Seral Stagesan ecopoetics by Perri MacKenzie

Jointly commissioned by Scottish Sculpture Workshop and Public Art Scotland on the occassion of OUTING Symposium

Scottish Sculpture Workshop 10th - 11th June 2011

www.perrimackenzie.comwww.ssw.org.uk

www.publicartscotland.com

After the end of the last glacial period approximately ten thousand years ago, many glacial meltwater lakes and ponds left behind in Northern Europe were colonised by pioneer species of phytoplankton. This colonisation began ecological successions that have resulted in the an-cient marsh, bog and fen habitats we know today; as well as the many meadows, forests, and woodlands which evolved differently.

Scotland has a high distribution of peat bogs.

A bog is a stage in the scientific model of a hydrosere: a plant community originating in a freshwater habitat. The term sere describes an intermediate stage in an ecosystem prior to advancing to the point of being a climax community. In theory this “stage” is vaguely outlined - its main condition being that it is intermediate - somewhere between the community’s ori-gins of lifelessness and the end point of a plant community: when it has stabilised to the point of no change.

A sere is the condition of landscape over time.

A hydrosere, as a bog, swamp, marsh or fen, is an intermediate stage in cycles of thousands of years. In this essay I will use the bog or hydrosere as a “lens” through which to think through the ideas surround-ing OUTING symposium – a symposium held at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop on June 10 and 11, 2011. The symposium brought together representa-tives from art organisations based rurally as well as artists with experience of rural art practice.

The symposium was primarily concerned with the notion of the residency format in rural art program-ming: using this format as a lens through which to investigate complex and broad issues pertinent to art ruralities. Through the lens of the residency, the fol-lowing questions were addressed:

What is the current moment - the current dynamics and flows of art ruralities? What is the current ecol-ogy of art ruralities?

Based on these current flows and dynamics - what

does the future look like? How will art ruralities respond to a changing social, political, and cultural context?

What are the tools which art ruralities can use to navigate this future? What strategies will they use towards self representation and critical solidarity?

In this essay, I will use the hydrosere, or bog, as a “lens” through which to unpick some of these threads. This strategy will aid in thinking through the current ecology of art ruralities – of organisations, methodologies and practices embedded in a variety of landscapes and mo-ments.

OUTING occurs at a confluence of contexts and dynamics: within the uncertain lull between notional funding cuts and realised funding cuts, as austerity measures are filtered down through the stop-start of financial years; and within a developing critical consciousness of art ruralities, many of which have developed in the past ten to twenty years. This confluence of anxiety over sustainability with a growing sense of rural criticality, leads to a unique context for the symposium: a seeking-to-engage in ideas of critical autonomy, solidarity, self-represen-tation. This situation was articulated by Nuno Sacramento, SSW Director:

Over the last years many things have been changing and residencies, having become increas-ingly more critical and aware of their surroundings, are also increasingly keen in represent-ing themselves, rather than, like so many of the things pertaining to the idea of rurality, being represented by others. (1)

For the purposes of clarity Seral Stages is linearly structured around the three questions described above: what is the current moment, what does the future look like, and how will we get there?

In developing this essay: thinking about artistic practice, landscape, and archeology, I ran into another theme: that of bronze casting. This has a rhyme with the context of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, which houses the only dedicated foundry facility in Scotland.

In the first section - “What is the moment?” - there is a fluidity and horizontal movement as I explore confluent notions of time, space, consequence and dynamics. This fluidity is akin to the planar movement of liquid bronze (made of tin and iron) which spreads as it is poured - and like its heated, bubbling state as a melting pot of ideas.

In the second section - “What does the future look like?” I concentrate on envisaging a harden-ing of flows and process as current dyamics stratify into future forms: just as bronze cools and hardens in the mould. The unpredictability of a bronze pour reflects the organised-yet-chaotic forms of the future, and the difficulty of anticipating them.

In the third section - “What are our tools?” - I forge a number of thought-objects from the cool-ing bronze, as I attempt to construct a “toolkit” for art ruralities, to help “think through” this difficult future.

What is the current moment?

The first question we asked at OUTING Symposium was:

What are our current conditions - what are the current dynamics of art ruralities? What does this moment feel like?

We can think about the current moment through thinking about how landcape changes through time in seral theory.

The intermediate quality of a seral stage is inherent in its its Italian origins of sera - “eve-ning”. Evening is both a late moment in the day and an intermediate moment, as late after-noon becomes evening, twilight, and nightfall. This moment - now - is hazy, undefined, and pregnant in this late and intermediate way; in the current mood of uncertainty and develop-ing critical solidarity. Rural art organisations are trying to anticipate changes from without whilst seeking to organise, define, and represent themselves from within.

The uncertain quality of this current moment - this indefinite intermediate-ness - can be vi-sualised through seral texture - through the changing opacity, knitted-ness, and wateryness of a bog as it moves through its thousands-year life cycle. Thinking about temporal texture in this way may seem odd, but for the purposes of visualisation I think it may be productive.

You can see in the figure below the continuum of a hydrosere from nudation (bare water) to stabilisation (stable plant communities such as forests, grasslands, or desert). What I find interesting about the sere model is not its logical progression but its changing texture: as each new species transforms the setting with its birth, respiration and death. For example, dying plankton which float to the bottom eventually form a peaty mud which pro-vides perfect living conditions for submerged plant species. In return, the respiration of the submerged plant species ensures the living conditions are no longer ideal for plankton. Later, plant species with floating leaves begin to block out sunlight and knit the mud with their rhizomatic roots, creating through this knitting a dense and rich soil for reeds and eventually shrub and tree species to transform the habitat into woodland.

In this textural change from species to species, we can see a trajectory becoming a form: a living, mobile organism becomes a dead, static environment for the next living organism. A growing root seeking nutrients becomes a nested network which aids the growth of another organism. Forces harden into structures.

Thus, in analysing our current moment, and investigating what our current conditions might be - it is useful to think about time on a macro, seral scale. For us, thinking about time is difficult, as time is interderminate, hazy - and looking from without whilst remaining within very difficult. Using the seral model - which is both analogue in its continuous variations and binary as a concrete unit is useful; in that it is a way of organising long-term changes and confluences. Organising such complex abstractions helps us gain power over them, and poten-tially control.

Now we have visualised the “current moment” through the temporal texture of a hydrosere, we can ask ourselves productive questions:

How far ahead can we think? Can we think beyond our human scale? What were the conse-quences of previous interactions - how did previous forces harden into structures? What forces are presently hardening into structures?

These questions were asked at OUTING Symposium, as art ruralities discussed their individ-ual trajectories: their changing structures, the forces that governed them previously and how these may affect their future.

The hydrosere - as an assemblage of landscape and time - is highly useful in thinking about art ruralities. This is especially in returning to the residency “lens” OUTING symposium employed in exploring issues pertinent to art organisations – as residencies based in art ruralities entangle notions of context, landscape, and experience. OUTING offered an insight into the wide variety of residency formats that have developed in art ruralities. For each residency there were interesting relationships to observe between their abstract contexts and their physical locations. For example, Deveron Arts has a context which is site specific, with its place as the local town; The Good Hatchery (an artist-run project which functions through bartering and exchange) has a highly autonomous context, in its placed isolation in boggy land. Representatives from Ann Lantainn spoke of a residency on a boat journeying from Lewis to Scandinavia – here the context is the shared trajectory, and the place the sea.

The Scottish Sculpture Workshop’s context is the material and skills it offers– its place is its foundry and workshop, located in the fields of Aberdeenshire. Finally Matthew Dalziel spoke of the fellowship or consultant model of residencies, where an artists presence is not required: here the context is the resonance of the artist, placed in the consciousness of a site.

What is interesting about all of these residency formats is how they share a certain quality - an entanglement of siting and citing. This is the tension between where a rurality places itself and how it places itself. I think that this particular entanglement is a key quality, a resonant tension - perhaps a quality unique to art ruralities. On a descriptor level – the practice of cit-ing - language forms an assemblage with landscape: articulation occurring both linguistically and geographically: for example, the Deveron Arts descriptor “The Town is the Venue” cites it literally in the confines of Aberdeenshire town Huntly. Articulation, here, is both the deter-mined descriptor of language, and as an articulated joint – a dynamic, selective action.

This selective action of placing can be extended to how an artist is planted within a site on residency – as Matthew Dalziel articulated: “being planted in a place...and feeling an artists reverberations extend throughout the place” Here, embedded becomes embeddedness: the reverberating resonance of inter-subjectivity. Embeddedness resonates throughout layers of interactions – as Jackie Donachie pointed out at OUTING symposium, the rural art organi-

sation is a community within a community (and in the groupings of artists within, perhaps there are even more communities nested).

There are more resonant qualities to be found in the action of placing an artist in a site: the pull between embededdness and temporariness for example. All residencies have to be tem-porary, as it is their project-basis – the gift of their presence and creative output – that char-acterise the experience. At the same time, artists on residency have to in some way embed themselves in their site, context, or community, even incidentally. This tension is one of many that make up the residency experience. We can visualise these tensions like the enmeshing roots of a reed bed in a bog: a structure for new flows to occur. These flows include aesthetic trajectories, intellectual exchange, entangling relations, developing practices, communities, infrastructures and organisations.

What does the future look like?

Where will we be in ten, twenty years time? Can we predict long-term changes through the forces that are currently shaping us? Which current forces will harden and stratify into struc-tures?

These questions were asked, at the conclusion of OUTING symposium – difficult questions to ask, considering their macro-level look at political, economic, and social conditions. With the current conservative political mood, it was agreed that a hardening of alternative education would occur, with many art organisations more accessible to students as art school courses are narrowed – there would occur a certain outsourcing of media and skills. In this way, art ruralities specialising in specific media, matter or form would stratify into advocates for a medium – into models of mentorship. It was noted that art ruralities were valued as places of learning and intellectual exchange – in the future they could be research enablers and re-search depositories.

There was also discussion of the future rural landscape in a social-environmental sense – what would infrastructure look like, what would rural populations resemble, what environ-mental and logistical pressures would isolated ruralities come under in an age of peak oil? In this regard, there was discussion of what it might mean for organisations and artists to be-come more earth-centred – both in terms of environment and globalisation.

This discussion highlighted the difficulty of trying to visualise a future situation – especially a future so uncertain. We asked ourselves – what can be useful here? Can we think of strategies that might help us in the navigation of this future?

What are our tools?

The final discussion of OUTING sympoisium focused on the creation of practical stategies to promote exchange, criticality, and solidarity in the face of an uncertain future. One suggestion put forward by Nuno Sacramento was the creation of a network, such as the constellation of artists and art ruralities present in the room – a network designed to help isolated art rurali-ties see out of their embedded situations and look beyond their locations and contexts to other organisations facing similar obstacles. There was agreement that this would be valuable, especially in furthering the critical discourse of art practices in embedded rural contexts. The solidarity of such a network seemed desirable as well, and the notion of a move towards self-representation seemed a key component in art ruralities consciousness.

Thinking around these three aspects: criticality, solidarity, and self-representation – I wondered if there was a further way I could be contribute prac-tically to this discourse. After using the model of a hydrosere, or bog, as a “lens” to think through the ecology of art ruralities, the particular resonant qualities of residences and embedded practices – I felt it must be possible to forge some sort of “tool-kit”.

I wondered: What would an appropriate toolkit look like – would the tools be forged from an as-semblage of context and landscape? Is there some-thing about the autonomy and self-representation of art ruralities that require particularly keen-edged implements?

I thought more about the temporal texture of bog-land - particularly the archival mire of Scot-tish peat, which contains much of the country’s ancient past. During a discussion of combat-ting the notion of “rural idyll” at Outing symposium, artist and organiser Ruth Lyons spoke of the lanscape of the Good Hatchery project:the landscape surrounding the Good Hatchery is industrial bog-land...with the isolation and bleakness it is incredibly hostile but somehow this hostility is incredibly productive

In popular understanding a bog is aesthetically unpleasant and agriculturally unproductive, and this makes it an interesting place to produce artwork: its barrenness reminding us of the difficult and intense creative struggle artists experience on initiating a new art work. We can see a rhyme with Lyons’ original articulation of productive hostility – and with Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden-artwork Little Sparta:

Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks. (2)

Notions of attack and production are synthesised in many residency formats – particularly in sculpture workshops, or foundries: facilities of intense, and rather hostile, production. Foundries can produce objects in bronze – like the ancient bronze weapons found in bogs. The production of an art object in a foundry can be thought of as an attack – producing a weapon. An artist on residence, isolated rurally, produces his own “weapons” with which to protect his

autonomy.

Unpicking the verb attack etymologically, it has roots in the notion of joining battle (from its origins in the Italian attaccarre – to attach). There is, then, a value of solidarity and of edge to this notion of residency as attack, of hostile landscape being productive. Thinking back to the symposium, this notion has value: as one of the aims was to consider a network of art rurali-ties towards critical solidarity.

Thinking through archeology, ecology, sculptrue and mettalurgy - I have synthesised some thought-objects that could make up a notional “toolkit” for art ruralities.

The double-headed axe The double axe, is a thought-object for notions of attack and production. The double axe, in its swinging movement, the flux between the mak-ing and becoming of art practice. In its destruc-tive (hacking) yet productive (hacking to cre-ate) dynamic, it can be used by ruralities as a symbol of creative edge – of the fierce creative autonomy of artists in residence.

The pincers/tweezersThe pincers/tweezers found in our toolkit of bronze implements is also a useful navigation tool for art ruralities. In a tweezers specificity it is articulate – literally, to make something spe-cific. The tweezers select but also embody the two forms of articulation – that of a enunciator/

descriptor and dynamic, movable selector – a dynamic between citing and siting. A dynamic that is both sited and productive; art rurali-ties can use it to exercise and embed their criticalities. As an assemblage of language and landscape, and as a tool of honing / extracting; this dynamic thought-object could be of crucial use in future times of challenging, stratifying forces.

The safety pinThe safety pin, with its sharp end that if undone whilst wearing, seems dangerously close to the heart. It implies a sharpness of perception - a criticality. Criticality of the forces that gov-ern you - and criticality of yourself in how you govern these forces - is essential in navigating unpredictable and difficult times. This sharp-ness that is close to the heart is a reminder of the danger in letting criticality be blunted. At the same time, the safety pin’s function is to join two pieces of fabric together - just like the an-cient cloak pins found in bronze hordes. This at-tachment reminds us of the verb attack through the Italian etymology - and together with its encased sharpness implies a critical solidarity: a joining-together whilst maintaining the keen edge of autonomy.

I hope that this notional toolkit, will go somewhere towards developing a critical solidarity for art ruralities – ruralities that are so diverse in their sites, contexts, and formats. I intended

with this essay to provide both an abstract reflection on notions of time, place, and force; and a productive, active synthesis of this reflection – something that, in some way, can be used.

I hope that through the analysis of these forces and textures, the complexity and size of an ecology of art ruralities is less overwhelming. In addition, it is hoped that through the synthe-sis of these forces into thought-objects, into tools that have their roots in sculpture, agricul-ture, warfare, and ecology, I have created some useful units to aid in clear navigation of this confluent, creative, surging ecology.

Footnotes

1. From OUTING statement of intention by SSW 2. Swift, Review of The Founding Gardeners

Bibliography

Chisholm, Dianne; “Rhizome, Ecology, Geophilosophy (A Map to this Issue)” Rhizomes: Cul-tural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 15 (2007). Accessed online 23 June 2011 http://www.rhizomes.net/issue15/index.html

Clements, Frederic E. Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation. Wash-ington D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1916. Accessed online 1 July 2011 http://lamar.colostate.edu/~aknapp/ey505/Clements%20Chap-ter%201.pdf

Delueze, Gilles and Guatttari, Felix; A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia University of Minnesota Press 1987

Swift, Katherine; Review of The Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf, the Guardian, 2 April 2011

With thanks to Lauren Gault for her advice on sculptural techniques