Fiona Hall, Big Game Hunting, Heide Gallery of Modern Art
There is extensive interest in animals in the arts. The Nature in the Dark conference is part of a collaboration that addresses our relationship to animals at the intersection of the arts, science and nature conservation.
We have been struck particularly by the significant popularity of human-animal study groups in the humanities since the 1990s and the great fascination with things like taxidermy in the visual arts.
These interests point, on one hand to a more general concern with empathy as state of mind and on the other hand serve as a critique of and/or counterbalancing gesture towards an objective (but also anthropocentric) scientific approach. It is also clear in the humanities and creative arts thinking about animals that we as humans can’t help but to antrophomorphize, because it is this specific human lens through which we sense the world around us. No matter which disciplinary angle we choose, we can’t take ourselves out of the equation. This is true both for the scientific study of animal perception as well for the philosophical questioning about reciprocal relationships. Rather than worrying about anthropomorphizing, we recognise that if we gain a better understanding of how animals sense the world, this will also lead to a better understanding of how they perceive us and in the end may alter the way we see ourselves.We are in this together
It is this mutuality, which is at the heart of it all. Current research tells us that it is the interdependence of, for instance, eco-systems that is so crucial and intricate and which we as a species continue to fail to recognise as a reality. We are in this together – ecologically speaking. But we are failing to play our part by our inertia and possibly our incapability to actually stop the current global trends of, for instance, rapid decline of habitat and biodiversity.
Australian philosopher John Passmore draws a distinction between ‘ecological problems’ and ‘problems in ecology’. Problems in ecology are to be taken care of by ecologists but ecological problems are problems of society. They are political problems and therefore have to be addressed from a broader disciplinary angle. This distinction helps to address indicates the broader role I see for art to play in this conversation.
Don’t tell artists what to do
‘Don’t tell artists what to do’ was the answer I got from the American theorist and art crtitic Carol Becker in an interview, when I tried to share with her my concern about working with artists in a political activist context in the 1990s and 2000s. Being an artist myself, who has participated in political campaigns, what I was trying to convey to her was that in my view only a few artists had managed in their activist work to address the economics of a professional practice in a way that I found convincing.
In most other cases there was an awkward urge by artists to participate in activism as a launching platform for forms of more personalised projects that in the media eye still could be associated with their individual names or group personae or to use marketing lingo their personal brands. More than ten years later this is still an issue.
Artistic intervention can be crucial in addressing ecological problems. In initiating the Nature in the Dark project, I see a way that an artistic stance can help unravel some of the conundrums presented by an age where science, aesthetics and politics are so highly intertwined.
What artists can do
Foremost with this project, I hope to emphasise something beyond the usual delivery of visuals for awareness raising public campaigns à la Greenpeace.
While not denying the value of visual advocacy, we need to be aware that media campaigns related to, for instance, biodiversity, can have a flip side of favouring one animal over another. The Victorian National Parks Association’s (VNPA) Reefwatch program, which contributes to Nature in the Dark, has been set up to promote possibly less “charismatic” but ecologically equally important marine species in Victorian waters.
Nature in the Dark makes excessive use of the photographic material and video footage that biological survey programs like VNPA’s Naturewatch and Reefwatch are generating. The American composer David Dunn notes the usage of media technology allows humans to leap into non-human sphere because it can help transcending perceptual thresholds as well as spatial barriers. I see this kind of video monitoring also as a contribution to the Latourian task for the citizens of the Anthropocene, namely, to cocoon ourselves in as many as possible sensory loops ranging from atmospheric activities to the movements of rather uncharismatic small marine species in Victorian waters. For Latour we don’t arrive at a global perspective through the zoom-out function in GoogleEarth but by fostering the actual number of connections between localities.
Operating along the borders of the present-day’s nexus of science, aesthetics and politics, we are aware of the inherent political dimension of the aesthetic in a media age. It is the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, who argues that due to the connection between the aesthetic and the political and vice versa it is the particular role of contemporary art to challenge what is visible and what is not yet visible in society. Pushing this boundary further means to expand the current horizons of what can be said, thought, made or done. It informs a politics yet to be.
For me the Nature in the Dark project attempts to integrate to an extent both of these concepts: Latour’s sensory loops and Rancière’s political aesthetics and aesthetic dissent. I consider this as a genuine contribution of the arts more generally to society. Although to be creative cannot be considered an exclusive domain of the arts nor of the human being it is still worth thinking about what, according to the British gorilla researcher and anti-nuclear campaigner Nicholas Humphrey is the role of creative work: ‘the chief role of creative intellect … to hold society together’.
The Nature in the Dark conference is part of a continuing art/science/conservation collaboration between the Centre for Creative (CCA), La Trobe University, and the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA).
Nature in the Dark Conference
Saturday 4th October 2014 – 11:00am – 6:00pm
Visual Arts Centre, La Trobe University in Bendigo
