Thinking with the Harrisons

Anne Douglas is a professor emerita, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Scotland, who explores the changing place of the artist in public life. Her research has increasingly focused on art and the environmental crisis from a practice-led perspective. She co-produced the Harrisons’ work ‘On the Deep Wealth of this Nation: Scotland’ (2017) in collaboration with Newton Harrison and the Centre for the Study of the Force Majeure, University of California Santa Cruz. Chris Fremantle is a researcher and producer of award-winning projects, including the Harrisons’ project ‘Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom’. He is a longstanding member of the international ecoart network and co-editor of ‘Ecoart in Action’, a collection of activities, case studies and provocations drawn from the network. He lectures at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Scotland.

"As pioneers of environmental art, Newton and Helen Harrison were fifty years ahead of their time. Their proposal was for nothing less than a new paradigm for research, at once earth-centred, open-ended, responsive and communal, uniting science and art around urgent questions of planetary ecology. In this book, Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle offer the first full-length appraisal of the Harrisons’ work. In a world reeling from the destructive impacts of unfettered technoscience, its relevance has never been greater." - Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSCHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: SEEKING A DIFFERENT PLACE FOR THE ARTS IN SURVIVALCHAPTER 2: ‘THINKING WITH’ WHITEHEAD, STENGERS AND THE HARRISONS The Bifurcation of Nature Nature as emergent Adventure and/as a ‘leap of the imagination’ What is ‘adventure’ in the Harrisons’ works? Inhabiting the bifurcation of natureCHAPTER 3: THE LAGOON CYCLE The Poem as Visual Essay Bifurcation of Nature: Collisions between East and West Bifurcation of Nature: Exploitation The Leap of the Imagination Inventing a fieldAdventure Storytelling In what sense is The Lagoon Cycle an event? ConclusionsCHAPTER 4: ON IMPROVISATION What is improvisation? An instrument in skilled hands A fine line between communicability and adventure, between certitude and risk A predicament, not something freely chosen … Creating a ‘more to life’ Generative metaphor What does improvisation make matter?CHAPTER 5: ON THE POETICS AND AESTHETICS OF SYSTEMS 109 Systems: A way of thinking Artists and systems – Haacke and Ukeles Burnham’s Proposed ‘Systems Aesthetics’ The Harrisons’ use of ‘systems’ Spoils Pile Reclamation Reclamation for whose benefit? Metaphor as organiserCHAPTER 6: ON THE POLITICAL Re-finding humanity: Arendt’s context for writing on the political Kant’s construction of the political in aesthetics What does it mean to develop politics based in judgement? The Harrisons and their publics The Art of Narrative resides in the Ability to condense the Action into an Exemplary Moment (Kristeva 2020, 17) The Spectator is not Involved in the Act (Arendt 1992, 63) Mortality, Communicability, Freedom How does the political as outlined here work with codes of conduct and constitutional forms? Otherwise the race of devils would destroy themselves (Arendt 1992, 18) What to do?CHAPTER 7: ARTISTS ‘THINKING WITH’ ONE ANOTHER On questions that drive practice Pedagogy: Curriculum Proposals Ballengée, Bon, Goto-Collins and Collins, Sprinkle and Stephens, Wallen A Wider Reimagining of the Role of the ArtsCONCLUSIONS NOTES TIMELINE REFERENCES INDEX