A Matter of Life and Death
Should ‘life’ or ‘death’ provide the central theme for organizing human consciousness? This provocative question was asked by Melissa Sue Ragain in the fall 2012 issue of Art Journal. The question is intriguing because advocates for ‘life’ recognize the imperative of death, and those advocating ‘death’ acknowledge the requirement of life.
Life advocates focus on anabolic processes: the synthesis in living organisms of more complex substances from simpler ones
Death advocates focus on catabolic processes: the breaking down in living organisms of more complex substances into simpler ones, with the release of energy. Entropy is the doctrine of inevitable decline. It is applied to social systems, biological entities, and geological phenomena.
Robert Smithson’s towering esteem is predicated on his ability to manifest entropy, which explains his absence from this text. This book, like the science of ecology, is a study of life. While Smithson was venturing into mine sites and quarries, the artists representing that era in TO LIFE! were being equally venturesome, but their attention was directed to open and productive biological systems.
Alan Sonfist was reestablishing forests.
Hans Haacke was explorating dynamic systems that extended beyond condensation and evaporation to include hatching chickens, growing grass, and fish swimming in filtered river waters.
Helen and Newton Harrison were setting up indoor food – producing installations: gardens, orchards, and fish farms.
The self-propelled expansion of all of these systems was not merely additive. It was exponential, the principle that characterizes the growth of living entities. This process is imbued with the miraculous transformation of matter. For this reason, Ragain relates these ‘life’ explorers to the New Alchemy. She explains it as “a way of describing new ecosystematic artwork….a way of unlocking the nonrational and ritualistic content of a contemporary lineage begun by Marcel Duchamp.” “Homeostasis Is Not Enough: Order and Survival in Early Ecological Art. Art Journal. Fall, 2012.