Chapter 8

The Artist as Ecologist

ALAN SONFIST: Nature as Material

For another temporary piece he brought snails into the gallery (Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1972). The Snail Enclosure showed two dozen black snails moving about in a square containment. The snails left trails of gleaming mucus behind them that over a period of time formed an increasingly tangled network of intersecting lines. In these works Sonfist as it were (re)staged natural conditions in a gallery situation. He had already used a similar approach in the Colony of Army Ants (1972). In An Autobiography of Alan Sonfist, the artist explained: “For three weeks I searched for a colony of army ants in a jungle in Central America. They were housed in a rectangular enclosure to present the functioning of an entire living society, rendering it visible. During the exhibition, I placed food in various predetermined geometric patterns. The ants varied these patterns according to their own pragmatic specific paths. Each of my predetermined feeding patterns was seen in a drawing on the wall. The “drawings” directly beneath them displayed the patterns that the ants had created while traveling in search of food. At the end of the show, in response to the totality of the artist-imposed patterns, the ants will have selected and stabilized their own predominant patterns.”[232] Although Sonfist never expressed his antagonism toward the art world in writing, his objectives would gradually move his activities out of the museum and gallery situation, so that these works can be interpreted as statements against the notion of paintings as precious art objects. Nature and natural phenomena became Alan Sonfist’s media, including himself, and the earth with its history of natural processes, cycles, as well as the changes caused by human intervention.

Consequently, he was invited to participate in exhibitions dealing with natural elements like the earth, air or processes, and with the landscape at large.[233] The artist’s use of his body as part of nature occasionally placed him in the Body Art movement, or in something like ‘ritual in art.’ In these works; some critics saw references to Duchamp (found objects) or Minimal Art (comparable formal aspects in, for example, the crystal works). His two fellowships at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT in 1971-1973 and 1976-1977 made sure that he also participated in exhibitions which connected environmental with technological issues. His early preoccupation with natural systems led to a comparison with Hans Haacke, as a matter of course. Sonfist has never allied himself with the systems approach in the ways it was used by Haacke and defined by Burnham, although the works described above could be interpreted as such. Sonfist has always shied away from any categorization.[234] It is a matter of fact, though; that the terminology used by Sonfist himself to exemplify his procedures is derived from systems theory, and that he was familiar with its concepts. Writing about the issues that concerned him became a way to explain the larger and interdisciplinary context of the work beyond the frame of purely art-historical references.

Crystal Globe (c. 1966) was a large glass sphere containing natural mineral crystals. As environmental conditions changed under the influence of heat and light, crystals vaporized into a purplish gas which then re-crystallized. Although the process itself was predetermined, the kind of configurations kept changing, making up the random or chance element. Crystalline Enclosure (1969) was a lucite globe form again containing crystals that changed form and place continually in response to the temperature and air currents in the surrounding atmosphere. In a stable environment there is little or no change. A disruption of the environment (just the presence of spectators would cause changes in air currents, for example) would cause the system to move from a state a relative equilibrium into disequilibrium. Being a self-regulating system, the system would react on a disruption of the environment by trying to move back again into a (i.e. another) state of equilibrium through feed-back or self-regulation. Sonfist explained: [235] His experiments with crystal minerals a few years earlier had made visible certain crystalline patterns of change that recur continually in nature, but of which we are seldom aware. “I want to make visible the invisible phenomena of the universe,” explained Sonfist in an interview.[236]

When Alan Sonfist experimented with natural phenomena, whether they were growth processes of crystals and crystalline structures, or chaotic patterns caused by micro-organisms, or relationships within a closed living system of army ants, there were always a number of elements involved that acted upon one another, constituting the overall framework within which the pieces had to be perceived. The most important elements were the visualization of: 1. a normally invisible micro-world - 2. patterns and structures, whether chaotic and random, or organized in an orderly manner - 3. processes in time, whether present, past, or moving toward the future. There are conceptual similarities in the works of Haacke, Smithson and Sonfist made around that time, but rather than comparing their works in terms of differences and congruences, I prefer to look at them as timely expressions of ideas and attitudes prevailing at the time. Both Smithson and Sonfist explored the nature of crystals, for example. Thematic congruency in Haacke’s, Smithson’s and Sonfist’s work with such concerns as time/space, change/process, randomness, making visible the invisible, references to the geological, biological, and human history of the site in terms of interdependent entities may be based more on similar interests in current scientific developments and ideas than on mutual influences. In a much later interview with Michael Auping, Sonfist responded that he was not aware of Smithson’s work at the time. “It’s difficult to speak of influence because I was very involved with my work at the same time they were making theirs. ... The way they work is so totally different from the type of work I’m involved in. They are imposing themselves on an area that has not been touched by humans; and I’m more concerned about not going into areas like that.”[237] What he actually says here is that he feels that his attitude toward nature differed completely from that of the early earthworks. Sonfist and Smithson apparently moved in different art circles, so it may very well be that they were not very aware of each other’s activities in the late sixties. However, there were a few similar starting points that served as working methods to give a new meaning to art in the work of both artists, while their objectives differed considerably. Both artists set out to search for a different position as artists by moving outdoors, and professed a functional type of art away from the museum/gallery situation. It was an era of new technological developments, and the new ideas in the sciences floated around in many different disciplines. This interest would unavoidably bring them in touch with the thoughts that have been discussed in previous chapters. It was also a period of renewed interest in the natural environment, which developed into an ecology movement.

The works which Sonfist made during the seventies reveal internal concerns with interdependent patterns and structures that are created as process, over a period of time. They were the result of staged artificial situations, surrogates of the natural condition, resembling laboratory conditions. If time as a literal process constituted a major element in his early work, the awareness of history, that is memory of things past, grew in importance over the years. His visualization of time now no longer followed the Newtonian definition of time: it could be both linear (the sequential time of a process) and cyclical (recurring cycles in nature); it might condense or stretch. Human beings participate in an earthly ‘universal’ process, of which one only experiences a fragment. By recalling or recreating environmental situations as they happened in the past, the artist wanted to point at “the isolatedness of one visual perception in a moment of time. So that any one visual image must be seen as only one segment in a total process. Any one form must be seen as an essence in a continuum that is shaped by other, perhaps visually absent, factors. Landscapes present the fragmentation of a continuum.”[238]

Sonfist’s method is one of inquiry and problem solving, to be compared with scientific methods. The work is the result of structured observations and inquiry. Robert Horvitz, virtually the only writer who has perceived this, wrote: “The problems he has increasingly focused on are akin to those encountered by the painter of landscapes: how to select an intelligible order from a wealth of physical appearances which cannot be fully grasped by either himself or those to whom he wishes to communicate. Decisions must be made on the basis of incomplete information about the meaningfulness of certain observations at the expense of others. These problems are also encountered in scientific research.”[239] Horvitz’ “scientific” interpretation describes the artist’s explorations as “a broad cross section of substances, many of them dynamic and most of them involved with the translation of energy from one form into another. ... Sonfist especially wishes to bring out those patterns of behavior which recur endlessly in nature: the transmutability of matter and energy, the hierarchical layering of forces, feedback and selfregulation, multiphase equilibrium, etc.”[240] Interestingly, his terminology, too, is derived from systems analysis and cybernetics.

Human beings have used and transformed nature into landscape from the start. We are the only ones who did so consciously, and we are also the only ones on this planet who can decide how to proceed. If the future of the planet ultimately remains uncertain, it is mankind who can and will determine the earth’s future. Sonfist: “Most of my pieces deal with this idea in an ecological sense in which I present the change in form caused to bring change in another related form.”[241]

Nature as a Public Monument

When Sonfist needs the assistance of professionals in other disciplines, or technological help, he will approach the person that seems most suitable to perform the task. For Colony of Army Ants he contacted the leading authority on army ants, Howard Topoff. He worked on Rock Monument with geologist Richard Laub, of the Buffalo Museum of Science, who accompanied the artist on his rock search. For the ecological Time Landscape he had the site analyzed by a team of scientists, including a biologist, a botanist, a chemist, a geologist and a city planner, to determine what natural phenomena existed previously and what effects the present atmospheric pollution and noise would exert on such an original environment when reconstituted. He even set up a non-profit organization - Conditions, Inc. - to legalize his position.[245]

The Time Landscapes

One may compare Time Landscape with a major urban design plan. Collecting the necessary scientific data is only part of the effort. In order to execute such plans, one has to weave one’s way through the city authorities, deal with politicians, community groups and real estate interests, hire lawyers to establish one’s legal position, etc. Organizing and supervising the final execution of the project seems ultimately only a minor effort compared to the preparations. Projects like this are expensive and require economic planning and budgeting quite different from traditional sculpture or painting. Time Landscape’s total costs (until 1978) were $74,700, which is relatively cheap compared to urban design and landscaping projects now.[247] Alan Sonfist sollicited support from the local planning board in Greenwich Village where he lived, from city government officials, the New York Horticultural Society, and several New York banks. Now the forest’s maple and oak trees have grown 25 feet tall, and shrubs and wildflowers flourish and bloom. Maintenance, often a major obstacle in such public works, especially in obtaining permission for planting at all, is now taken care of by community volunteers. Time Landscape has recently been acquired to become part of New York City’s public art collection.

Since then, Alan Sonfist has gradually developed a number of similar time landscapes. The projects are often part of an ongoing series of activities which may stretch over years, or original ideas that are changed and re-used later, making an indication of exact dates very difficult..[248] How long and how complicated the procedures sometimes are, is shown by the example of Monuments of Texas, which he began at least fifteen years ago. The concept proposed a series of islands in the polluted flood plain of the Trinity River, and upon each island the artist envisioned an ecological environment, here too based upon the vegetation of the past. Part of the project is finally under way.

The issues which the artist has dealt with over the years have continuously become more complex, as have the situations he works in, including the total environment of the site, as well as the economic, social and political factors present. Among recent projects is Sewanee Oasis for St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School (Nashville, Tennessee, 1989), resulting from a workshop/seminar. Sewanee Oasis is triangular in shape, within which seedlings from native species that are considered endangered were planted. The artist hopes that it will become a complex microcosm of the original forest. The concept of Sonfist’s time landscapes is gradually reaching the European Continent. In Italy he obtained a large commission for a private estate in Fattoria di Celle near Florence. More important, though, is a commission by the French Ministry of Culture to create a 10 mile long series of parks in Paris, along a corridor north of La Defence, Natural/Cultural History of Paris: A Narrative Environmental Landscape. Inspired by some of France’s most famous architecture, he decided to include references to the Chartres and Notre Dame cathedrals, the Louvre and Chaillot Palace, among others. For this he developed low platforms shaped according to the groundplan of these monuments, which will be planted with the original vegetation of the location where the buildings were constructed. This includes a pure beech forest, a mixed forest, grasslands and marshes. Also, the original topography was researched. For the terrain around the groundplans he designed floral garden patterns which refer to Napoleon’s army formations during different battles. The time landscape remains a continuing thread in this project, too; new is the artist’s reference to and inclusion of historical architectural landmarks. As the title suggests, natural and cultural history are connected in time. They have a story to tell, which is to be remembered.[249]

Tools for Understanding Ecology

During the seventies, he withdrew more and more from the art world to create his environmental and ecological projects. As a consequence, he received little attention from the art world for a while, with the exception of an exhibition in Florida in which Helen and Newton Harrison also participated. Meanwhile his knowledge of eco-systems, biology, and landscaping, together with his very specific approach to a site, began to draw the attention of those who wanted something different than just another piece of landscape gardening. Although he moved into the domain of the landscape architect and has become a competitor in a sense, he does not truly feel that he is a threat, but rather that his work might have a positive influence and possibly lead to a return of a concept in landscaping and gardening that is not a thin overlay to cover the natural conditions and, even worse, destroys the site’s inherent environmental qualities. Meanwhile, teaching about his concerns has also become an important part of his work, and Sonfist accepts invitations to give seminars and to work with students on ecological development projects.

HELEN MAYER HARRISON - NEWTON HARRISON: The Ecological Argument

A Self-generating Eco-system

It is rarely mentioned that Newton Harrison presented yet another work in the exhibition, the Brine Shrimp Farm which became Survival Piece #2: Notations on the Eco-system of the Western Salt Works (with the inclusion of brine shrimp). Survival Piece #2 consisted of a series of 10 x 20 foot ponds, each containing brine shrimp and algae. The shrimp ate the algae, which by producing carotene altered the salinity of the water which in turn changed color, from green to olive, to brown, to brick red, as the salinity of the water grew. Designed with the assistance of Dr. Richard Eppley from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the piece addressed “questions of how living organisms react to specific environments.”[255] In 1970 Newton Harrison also participated in Explorations and he was the recipient of a grant from Experiments in Art and Technology’s “Projects Outside Art” program. Possibly because of this interest in technological processes, as well as the new concern for natural growth processes Harrison’s career took a major turn. He decided to abandon his studio almost as a protest against what he now considered art’s narrow focus on object making. One could interpret this experiment as a key work in the artist’s beginning to understand something of natural ecological growth systems. Meanwhile, he had met Helen Mayer, whose interest in growing processes may have pushed him further in this direction. The first published ecological piece was exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery, New York in 1968: The Slow Birth and Death of a Lily Cell.

Reflecting upon his decision to switch from experimentation with technological processes toward processes in nature, Newton Harrison said: “I had been thinking about the issue of survival as subject matter. My first response was to ponder earth - literally the ground I stood on. I asked myself what earth meant to me, and what I knew about it. And, to find out, I decided to make earth. I gathered different kinds of manure, sewage, sawdust, vegetable matter, clay and sand ... this was in 1970.” And Helen Harrison commented: “And I began to utilize the piles of earth by containing them and then growing things. So, openers in earth art for us was to make earth, to plant, to grow, to harvest, to do it consciously, to change ourselves thereby. We did not consider it either interesting or valuable to use earth to make forms on unusual sites.”[256] These considerations led to the development of their so called Survival Pieces (1971-1973). Because of their ecological concerns, these works already differed from those of other artists who worked with earth as material. Meanwhile the Harrisons had begun their collaboration as artists; a collaboration that continues until the present day.

Newton Harrison was born in New York City, 1932. He attended Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, and subsequently entered the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1952 where he studied sculpture. He graduated from Yale University, New Haven. Helen Mayer Harrison was born in New York City, 1929. She studied at Cornell University, New York State and Queens College, New York where she graduated in English literature. It was followed by a Master of Arts degree in education at New York University. Between 1949 and 1953 she held various teaching positions. She met Newton Harrison, and they married in 1953. In 1967, they moved to La Jolla, California, where Newton Harrison had obtained a teaching position at the University of California, San Diego. Helen Mayer Harrison obtained a doctorate degree in the philosophy of education and became Director of Educational Programs at the University Extension, from 1968-1973. Both have since then shared a professorship in the Visual Arts Department, and were Head of the Department, until their retirement. The Harrisons still live and work near San Diego. In 1993 they formed The Harrison Studio with architectural designers Gabriel Harrison and Vera Westergaard.

The consecutive Survival Pieces, six in total, are experiments with the self-generative aspects of different kinds of growing processes. Plants were grown in a portable pasture. Another consisted in the breeding and ‘harvesting’ of catfish. To create a portable orchard, eighteen trees, each in a cubic yard of earth, were placed to grow under artificial light. And as a comment on the snail infestation in California at the time, the Harrisons put white Peking Ducks in the exhibition garden, which ate the snails. Unfortunately the ducks also proceeded to eat from the real garden, which was not foreseen. The objective of these experiments was to (re)create eco-systems, in a kind of artificial setting. Survival Piece #3: Portable Fish Farm, exhibited at the Hayward Gallery in London (1971), probably became the most remembered of the Survival Pieces. Harrison’s plan to electrocute the fish in public had reached the news media, causing great bewilderment and hostility toward the artist. According to the artists, this was a much more humane way of killing fish than the techniques usally applied (which was correct). But Jonathan Benthall criticized Portable Fish Farm for being rather contradictory in its intentions, pointing out, correctly in my view, the artist’s naiveté in not having completely thought the implications of the piece through. After all, argued Benthall, “the farm requires an elaborate support system of water-heaters, agitators, syphons, etc., powered by electric current which was presumably generated at one of the big power stations in South London that belch smoke into the air. So not only did Harrison fail to recognize the literary symbolism of electrocuting fish: he also failed to recognize that its consumption of power was polluting the air of London and using up fossile fuels...”[257] Yet Benthall’s conclusion was that the project was interesting and had to be taken seriously. The Survival Pieces presented the visitor with the process of closed (eco)-systems as art ‘objects’ without an aesthetic beautification. Using relatively simple technologies, the artists’ farming system dealt with self-generating life-cycles. The results were obtained from detailed research, but were not meant to be used scientifically. They only served the arts. The meaning of the works consisted in visualizing ecological processes, not just growth processes. In this respect they belong to the first ecological art works.

Their experiments and problems with brine shrimp and catfish (Survival Piece #2 and #3) had brought them in touch with scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. It was John Isaacs of the Institute who directed them to their research on the Scylla errata Forskal, a fast-growing, edible, but cannibalistic crab, which had become a threatened food source in Sri Lanka. A Sri-Lankan zoologist, Ranil Senanayake, had brought some crabs, which had been sent to him by his mother, for research on aquaculture. “We put aside all art and began investigation into the crab. We decided to let the crab be our teacher.”[258] Again, it tells something about their approach: accepting that natural phenomena teach, i.e. inspire them or us, rather than them or us trying to teach, i.e. dominate nature. Their research on the crabs took such a seriously scientific turn that Isaacs suggested to them to apply for a Sea Grant from the Scripps Institute, which they received in 1974.

The research into a contained and self-generating eco-system in which Scylla errata Forskal would survive made them realize the complexity and fragility of eco-systems in general. It took quite some time before they discovered the conditions necessary to sustain the crab’s breeding cycle. It was this section of the cycle that caused scientists headaches and the problem had not been solved yet. The Harrisons carefully patterned their working method after the functioning of eco-systems, so that their work could pass as science, but the story of their research evolved into the artists’ most elaborate art project to date: the The Lagoon Cycle (1972-1985).[259] The portable orchards, the vegetable gardens and fish farms that were intimate survival pieces installed in galleries, had gradually expanded into planning whole eco-systems.

The Lagoon Cycle

The First Lagoon: The Lagoon at Upouveli recounts the visit to Sri Lanka and the search for the crab as a possible subject for a self-generating aquaculture system. It became a confrontation with the decline of the traditional ways of living, like fishing or the rice culture, through the introduction of new technologies like the tractor replacing the water buffalo.

The Second Lagoon: Sea Grant tells how they obtained the Sea Grant and their consistent research into living habitats and in particular into the mating of the Scylla errata Forskal. It narrates the idea of the tank as replacement for the lagoon, in which the lagoon becomes the metaphor for a bioregional system with an elaborate chain of interdependent life cycles. The Second Lagoon also critically addresses the supposed objectivity of scientific methodologies.

The Third Lagoon: The House of Crabs tells how the Harrisons are approached by “a marketing agent, businessman, scientist, journalist, and accountant,” who advise them how to capitalize on the success story of the crab’s breeding cycle. The story becomes an observation about the capitalist free market economy, which is one of the major causes of the discrepancies between the first and third worlds. It becomes a criticism on all existing models.

The Fourth Lagoon: On Mixing, Mapping and Territory takes the history of the Salton Sea as a point of departure for a disastrous example of destroyed ecological systems; it proposes an estuarial poly-cultural farming system based on a self-sustaining chain of production or a balanced life-cycle.

In The Fifth Lagoon: From the Salton Sea to the Pacific - From the Salton Sea to the Gulf, the Lagoon Maker proposes to cut a channel through the mountains to the Pacific Ocean or through the Colorado River delta to the Gulf of California so that the polluted Salton Sea will be fed and cleansed by the clean ocean waters and will turn into a productive estuarial lagoon. The Witness responds but “if the polluted waters of the Salton Sea are exchanged with the Pacific or the Gulf, who will flush the Ocean?”

The Sixth Lagoon: On Metaphor and Discourse takes the whole of the Colorado River basin as its subject for a discourse on how, through the canalization of the entire river, the building of power plants and irrigation systems, and our modern life style, human intervention has completely disturbed the original environmental conditions, which eventually will turn against us.

The Seventh Lagoon: The Ring of Fire proposes a ring of aquaculture systems surrounding the Pacific Ocean which would supply the world with sufficient food whithout having to resort to the industrial and technological operations that have caused the ecological imbalances we have to confront now. It considers the world’s oceans as the ultimate lagoons. “Lagoon Maker and Witness begin a search for new guiding metaphors to replace those of force and fire, as they perceive the accelerating greenhouse effect as nature’s response to the millennia of force and fire. Finally they muse, the oceans will rise gracefully, but will people withdraw with equal grace?”[262]

The survival of the earth is the underlying theme in The Lagoon Cycle, but functions here only as one layer among a number of inter-contextual levels. Newton Harrison explained: (like a collaboration of an alga and a fungus) “...which exist in symbiosis; they help each other survive. One of them takes energy from the rock, the other takes energy from sunlight. They interact and feed each other. That’s nature’s response to a minimum condition. At the other end, the rain forest is nature at work in a maximum condition - the conditions of maximum available energy: water, sun and heat, where plants have even evolved that grow upon plants - all surfaces support life. Now we, like nature, also cover surfaces. And we work and account for a surface, we’re taking our lesson from what we’re referring to.”[263] The ‘Lagoons’ contain a body of information and data pertaining to the ‘problem’ to be solved for each lagoon. The information is based on scientific data encompassing geological, oceanic, atmospheric, topographical, and surface structure schemata. In addition there is information about the geographical situation, about economic, social and political issues as well as historical expositions. One may add that the whole creation of The Lagoon Cycle also serves as a metaphor for the way the artists perceive their function in society as artists, comparing and connecting the process of creating the work with the processes in nature.

Mapping and Metaphors

The Harrisons have been categorized as conceptual artists, story artists, ecological artists, social critics, landscape artists, and have been linked to performance art. The preparatory scientific research remained of secondary consideration. These categorizations would in a way be correct if they did not suffer from a major flaw: they only take into account one aspect, at most two at a time. However, the explorations of growth processes, for example, were from the start concerned with a complex set of ideas. Although the artists did not theorize upon these activities in terms of a ‘systems approach,’ like Hans Haacke, the initial approach was very similar. I refer to Haacke’s research exemplified in his Visitors’ Profiles, which installation suffered critical attacks of presenting too didactic, too literal a picture. Criticism concerning the artists’ early ecological projects was related to general accusations: that they were utopian survival proclamations, showing goodwill but not well-founded upon facts, knowledge or correct analysis, and therefore appeared somewhat dishonest as far as the aims of the ecology movement were concerned. Much of the ecologically oriented art was indeed often accompanied by a rhetoric that was not sustained by the work itself, but one can hardly accuse the work of the Harrisons of such superficiality.[266] Several years later, when the Harrisons had moved part of their activities into the ‘real world,’ similar criticism kept being brought up, accusing the artists of having neglected the communities they were addressing.[267] The artists may indeed not have fully recognized all the political and social implications then. However, when Helen and Newton Harrison now operate outside the museum or gallery context as teachers or organizers, as facilitators offering knowledge and understanding of difficult environmental issues, their work shows the strength it implicitly holds. It is important to keep in mind that the Harrisons go about their projects as researchers set out to solve a problem, and initially they worked mainly with scientists or engineers. Yet they perceive themselves as storytellers and their work as art, whose the final form serves to transcend the literal process (in contrast to Haacke who has purposively emphasized the literalness of his work) onto a metaphorical level: the workings of the small eco-systems which were set up and in fact controlled by human intervention were in the end references to the earth’s ecological systems at large. Through understanding a simple system, the Harrisons sought to understand, and create understanding about the larger, more complex systems of life. What were at first personal explorations in search of a new art form, developed into large-scale interdisciplinary research projects into global survival plans, with proposals, collaborative actions and political and social discourse.

A Different Function for Artists

The works of the Harrisons are not about presenting solutions only. More important is the call for change; to inspire a way of thinking which changes the attitude that has led to many of the problems today. Important for them is that we begin asking questions, start a discussion, a conversation. For they are painfully aware that nothing will happen if our thinking does not change. Newton Harrison: “Therefore, new paradigms will be needed which will lead to new legal and social codes that will permit land and water to be passed on to succeeding generations intact, non-renewable resources husbanded, and renewable resources not depleted. ... For if the paradigms that inform the present use and energy practices of our culture (exploit / consume / transform into goods / transform into profit) as typified by our use of the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed do not undergo modifications slowly (through civil means) or more rapidly (through revolutionary means), then they will surely undergo modification through massive biological revolt as ecosystems simplify in response to increasing stress and become minimally productive.”[269]

The following descriptions give somewhat of an idea of how the Harrisons proceed when they receive an invitation. Guadelupe Meander: A Refugia for San Jose (1983) drew attention to the Guadelupe River, which, wrote the artists in a letter to the Mayor and the City Council, “meanders neglected by the outskirts of your city center, almost forgotten, pursued by development on all sides, overgrown, polluted, dammed at its headwater.” They suggested dredging, rebuilding of the bridges so that the river would be accessible again, the restoration of the riverbanks for native plants, shrubs, flowers to grow, and the creation of a path along the borders, so that the river would become ‘the green spine’ for San Jose. The art exhibition resulted in documentation of their research through photographs, maps, drawings, texts and the actual proposal was received favorably.[270]

Sometimes, unforseen events prevent their projects from happening. In the case of Breathing Space for the Sava River / Atempause für den Save Fluß: Die Summe seiner Geschichte (1988-1991) in former Yugoslavia it was the war. While in Berlin on a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) fellowship, they were invited by Hartmut Ern of Berlin’s Botanical Gardens and Martin Schneider-Jacoby from the Stiftung Europäisches Naturerbe to look into the creation of a nature reserve in the northern part of Yugoslavia. The idea of creating a reserve for them still belonged to the traditional way of thinking in parts. Many of the natural reserves are the result of this kind of thinking as if it concerns islands separated from the rest of the environment. There may be small bioregional eco-systems that can exist locally, but more often the environmental conditions of the surrounding areas affect flora and fauna. In this case, the ‘park’ belonged to the flood plain of the Sava River, a river heavily polluted by the wastes of chemical plants, an atomic power plant, sewage systems and so forth. The artists therefore suggested a “nature corridor that would run the length of the river from its twin beginnings above Ljubljana to its ending in Beograd, where it joins the Danube River and supplies the lower Danube with one third of its water.”[271] After many “conversations” back and forth the proposal was seriously considered by the Croatian Water Department and other authorities until the war, which damaged even the existing section of the nature reserve.[272]

For the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn, they have been working on Future Garden: Die gefährdeten Wiesen Europas. (1996) Five kinds of meadows which were in danger of being destroyed were moved to the roof of the building, where they will grow the next two years. After their work on the threatening deforestation in North America the Harrisons became interested in what happened in Europe. They were told that the problem here was of a completely different nature: the disappearance of the meadows in Europe; some of them centuries old and belonging to the richest existing biodiverse eco-systems. And they arrived at the conclusion that the European meadow developed from an unconscious collaboration between culture and nature. And that it appeared one of the last examples of biodiversity on the whole continent. They visited numerous meadows and found a 400 hundred year old one in the Eifel which existence was threatened by a housing project. It was decided to try and save it and bring it to the roof of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle. This was the beginning of a project which led to the creation of the “Meadow Stories.” Herein the Harrisons proceed their discourse on biodiversity with warnings, possibilities and choices for future generations to preserve and develop meadows and gardens to show respect for the original local vegetation.[273] For not only the disappearance of the meadows is at stake; their destruction will effect complete water retention systems and ultimately endanger our drinking water.

Another large project still in progress is Tibet is the High Ground, in which the Harrisons propose reforestation of the Tibetan Plateau. Using photograhs, map drawings, poems and performances, they present the idea of an “analog” forest, or “a simplified woodland-rainforest eco-system,” which will be less complex than the original, but still bring yields to its inhabitants, by protecting the existing topsoils and the riverine and wetlands ecologies along the rivers that originate here. And these are the seven largest rivers of the South-Asian continent: Indus, Yellow River, Yangtzekiang, Salween, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Ganges. The woods of the Tibetan Plateau have been systematically cut and carried off, in particular since the Chinese invasion after the Second World War. How grave the consequences of this destruction will be has not fully been comprehended. Erosion and floods are common features now. But, ask the Harrisons, “Can it be true that (even) the drought in California and inland Oregon is a result of the northward shift of the jet stream across the Pacific so that the moisture laden air instead gifts its waters to the Pacific northwest? Can it be true that the jet stream is veering south to avoid the chimney effect over Tibet? Can it be true that the chimney effect over Tibet and the emerging desert is a response to the loss of forest and other vegetational cover?”[274]

Formally the work of the Harrisons has not changed much. Mapping and storytelling remain their footholds, both being central elements in the long human tradition of knowledge and information transference. Newton Harrison has also described their method as “conversational drift.” “When we get up to tell stories (to the Croatian water Department), the storytelling is what causes the conversation to drift. After we’ve told our stories those government officials see our images differently. The conversation drifts and in this context the idea of purifying the whole (Sava) river seems more real and less difficult.” Graig Adcock interprets the work of the Harrisons: “By doing art with ecological content, the Harrisons imply that the human species should treat the planet as sculpture. Such an idea strikes many people as absurd, but humans are clearly modifying the ecosystem and changing the fragile biosphere of the planet. The Earth will become and already is very largely, an artificial construct.”[275]

However, rather than submitting to a doomsday scenario they maintain an optimistic attitude. The principal argument in their strategy against entropy is the ecological argument, and their scientific research withstands comparison with environmental impact studies. Questioning certain scientific and technological methodologies, they suggest that nature, science and technology are not incompatible. Probing the boundaries of art with non-artistic ‘scientific’ methods, they bring these disciplines into the domain of art. Although they question the modernist concept of art, they perceive themselves as artists in search of a new territory for the visual arts. Although their work has been accused of using traditional means, only a superficial interpretation can lead to this conclusion. The layering of the work comprises information of scientific data, historical schemata, geological processes of the past and present, information about natural landscape conditions and human involvement, presented as interrelated events that have evolved over a period of time and space. There is an unmistakable concern about current and future ecological disasters, using metaphors as a strategy to voice their warnings and suggestions for change. Their message: the need for everyone to take responsiblity for their environment. [276]