Rivera 1 Ephemeral Environments: Reconnecting with Nature Through Impermanence In support of MFA Thesis Exhibition, Spring 2015 Luisa Rivera Thesis Committee Members: Ryan Peltier, Mentor Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson, Graduate Faculty Piotr Szyhalski, Graduate Faculty Rivera 2 I. Introduction In the process of becoming settled, humanity has established boundaries to divide itself from the environment, because its idea of progress demanded so: to become an invader, first you must become an outsider. In that process of detachment, ‘nature’ became a cultural construct to describe everything that wasn’t human or human-made. This philosophical demarcation, however, has always been debatable and now that we are experiencing an ecological crisis, it is even more questionable. Through the destruction of resources, we perceive and anticipate our own mortality, since human existence depends on them. This situation forces us to rethink the notion of nature because rather than being separate from it, we are part of nature. The project that I am presenting for my thesis, Spreader, focuses precisely on this acknowledgment. Through elements of representation and narrative, I explore an ephemeral realm where the limits between the environment and humans are blurred in order to evoke a more complete conception of reality. Using painted and drawn paper cutouts, I created two works. The first one exists as a set of interventions in the public space, where I overlap small-scale cutouts with human-made sites. The second exists in the gallery, where I develop a more detailed and large-scale environment that allows me to move away from the smallness. The two manifestations of the project have in common the use of paper as primary material, the juxtaposition the natural world and humans, and the notion of the ephemeral. These key elements will be addressed in this thesis. Rivera 3 The content of this paper unfolds three main sections. The first two describe the conceptual background of Spreader. A third segment overviews the project itself. In the first section, I refer to the cultural construct of nature in Western discourse, and how this has determined our relationship with the environment. In the second section, I will address the notion of impermanence, especially focused in the artwork, and the role that documentation plays in this context. In the third section, I present an overview and analysis of my thesis project. Although this segment is primarily focused on the formal aspects of the work, I incorporate elements from the previous sections since many decisions in Spreader are tightly related to that overall investigation. Rivera 4 II. Where Do We Stand on Nature? Defining or understanding the meaning of ‘nature’ has been an important topic of discussion in Western discourse and continues to be debated even now. Even though the interpretations have been diverse and vast, especially since Aristotle’s Physics, this research focuses mostly on how nature was conceptualized from modernity to our current context. Modernity has always been linked to the historical phenomenon known as the Enlightenment, which we all learned to identify as an era of rationalism, individualism and rejection of tradition. Although this form of anthropocentrism seems secular, many of the protagonists of the Enlightenment were shaped by a previous way of anthropocentrism determined by Christianity: “most of the enlightened still retained a belief in God, even if they were hostile to the Church” (Barnett 2). This religious legacy from Christianity influenced how intellectuals approached nature during modernity. As scholar of religion and philosophy Ronald Massanari explains: In traditional Christian ethics, . the themes of dominance and stewardship often characterize the relationship of humans to nature. Identifying nature as profane provided a rationale for disregarding, sometimes with contempt, nature and all that is in it. For the dominance perspective, the relationship between human individuals and the rest of nature is controlled by the assumed divine mandate that humans can and should use everything else in nature for their benefit. (28) Rivera 5 Through this notion of domination, Christianity generated a clear separation between humans and the natural world. This is represented by the concept of “dominion” (from Latin dominus 'lord, master'), which Christianity used in order to express and justify sovereignty over the earth. Even though modern thinkers tried to distance themselves from this religious tradition, the anthropocentrism persisted and permeated, although in a new form shaped by rationalism and justified by philosophy. This is the case of Immanuel Kant, who supported the anthropocentric dominance over nature in his Lecture on Ethics (1779): “But so far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious, and are there merely as means to an end. That end is man. Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity” (Kant 239). Although in this statement Kant outlines some relation between humans and animals, by saying our duties to them are indirect and relegating animals to the category of means, he is arguing in favor of the hierarchical and dominant view drawn earlier by Christianity. This kind of alienation between the human and nonhuman was accentuated by the industrial context that, according to Robin George Collingwood in The Idea of Nature, encouraged the progressive changing, rather than cyclical changing that was present in previous eras (13). This determined industrial growth, which forced modern society to become even more separated and alienated from the natural world. It is interesting to note that Collingwood first published The Idea of Nature in 1945, the same year the atomic era began. Within this context of self-destruction, our separation from the surroundings was reaching a new peak. Rivera 6 When we take ourselves out of the equation, the idea of landscape emerges, as opposed to the notion of land. Simon Schama refers to this in Landscape and Memory by stating “Landscapes are culture before they are nature, constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock” (Schama 61). In other words, Schama refers to the idea of the land transformed, either by our action or our perception. Malcolm Andrews also addresses the problem of landscape in Landscape in Western Art, where he develops the idea of the frame: “It gives the landscape definition. The frame literally defines the landscape, both in the sense of determining its outer limits and in the sense that landscape is constituted by its frame” (Andrews 5). In this, the idea of frame not only symbolizes the delimitation between nature and us, but also transforms the land into a flat and linear experience that we can access only as spectators, not as participants. The main purpose of this separation has been the possibility of establishing a clear hierarchy that would allow humankind to dominate the space around itself. Reconciling this relation of power has been a key factor in this overall discussion, especially for green theorists in the last decades: [Theory] has assumed that because mountains and waters are human at the point of delivery, they exist only as signified within human culture. Thus they have no intrinsic merit, no value and no rights. One function of green studies must be to resist this disastrous error. (Coupe 2) Rivera 7 In this statement Laurence Coupe, who has been contributing actively to ecocriticism since 2000, identifies and asserts the direct duties we have towards the environment. But the question is: How do we reconcile our relationship with nature? According to author Timothy Morton, who recognizes this idea of separation as a legacy from modernity (Morton 5), the shift in consciousness happens when we understand that we have never been separated from the environment in the first place: “Ecology includes all the ways we imagine how we live together. Ecology is profoundly about coexistence. Human beings need each other as much as they need an environment” (Morton 4). Morton suggests that this new ecological awareness is similar to the one found in the Romantic period, and therefore we should look into it to find some answers ("Are You a Romantic?"). This artistic and intellectual movement known as “Romanticism” originated in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century as a reaction to modernity (Löwy and Sayre 17) and the rationalism of the Enlightenment philosophy (8). Generating such a succinct definition borders on the impossible, because Romanticism generated very different nuances in every cultural realm (philosophy, arts, economy, politics, etc.) but such description is effective to understand the movement’s main attitude across the arts, which is the field analyzed in this paper. Romantic authors believed themselves to be interconnected, not just with their emotions and other living beings, but also with the entire environment. Due to these characteristics, Morton finds the key to our current ecological condition in Romanticism, and more precisely in the literary concept called Romantic Irony, Rivera 8 which he explains, “is the kind of irony where the narrator realizes that he or she is actually a character in the story” ("Are You a Romantic?"). He then adds that “we are now living in an ecological age and ecological awareness means precisely this kind of irony” ("Are You a Romantic?"), because we need to realize that we are not outsiders to the environment. This conception of reality present in the Romantic period was highly influenced by mythology, “both in itself and as a subject for poetry” (Zwerdling 447). As an ancient expression, myths generated these encounters between humans and nature, which is what Joseph Campbell refers to as the “harmonizing force” of this tradition (Campbell and Moyers 66). If we observe Greek myths, we notice that they respond to the unknown with a rational thinking because, even if the explanations sound literary now, they were all elucidated as facts.