Nature

Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art

by Jeffrey Kastner (Editor)

Nature, as both subject and object, has been repeatedly rejected and reclaimed by artists over the last half century. With the dislocation of disciplinary boundaries in visual culture, art that is engaged with nature has also forged connections with a new range of scientific, historical, and philosophical ideas. Developing technologies make our interventions into natural systems both increasingly refined and profound. Advances in biological and telecommunication technology continually modify the way we present ourselves. So too are artistic representations of nature (human and otherwise) being transformed. This anthology addresses these issues by considering how the rise of transdisciplinary practices in the postwar era allowed for new kinds of artistic engagement with nature. These include the postminimalist inscriptions associated with Land art; environmentally engaged practices designed to propose novel forms of stewardship; and more recent projects concerned with relationships between the most subtle and minute components of life and the large-scale appearance of the world. These projects unsettle the most basic operations of "natural" personhood and identity. Including a wide range of writings by and about artists, juxtaposed with influential texts from diverse theoretical bases, this collection provides an overview of the eclectic scientific and philosophical sources that inform contemporary art's investigations of nature.

Contents:
Introduction --
Material zones. Imagination and matter / Gaston Bachelard --
On the importance of natural disasters / Walter De Maria --
In conversation with Dennis Wheeler / Robert Smithson --
Systems aesthetics: conversation with Jeanne Siegel / Hans Haacke --
Looking at, and overlooking, women working in land art in the 1970s / Suzaan Boettger --
In conversation with Linda Montano / Ana Mendieta --
A nomad among builders / Michael Auping --
Scapeland / Jean-François Lyotard --
Between space and time / David Harvey --
Flow city / Mierle Laderman Ukeles --
Topologies: Michel Serres and the shapes of thought / Steven Connor --
Heather and Ivan Morison: Earthwalker / Emma Cocker --
On TechnoSphere / Jane Prophet --
Mind and body shifting: from networks to nanosystems / Victoria Vesna --
Vibrant matter: a political ecology of things / Jane Bennett --
Curie's children / Vilém Flusser --
A brief history of art involving DNA / George Gessert --
Interactive plant growing (1993) / Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau --
Art that looks you in the eye / Eduardo Kac --
In conversation with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve / Aziz + Cucher --
The extended body / Oron Catts & Ionart Zurr --
Evolutionary ideas. Creative evolution / Henri Bergson --
The biosphere / Vladimir Vernadsky --
Chance and necessity / Jacques Monod --
Steps to an ecology of mind / Gregory Bateson --
The three great movements / Arne Naess --
The three ecologies / Félix Guattari --
Nature and culture / Peter Halley --
Experimental geography / Trevor Paglen --
Remote possibilities: land art's changing terrain / Claire Bishop, Lynne Cooke, Tim Griffin, Pierre Huyghe, Pamela M. Lee, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andrea Zittel --
On ecocivility / Helen & Newton Harrison --
In conversation with Stefano Boeri and Hans Ulrich Obrist / Tomás Saraceno --
Art in the age of technoscience / Ingeborg Reichle --
The history of telepresence: automata, illusion and rejecting the body / Oliver Grau --
A cyborg manifesto / Donna Haraway --
From psycho-body to cyber-systems: images as post-human entities / Stelarc --
No ghost / Tom McDonough --
Cognition and conscience. The natural fantastic / Roger Caillois --
What is it like to be a bat? / Thomas Nagel --
The animal that therefore I am / Jacques Derrida --
The open: man and animal / Giorgio Agamben --
In conversation with Robert Rosenblum / Alan Sonfist --
In conversation / Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman --
In conversation with Mark Dion / Andrew Ross --
The world we live in is a revelation / herman de vries --
Crossroads community (The Farm) / Bonnie Sherk --
7,000 oaks: conversation with Richard Demarco / Joseph Beuys --
Notes on art as/and land reclamation / Robert Morris --
In conversation with Fareed Armaly and Ute Meta Bauer / Mel Chin --
In conversation with Shane Danaher / Mary Mattingly --
In conversation with Tim Chamberlain / Brandon Ballengée --
Please don't feed the animals / Jesse Ashlock --
Marcus Coates / Mark Sheerin --
Rachel Berwick: Zugunruhe (2009) / Denise Markonish --
Justine Cooper: the awe of natural history collections / Carl Zimmer --
Earth sound research revival: conversation with Jörg Heiser / Henrik Håkansson --
The politics of life itself / Nikolas Rose --
Contestational biology / Critical Art Ensemble --
Zhao Renhui: The blind / Paul Tebbs --
Will non-humans be saved? : an argument in ecotheology / Bruno Latour --
Biographical notes.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History

239 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2012

Reviews

[Margaryta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nature is understood quite broadly in this collection, ranging from the literal nature and the boundaries between the human and non to a consideration of a more philosophical concept of "essence," particularly as it relates to the possibility of dematerializing and digitizing the body.

[Chad Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology addresses these issues by considering how the rise of transdisciplinary practices in the postwar era allowed for new kinds of artistic engagement with nature. These include the postminimalist inscriptions associated with Land art; environmentally engaged practices designed to propose novel forms of stewardship; and more recent projects concerned with relationships between the most subtle and minute components of life and the large-scale appearance of the world. These projects unsettle the most basic operations of “natural” personhood and identity.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since our relations with nature are in crisis, this book could not come at a better time. It offers high levels of bewilderment and occasional glimmers of hope. It is a resource which is worth coming back to again and again, one suspects. (Although I probably should disclose that I am one of the many contributors.)

[Sigrun Hodne · Rating 4 out of 5]

As for all the books in this series, the texts in this volume are a bit varied regarding quality, but most of them are quite all right. And the overall organization of the material is good.