Communities of Resistance; how ecological artists + scientists might help resist the environmental wars.

I. FORMING COMMUNITIES OF ART & SCIENCE FOR TRIAGE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE ERA

Environmental War Resistors

AS REPORTS OF ONE ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER after another pile up in the world, it can feel as though the earth is under military siege—a paradoxical state in which we live amongst occupying forces, and yet we are also the occupiers.

As an ecological artist, I am often dismayed and despairing over what we are doing to our beautiful planet, all the species, the air, water, and memories of pristine places while knowing that my very existence as a first world citizen causes these troubling problems.

However, I am part of a community of artists and scientists resisting environmental catastrophe, collaboratively seeking resilience for vanishing species and polluted waters. When I became willing to cross over between silos of artist or scientist, identities began dissolving into a more open transdisciplinary frame. In this essay, I will detail how my thinking developed in collaboration with scientists, where curiosity has common currency with art, and some nuances of that process in my practice. Collaboration is defined here as working with another researcher to understand dynamic processes, discover new knowledge, and find applications for that knowledge.

A complex adaptive model (CAM) is a tool to observe how disconnected, changing systems operate in relationship to each other, like the aspects of the ecosystem humans inhabit. In this frame, I built a CAM for environmental restoration.

Trigger Points as Environmental Triage

I call my CAM Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism. It is designed to triage water conservation and survive global warming in the coming decades. In 2009, it became my transdisciplinary Ph.D. dissertation topic at the Zurich Node of the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, U.K. A question I addressed in my dissertation was whether collaborative transdisciplinarity could provide an answer to the extensive damage caused in the Anthropocene Era, the period in which humans have impacted and, in most cases, severely degraded every living ecosystem on earth. My thesis argued that small points of intervention might “trigger” large landscape restoration, and a transdisciplinary approach would best identify those points.

Fish, like other amphibians, are the “canaries in the global coalmine”—they provide first evidence of coastal ecosystem resilience or collapse, where trigger points might be identified. I referenced them in my work as indicators of ecosystem vulnerability to collapse. Much of my collaborative research with scientists since 1990 has addressed that vulnerability in coastal zones, those edges (ecotones) between water and land where fish are born.

Dr. Angelika Hilbeck was the first supervisor for my dissertation. As Chair of the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER), Hilbeck has challenged Monsanto and Syngenta, companies that are imposing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on small farmers. In discussing my research, we explored the limits of transdisciplinarity for my CAM, raising new questions about contemporary environmental problems and solutions, for example, how specific metaphors might function as idea models in restoration science.

Some Geographic Information Systems (GIS) practitioners believe GIS is the apotheosis of transdisciplinarity because it combines visualized data and scientific analysis. Dr. Juliana Maantay, professor of Geology at Lehman College, taught two of my advanced classes when I studied for a GIS certificate there as part of my dissertation research. My goal was to learn to analyze how layering statistical data with GPS coordinates could accurately predict ecotone ecosystem problems and trigger point solutions.

Maantay believes GIS is a separate scientific discipline that can create new knowledge. Although we didn’t collaborate in the sense of generating new knowledge together, her analytic research methodologies informed my proof of concept for mapping correlations where layered confluences of built infrastructure, seagrass, endemic and invasive species indicated potential coastal trigger point sites. 

Locating Trigger Points

In those relationships where our research interests overlapped, as an artist I was comfortable with looking broadly at the big picture with scientists, but it was an intellectual stretch to verify each passionate declaration and confront the devil in the details of choosing data attributes for analysis and presentation. In contrast, scientists stay focused on small pictures while remembering the larger one. In my dissertation, I struggled to develop my thinking between both worlds, and present a coherent and original point of view

In the littoral zone, tidal action is an elemental source of soil, as waves break down rock over time. An interest in soil is shared by most ecological artists and restoration scientists. In my research, physics plays an important role because it determines the nature of change. Ecological artist Alex Toland is a transdisciplinary Ph.D. candidate studying soils science. She recently curated my work into Dirt Dialogs, a poster show exhibition for the Soils Science International Conference in Jeju, Korea. Her exhibition presented how artists research soil in new ways to effect change. I designed a poster linking the fate of soil and fish to the nature of time, that I had studied in my own research.

Friendship is another common currency shared by artists and scientists. Many of my relationships with scientists began or unfolded as friendships. It is easy to discount the significance of productivity inspired by personal, informal relationships or overlook how the fact that relationships outside the scientific community can lead to insights about the potential efficacy of transdisciplinarity.

A chance exchange with Dr. Mary Jo Aagerstoun in the spring of 2014 is an example of how an informal exchange with a non-scientist can contribute towards new interdisciplinary knowledge. As a member of another common community, the ecoart collective, an online group of ecological art practitioners, Aagerstoun asked the group to identify some scientists with whom we had worked. Considering her question became the nucleus of this essay, prompting me to examine how my ideas have evolved in these relationships.

II. COLLABORATION WITH DR. MICHELE DIONNE

I PURCHASED THE SITE for the Ghost Nets project (www.ghostnets.com, 1990-2000) in 1990 with the intention of living there and restoring it, phrasing my intentions then as “going to a place where degradation was manageable, to create a model that could be applied where degradation was substantial.” The site was a former coastal town dump on a fishing island in the Gulf of Maine. My intention was to accomplish the means to quantify a relationship between restored wetlands and finfish abundance. Had I known then what I’ve since learned from scientists, my first task would have been to take core samples at the site to establish prior history. The completed Ghost Nets project restored the site—2.5 acres of habitat in the middle of an Atlantic seabird Class A Fly Zone—to a flourishing wetlands system that includes my personal residence (www.ghostnets.com). However, without initial core samples my intentions from the inception were undermined. Today, because of what I’ve learned about science since I began this work, I would have systematically integrated scientific tools into my strategic plans.

In 1995, midway through Ghost Nets, Annette Naegel, then at the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine, who knew of my restoration work, suggested I meet community wetlands biologist Dr. Michele Dionne, Research Director of the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR).¹ Dionne and I became friends when I told her I wanted to quantify wetlands restoration and fish abundance. We continued to collaborate informally and later formally to understand what supports resilience in fish communities, until her death in 2012.

Our initial formal work began in 1997 to study how many species were using the restored salt marsh at the Ghost Nets site. Later, Dionne invited me to join an international working group, for the Secretariat of the Commissions for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and the Global Progamme of Action Coalition for the Gulf of Maine (GPAC), to establish protocol for tidal restoration in the Gulf of Maine. This work led us to apply for a Charles Lindbergh Foundation grant in 1998 to compare the biological community implications of geomorphological salt marsh aspects, where we were finalists. In 1999 and 2000, we did receive grants from the Nancy H. Gray Foundation for Art in the Environment. Those grants provided funding for Dionne to complete monitoring the restoration work. We found eighteen indicator species at the site, sufficient to declare it a restoration success.

Dionne submitted her final monitoring report for the Ghost Nets site on July 14, 2007: Restoring Wetland Functions to a Human-Altered Shoreline in Midcoast Maine: Initial Nekton Response to a Salt Marsh creation Pilot Project, whichshe and research staff at Wells NERR had conducted in April 2000. In addition to the observations of indicator species, they had surveyed the presence of nekton (i.e., fish, shrimp, and crabs) with the objective of providing baseline data on community functionality for the restored marsh. When Dionne’s team collected specimens for monitoring, they discovered a specimen of invasive European green crabs in a haddock’s stomach and a greater abundance of those crabs at the restored site than at undisturbed control site. Although it was well known that over-fishing was causing finfish declines, there were indications that there were other causes, including pollution and the impacts of invasive species on habitat and communities. Green crabs are among many species introduced into the littoral zone by the practice of dumping ships ballast inshore.

The green crab discovery introduced greater complexity to my original goal of demonstrating a simple relationship between restoration success and finfish abundance. It raised questions about community adaptation, whether finfish predation on green crabs at a certain stage of development under certain conditions might control their impacts. Those questions later became a cornerstone of my dissertation research. They were the reasons I became interested in creating a CAM and how I began to experience myself as part of a community of resistance to anthropogenic degradation.

My interest in landscape as an artist and Dionne’s interest in biological communities as a scientist overlapped in our curiosity about how geomorphological conditions, including built human infrastructure, impacts species relationships. In 2000, we co-presented on a panel at the “ArtSci” conference at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, but it wasn’t until 2010, after I began my dissertation, that we started discussing research models to take what we had guessed about crabs and geomorphologies at the Ghost Nets site to extrapolate new knowledge to salt-marsh systems throughout the Gulf of Maine. Before she passed away, Dionne shared with me the specimen data she collected in 2002 and 2004 from Casco Bay, in the Southern Gulf of Maine. I then began designing an experiment to measure the local impact of the Ghost Nets model and extrapolate what might be learned from modeling solutions for whole bioregions. That was when and why I enrolled in the GIS certificate program at Lehman College and began making GIS maps. Work on Dionne’s data from 2002 then became the basis for the fourth chapter of my dissertation (see Figures 2 and 3), although she did not live long enough to see my results. The GIS maps analyzed relationships between native fish, European green crabs, eelgrass and other biogeographic features in the Gulf of Maine. Eventually, that contributed to identifying modeling rules for my CAM.

III. COLLABORATION WITH WENDI GOLDSMITH

I MET WENDI GOLDSMITH² IN 1994 at a conference in Boston. As with my other collaborators, we also became friends, sharing our ideas about restoration. Our work together on Ghost Nets culminated in 1997 with a state-of-the-art bioengineered restoration of the onsite salt marsh. In a 1999 conversation, we came to the same conclusion, which Goldsmith articulated, “the environment was lost by increments. It can be restored by increments.” That was an early, succinct expression of what I came to term trigger point theory.

IV. COLLABORATION WITH DR. IRWIN NOVAK

I MET DR. IRWIN NOVAK³ IN 2000 during a residency at the University of Southern Maine. In 2002 we collaborated to identify open space appropriate for restoration in Back Cove Park, Portland, Maine, to establish potential shore land habitat contiguity as public art. I had considered that Back Cove might be a trigger point whose restoration could have implications extending all the way to the Mississippi Water Basin. My interest in our work together was in determining whether we might be able to activate that local trigger point. An additional goal was to demonstrate how fragmented habitat for wildlife corridors and marsh restoration might be relatively easily re-established with urban planning, “IF” we were willing to pay attention to new connections and consider how human survival depends upon the survival of other species.

V. COLLABORATION WITH DR. JIM WHITE

I MET DR. JIM WHITE⁴ IN 2007 when we were paired as a collaborative team to produce work for the Weather Report show curated by Lucy Lippard and launched by Marda Kirn for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO. Over several months we produced a series of recorded desktop-sharing sessions from weekly online meetings on global warming. That project became Trigger Points/Tipping Points, a series of screen shot prints and an animated film from our sessions illustrating the impacts of climate change and global warming on three deltaic systems—the Ganges, the Nile, and the Mississippi—and how they corresponded to conflict zones: Bangladesh, the Sudan and the Gulf of Mexico, respectively. In 2009, under White’s auspices, I attended the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) for the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, as an official observer for the University of Colorado at Boulder, to present our work to participants. At the COP, I also participated in the Ethics Committee’s work with legal advocate Don Brown and colleagues of White, who were conflating good science with ethics and policy recommendations, while arranging for the press conference on the work that White and I had prepared. However, I was forced to cancel our event when the Danish Police closed the Bella Center, where the conference was being held, ostensibly due to fear of activist protests. Until that point I had assumed that enlightened climate change policies would emerge from considered information. At that point, I realized that addressing climate change would not come from informing policy makers. It would become the burden of activist grass roots movements. Policy makers lacked the political incentive to adequately address climate change. Those people most affected by climate change are poor and often live in third world communities, where their voices are muted. That insight reinforced my thinking and that of many colleagues. It also encouraged me to further pursue the potential of applying trigger point theory to urban design, such as I had explored for Back Cove, Portland. Meanwhile, White and I began focusing our attention more narrowly on how and where our insights might be most effective.

VI. COLLABORATION WITH DR. R. EUGENE TURNER

I FIRST MET DR. R. EUGENE TURNER⁵ IN 2008 at a conference on Deltaic Systems in Baton Rouge LA. Because his areas of specialization are wetland ecology and conservation, biological oceanography, coastal restoration, coastal management, hypoxia (the “Dead Zone”), and coastal ecosystems, I knew Turner would be a valuable resource to help understand where and how trigger point theory might intervene in large scale marine degradation. In 2009, at Dionne’s suggestion, I invited Turner to participate in the Gulf to Gulf project (www.gulftogulf.org), which was conceived of as an online mini–think tank, and had evolved from the Trigger Pints/Tipping Points project—as a way to talk about, visualize, and design minimal-carbon-impact solutions for climate change impacting gulf regions internationally. Dr. Turner is a lead researcher on the impacts of the 2010 Macondo British Petroleum (BP) oil spill, and his knowledge became invaluable to the Gulf to Gulf sessions. The most dramatic example came in 2010, when I asked him to identify the trigger point for the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zones, and he replied, “Iowa.” The Midwest’s factory farms are the source of nitrogen discharge—much of which comes from the fertilizers that are a byproduct of oil production—into the Mississippi River, causing eutrophication (oxygen depletion) in the Gulf—where oil production occurs—in turn causing dead zones that kill marine life, a spreading global phenomena.

I continued to work with White, Turner, and Dionne (until she passed away) on the Gulf to Gulf (2009–present) project,⁶ meeting with them and inviting other guests on a regular schedule for one-hour recorded desktop-sharing webcast conversations. Over twenty of these raw webcasts have been uploaded to Vimeo, where they have been accessed by viewers in over 75 countries. It is our hope that they might be sources for education, for viewers to reflect upon what we are facing and how we must change our attitudes because of climate change. In my practice and in the evolution of my thinking, these webcasts are perfect examples of trigger point theory in action. The World Wide Web becomes the trigger point site to intervene with very small amounts of energy to impact global bioregions with insight and hope.

White and Turner contributed to the evolution of what became the Oil & Water series and then the Fish Story project, which built on my initial insights at Back Cove. In 2012, Turner invited me to present trigger point theory at the Annual Restore Americas Estuaries Conference (RAE) in Tampa, FL, where I could also observe, participate in and reflect upon some of the work on the most ambitious restoration project ever embarked upon: for the Florida Everglades. The Everglades has been marked by politicized stakeholder infighting, sabotaging some of the hard work of grass roots volunteers and provoking questions about how to best strategize the politics of restoring large systems.

In 2012, I began applying insights gained from the Gulf to Gulf sessions and what I had considered in Florida. Turner, White, and I began working as a team to conceptualize the science and community aspects of creating the Fish Story project for Memphis Social, Memphis, TN, curated by Tom McGlynn, with the goal of identifying a localized trigger point for the Mississippi Water Basin (MWB), the third largest watershed in the world, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Dr. Turner and I met in May 2013 in Memphis, TN, to present Fish Story, with four events planned to complete our work there: (1) a canoe trip down a newly mapped section of the Wolf River, a tributary of the Mississippi that I thought might indicate a local trigger point; (2) a workshop with local environmentalists held at Crosstown Arts where I hoped to engage local environmentalists in identifying details of a trigger point; (3) an installation at the Hyde Gallery, Memphis College of Art (MCA) to invite observers to consider where the Wolf River meets the Mississippi River; and (4) a webcast, also held at the MCA to correlate trigger points between systems. My goal for the Fish Story project was to identify a trigger point in the Memphis region whose restoration might affect the entire MWB and the 18,000,000 people who rely on it.

Two critical points emerged from Fish Story. Our first important point was emphasized in the workshop, that the real trigger point in the MWB is racism. Memphis was once the center of the cotton industry and the slave trade that supported it. The MWB, has a long history of coupling environmental and human dispossession, reflecting the same global dynamics of environmental injustice observed at COP15.

Although Dr. White couldn’t join Turner and me in Memphis, he stayed in touch by email while we were there. Before the installation was completed I asked him to calculate how much environmental restoration would be necessary to offset the rise of carbon dioxide emissions in the air. Our second important point emerged when White calculated that if people could re-green the earth by an additional 36% by 2030 that might mitigate climate change. The calculations were made available in the installation with the intention of provoking the viewers’ consideration. My conclusion from the period of producing work in Memphis was that the area where the Wolf River meets the Mississippi (passing through poverty stricken lowlands that are routinely flooded and where the Army Corps had diverted the tributary to create a marina) might be a trigger point to change the regional habitat⁷ and initiate that additional 36% of re-greening.

VII. CONCLUSION

SYSTEMS CHANGE IS DAUNTING. However, the “war” we are in requires us to take on that challenge. Ecological art depends on working across disciplines to effect change. In communities of resistance like those I’ve described here, the rules of transdisciplinary engagement are often vague, leaving some stakes ill-defined that might better serve our common cause with measures of transparency, acknowledging others’ contributions and strengthening support for this kind of work.

An obstacle to this change is apparent in how each discipline is forced to compete for scarce resources. The scientific community functions somewhat differently from the art world. While scientists are usually overtly attributive of the contributions of others, they are covertly competitive over who might publish first and with which colleagues. In contrast, the art world is often fiercely individualistic but is often covertly beholden to a rigid network of marketplace power. Hence, these collaborations challenged respective presumptions about conventional professional boundaries for each of my colleagues and myself. As we grew in generosity, open-mindedness and perception our work generated new knowledge and artifacts to triage the environmental wars. However, that did not make it easier to get the financial support needed to continue. If we are to expand this community of resistance, one challenge to a productive collaboration will continue to be the willingness to challenge—and be challenged by—the unfamiliar.

Another unfamiliar challenge is to attract adequate support. As with any resistance campaign, this triage requires inventing new venues, platforms, and frames for the modeling projects it can effect. It also requires foundations and, ultimately, policy makers to become smarter and more open-minded about their investments.

Six rules emerged for my CAM. One of those rules is to accept and reflect on the paradox of urgency in the time required to change systems. The remarkable community of scientists with which I have had the privilege to engage has been essential to the evolution of my thinking, from linking and daylighting buried waters to understanding relationships between biogeographies and geopolitics. Events, such as the closing of COP15, the devastation of the BP spill, or European green crab decimations of marine ecosystems have been disturbing. However, over time, they have also inspired transdisciplinary work that could lead to empowering ordinary citizens to triage what is being lost, one increment, one trigger point at a time.

The idea of informed citizen science seems the most promising direction we can take in extended resistance to environmental assault—this will require many scientists and artists to guide and inspire change. If this is truly a war, then resistance must continue. However, I see the tools of war that artists and scientist can assemble as vanquishers of ignorance and fear, rather than lives.

END NOTES

¹ Dr. Michelle Dionne, (deceased), Research Director, Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, (NERR) Wells, ME. Affiliate Faculty in Zoology, University of New Hampshire and Adjunct Associate Graduate Faculty, University of Southern Maine.

² Ms. Wendi Goldsmith, CPG, CPSSc, is founder of the Bioengineering Group, Inc., Salem, MA, and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and President. Her diverse background spans geology, plant and soil science, ecological planning, water quality management, and river restoration design. See http://www.bioengineering.com/people/wendi/wendi.php. Goldsmith presented a case study at the international conference on the design application of new technologies “Manufactured Sites” at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (April 3-4, 1998). A publication from the conference followed: see Niall Kirkwood, editor, Manufactured Sites: Integrating Planning and Design in the Remediation, Reclamation and Reuse of the Post-Industrial Landscape (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998).

³ Dr. Irwin Novak, geologist, University of Southern Maine, specializes in analyzing geomorphology from satellite imagery. See

https://usm.maine.edu/rscholar/irwin-novak. Our mapping contributed to a major solo installation at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. The exhibition was also part of the annual Camden Conference, which was about water in 2002.

⁴ Dr. R. Eugene Turner, Distinguished Research Master and new Boyd Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. See http://www.oceanography.lsu.edu/index.php/people/faculty/eugene-turner/.

⁵ Dr. Jim White, Professor of Geological Sciences, Fellow and Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO and founding Director of the Environmental Studies Program at CU (http://instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/). Our collaboration resulted in a number of publications and exhibitions.

Publications of works with scientists cited:

Ernest, Dagney. “Rahmani opens, premiers in New York,” The Herald Gazette (October 23, 2010).

Billard, Mary. “Saving the World. Smelling Good Too.” The New York Times (October 21, 2010) E6.

Black, Helene, and Pinkel, Sheila. In Transition Russia 2008. Presented by NeMe, 2008.

Boettger, Suzaan. “Global Warnings.” Art in America (June/July 2008). Illustrated p. 161, discussed p. 206.

Dederer, Claire. “Looking for Inspiration in the Melting Ice.” Sunday Arts & Leisure, New York Times (September 23, 2007).

Exhibitions of works with scientists cited:

Still Waters, curated by Lisa Alembik, Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, 2009.

Feeling the Heat, curated Liz Christensen, Deutsche Bank Art Gallery, New York City, NY, June, 2008.

In Transition Russia 2008, curated by Sheila Pinkel, the Independent Museum of Contemporary Art (IMCA), Cyprus, and NeMe in collaboration with the National Centres of Contemporary Art (NCCA), Ekaterinburg and Moscow, Russian Federation, 2009.

The Cultura21 Group at the Joseph Beuys 100 days of Conference Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, September 6, 2007.

Weather Report, curated by Lucy Lippard, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO, September 14–December12, 2007.

⁶ My work with Dr. R. Eugene Turner and Dr. Jim White as a result of the Gulf to Gulf series, led to a number of Oil & Water Exhibitions:

Unbound—An Exhibition in 3 Chapters, curated by Heidi Hatry, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, March 16–May 6, 2012.

Horizon Lines, curated by Amy Lipton, ecoartspace New York, NY, October 9–November 30, 2011.

Beyond the Horizon, curated by Amy Lipton, Deutsche Bank, New York, NY, June 6 – September 21, 2011.

Oil Spill: Information Gulf, curated by Katie Avery, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 2011.

One of A Kind, an exhibition of unique artist’s books, curated by Heidi Hatry, Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA, 2011.

SHFT, curated by Edie Kahula Pereira, 133 Greene Street, New York, NY, 2010.

Fish Story, Memphis, Memphis Social, curated by Tom McGlynn, Memphis College of Art and Crosstown Arts, Memphis, TN.

⁷ More information can be found at the website www.gulftogulf.org, created as a result of the Fish Story project.

⁸ See Paul C. Schroeder, Paul R. Boudreau, Chris E.W. Brehme, Andrew M. Boyce, Alison J. Evans, and Aviva Rahmani, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, Vol. 28 (2001) pp. 865–887; www.commoncoordinates.com/papers/2001epbgominfoex.pdf. My co-authors were Paul C. Schroeder, Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine; Paul R. Boudreau, Marine Environmental Sciences Division, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Nova Scotia, Canada; Chris E.W. Brehme and Andrew M. Boyce from the Island Institute, Rockland, Maine; and Alison J. Evans Integrated Coastal Planning Project, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada.