Sasha proposal

The Oikos of Political Ecology: Reconfiguring Cosmopolitics

through Art Criticism and Practice

Introduction:

Ecology is the science of dwelling. It is the delicate study of the habitat, the “whole science of the relations of the organisms to the environment including, in the broad sense, all the conditions of existence” (Haeckel 1866). Ecology elucidates the secrets of systems, relations, totalities – those located in the natural, nonhuman world.[1] However, in the past few decades, experiments in cultural ecology and political economy gave rise to the field of Political Ecology, an academic discipline crafted to enfold not only nonhumans and “natural” systems but also humans, things, technologies and inorganic processes. Nevertheless, in appropriating and interweaving the field of ecology within its own academic practice, Political Ecology did not rid the term of its weight, its discursive assumptions and affiliations. Numerous scholars, among them Bruno Latour and Sarah Whatmore, have placed pressure on the notion of ecology, claiming that it can effectively be made more democratic, more secular and therefore productive for the social sciences and for Political Ecology in particular. It is to the contemporary conception of ecology that we briefly turn to in this paper, not to make the case for the demise of the discipline or the term, but to show how a relocation of the oikos of ecology can take place not only through writing and research, but also (and perhaps more effectively) through creative experience. Art can serve as a catalyst for a discursive and conceptual transformation of ecology and its related disciplines.

While it would be possible to analyze the work of numerous artists and creative collectives, we will focus on the early critical work of the architectural theorist Reyner Banham and the recent urban interventions of the contemporary Icelandic installation artist Olafur Eliasson. Banham and Eliasson were chosen for this paper for very precise reasons. First, their creative work is concerned with the interplay among humans, nonhumans, things and technologies – it differs from the work of Political Ecologists only in incorporating creative methods and perspectives. Second, their work is intimately related: Reyner Banham’s criticism of urban design, environment and politics is directly implicated in Eliasson’s construction of dual sunsets, surprising atmospheres and colored waterways. Finally, Banham and Eliasson exist in a peculiar conversation since both critic and artist have written about, theorized and worked in the landscape of Los Angeles; in this way they are invested in the same cultural geography, and in the same series of political and ecological considerations.

Question: In what ways have the architectural theorist Reyner Banham and the artist Olafur Eliasson engaged with the political ecology of Los Angeles, especially in ways that evoke a systems-based approach to understanding the urban landscape and a documentation or practice of Isabel Stengers’ and Bruno Latour’s cosmopolitics? More broadly, how can the works of Banham and Eliasson catalyze relevant and exciting progress in reevaluating the links between the human and the nonhuman, and in doing so inform the academic discipline of Political Ecology?

I. The Oikos of Political Ecology

-Oikos is the greek word forming the root of the word Ecology, and it means “habitat” or “home/ house” – the terminology suggests a unified kingdom of Nature separate from the human

- What is at stake in Political Ecology’s incorporation of a term, and a scientific discipline, that contrasts a single, unified nature-system (bios) with multiple, variant and chaotic human networks and societies (poleis)?

-Latour argues that Political Ecology must “let go” of “Nature.” (Latour 2004): relocate the oikos of Ecology to a more cosmopolitical understanding of the world (natures, things and cultures)

-it is relevant to consider that art theorists and practitioners have placed pressure on the notion of ecology, engaging with contemporary ideas of the politics of ecology and with Stengers’ cosmopolitics

II. Reyner Banham and Olafur Eliasson in Conversation

-Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies as a phenomenology of environmental experience, is placed in dialogue with Olafur Eliasson’s Green River Project

-Banham and Eliasson are both invested in Political Ecologies, and the legacy of Banham’s theory can certainly be traced into Eliasson’s contemporary practice

-What is more crucial about the intersection of the art critic/ artist is that they both actively displace and reframe agency in the geographical context of Los Angeles

-Reyner Banham displaces agency by experimenting with how one documents the geography of a place: he takes into account L.A.’s geology, natural resources, built infrastructure, capital financement and cultural formations in four distinct “Ecologies”: (Surfurbia, Foothills, The Plains of Id, and Autopia). However the way he presents his findings is with chapters that are creatively intersected and woven with architectural, cultural and auto-ethnography observations, delegating agency to the reader of his work, who actively creates his/her own “Los Angeles”

III. Eliasson’s Green River

-Eliasson added an environmentally friendly dye to the L.A. River’s water in 1998

-he did this with a specific color that suggested both toxicity (pollution) and spectacle. The Green River event, as a consequence, was both startling / frightening, and stunningly beautiful. (Eliasson shows how even a color or an ephemera has agency in an urban landscape)

-in doing so, he highlighted the agency of the body of water through giving it a color with which to play: the swirling dye effectively showed the internal turbulence/ fluid dynamics of a river that few L.A. urbanites had ever stopped to look at

-it was not only the agency of the river that was highlighted, but the relationship between the river and the sprawling city around it, part of a common space that is characterized as much by technological innovation, Mediterranean climate and human society as by a specific “dream”

-What Eliasson did was to politicize both an ecology and a vision of place

-like Banham, he displaces agency by elucidating the relations between natural resource and human construction, ecology and technological innovation, the material and the imaginary

IV. What can Art offer Political Ecology?

-we have seen how an art theorist and an artist have illuminated cosmopolitics, a view of the world as assemblages of the human, nonhuman and technological, in new and powerful terms

-Banham and Eliasson’s engagement with Political Ecology extends into their praxis, into the very form and function of their works, and these works’ reception by readers and viewers

-In this way Banham and Eliasson show that art criticism and creative practice can catalyze relevant and exciting progress in reevaluating the links between the human and the nonhuman, (dis)assembling and re-mobilizing the oikos, the intellectual home, of Ecology.

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