A Major Counter Force
An enlightened principle runs through the past forty years of Helen and Newton Harrison’s work like a brilliant current. It can be simply stated: humans must establish new carbon sinks to replace melting glaciers.
The recent retrospective exhibition at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in NY showed how the Harrisons applied this principle to Tibet, Laos, India, China, Kashmir, Pakistan, Vietnam, Burma, Tel Aviv, Nevada, Portugal, Holland, Germany, and the Sacramento Valley in California.
This tidy thesis has sprawling implications.
Foremost -it reverses the fatalistic belief that the planet’s systems have been so drastically disrupted that it is no longer possible to restore balance. The artists provide a way of accommodating the changes. If only enough of us would attend to the achievable strategies the Harrisons have not devised. Their proposals are not merely artistic imaginings. The artists are conducting controlled tests to demonstrate the validity of the principles they advocate.
The artists advocate forced migrations of species to replace those that can’t survive; planting botanicals that can tolerate drought; encouraging succession so life is maintained; accepting death as normal; focusing on collective survival; reintroducing 15,000 year old populations because they survived a previous warming period. These are all manageable adaptive behaviors.
“Force Majeure” is the title they chose for their project because they are mounting a ‘major counter force’ in opposition to the standard practices of industry that produce predictably noxious consequences.