Rewilding Audiences through Agency, Ritual and Empathy: Jenny Kendler’s Eco Art Reform Tactics By NOËL KATHRYN ALBERTSEN THESIS Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Art History in the OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Approved: ________________________________________________ Christina Cogdell, Chair ________________________________________________ Talinn Grigor ________________________________________________ Alexandra Sofroniew Committee in Charge 2020 i Acknowledgements I would like to thank my chair, Dr. Christina Cogdell, for her profound support and guidance through the thesis-writing process. Thank you to my committee members Dr. Talinn Grigor and Dr. Alexandra Sofroniew for their consistent encouragement and invaluable feedback. I would like to also thank the entire Art History Department for their help and support. Thank you so much to my dear friends and family for their encouragement through this process, including my Great Aunt Mary Ellen and Uncle Jack Brucato, my sister Lara Hiehle, and Carol Fisher. Lastly, I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to my mother, Christina Lee, to whom I dedicate this thesis. ii Abstract Rewilding Audiences with Agency, Ritual and Empathy: Jenny Kendler’s Eco Art Reform Tactics In the evolving genre of ecological art, or eco art, artists work in the midst of ever- increasing environmental crises so they might compel audiences to help safeguard the planet. However, rarely are audiences offered an immediate and direct entry point into environmental activism that offers a simple and practical way to take action. Contemporary artist Jenny Kendler is an exceptional figure in the field of eco art for her revolutionary methodology which combines a number of eco art reform tactics to engage her audience in ways to immediately benefit ecologies suffering specific problems. Her prolific career has rendered an extensive portfolio of these projects that employ the tactics of ecovention, ritual, and the deconstruction of cultural canons to inspire safeguarding efforts. Further, the underlying philosophies of Kendler’s practice take inspiration from ideologies such as rewilding, the Deep Ecology worldview, and philosopher David Abram’s work Spell of the Sensuous that focus on reminding humans of their inherent identity as part of the natural world. These ideologies lend themselves to the mindset that nature should be saved for its own intrinsic value versus solely for how it benefits our species, but also that we are forever a part of the nature we often think of ourselves as separate from. By tracing the origins of her three most prominent reform tactics through the history of eco art, this thesis seeks to establish Kendler as a significant pioneer in the expanding field of eco art. iii Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Ecovention as Artistic Strategy: An Entry Point into Environmental Activism….……..…10 Ritualizing Interaction with Nature…………………………………………………………...19 Deconstruction of Cultural Canons and their Return to Nature……………………………33 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………39 Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………...41 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………….53 iv Rewilding Audiences with Agency, Ritual and Empathy: Jenny Kendler’s Eco Art Reform Tactics Even in the most urban of cities, goldfinches migrate through in the fall, coyotes run the railroad tracks, and spiders weave intricate webs on the windows of skyscrapers. And even within those skyscrapers, nature is alive because we are still (and always) embedded within our animal bodies. We are blood, bone, guts, bacteria-we are multitudes, ourselves an ecosystem-mortal and fully animal, no matter how our culture may try to ignore this fact. And so, I suggest with this installation, the need to reclaim our animal selves, and to recognize and respect our kinship with the others with whom we share this planet. Jenny Kendler on her project, Tell it to the Birds (2014-2015) Introduction Environmentally-engaged artists generally share a common goal: to educate and inspire their audience so that they might care about environmental threats and engage in safeguarding efforts. However, in the field of ecological art, or eco art, a field deeply intertwined with environmental activism, what entryways into connecting with nature and engaging in activism do these artists actually offer through their eco art? The birth of the Modern Environmental Movement in the U.S. began in the 1960s and 70s when awareness of increasing environmental threats such as devastating water pollution and oil spills spread and inspired widespread activism. Since this zeitgeist of environmental reform, when such pivotal milestones occurred as Rachel Carson’s pivotal book on environmental conservation Silent Spring (1962), the first national Earth Day was held (1970) across the country, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was founded to aid in developing protective environmental laws (1970), artists have undertaken projects to benefit the environment. However, these artist-initiated works were primarily solo projects meant to inspire people who were removed from the epicenter of the activity, where artist, not viewer, was the primary agent of change. Today, inspiring activism is 1 still central to the goals of eco artists-and, furthermore, in the midst of environmental crises such as swelling climate change, ongoing species extinction, and dire pollution in our land, water, and air, the need for humans to take immediate action to defend the environment is even more urgent than it was in decades past. Even so, today, rarely are eco artworks presented in such a way that they create space for audiences to engage with nature in a profound, personal way or become immediate agents of tangible change. Additionally, the means by which environmental activists often push for changes in human behavior is often by emphasizing how letting the natural world fall to harm will negatively affect our species, instead of valuing it for its inherent worth and highlighting that we are, in fact, part of nature itself. Ecologically-engaged artist and activist Jenny Kendler stands out on the spectrum of eco artists for the ways that she utilizes clever and strategic reform tactics in her artistic practice to accomplish the crucial goal of inspiring activism. Her ecological reform tactics re-sensitize her audience to their inherent connection with and as part of nature by drawing on a number of unique ecological philosophies that focus on the intrinsic human-nature nexus, such as the Deep Ecology worldview that emerged in the 1970s. This philosophy stresses that we must safeguard the natural world from human destruction not solely because of its benefit to us, but, instead, for its intrinsic worth as a living system of which we are a part. The strikingly uncommon principal of this philosophy is clear when considering, for example, how often environmental activist messages focus on a “preserving our planet for future generations” trope instead of saving other living systems for their fundamental value. It is this notion, that we are inherently part of nature itself and not removed from it, that is worth protecting for its own sake, that is the impetus of Kendler’s practice. She enacts this core belief time and time again by the tactics she utilizes in her projects. Kendler herself has acknowledged the use of tactics in her artist-activist practice: “I 2 kind of deploy these strategies of beauty that are found in nature and use that as an activist tool.”1 My analysis explores the significance of the types of strategies Kendler uses and furthermore how she uses these strategies to engage her audience. I will investigate how she seeks people’s participation in environmental awareness and activism by examining three of the reform tactics she practices in her eco artworks-ecovention, ritual, and the deconstruction of cultural canons. By comparing her to earlier and more contemporary eco-artists concerned with the environment-but rarely emphasizing the inherent connection of human and nature, or engaging with audiences as directly as Kendler-I will demonstrate how Kendler powerfully utilizes these reform tactics based on philosophies and ideas that emphasize the human-nature connection, and argue that her groundbreaking practice has the potential to revolutionize methods of inspiring environmental activism through art. Before delving into Kendler’s background and practice, it is helpful to have a grounding in the history of eco art. Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape (1984) by John Beardsley is a helpful introduction to the predecessors of eco art-earthworks and land art from the 1960s to the 2000s. Such prominent land artists as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson are discussed, who, as typical of all land artists, used natural materials like icicles and stones to create sculptures on site of their natural habitat. Some artists engaged in eco art-related projects as early as the 1960s, though the term would not be invented until decades later. However, the majority of artists Beardsley examines are land artists working with parts of nature as medium but are rarely strategically implementing a plan of ecological improvement. This is the domain of eco art, the next wave of environmentally-concerned art. 1 Katie Dupere, “How one activist combines impactful art and advocacy to save the Earth,” 22 April 2016, Mashable website: