Entering the Symbiocene: A Transversal Ecosophy-Action Research Framework to Reverse Silent Spring

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good morning everyone, I wish to thank Mary for inviting me to share my recent art practice-theory research. I’m a New Zealander who has been living in Ireland these last 21 years. I have recently successfully defended my doctoral research so the ideas in this talk will be available shortly.
• #3: In todays talk, I will briefly use my creative practice as an example of why long-term ecological art practices are important: I see them as ‘memes for the Symbiocene’ not the Anthropocene However as many of you know, an ecological worldview brings complexity to such practices. Such practices, in turn, challenge art practice and education conventions: the low of such practices is they remain marginalised in art education, in art publications and consequently little understood by audiences I discuss why articulation matters! And why developing a guiding theory-method framework is empowering and urgent for practitioners and educators, and for non-artists collaborating on long-term ecological arts projects.
• #4: On my website, I have 2 quotes to remind myself of the difficult context that we are working in. As you know we are living in the unprecedented age of the Anthropocene, the age when industrial western culture is now recognised as changing the geology and life-support systems of the Earth! Prof. Brian Swimme says: The struggle of embracing our moment – is the struggle that we live in the most destructive moment in 65 million years.’
• #5: And I have a quote from a forest-planter, the first woman to gain a PhD in Africa, noble peace winner Wangari Maathi, to remind me that ‘there are opportunities even in the most difficult moments’. We know from environmental philosophers, such as Kathleen Dean Moore, that with the scientific understanding we now have of the ecological emergency, that we have a moral imperative to act, even if the consequences of our actions appear limited – this is an important point to convey to any art student or creative practitioner. To look the other way is like any other crime; morally unconscionable and it promotes the status quo. In many ways my work is directed to newcomers to the art & ecology field as I would like so many more to engage in this area –particularly as scientists are saying this is the hinge decade where we have the most opportunity to avoid the catastrophes that are rapidly unfolding.
• #6: I’ve found it useful to consider how Donna Harraway (2015) and others rename the anthropocene as the capitalocene, as it better identifies the nature of the planetary emergency – that it is fueled by the unsustainable advance of a globalised, extractive capitalism (although the roots of the problem are ancient and lie in the heart of the Western worldview which sees itself separate and devalues the nonhuman world)
• #7: Harroway further characterises a large engine of the Anthropocence as the ‘Plantationocene’ as industrial culture has simplified much of the planet’s living diversity into ‘slave’ monoculture plantations Industrial mononculture clearfell forestry, the main type of forestry in Ireland and large parts of the colonised world, is the focus of my eco-social art practice
• #8: Others such as sociologist Charles Derber have argued that since industrial society is causing the 6th great mass extinction -- ‘the great dying’, it means that we are living in a sociopathic culture (Derber, 2014), (I will come back to this point later as it underlines the theorist I chose to use to significantly increase understanding of ecological art practices)
• #9: So how do we move away from the endgame of the Anthropocene? Former Prof. of sustainability, Glenn Albrecht (2016) talks how we must urgently ‘exit the anthropocene and enter the Symbiocene’! He argues that we must quickly adopt new thinking, new practices and a politics where mutualism is prioritised, where we value the symbiotic mutual flourishing of all life He talks that we must develop ‘memes’ for the symbiocene – I see some longterm eco art practice, mine included, as working as powerful memes for societal learning and change; practical philosophies for living life differently, for living life well
• #10: Cultural responses are crucial for developing new life-sustaining values. Although not widely appreciated in art education or in national culture policies, at UN level it is recognised that cultural responses are one of the four pillars for driving examples of sustainablity in our local areas, for our local communities Even recent neuroscience research as outlined by George Lakoff confirms that facts alone will not change societal behaviour -
• #11: I’m particularly interested in creative practices that build bridges between art, science and other ways of knowing; that recognise the value of lived experience, local knowledges and the intrinsic rights of human and nonhuman communities to thrive
• #12: I see long-term ecological art practices as being very valuable; they operate by artistically weaving art + non-art activities together in a cyclical process of questions and reflections, often to address unsustainable business-as-usual thinking and practices In my eco-social art practice, I combine lifeworld (lived experience/tacit knowledge) and disciplinary knowledge; I weave my past experience in research science with the practice of ‘new-to-Ireland’ continuous cover forestry , and my Green Party political and policy-making experience. I utilise my video/photography and online writing skills to translate my new forest practices in the conifer plantation I live in and to make the project accessible overall to those not familiar with advances in forestry. A key practice for weaving, reflecting on and communicating this practice to a diverse audience comes from my experience in looking after an online community and my MA in Virtual realities: I have been able to manage a multi-constituent project and connect with local and secondary audiences from a rural location using social media
• #13: I blend these various skills and lifeworld knowledges to explore how we can move from the life-limiting, unsustainability of monoculture forestry ….to instead, investigate new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry approaches. The bottom image is of an area in the plantation that I live with, that is changing to a mixed species, permanent forest which we call Hollywood. This area is sheltered by the conifers that we have selectively felled every three years to create pockets of light, so as to encourage natural regeneration of native species.
• #14: Close to Nature forestry requires new skills of how to carefully mark trees for the future forest and selectively fell others – the conifers and native species are used together for integrated aims for biodiversity, enriched stable soils, disease resilience, carbon sequestration, firewood and future timber production. (In this image, is the 1st tree-marking workshop I held for myself and my interested neighbours; observation skills are crucial to this type of forestry) The plantation is slowly becoming a forest. Planted about 40 years ago, the transformation project is now in its 8th year and it will take some decades to realise its potential as a truly flourishing forest. The project is echoing and enhancing the work of small numbers of professional foresters and private landowners who are beginning to imagine and practice a new forestry for Ireland. Due to the timescales involved and an industry that is currently built around even aged mono-crop timbers, changes in forestry will take time. Hollywood is the smallest Close-to-Nature continuous cover forest in Ireland but even though it is small I like to think of it as the
• #15: the little wood that could. Because while it is a small and slow art practice
• #16: new experimental videos that reflect my and others’ new forestry experiences; forest science data from Hollywood has contributed to a recent forest journal article, and the project has enabled me to advocate these practices as the key approach to sustainable forestry for the Irish Green Party and from living inside Hollywood, I have developed a political voice to share news of developing laws against the crime of ecocide (how industrial practices, like monoculture forestry are a violence against life itself).
• #17: …however, despite the urgent need for new life-sustaining values, new thinking and practices, creative practices such as mine remain marginalised For example, in Ireland, there is no mention at national level of culture having a crucial role to envisage situated and emergent, relevant and engaging ideas of sustainability Art and ecology programes remain rare in Ireland and the UK ‘Nature’ as a thematic concern is still popular (and needed) but the potential for multi-constituent ecological art practices to play a crucial role in moving society in more life-sustaining directions, is largely under-realised in the art world and beyond
• #18: Why are eco-art practices not more common: ecology challenges the Western worldview. Beuys, in the 1980s declared everyone should be taught ecoliteracy, he understood ecology fundamentally decenters the primacy of humankind and human concerns, of which much western art is currently focused Ecology challenges the idea of the solitary individual, the artistic genius working alone, the possessive individualism celebrated in the neolib economy, and that creativity only resides in art Beuys understood that new art practices, that emphasise the social and environmental were needed creating responses for an ecological paradigm are also challenging; particularly when art career recognition and funding is still tied up largely with the creation of object based artworks And sadly, 30 years later, ecoliteracy is still not a fundamental of art education
• #19: And 30 years on, leading practitioners are still encountering Incomprehension of their long-term, multi-constituent eco-art practices (Goto and Collins, 2016)This hinders recognition and limits understanding of such practices in contemporary art education, for non-artists working on such projects and their audiences
• #20: If we see these practices as blueprints, practical philosophies for living life differently more sustainably, then clear articulation of such practices is vital. As philosopher Charles Taylor argues ‘Articulacy has a moral point, not just in correcting what may be wrong views but also in making the force of an ideal that people are already living by more palpable, more vivid for them; and by making it more vivid, empowering them to live up to it in a fuller and more integral fashion.’ For what often occurs in ecological art practice, is that not only that environments are restored and new practices are adopted but practitioners mental ecologies are transformed; their lives becomes a meme
• #21: Getting to my research of articulating ecological art practices, I looked at many leading practices. On the surface these practices seem very diverse but in my research I began to see patterns in the aims of such practices, (generally evolving new context-specific values and practices for sustainability to counter existing unsustainable situations) and that these practices’ routinely involved similar key method stages.
• #22: While the literatures routinely categorise such practices as transdisciplinary, and they are to a point, more recent research indicates they act transversally. That the embody the therapist-theorist and political activist, Felix Guattari’s lifetimes work on transversality. Guattari argued transversality, rather than transdisciplinary theories can significantly deepen understanding of how diverse assemblages of lived experience and disciplinary knowledge can work to foster new life values, new directions of thought and practice. While not examining eco-art practices specifically, Iain Biggs (2014) analyses in applying transversality to deepen understanding of multi-constituent art-led practices are also important
• #23: While some have dismissed Guattari’s slim Three Ecologies book as an unfinished concept, I began to realise this recent research was identifying a greater contribution. In particular, Elliott’s overview of Guattari’s lifetimes work and his particular application of transversality, ecosophy and chaosophy really interested me when he applied these theories briefly to deepen understanding of the the multi-constituent practices of the pioneering practices of Helen and Newton Harrison. I realised that Guattari’s ecosophy is a means to recognise how new values, subjectivities arise from individual-collective assemblages that combine lifeworld and disciplinary knowledges, like ecological art practices
• #24: I make claims for Guattari’s theory to guide understanding of long-term eco art practices for a number of reasons. Remember when I said earlier, that western industrial culture is sociopathic, Guattari deeply understood the psychology and social aspects of the planetary predicament He understood that the environmental crisis was rooted in calcified mental and unquestioned social practices He understood capitalism seizes people’s minds as an ‘overcode’, (from his extensive polictical activism experience, that the politics of the left or right could not defeat it And that a scientific -technological paradigm was gravely insufficient to counter its pervasiveness; tech advances and renewables will not treat the root of the crisis Essentially, Guattari recognised that we must move from a scientific to an ethico-aesthetic paradigm
• #25: Many have commentated that Guattari’s ideas are complex and one can feel like one is falling down the rabbit hole chasing his ideas. However Guattari’s ideas of transversality (developed from the 70s onwards) and his key ideas that we need to advance the 3 ecologies the mental, social and environmental spheres together, speaks to the aim and potential long term eco-art practices priorities Guattari completely understands the madness and chaos of sociopathic culture. Because of Guattari’s “three ecologies”, I prefer to call ecological art practices “eco-social art practices”, to better emphasise that these practices enact not only environmental learning but also that they are socially transformative for their practitioners and their audiences.
• #26: Guattari realised the means to advance resistance to capitalism and outdated, life-limiting worldviews lay in micropolitical assemblages that operated and communicated transversally – In his words, these formations become “molecular revolutions” or “softly subvert” globalised capitalism and the Western worldview – So, I argue my transversal practice aims to softly subvert the stranglehold of unsustainable industrial forestry
• #27: Guattari’s concepts help build understanding that sustainability is contingent, an ever-evolving state that is enriched by democratic participation & different ways of knowing. He describes such practices as similar to musical ‘refrains’, that they circle a problem with various knowings, new ethical understandings and aesthetic practices – and that that these are the key components to develop ‘new lines of flight’, new values, ideas and practices. I therefore argue Guattari’s ecosophy identifies the target, main components and potential of transversal practices. While I can’t go into too much detail, Guattari is also incredibly useful to think about new social media technologies and how they may enable and emit the learning from transversal practices. Unlike many other social theorists, Guattari celebrated and theorised the rise of independent communicative technologies and this has been an important means to explore the under-acknowledge potential of social media for long-term eco-social art practice and what I see as the potential of massive open online courses to radically develop the art and ecology field.
• #28: Guattari’s theory while it embraces and helps us understand complexity, is itself complex and not suited to describe how one practically initiates and maintains transversal practices Interestingly, Guattari was himself interested in action research as a method approach but this was not developed during his lifetime. (Genosko) Through Chris Seeley’s research, I found that action research, used widely in other fields, can be used to frame Guattari’s key ideas and provide an accessible method pathway for long-term eco-social art practice. I found it matched Guattari’s ideas of transversal practice when I applied it to my own and others practices in my research. The above diagram shows how AR identifies the circular pathway of reflection * action and– it visualises why such practices are a profound departure from the narrow scientific (colonial) research model.
• #29: AR is an methodology approach for eco-social complexity, it is not a prescriptive model but a reactive pathway, each step allows plenty of opportunity for creativity and serendipity, action and reflection.
• #30: So to give an example- This is what you may have encountered if you had asked me about what my practice involved and its concerns at the beginning of my project. To my mind, I was, through trial, error, advancing new understandings of sustainable forestry through traversing social and hands on forestry practices, through theories and life knowledges, I was embracing the complexity of working ecologically. Edcuator and artist Charles Garioan has also thought about this and asked ‘how differently would art, science, and other disciplines be valued, … if experienced as an ecological system of ideas’ (2012), and at the same time, recognised the ‘untamed messiness of such an exploratory, experimental, and improvisational’ way of working is a threat to conventional education systems, including academia and representational art practice (2014). But I was convinced my and others long term eco-social practices were emitting valuable outcomes.``
• #31: So I identified the components/stages of my transversal practice according to an action research approach
• #32: For instance in my practice, Action Research (AR) identifies and orders a repeating cycle of method stages, from worthwhile purposes to practical challenges and the practical skills and learning I have gained from working with foresters at Hollywood
• #33: To valuing ‘many ways of knowing (experiential, lived, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge) The experiential knowledge of being-in-the-forest reminds us of the complex interconnections that foster a thriving forest
• #34: AR also identifies why eco social art practices can include and develop scientific and traditional understandings, My practice has contributed to this forest journal paper, and
• #35: AR identifies in considerable detail why Artistic knowing is essential in action research for sustainability, to translate experiential knowing and to weave other ways of knowing into cohesive and engaging projects (Chris Seeley, 2011, 2014)
• #36: And AR identifies another key step in why such practices need to include diverse participation and inclusive democracy, even to how we might include the priorities of the nonhuman
• #37: AR also identifies why such projects encourage new dialogues and policies from all of the above From my small 2 acre forest transformation work, my eco-social art practice and my lifeworld experience of knowing Green politics I advanced continuous cover forestry as the key point of Irish Green Party forest policy in 2012. I am currently the Greens spokesperson for forestry in Ireland
• #38: Action Research also confirms the significant outcome of such practices as evolving valuable, learning for change, communicative spaces.
• #39: Action research therefore confirms what pioneers of long term ecological art practice, the Harrisons, have argued:that the most valuable outcome of their multi-constituent practice is ‘conversational drift’ : how the questions, the new images, texts, diverse perspectives, develop a communicative means for envisioning new values, possibilities, practices and policies
• #40: And Action Research makes visible the complex iterations of a transversal practice as a recognisable cycle of activities – it speaks to Guattari’s ecosophy and ideas of the potential of transversality. Action research also counters time-wasting in trying to develop a methodology intuitively and greatly enhances learning and peer-to-peer exchange as it establishes recognisable method terminology. I also found it significantly clarifies the practices of key people in the art and ecology field. In these urgent times we need a recognised means to compare effective practices and encourage more to engage with eco-social concerns.
• #41: …through my research I that the Guattari-action research model can more significantly articulate the significant potential and value of eco-social art practices and the means to develop and maintain such practices; The framework advances understanding of and for the emergent art and ecology field
• #42: I have produced an ebook (and print on-demand version) of the key method stages of my transversal practice (available in the coming months)
• #43: Thank you!Follow ‘the little wood that could’ at: www.hollywoodforest.com email: cathyart@gmail.com