Radical Nature (Cv/Visual Arts Research Book 172) (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

Eco-art exhibitions are part of the trend of our times. Radical Nature, the current show at the Barbican Art Gallery in London demonstrates some of the possibilities and paradoxes of enterprises of this sort. Basically what the organizers have to do is to move the outside indoors. This sets them both practical and, in their own terms at least, moral problems. The Barbican Art Gallery is right at the top of a great hulking post-Corbusier building. You can only get there by using an elevator. The spaces are completely enclosed, which means artificial ventilation as well as artificial lighting. In this sense, the building feels like a paradigm of all the things that the contemporary prophets of an ecological revolution most deplore. Quite a number of the exhibits feature growing plants, which have to be kept alive in this setting by using energy-expensive means. To be fair, the point is specifically made in the exhibition itself. It features a presentation by the veteran artists Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison – a version of their Survival Series of 1970-2, a group of works intended to teach techniques for self-sustainable living. Basically, this version is an indoor farm split up into a series of containers, each about four times the size of a large window box. The Harrisons, however, add a note to say that they really don’t like showing their ideas in this way any more, because of the amount of energy consumed by the artificial lighting. Read more…