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IMAGE: GLACIER MUSIC
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ON GLACIERS AND MYCELIA BY CARIDAD BOTELLA LORENZO, BOGOTA 2013
Earth’s current situation concerning climate change and its impacts on ecosystems and human life has not gone unnoticed to contemporary artists. Nature continues to be the major source for artistic inspiration, as a metaphor of climate change and other social issues. Engaged with society and the environment, artists develop works to reflect upon today’s realities in order to raise awareness about aspects such as our place as parts of the environment, of nature, of society but also, very straightforwardly, of the changes the planet is undergoing. This tendency in art has been going on for some years now but recently I’ve come across two examples, which I find remarkable because of their highly poetic and social value. The following two projects shift between poetic pain and social
hope; both showing how today’s art can relate to our present times and reflect upon possible futures to come. COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCES Colombian artist Jorge Restrepo sets in action collective performances that are thought of as tools for implementing human cognition and both social and personal development. As a student of agronomy in Honduras, he became familiar with the fungus mycelium. Acting as a network, mycelia populate the roots of trees and other plants, ensuring the survival of both tree and fungi in a symbiotic relation. As an artist, “representing a mycelium in an action or installation has become something essential, it means recognizing the
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‘A DIALOGUE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ART IN AN ATTEMPT TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT THE HUMAN-INDUCED DETERIORATION OF OUR ENVIRONMENT.’
existence of biological networks, as the principle of all ecosystems in the planet”, he says. Modern agriculture has failed to replicate nature’s ways by separating high rising plants from their natural allies, which the artist sees as a consequence of our difficulty to integrate concepts and this as a sign of our limitation to maximize the use of the brain. Having all this into account, Restrepo creates the scenario to build a mycelium, - as collective weaving but with a specific scientific and visual frame of reference - in the context of an institution (teachers and students). Relevance rests not in the mycelium itself as an object but in the whole of activities involved in this action: motivation meeting, explanation to teachers and organization, the proposal to the students, the collective action and publication of the results. He is well aware that this chain of actions is not going to change the educational system but what matters is bringing forward a message. GLACIER MUSIC Through an exercise of relational aesthetics, mycelium can exemplify a more enriching way of functioning and learning in society, the way glaciers have become the metaphor and synecdoche of global warming. Glaciers are dying and this ongoing fact produces certain sounds and images, around which the Goethe Institute in some Central Asia
countries, has developed the multidisciplinary project “Glacier Music”. The project promotes a dialogue between science and art in an attempt to raise awareness about the human-induced deterioration of our environment. Through educational material and exhibitions, it also aims at the student population. In 2013, the “Glacier Music” project sponsors festivals in Bishkek, Dushanbe, Almaty and Tashkent. The Festival celebrates the award-winning works of the project’s Open Call with concerts and exhibitions, bringing together Central Asian and international artists in a series of performances and events. In 2012 the expedition to Tuyuk-Su glacier in Kazakhstan took place where Berlin-based animation, video and media artist Lillevan recorded material for the Glacier Music Festival, taking place on May 2013. In collaboration with Uzbek composer Artyom Kim, Lillevan recently presented a this research in Berlin, as part of “Unmenschliche Musik”,- Inhuman music, which will be complete during the already mentioned festival. If John Cage made us aware of the value of silence, of the beauty of traffic jam sounds; with compelling images and sounds of melting glaciers, Lillevan gives “voice” to a very real problem, in a very poetic but frightening way: who wouldn’t be sad and afraid of hearing the earth cry?
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