… if you were listening to Radio 4 this morning you would have heard a very brief snatch of RSA Arts & Ecology’s Michaela Crimmin respectfully disagreeing with the plan to use the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Squarefor a memorial to World War Two hero Sir Keith Park. The RSA were instrumental in turning the Fourth Plinth into a unique public contemporary art space.
Listen here.
Photo: Alison Lapper Pregnant by Mark Quinn taken by my old friend Daveybot.
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog
I think that one should really try to engage experimentation and making examples and models. This way I think you can challenge all kinds of systems, politically and economically. If you don’t make examples then the machine just keeps running and being happy and self-fulfilled. And that is what one should challenge, always.
   Bjornstjerne Christiansen – interviewed by RSA Arts & Ecology
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog
Tonight we’re hosting the Chico Mendes Legacy discussion at the RSA. Before he was murdered, Chico told Elenira that if he were killed, she was to take on his work. Which is quite a burden to carry, because as a girl, she witnessed her father’s death at the hands of thugs hired by local landowners. But she did go on to found the Instituto Chico Mendes to keep her father’s ideas alive, and she’ll be here tonight to talk about her father’s legacy.
I interviewed her last week for the main RSA Arts & Ecology website. The great thing about Chico Mendes’ work is that it wasn’t principally about saving the rainforest at all. It was about creating a decent existence for the forest dwellers of the Amazon, the rubber tappers like Mendes and his family, who were being pushed off their land by agribusiness, and murdered if they objected. It was about people. Mendes was visionary enough to know that preserving the rainforest was crucial to preserve the local economy.Â
One of the reasons why most people don’t give two hoots about environmentalism is that a lot of people in the environmental movment don’t get this. They see people as the problem, not the solution. It’s one of the reasons why so little environmentalism has much traction. Yet.
Elenira Mendes made a point along these lines.
 Unfortunately not
all who defend the environment today are focussed on these populations [the forest dwellers].
There is much talk about saving the forest, but people forget that
there is human life in it. There are communities and human populations
living in the forest that need support, need better living conditions.
Environmental organizations need to remember it is not a big only a big
forest with many trees and animals. It is populated. It has traditional
populations, such as indigenous people, those who live and work on the
river banks, and the rubber tappers and small producers that need
support, incentives and investment. If we create the conditions for
these populations to continue in there areas, automatically, the forest
will be preserved.Â
Read more here.
(For that matter, enviroment doesn’t just mean the rainforest either.)
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog
In partnership with The Arts Catalyst and SCAN, Arts & Ecology held a forum at the RSA on Friday 28 November 2008 (10am to 6pm) exploring the impact of nuclear power in art and culture. Nuclear power is re-emerging as a a major modern issue, both in terms of generation of energy, and as part of defence strategies.
We are now synidcating the feeds from the RSA Arts and Ecology Centre.Â
From the RSA Website:
The RSA Arts and Ecology Centre is an organisation whose role is to catalyse, publicise, challenge and support artists who are responding to the unprecedented environmental challenges of our era. Using their inspirations, RSA Arts and Ecology aims to create a positive discussion about the causes and the human impact of climate change through commissioning, debate, interdisciplinary discourse and a high-profile website.
The RSA Arts and Ecology Centre was set up by the RSA in 2005.The centre’s head, Michaela Crimmin, says “Artists have always had a powerful relationship with the natural environment. Equally artists continually question and re-examine society’s notions of progress. We need their unique perspective on the enormous challenges ahead – on the relationship between environmental issues, and not least climate change, and people.”
For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action. Find out more…