ESSAY Working Together Chris Fremantle REFERENCES Why is “working together” so vital right now? It is at the heart This embrace must not be uncritical. The future of energy must be David Haley, “Art, Ecology and Reality: The Potential for Transdisciplinarity in the Proceedings of Art, Emotion and Value,” (presented at the 5th Mediterranean Congress of Aesthetics, 2011). http://www.um.es/vmca/proceedings/docs/52.DavidHaley.pdf, accessed 12 March 2014. of ecoart practices and at the heart of the Land Art Generator renewable, and it must be socially just. The BBC reported when Initiative. It is one of the features that distinguish these practices the renewable energy system on Eigg, an island off the west coast and programs. LAGI asks architects, designers, and artists (a.k.a. of Scotland, came online. What wasn’t reported was the social “creative practitioners”) to work with scientists, engineers, justice built into the system. Renewable energy is limitless over inventors, land managers, ecologists, manufacturers, and time, but limited at any point in time. On Eigg, every house and Wallace Heim “Evaluation Report DEFRA Climate Challenge Fund CCF9 Project code AE017 Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom,” (2008). http://greenhousebritain.greenmuseum.org/evaluation, accessed 12 March 2014. communities. business has a cut-out switch, which stops an individual from Grant Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Duke University Press; Durham and London, 2011). Joachim Sauter, interview in Data Flow: v. 2: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design (Berlin: Gestalten, 2010). Curriculum for Excellence: Building the Curriculum for Skills for Learning, Skills for Life and Skills for Work (Scottish Government, 2009). Superflex, Superflex: Tools (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 1999). Supergas website: http://www.supergas.dk/ introduction, accessed 12 March 2014. Jeremy Till, “The Negotiation of Hope” in Architecture and Participation (London and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005). There are several elements to working together. Teamwork is using too much energy at any particular moment. This is a form of considered to be an important skill. In fact, it is part of the national community collaboration, which is significant and which addresses curriculum in Scotland (2009). Participation has become mainstream the “tragedy of the commons” (the tendency for people to act in in art, design, architecture, and new media. Interdisciplinarity is their own short term interests even if this has long term negative the mot du jour in academic research. Collaboration and creativity, consequences for the community). On Eigg people embrace each participation and knowledge have become powerful words in the other with social as well as environmental justice. discourse today, but they are double-edged. Do they reinforce If we want to understand why working together with artists might existing marketization, or do they open up new forms of public be important, it is worth looking to the practice of Helen Mayer space? Harrison and Newton Harrison. These eminent ecological artists LAGI invites teams to form and work together, ideally with responded to an invitation from David Haley (Director, Ecology in communities, to develop new solutions for our societies’ energy Practice, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) to consider the systems and to imagine new structures for generating renewable impact of global warming on the island of Britain. The result was energy at the mid-scale—the scale that relates to settlements. LAGI the project Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom wants us to embrace renewable energy as a beautiful part of the (2006–2008), which was funded by the UK government as part of its places we live in. Climate Challenge program. In the independent evaluation of that “Embracing” is a good word in this context, because we need to embrace renewable energy. It is also a good word for the particular sense of working together, because creative and techno-scientific practitioners need to embrace each other’s skills and expertise, knowledge and methods. LAGI is not looking to decorate existing energy installations or plop down energy-producing sculptures. project, Wallace Heim comments on interviews she conducted with the Harrison’s project collaborators: They all reported that the experience was illuminating, informative, challenging, imaginative, liberating. Their respect for the cross-disciplinary knowledge of the Harrisons was high, including both the science, the landuse planning and the architectural aspects, including Newton Harrison’s ability to ask “the right questions.” 2 Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Further, they had been taken on a journey, relieved of move from the problem to sense-making necessarily brings with it the strictures of their respective disciplines and work an acknowledgement of the contested social situation in which the practices, and had found it in some way transformative design process is first initiated....” of their way of considering climate change and possible When we step outside our specialized spaces, whether the adaptations to it. But, from their responses, the exercise galleries, concert halls, and theaters of artists, or the labs of was not just one of being relieved of limitations, but one scientists and engineers, we are negotiating our practices. which was highly informed, creative, and reflective, Increasingly, we are negotiating with communities as well as sea level rise at Arnolfini, Bristol. not merely of their own methods of work, but of more other professions. Creative practitioners working with ecological (left to right) Tom Trevor, Newton conventional responses to climate change. They systems, human habitation and development, energy and resource Harrison, Martin Clark, Helen Mayer reported feeling supported, mentored, and reported an generation, and so on, quite specifically embrace other ways of Gaining Wisdom. 2006–2008. Discussing Harrison, and Chris Fremantle Photo by David Haley appreciation of what this kind of process of “art” can working, and in particular other methods. They can enter into deep achieve in providing the context, the time and space relationships. There is a sharp edge here, because this involves for imagining possible futures, for rehearsing what may dealing with other living things, not just inert materials. Therefore, happen. (2008, p. 9) The words that Heim chooses to characterize the experience of collaborating with the Harrisons are also used by others when speaking about the quality of collaborative relationships between artists and scientists. LAGI is seeking to provide a context, time, and space for that quality of informed, creative, and reflective practice to imagine possible futures and rehearse what can happen as we embrace renewable energy. There are dangers, however, in focusing on an idealized form of Plein Air: Tim and Reiko working with collaborative practice. What Heim’s description does not suggest trees in Aberdeen. 2010–2014. Reiko Goto is that the result of Greenhouse Britain is a problem solved. Rather and Tim Collins, with Michael Baldock, Carola Boehm, Matt Dalgliesh, Trevor it is making sense of our new circumstances and exploring what Hocking, Chris Malcolm, and others some futures might look like. In his essay The Negotiation of Hope (2005), Jeremy Till addresses this embrace has to be respectful, has to have an ethical dimension, and has to be caring. To understand what this might mean, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto’s project Plein Air (2010–2014) required that they work with engineers to develop a range of sensing technology. This technology enabled the public to perceive trees breathing and, in collaboration with musicians and audio artists, to transform the data streams of that breathing into acoustic experiences. Collin’s and Goto’s concern was to encourage empathy, using technology to heighten awareness. In being collaborative, we are often being interdisciplinary— working between, with, across, into, and beyond disciplines and between different forms of knowledge and practice. Sometimes conversations explore the similarities between artists and scientists, John Forester’s argument that the role of designers in particular should be understood as “sense-making” rather than “problemsolving.” Till states: “Central to Forester’s argument is that such a 3 Installation photo of Supergas/ User/ The Land, Chiang Mai, Thailand. 2002. Photo courtesy of Superflex designers and engineers, but a discipline is a specialization. With In short: the result of design work has to be understood specialization comes skill and expertise. Ecoart always requires immediately and should be directly legible by as many as multiple and varied skills and expertise. There are many dimensions possible. This means it has to be told in a language that to this. Creative practitioners tend to have thematic interests, such everyone understands. Artwork however is produced as water, biodiversity, urban greenspace, brownfields, phyto- using an individual and personal language and it is remediation, farming, orchards, and permaculture. Ecoartists will mainly not meant to be understood immediately or by name their collaborators and will report, and sometimes document, everyone. The process of understanding an artwork by the dialogues. deciphering is very important. It forces one into a much I’m increasingly concerned about the terms “collaboration” and deeper dialogue with what is presented. In design work “interdisciplinarity” because these words might be obscuring the it is the opposite—if there is a fire, you don’t want to basic act of “working together.” However, not all “working together” decipher an exit sign. It goes without saying that the is the same. David Haley (2011), using the analysis of Basarab borders are blurry and that you find both approaches in Nicolescu, suggests some ways of thinking about the differences. both fields. (2010, pp. 250–251) A group of people with different specializations can all work on the same question. This might be called “multi-disciplinary.” If those people exchange methods, so that the specializations become hybrid, then that might be called “inter-disciplinary.” Then there are circumstances where different specializations come together to Perhaps the Danish collective Superflex might exemplify this issue. In addition to their work 2000 Watt Society Contract, which relates to the collaboration on Eigg mentioned above, Superflex’s Supergas project sits in this blurry, in-between space. The Supergas website Introduction page states: focus on a problem, setting aside any hierarchies of specializations, 4 and this might be called “trans-disciplinary” (the prefixes post- and In 1996–1997 Superflex... collaborated with biogas extra- have also been used). Haley argues that the repositioning engineer Jan Mallan to construct a simple, portable of specializations, clarified by this terminology, is vital to address biogas unit that can produce sufficient gas for the cooking 21 st century questions. I would argue that ecoart is inherently and lighting needs of an African family. The system has interdisciplinary—it is not just the knowledge domains that are been adapted to meet the efficiency and style demands embraced. If you look at a lot of ecoart, it actually sits in grey areas of a modern African consumer. It is intended to match between art and design—not clever product design, but design in the needs and economic resources that we believe the sense of clear communication of information, clear construction exist in small-scale economies. The orange biogas plant of process resulting in impacts. Joachim Sauter opens up the issue produces biogas from organic materials, such as human when he states: and animal stools. First, note that the engineer is credited in the first sentence. In the most successful collaborative projects we Second, the Supergas project appears to conform to Sauter’s encounter instead a pragmatic openness to site and description of design. In Tanzania, Cambodia, Thailand, Zanzibar, situation, a willingness to engage with specific cultures and Guadalajara, the project’s function is clear. When seen in an and communities in a creative and improvisational art exhibition, however, for example at the Louisiana Museum, manner…, Denmark (1997) or at Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, participatory processes, and a critical and self-reflexive in Maastricht (2011), it becomes a kind of personal language that relationship to practice itself. Another important requires deciphering. In those contexts, it becomes an “issue- component is the desire to cultivate and enhance forms based” work of art. There is a third position from which it also of solidarity…. (2011, p. 125) needs to be deciphered. As Mallans states in an interview: “That’s also different from industry. In industry you don’t ask whether there is any money. Of course there is. But here you know there’s no money.” (1999) Creative practitioners working on environmental and ecological projects, including those contributing to LAGI, might be attempting to operate, like Superflex, in both of Sauter’s modes. Their works often operate at more than one level—to understand immediately what the project is doing and make it directly legible, but also to enter into a deeper dialogue through a more personal relationship with the work. In exploring collaborations between artists and communities, Grant Kester is interested in the politics of collaboration: a concern with non-hierarchical and Kester’s defining characteristics are leitmotifs. In particular “solidarity” is a political word (perhaps more so if you are connected to Poland and grew up in the 80s), but it signals the importance of respect and justice in the process, echoing openness to site and situation, reinforcing and engaging with specific cultures and communities, and embedding an alternative politics. Kester’s phrase “a critical and self-reflexive relationship to practice itself” opens up space for the practice to inhabit the blurry space between clarity and directness on the one hand, and depth and personal language on the other. The reason we might need to rethink our understanding of creative practice, as suggested at the start of this essay, is because the most provocative examples of ecoart, and LAGI in particular, are characterized by a shared process rather than an autonomous one. The artists are not adding decoration to something that engineers have designed, and the designers are not simply designing the logo for the product. There’s a deep understanding that to make sense of our energy challenges and to intervene effectively takes multiple intelligences, multiple practices, multiple creativities working together. 5