Ecologies
Olafur Eliasson
Similar splits can be found in the art world. Some artists see nature primarily as subject to human manipulation, while others center their work on growing or decaying plants, ceding a large part of their artistic control to natural processes; the best such work creates a tension between some container and the organic shapes within it. Seven site-specific installations by five different artists commissioned by three Chicago museums include works at various points on this spectrum.
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Dan Peterman’s art is often made of recycled materials, and for years he’s provided space for such low-tech ventures as a bike co-op in a building he owns on the border of Hyde Park and Woodlawn. There isn’t much nature, though, in his Excerpts From the Universal Lab (Plan B) installation–one of four in “Ecologies”–at the Smart Museum. The Universal Lab was a place where people could pursue low-tech scientific investigations, recently shut down due in part to a lack of funds and space. The “Plan B” in the title refers to the fact that Peterman’s original idea, which involved displaying chemicals from the lab, had to be scrapped due to legal and safety concerns. Obviously an admirer of the lab, Peterman calls it in a wall text “a domain of science that was modest, local, accessible, and connected to immediate human needs and goals.”
Fend’s proposals may be good ones, but they’re clearly oriented toward making the land and water work for us: he wants to increase fisheries in some regions, for example. And even though he indicates opposition to the Three Gorges dam, his project still seems to partake of the Army Corps of Engineers ethos that the land is ours to manipulate. One has to wonder just how ecological Fend’s thinking is when he writes in a statement that one result of his ideas would be to “show ways of working with China that would provide companies such as Caterpillar and John Deere with much more to export.”
Each planter is filled with mostly edible plants–corn, chives, cabbage, and strawberries among them–which are regularly watered and weeded and seem to be growing nicely. The arrangement of the irregularly shaped planters is itself organic, and they mount the forbidding steps of the museum like some unruly vine. This is nature directed toward human use to be sure, but the way the installation seems a bit out of control and its relation to the museum building gently remind us that nature has its own forms–from which much of our cityscape is deeply alienated.
The alien, alienated space surrounding the planter–it’s suspended above train tracks, floating between buildings–is one of those wonderfully bizarre urban plots disengaged from land and sky. Floating in space, the planter both reflects this suspension and counters it, reminding us of what is lost in cities: a sense of place anchored to a bit of ground. The verdant grass is regularly watered by an irrigation system, but this is not just another assiduously tended garden plot–it’s an almost surreal miracle that makes us see nature and the city anew.
