Sacha Kagan Art and Sustainability Image | Volume 25
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Sacha Kagan Art and Sustainability Image | Volume 25 Sacha Kagan is research associate at Leuphana University Lueneburg and founding coordinator of the international network Cultura21. He works in the trans-disciplinary field of arts and (un-)sustainability. Sacha Kagan Art and Sustainability Connecting Patterns for a Culture of Complexity Printed with the support of Leuphana University Lüneburg. At the same time dissertation for Leuphana University Lüneburg, 2011. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are avail- able in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2011 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reprodu- ced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover Design: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Jean-Claude Kagan, Eirtemys, 2010 Typeset & Proofread by Sacha Kagan Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN 978-3-8376-1803-7 Global distribution outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland: Transaction Publishers Tel.: (732) 445-2280 Rutgers University Fax: (732) 445-3138 35 Berrue Circle for orders (U.S. only): Piscataway, NJ 08854 toll free 888-999-6778 Contents Acknowledgements | 7 Introduction | 9 Sustainable Development and Sustainability | 9 The ‘cultural dimension’ of sustainability | 13 Overview of the following chapters | 16 Methodological considerations | 19 1. The Culture and Art of Unsustainability | 23 Introduction | 23 Section 1: The culture of unsustainability | 24 Section 2: The art of unsustainability | 66 Conclusion | 91 2. Toward Culture(s) of Sustainability, Step One: Systems Thinking and the Limits of Holism | 93 Introduction | 93 Section 1: Some basics of Systems Thinking | 96 Section 2: The Systems View of Life | 101 Section 3: The Systems View of Society | 115 Section 4: Ervin Laszlo’s “Systems View of the World” and the limits of Holism | 136 Section 5: Cybernetic apparatuses and the risk of a technological drift | 147 3. Toward Culture(s) of Sustainability, Step Two: From the ‘Big Picture’ to the Culture of Complexity | 153 Introduction | 153 Section 1: Complexity: Edgar Morin’s ‘method’ | 154 Section 2: Transdisciplinarity | 200 Conclusion to chapters 2 and 3 | 212 4. Aesthetics of Sustainability | 217 Introduction | 217 Section 1: From Aesthetics, environmental aesthetics and ecological aesthetics to aesthetics of sustainability | 219 Section 2: From Bateson’s sensibility to the pattern which connects, to a sensibility to patterns that connect | 225 Section 3: The sensibility to complexity | 235 Section 4: The transdisciplinary sensibility | 240 Section 5: The phenomenological and animistic sensibility to a more-than-human world | 246 Conclusion | 267 5. Ecological Art | 269 Introduction | 269 Section 1: Land art, environmental art, ecological art | 271 Section 2: Precursors and pioneers | 277 Section 3: Exemplary directions in environmental/ecological art | 290 Section 4: The “Reenchantment of Art” according to Suzi Gablik | 310 Section 5: The Monongahela Conference on Post-Industrial Community Development | 323 Section 6: The exhibition Ecovention | 333 Conclusion | 343 6. Sustainability and Ecology as keywords: a decade of contemporary art | 345 Introduction | 345 Section 1: “Eco-centric topics” in contemporary art | 350 Section 2: Exhibitions on art and sustainability | 364 Section 3: Post-environmental art: The exhibition Greenwashing | 379 Conclusion | 396 7. Fostering Change: Art and Social Conventions | 399 Introduction | 399 Section 1: Double entrepreneurship in conventions | 400 Section 2: Polity Conventions: The political setting for double entrepreneurship in conventions | 429 Conclusion | 460 Conclusion | 461 Appendices | 475 Appendix 1: The subconscious and the ‘eco-’ in autoecopoïesis: a speculative excursus | 475 Appendix 2: Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Kunst und (Nicht-)Nachhalt igkeit | 481 Bibliography | 491 Acknowledgements The following pages are the result of a research process marked by many exchanges, learnings and bifurcations thanks to encounters with inspiring and generously supportive people. First of all, my overall research was possible thanks to the active support of my PhD supervisor, and director of our research institute (the Institute of Cultural Theory, Research, and the Arts, at Leuphana University Lüneburg): Volker Kirchberg, who since hiring me in mid-2005, allowed me to spend much of my working time focusing on the research theme of arts, culture and sustainability. Not only did Volker provide this research space-time, but he also actively fostered the vitality of my research theme, not only as doc- toral supervisor but also for example as organizer of the 2007 conference of the arts research network of the European Sociological Association (which included sustainability as one of its three key foci). Equally fundamental was the inspiration and critical support of my sec- ond PhD supervisor Hans Dieleman, whose exploration of the roles of artists for sustainability were the yeast that allowed my own interest in this theme to grow, ever since I attended his seminars as an exchange student at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, back in 2001. As PhD supervisor, Hans brought me much appreciated critical feedback which allowed me to im- prove and clarify my analysis and my formulations. Of utmost importance were the insightful exchanges with fellow organ- izers and members of the international network Cultura21, and of the Ger- man organization Cultura21, including: Davide Brocchi, Oleg Koefoed, and Francesca Cozzolino. Further exchanges with colleagues at the Leuphana University (includ- ing Ullrich Günther, Christoph Behnke, Ulf Wuggenig, Anke Haarmann, Nicolas Dierks, Katina Kuhn and the colleagues at the INFU) and at other organizations (including Katelijn Verstraete and her co-workers at ASEF, Guy Gypens at the Kaai Theater, David Knaute, Hatto Fischer, Jennifer Gidley) are also to be thanked, as well as the discussions with social scien- tists (including Tasos Zembylas, Hans Abbing, Rudi Laermans, Federica Vigano, Arild Bergh, Julien Knebusch, Nelly van der Geest, Jan van Boe- ckel) artists (including Aviva Rahmani, David Haley, the collective 8 | ART AND SUSTAINABILITY Wochenklausur, Insa Winkler, HMJokinen, Shelley Sacks, Rosemarie Horn) and curators/writers (including Bettina Steinbrügge, Caffyn Kelley, Hilde- gard Kurt, Georg Engeli). I also thank Jacques Leenhardt and Werner Faul- stich for their stimulating questions and comments as members of the jury at my PhD defense. By this very process of naming a few persons, I am doing injustice to the many other individuals and groups not mentioned, whose paths I crossed and learned from. As the usual expression goes in ‘acknowledgements’, “you know who you are” / “you will recognize yourself.” I also want to thank the many authors with whom I did not directly interact but whose writings inspired me or stimulated my critical reactions. I thank the students at the seminars I taught at the Leuphana University Lüneburg and elsewhere (e.g. at the CCC postgraduate program), and my friends, as well as my family and my partner Nino Ruschmeyer, for count- less stimulating conversations. The original version of the manuscript of this book was entirely written with Open Office, under Ubuntu Linux. I thank the FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) community for their great efforts and dedication in provid- ing end-users like me, with alternatives to monopolistic proprietary soft- ware. Unfortunately, because an Open Office compatible layout template was not available yet at the publishing house, I had to resort to proprietary software in the final preparation of the current format of the book. Finally, I thank the team at the publishing house transcript Verlag, who were kindly supportive and responsive, and especially Stefanie Hanneken for her corrections and advices during my copy-editing/proofreading. Introduction SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY The expressions “sustainable development” and “sustainability”, which con- stitute the moving horizon of my research perspective, acquired a wide- spread popularity across the world within the past two decades, as a re- sponse to perceived threats to humanity’s continued existence. The general understanding of “sustainable development” is most often described as a triptych of social justice, ecological integrity and economic well-being, and was popularized by the Brundtland report (1987). It aims at a development of human societies that would achieve “the reconciliation of social justice, ecological integrity and the well being of all living systems on the planet. The goal is to create an ecologically and socially just world within the means of nature without compromising future generations” (Moore 2005, p. 78). The term ‘sustainability’ (used in 198 1 by Lester Brown), has an older genealogy in the German-speaking world, as the term ‘Nachhaltigkeit’ was coined (first in 1713 by Hans Carl von Carlowitz) to characterize a man- agement of forests that would not deplete resources on the long term, but al- low the renewable natural resources to regenerate and thus ensure its exploi- tation over the long-term.1 I will however not delve