by Claire Lamont
6. August 2009 10:54
Last week a group of intrepid Scanners took an evening out from the social whirl that is environmental publishing to visit the Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican Centre. Barbican being a 10-min walk from Earthscan Towers, it seemed kind of rude not to take a look at what promised an exploration of artistic responses to nature and ‘our Changing Planet 1969-2009.’
The exhibition consists of a number of installations, from old-fashioned paintings, photos and films to huge architectural pieces and what I guess one would call landscape art – including a literal chunk of tropical forest transposed to the gallery floor, a pretty stunning concept in itself. As you have probably surmised by now I am no art expert, so I just went into the exhibition looking for anything that provoked a strong reaction in me, particularly in terms of the issues I’m dealing with every day in my job (no, not databases, sustainability...)
One piece which stood out for me was a video/slideshow by the Centre for Land Use Interpretation which followed the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline as it wound its way down the country, concentrating on the detritus of the pipeline’s workers and the trucker stops. These were juxtaposed with shots of the bleak Alaskan landscape. I’m not sure what the artists were looking to achieve with this (does it matter? Art critics, please post your reply below…) but I didn’t feel like these images made me look particularly at our (ab)use of our environment - at no point was I arrested by disgust at the destruction of our precious Arctic ecosystem, achieved to furnish the USA with more oil to fuel a destructive economic dependency. Rather, I was struck by the profound complexity of our relationship with this planet. As pipelines carry oil across a vast landmass to make my Central Line tube train run in the morning, the sheer enormity of the sustainability ‘project’ (if there is one single such project) really struck me. How can you go about changing the terms of a relationship, when that relationship is between human civilisation and the very planet we live on? Sustainability really does involve a new way of looking at ourselves in relation to our planet, in trans-national terms which would have been inconceivable not too long ago. I hope that some Earthscan books can help us to answer these questions, and some others can help us look at how to frame that question so we can begin to seek answers. In the meantime, I guess the exhibition brought home to me the impossibility of coming to terms with the challenge in normal human responses, like art. All the art that spoke to me spoke only of vast complexity, awe and confusion. We all watched the film for a long time, as if hypnotized by the convolution of a single pipeline’s journey.
To end on a less serious note, I think our favourite part of the exhibition was actually the Dolphin Embassy, which is well worth the entrance fee just to enjoy the craziness of some artists and the sheer beauty of 70s denim cut-offs. But that’s a whole other meditation.
