Artcylcing - Newsletter 6 (inglés)

NEWSLETTER Welcome to ARTCYCLING! Our artcyclers are keeping working during the Artcycling workshops, creating decorative art products from wastes. In addition, we are already preparing the national showrooms to show everybody the work done and to inform as much people as possible about Artcycling.

Unfortunately, we had to say good bye to our partners from Pacificstream; we would like to show our gratitude for all the efforts done to continue with the project in UK and for the results already achieved.

Enjoy the reading!

IS ART SUSTAINABLE? This is a question that presents itself sooner or later, when you work with a project such as Artcycling.

Artcycling is an experiment that works with several different aspects of sustainability at once. Sometimes we talk about “four pillars” that support sustainability: the economic, the environment-oriented, the social, and the cultural pillars. To call them pillars may sound as if they are separate and only held together by a “superstructure” which would be “sustainability”.

This easily becomes abstract and complicated.

Apple bears and seaweed furnitures To simplify, we can take an example. Hannah works on making various creative products of residues of apple production. The apple pulp which is left over when we make apple juice, can of

The project has been funded with support from the European Union.

This communication reflects the author’ views only and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

NEWSLETTER 6 - March 2016

course be used to bake into bread or the like. But we can also continue the drying out and end up with a kind of paper / cardboard that can be used to make everything from bookmarks to packaging. The resulting product is an alternative to cellulose, and the apple pulp can be found in large quantities in the world already. It’s a waste product, which almost calls for our creative energy. This is why Cultura21 in Copenhagen decided to work with, among others, The Apple Girl about making small works for our Artcycling course and invite participants to contribute.

Hannah Michaud, also known as Apple Girl, makes festival wristbands from apple pulp, a by-product of cider production (Link)

When we work with Artcycling, we try to reduce pressure on the natural or biological ecosystems. We try to experiment with how we can ‘loop’ materials back into the production flow, to influence our production, for example, of paper or other things - just think of teddy bears of apple pulp.

It could save thousands of tons of material annually from the production of teddy bears. This is a case of environmental unsustainability in a particular production. But when we work with artists who develop a new way to create what might become a better livelihood for themselves, socially and economically, we touch upon the social and economic aspects of sustainability. If the artists develop new small businesses out of their production, they can create jobs for themselves and for others.

Sustainability branches out, it is never only in one dimension. It is always also cultural.

The cultural sustainability of art Artcycling connects people across national or disciplinary borders; people, for whom working for transition to higher sustainability lies at the heart of what they do. They are all engaged in culture, as artists or in other ways, through research, policy development, networks, networks, or as creative activists and committed citizens. This can be through more specific activities, like what Retextil and Intras do, or through broader network types sharing experiences and ideas, like what Cultura21 do.

Through the past 10 years, we have seen many more actors like Retextil and Cultura21. This is of course positive, in many ways - even though the reasons may be less bright. This shows how sustainability has come to

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take up more attention and agenda focus in the world, and that many more people are engaged in the issues as something they would like to improve on a daily basis. Many restaurants, shops, associations, and communities have popped up, that try to impact on sustainability through cultural actions. On a larger scale, an organisation like UCLG (Union of Cities of Local Governments) has lead the way in getting cities to adopt the agenda for culture and sustainability, Culture21. A slightly convoluted way to answer the question would be to say that sustainable culture seems to be sustainable.

But then we open up to an important aspect of the issue of sustainability.

For what does it actually mean to “be sustainable”? Can artists, businesses, political parties, municipalities, and so on, be sustainable? And if they can, how do they look like after they have become sustainable? There are several answers to this question.

Being sustainable – paradox and fundament “Being sustainable” can mean that you do not strain the planet’s ecosystems more than they can stand. An artist making bronze sculptures draws on the planet’s resources by using metals that have to be retrieved out of the ground and are not available in infinite quantities. But precisely bronze, an alloy of copper, tin, lead and zinc, is recycled and is therefore used over and over again in new sculptures. The artist will spend a lot of resources melting and re-melting the bronze that has to leave the discarded sculpture when political winds change or an icon falls out of favor. Every remelting is an opportunity for the artist to ask him/herself

Recycled Furniture by one of the Danish Artcyclers, Amina Shirazi.

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NEWSLETTER 6 - March 2016

and the culture around him/her, whether making the next sculpture is really the best choice - and how.

Being sustainable also means paying attention to planetary and ecosystem needs. If we see art as a response to what we perceive as the needs of the world/the planet - as the answer to a calling - we must be aware of how we answer the call. The answer to ecosystem needs may be a so-called “affordance”: a handle, an act which offers new options for action. Understanding these handles in sustainability terms implies that we seek to serve others while respecting the ecosystem needs on a higher level. By choosing to recycle as much bronze as possible, when I make a sculpture. Or to make woolen crafts, which only use recycled wool. It could also be exploring how the leftovers from the production of e.g. apples, can be included as a replacement for another product, rooted in a culturally defined demand. Teddy bears, for example, or stationery.

This brings us back to the cultural dimension - and the social. The ways we work with Artcycling are different, e.g. in relation to the way that we reach out into the social and cultural needs. At Retextil in Hungary there is a strong local community involved in creating works out of recycled cloth. At Intras in Spain there is a strong social dimension that reaches out to parts of the population that otherwise would not be actively contributing to the creation of sustainable works. They also intervene into local cultural traditions and give them a twist. At Cultura21 in Denmark, sustainability is becoming still more common in the artistic world, but still a lot of artists find it difficult to break through. Cultura21 explore how they might help artists to become more self-sufficient by taking up the sustainability challenge.

The answer to the question “Is art sustainable?” could thus be that art answers a call, rooted in a collective need for meaning, beauty and the feeling of giving something back to the world that creates us every day.

It is art’s primary role is to explore the field and to create “affordances” that share the feeling of being affected, involved and challenged aesthetically. Sustainable art does just that, while it manages to give life back to the ecosystem, rather than preventing future life from unfolding.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE We don’t have ideal Hungarian expressions which would separate the differences among these concepts of sustainability. Reduce means the cutting down of materials (even commodity) we use or purchase, the reduction of the unnecessary wrapping, for what we can find many great inspirations and initiatives nowadays. There is a creative step between Reusing and Recycling - if you reuse something the object comes back to live in the same function, but if you recycle the object or material goes through a transformation process or will be given a new purpose.

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What can be recycled and how? Let’s see the road of the clothes: it takes a lot of work, plants and contamination to create jeans in the Far East. We buy the pants in Europe for our wage of one or two hours while for the same amount of money the creator works for a month under inhuman circumstances in many cases. For how long do we wear jeans? 300 hours?

1000? And what happens to it afterwards? Probably it’s still wearable we just get bored of it. We give it to someone who would like to wear it or throw in the garbage. If we don’t pass it on do we sew something of the material? A bag? A pouf? Or do we burn it in the furnace with it, since at least it’s a natural fabric and it’s barely harmful for the environment?

With the Retextil Foundation we are committed to recycle textiles.

A dress can be worn if it changes hands, can be used for something else with minimal modifications (as a bag, blanket, etc.) and can be rethought on an artistic level into furniture, decoration, jewelry, and so on. The reduction of our ecological footprint this way is an answer for the consumer culture. Even if you choose to reduce the production or to give the objects a longer life the goal is to minimize the garbage: protect our environment and keep it safe for the next generations!

Recycled sofa covers made by the Spanish Artcyclers.

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The next issue… … The view of our artists.

We will come back in June!

For further information, please contact us via e-mail: proyectos2@intras.es You can find us on Facebook as well: https://www.facebook.com/Artcycling