Comments on: Spotlight on Ecology: Mark Dion http://blog.art21.org/2007/11/08/spotlight-on-ecology-mark-dion/ The Official Blog of Art21, Inc. and the Art in the Twenty-First Century PBS series Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:30:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: alan labudde http://blog.art21.org/2007/11/08/spotlight-on-ecology-mark-dion/#comment-838 alan labudde Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:38:43 +0000 http://blog.art21.org/2007/11/08/spotlight-on-ecology-mark-dion/#comment-838 couldn't you have just made a stereo drawing of the rats in a tree? i don't believe I'll donate my body to Art. Nor even to be plasticized...I'm sorry I went to that "anatomical" exhibit which wasn't Dions by the way. Strange Days, Strange Fruit were the white rats actually orange and then bleached white before tarring? couldn’t you have just made a stereo drawing of the rats in a tree? i don’t believe I’ll donate my body to Art.
Nor even to be plasticized…I’m sorry I went to that “anatomical” exhibit which wasn’t Dions by the way.

Strange Days, Strange Fruit

were the white rats actually orange and then bleached white before tarring?

]]> By: Mary Jo Aagerstoun http://blog.art21.org/2007/11/08/spotlight-on-ecology-mark-dion/#comment-728 Mary Jo Aagerstoun Sat, 10 Nov 2007 01:12:03 +0000 http://blog.art21.org/2007/11/08/spotlight-on-ecology-mark-dion/#comment-728 I attended the sneak preview of ARt 21's "Ecology" segment at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. What struck me most about the film, was the strong strain of nostalgia, with all the melancholy that implies. There is a lot of fear-mongering going on right now in the public arena about all kinds of things. And I think the “mirror” Dion was referring to artists holding up, in these cases, deploys nostalgia as a sort of spiritual “comfort food.” It is hard to know where to go in this fear-ridden time. In many ways, if the predictions are true, that global warming is a juggernaut which cannot be stopped by puny human effort, then looking back, remembering, yearning for times that may never have existed, or fanciful recreations of times past is understandably attractive to the mirror holders. Like putting a green filter over the mirror. It may also be that those artists who seem to be struggling to create a “greener” future by engaging art with science in bioremediating ways may in some ways be invoking nostalgia as well. I think, however, that what ecoartists are doing has something in their practice that the artists we saw in the film do not…namely, their work inspires hope in viewers, and encourages agency, especially because in the best cases, community is integrally involved in creating the work. This was the one thing that was not present in any of the works presented in the film. What we saw, in the cases where there were others working with the artist, was not community involvement, but the deployment by the artist of people with certain skills needed to do the work to make the art. Sort of human “brushes” if you will, or art-machines. I hope at some point Art 21 will REALLY take on the well-established Ecoart movement worldwide and do it justice. Invoking the term "Ecology" as the title for this segment was not only misleading, but disrespectful of the hundreds of ecoartists from Iceland to Oregon, India to Miami who are engaging their artistic creativity with direct bioremediation and activism at a time when we need to engage all forms of knowledge to save our planet, including especially art. I attended the sneak preview of ARt 21’s “Ecology” segment at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. What struck me most about the film, was the strong strain of nostalgia, with all the melancholy that implies. There is a lot of fear-mongering going on right now in the public arena about all kinds of things. And I think the “mirror” Dion was referring to artists holding up, in these cases, deploys nostalgia as a sort of spiritual “comfort food.” It is hard to know where to go in this fear-ridden time. In many ways, if the predictions are true, that global warming is a juggernaut which cannot be stopped by puny human effort, then looking back, remembering, yearning for times that may never have existed, or fanciful recreations of times past is understandably attractive to the mirror holders. Like putting a green filter over the mirror. It may also be that those artists who seem to be struggling to create a “greener” future by engaging art with science in bioremediating ways may in some ways be invoking nostalgia as well. I think, however, that what ecoartists are doing has something in their practice that the artists we saw in the film do not…namely, their work inspires hope in viewers, and encourages agency, especially because in the best cases, community is integrally involved in creating the work. This was the one thing that was not present in any of the works presented in the film. What we saw, in the cases where there were others working with the artist, was not community involvement, but the deployment by the artist of people with certain skills needed to do the work to make the art. Sort of human “brushes” if you will, or art-machines.

I hope at some point Art 21 will REALLY take on the well-established Ecoart movement worldwide and do it justice. Invoking the term “Ecology” as the title for this segment was not only misleading, but disrespectful of the hundreds of ecoartists from Iceland to Oregon, India to Miami who are engaging their artistic creativity with direct bioremediation and activism at a time when we need to engage all forms of knowledge to save our planet, including especially art.

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