ECO ART/ACTIONS
2009

What are eco art/actions? We couldn't decide definitively amongst ourselves, but we can agree that we like them, we support them, and we stand in discordant solidarity.

Some of us believe it merely begins with the basic concept of improving the human relationship to the natural world through the visual art experience and products. This art-environment-functional concept can take many forms, including education, advocacy, negotiation, action.

Others of us believe that the eco art/action must move beyond mere advocacy and comment and involve direct action, political or social. Throwing seed bombs with native seeds on corporate property, dumping dirt or manure in city squares, digging up unnecessary concrete and reclaiming green space, illegally planting trees.

We enjoyed viewing, debating, and (re)interpreting all your works. Perhaps the one worth mentioning by name is Francesca Galeazzi's "Justifying Bad Behavior for Eco Art Actions," a biting satirical piece about the damaging things we may do while making ecological art. Let's kill any self-righteousness we have right now and fearlessly turn the cameras on ourselves. LET THIS BE A LESSON TO US ALL!

If one examines the trajectory of modern society, one is faced with a choice: either reject the capitalist paradigm of environmental commodification, or conclude that change is impossible. One of the primary themes we found in these works is the rejection of the paradigm of infinite growth. But the subject is contextualised into a dialectic that includes art and action as a unified entity.

But is ANY environmental activism "art"? When volunteers for the Sea Shepherd put themselves between a whaling ship and a whale, are they doing some sort of eco performance art? When Amazon basin native peoples lay their bodies in front of bulldozers to defend their rain forest, are they making art? Many artists would say no. But who are we to say they're not?

Just as Marcel Duchamp demonstrated when he bought a urinal and signed it "R. Mutt" anything that is proclaimed art by an artist can be art if the artist says it is so. In the end we could only agree that we are not here to say what is an eco art/action and what is not. If it fits the parameters in the broadest sense, we include it and support it.

To quote the eco art manifesto:
"Eco is a Greek word meaning ‘home.’ Watersheds are the ecological homes for all forms of life. Eco-art, therefore, engages the intimacy of home (here) and the immediacy of time (now). It specializes in here and now by valuing indigenous materials, locally generated energy sources, sustainable procedures, and topical themes."

If, as Foucault states, "Art is part of the failure of language" then these artists reinvent art in a new language, a language that speaks of our home, the planet Earth.

Society is fundamentally responsible for the status quo, for our trajectory of infinite growth, of depletion, extinction, and destruction. But society is us. We can change. We must change. And we will change, if not willingly then by nature's dispassionate hand. These artists, through their art, their actions, aim to affect that change through conscious choice.

-The Ecofuturist International