review of Beyond Green at the Smart Museum

this is a review written for ArtUS, a print publication, in its
unedited form… it's fairly cursory (skimming the work mentioned and
leaving out quite a bit), as most reviews tend to be due to space
limitations and such. but the show includes some work that's
interesting to consider in terms of some of the discussions that have
been going on here, related to relationships between art and design,
functionality and entertainment.
note: A PDF of the exhibition catalog is available at the museum's
website as well, for anyone interested (for what it's worth, i
recommend it)
http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/index.shtml

Ryan Griffis
Review: Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
6 October 2005 - 15 January 2006

For the April 1991 issue of Art Forum, critic Jan Avgikos contributed
an article exploring the works of artists involved in various ways with
the “environment,” including Mark Dion, William Schefferine, Meg
Webster, and Peter Fend among others. In the end, the author saw a
major flaw in the “green” desires of these artists - by trying to serve
as a mediator between nature and culture, it returned us to “old myths
that seek to naturalize culture.” The same year as Avgikos’ critique, a
group of international business leaders formed an organization that
would represent the voice of industry in discussions about how to deal
with environmental crises. In preparation for the 1992 UN Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro, this organization, eventually becoming the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), would make sure
that governments would not take action to solve ecological problems
without their consultation. Their logo is a globe-like symbol
surrounded by a ring composed of some kind of liquid drops and gear
teeth. And, of course, it’s green. The WBCSD’s image seemed to offer
what the artists could not, a convincing merger of nature and culture
that would serve capital’s desires for economic expansion. Naturalized
culture sells.
This collision of affect and economics found in the ongoing battles
over environmental conditions forms the context of a new exhibition at
the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum titled “Beyond Green: Toward a
Sustainable Art.” Curated as a traveling exhibit by Stephanie Smith,
“Beyond Green” brings together several individual artists and
collectives tackling contemporary concerns of sustainability. Obviously
building upon the problems of artists, writers and designers of the
1990s invested in environmental discourse, Smith is rather expansive in
her definition of sustainability to include emerging models, while also
remaining conscious of the immediate institutional frame at work. The
exhibition is self conscious of its role as a producer of waste and
energy expenditure, making note of the Museum’s attempts to use the
show as impetus to make itself more environmentally responsible in
exhibition design.
The relationship between design and art, certainly a prominent theme
in the current art market, comes to the forefront in the work of the
selected artists as well, forming a thread connecting them that is as
important as that of sustainability. A utopian, DIY sensibility ran
through much of the work, providing solutions - or simulations of
solutions - to the material problems faced by various global
constituents. Nils Norman contributed “Ideal City, Research/Play
Sector,” (2005) a mural size print that depicts fantastical designs for
alternative, multi-use spaces that have more than a tinge of dark humor
embedded in their utopianism. For “Beyond Green,” Norman also explored
notions of utopia in public space through a course taught at the
University of Chicago. The collective Learning Group explores equally
utopian visions of space, but with their “Collected Material Dwelling,”
(2005) these desires are temporarily materialized as a structure built
from discarded plastic bottles.
Not all design solutions participate in utopian thinking, as the
problems they deal with contain an inescapable reality. A “Hippo Water
Roller,” (2005) an actual industrially produced object designed to
facilitate the transport of water over long distances by foot, is
re-presented by Marjectica Potrc from her larger “Power Tools” series.
The revelation that this water moving device also protects the person
pushing it from potential land mines, illustrated in an accompanying
drawing by Potrc, makes the geopolitical relationships between harsh
social and natural environments all too clear. Likewise, Michael
Rakowitz’s “paraSITE” series (1998), updating Krzysztof Wodiczko’s
earlier “Homeless Vehicle,” uses the language of modernist architecture
to make a ubiquitous, yet mostly hidden, homeless population visible.
Rakowitz structures, custom designed for specific individuals,
implicate the built environment, using the “waste” air from ventilation
systems for structural support and heat. Free Soil, an international
collective of artists, attempts to expose the massive, opaque
infrastructure of food transport. With their multi-faceted project
FRUIT (2005), visitors are asked to think about the ecological and
social ramifications of eating food that has traveled half way around
the world.
Many of the works generate an allusion to empowerment, both actual (as
in WachenKlauser’s “Material Exchange” community effort, 2005) and
symbolic (Allora and Calzadilla’s video meditation “Under Discussion”,
2005), revealing attempts at generating autonomy in the face of
globally-scaled crises. Such autonomous interventions are not
necessarily anti-establishment, however. Jane Palmer and Marianne
Fairbanks, collectively known as JAM, propose a consumable solution to
the energy problem - very fashionable carrying bags with flexible solar
cells for recharging personal electronic devices like cell phones and
iPods ("Jump Off," 2005).
With all the focus on “sustainability,” the unspoken centrality of
“development” in all of this can all too easily go unchallenged.
“Beyond Green” makes some crucial challenges to the economic
imperatives that have so far driven the success and failure of
environmental policy, providing a literal reflection on the
“greenwashing” of corporate identity. But the question of whether or
not we can design our way out of the problems of development remains.