Bioneers 2007 is just over. I love Bioneers because it makes me feel hopeful. Why should I feel hopeful in a world that seems to be falling apart? Because bioneers show imaginative ways to change the future and because they demonstrate by their own accomplishments that positive change has already happened and is happening. My other lesson from this year's Bioneers is to take nothing for granted. In this globalized economy, following the links from product to consumer to waste stream can reveal some pretty startling realities. This week investigative reporter Loretta Tofani is publishing a series on the effects of our low cost goods and off-shoring on Chinese workers' health. I guess I should have thought more about this as more and more toxic products arrived in the U. S. Chinese workers are exposed to these very toxins every day. "Their lungs shut down, their kidneys fail, they lose fingers, limbs, all so Americans are guaranteed an unfettered flow of cut-rate merchandise," writes Tofani. For more of this horrifying story see http://www.sltrib.com//ci_7239727?IADID=Search-www.sltrib.com-www.sltrib.com.
I don't want to feel guilty, I don't want to feel I am responsible for every evil in the world, but I do want to live more consciously and I don't want to take things for granted. We fall into habitual ways of doing things and don't even think about their consequences. An artist who makes this reality visual for me is California artist Kathryn Miller because she speaks to the kind of irrational habitual behavior I see everyday, living as I do in a desert environment. Early settlers in Salt Lake City mentally brought the Midwest and Northeast with them. In their minds, a proper house should have a nice, green lawn. Many, even most, still feel this way despite repeated droughts. That makes sense in climates that get lots of rain, but we get only 16 inches a year. (I should add this is not unique to Salt Lake City. Settlers in other desert towns and cities across the Southwest have done the same.) Miller's Lawns in the Desert brings the absurdity of this practice into focus. Photographs of her 1994 work show two persons in surgical garb trying to keep alive a length of sod placed on a gurney. An IV is hooked up to the sod to assist the "surgeons." It's funny in a dark, self-critical way. It immediately conveys the reality that behavior like this is unsustainable. So here is another way art can address issues of sustainability: by pointing to examples of unsustainable behavior.
For a photo of Miller's work go to http://greenmuseum.org/content/wif_detail_view/img_id-16__prev_size-1__artist_id-3__work_id-6.html.
Copyright 2007 Patricia Sanders
I don't want to feel guilty, I don't want to feel I am responsible for every evil in the world, but I do want to live more consciously and I don't want to take things for granted. We fall into habitual ways of doing things and don't even think about their consequences. An artist who makes this reality visual for me is California artist Kathryn Miller because she speaks to the kind of irrational habitual behavior I see everyday, living as I do in a desert environment. Early settlers in Salt Lake City mentally brought the Midwest and Northeast with them. In their minds, a proper house should have a nice, green lawn. Many, even most, still feel this way despite repeated droughts. That makes sense in climates that get lots of rain, but we get only 16 inches a year. (I should add this is not unique to Salt Lake City. Settlers in other desert towns and cities across the Southwest have done the same.) Miller's Lawns in the Desert brings the absurdity of this practice into focus. Photographs of her 1994 work show two persons in surgical garb trying to keep alive a length of sod placed on a gurney. An IV is hooked up to the sod to assist the "surgeons." It's funny in a dark, self-critical way. It immediately conveys the reality that behavior like this is unsustainable. So here is another way art can address issues of sustainability: by pointing to examples of unsustainable behavior.
For a photo of Miller's work go to http://greenmuseum.org/content/wif_detail_view/img_id-16__prev_size-1__artist_id-3__work_id-6.html.
Copyright 2007 Patricia Sanders
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