Poles Apart: Eliasson and the Harrisons
Poles apart, two works of art that relocate materials from the landscape exemplify the extraordinary range of approaches taken by artists whose themes revolve around human relationships to the non-human environment. A precedent was established by the Land Art artists in the 1970s. The grandiose scale of their manipulations of the landscape are typically associated with arrogant assertions of power. Contrasting interpretations are required by subsequent transpositions and relocations of materials found within the landscape.
One pole includes actions that seem equally arrogant. In this instance, the materials collected from the landscape are deposited within a gallery. This pole is represented by Olafur Eliasson whose current exhibition at the Lousiana Museum consists of relocated rocks, pebbles, and soil that were used to recreate an Icelandic landscape within an architectural space.
Trickling water runs through a riverbed that actually meanders through the galleries. It is surrounded by mounds of rocky earth. Indignant commentary already surrounds this work, many colleagues protesting that "Riverbed" required a massive expenditure of machine time, fuel, and labor to haul the many tons of rocks and earth needed to recreate the landscape, not merely represent it. Although I have not experienced this work personally, the impression conveyed by the images is that the work commemorates the human vision, energy, guile, and zeak required to accomplish this feat. The barren installation, devoid of any signs of life, appears like the background for this human achievement. With a reputation of being a titan in the art world, Elisasson has previusly created the sun in The Weather Project that filled the vast void of Turbine Hall at the Tate with a representation of the sun and sky.
The other pole is occupied by Helen and Newton Harrison. In 1996 they dug up and replanted an entire 400 year-old meadow in Bonn, Germany and transplanted it onto the 1 1/2 acre roof of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle museum. "Future Garden, Part 1, The Endangered Meadows of Europe",diverted the focus away from artistic expression. The Harrison's had a much more urgent and pragmatic motive. They were carrying out a rescue mission, since the featured meadow was about to be destroyed due to urban development.
The artists used this opportunity to elevate the status of meadow ecosystems. Most significantly, the project demonstrated that actions taken by humans can generate bio-diversity instead of diminishing it. They are not wild. The meadowlands of Europe developed over centuries as a result of forest clearing. They would revert to forests if they were not maintained by humans grazing livestock and/or cutting hay. Meadow ecosystems are human constructions. Unlike most human interventions in the landscape, these are both complex and stabile. Both humans and ecosystems benefit from this kind of management.
“Future Meadow” also provided an opportunity for the artists to expose the environmental toll of overcutting and over grazing, as well as mechanized, mono agriculture. While the roof top garden was dismantled in 1998, the project persists because seeds from the original meadow were planted to generate other meadowlands throughout the park system of Bonn, thereby ensuring the continuation of a historic tradition that is a cultural as it is ‘natural’. The Harrisons conclude, “Paradoxically, even as it is being destroyed and replaced, the meadow as it has evolved is, and will continue to be, a valuable model for future survival. As the artists, we see this collaborative model speaking across time, offering choices, posing questions and functioning as a potential model for future man-nature collaborations. Thinking about this, we begin to imagine a future forest, a future estuary, a future lake. In fact, imagine monoculture Europe as a Future Garden, a biologically diverse system, with the meadow as the model.”
This work predated the Harrison’s development of the “Force Majeure,” a concept they have been evoking since 2008. Nonetheless, their description of this initiative, which highlights many sobering conditions that currently beset planet Earth, apply the “Future Meadow”. “That the Force Majeure, framed ecologically Enacts in physical terms outcomes on the ground Everything we have created in the global landscape Bringing together the conditions that have accelerated global warming Acting in concert With the massive industrial processes of extraction, production and consumption That have subtracted forests and depleted top soil Profoundly reduced ocean productivity While creating a vast chemical outpouring into the atmosphere Onto the lands and within the waters That altogether comprise the Force Majeure. (Harrison and Harrison 2009).” The theme conveyed by this poetic text is developed in their projects thorugh the rigorous research that involves geographers, historians, urban planners, ecologists, climatologists, hydrologists, and other scientists. an age-old practice whereby