleting resources and animals under threat from global warming, but with the loss of each species of animal and plant, society loses “While Spinoza does not employ a vocabulary of ‘care’ as it is found in much thinking about societal wellbeing today, we will see that his study of varied aesthetic experiences constitutes a theory of agency which has considerable affinity with contemporary debates about the individual, and by extension, with questions of societal wellbeing.” And “Spinoza also shows that aesthetics extends beyond the human individual and society into considering the natural world. Whether it is a human, an animal, or an inorganic substance, each entity’s powers of existence define its specificity within its respective environment, and which may therefore be understood as an aesthetic relation.” (Herman, 788). 191 88 not only genetic diversity but also loses aesthetic diversity offered by the natural world and the benefits from biological systems taking tens of thousands of years to evolve. Humans cannot stop or, in some situations, slow species extinctions. Hopefully, in our search for a sustainable public, we will find art that teaches society to respect the plants, finite resources, and non-human life that makes our world diverse, interconnected, complex and healthy. The research of philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s agonism concept is crucial in public art. Supported by Edward Herman, he aptly points out that challenging dominant discourses with agonist perspectives helps signify under-represented issues in public using art as a catalyst. Artists like Mike MacDonald, Ron Benner, Bowley and Kellhammer, and Germaine Koh all, in their way, function as antagonistic forces in the world of public art. They challenge the colonial past and monuments by questioning the status quo with innovative approaches and notions of sustainable public art. Mouffe characterizes artists’ vital role in the conflict between the hegemonic forces and the public by subverting the dominant model by asking agnostic questions. Why would it be necessary for artists to be antagonistic? Herman warns not to repeat the same U.S. media model, and yet, unfortunately, it continues; vast sums of money are invested in commercial enterprises in the arts and entertainment industry, avoiding the not-for-profit endeavours due to a lack of profits and lower ratings, and this includes charities and the arts.192,193 The media take-over leaves few alternatives to the open discourse between community members with varied interests. The crisis of shrinking public common lands available for citizens to gather, discuss, celebrate, and protest has been 192 Herman says that by the 1970s, U.S. public programming fell to 2 per cent in broadcasting, a trend repeated by many nations, and the arts were not immune. 193 “A recent report projects a 12 per cent decline in Canadians’ giving to charitable causes between 2019 and 2021”. Draaisma, Muriel. “Charities Face’ Triple Whammy’ as Demand Rises, Donations Drop and People Less Able to Give | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 5 Apr. 2022, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadiancharities-unprecedented-strain-giving-report-2022-1.6408393. 89 disappearing while commercial media’s influence and power have been growing. It is filling the void without the necessary antagonistic discourse directed toward the hegemonic powers investing in the media industry.194 The wealth and influence of the hegemonic powers make discourse and communication difficult when the media is controlled by the few directed to make profits. The public needs to expand its domain to protect the environment and the well-being of all its inhabitants. Public art cannot solve the environmental crisis, but it can be sustainable and help by being a positive role model in practice over many generations. In this way, it offers the potential to open discourse, address issues of concern and transmit concepts and solutions throughout the community and beyond. Artists and community members should be allowed to question dominant discourses in the public forum without more powerful forces exercising their will. Public art should challenge us to change the current destructive ecological path we are undergoing today. Artists and selection committees should avoid the short-lived public monumental artworks in favour of sustainable projects and temporary installations, leaving the land healthy and intact for future generations. Public art is available for everyone and may even intrude into our daily lives and thoughts with current worldly concerns for us all to share and solve as public issues. Art can introduce temporary or permanent solutions to problems until healing and recovery occur. International and Canadian Artists are leading the way to change gardening into installation art as a reaction to the ecological crisis. There may be a growing trend in public art coupled with 194 Herman describes an example from 1967 in the U.S. when government dominance over public television dared not produce documentaries on the Vietnam war in fear of causing dissenting opinions. If found challenging, the government line public-funded television networks found their budgets reduced. (Herman). 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Print. “Tragedy of the Commons.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Aug. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons. “Urban Development Overview.” World Bank, 20 Apr. 2020, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview#1. “What Are the Causes of Bee Decline?” Friends of the Earth, 17 July 2017, friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/what-are-causes-bee-decline. 94 Willard, Tania. “Surfacing, Voicing and Signalling Freedom in Relational Performance: Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Camille Turner’s Freedom Tours.” Public (Toronto), vol. 32, no. 64, 2021, pp. 23–31, https://doi.org/10.1386/public_00069_1. Image List Image One. Koh, Germaine. GroundWaterSeaLevel. Vancouver, British Columbia, 2014. ……………….. 12 Image Two. Koh, Germaine. By the Way. La Torre De Los Vientos, México City, 2000. …………………. 26 Image Three. Koh, Germaine. By the Way. La Torre De Los Vientos, México City, 2000. ………………... 26 Image Four. Gear, Malcolm. Elevated Wetlands. Artist: Noel Harding. Don Valley, Toronto, Ontario, 1999. 64 Image Five. Kellhammer, Oliver. Ravine Damage, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1992. ………………….. 78 Image Six. Kellhammer, Oliver. Restored Ravine, Artists: Janis Bowley and Oliver Kellhammer. Vancouver, British Columbia. 1992. ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 79