I’m delighted to share this post from China-based Irish artist Niamh Cunningham. She was a recent participant of the Haumea Online 6-week Essential Ecoliteracy Course. If you have wondered about the course, you get a great overview from the course from Niamh’s reflections and stunning work.
Niamh is a visual artist, but the Haumea Online Essential Ecoliteracy course is for anyone working in the creative sector who wants to become more fluent and confident about responding to the ecological emergency and these urgent times.
Thank you so much Niamh for this unexpected review of the Haumea Online Essential Ecoliteracy course and for sharing your wonderful work on transformation too. How wonderful to learn and share across thousands of miles.
also available in: 简体中文 Chinese (Simplified)
“What is the pattern that connects?”
Exploring the cultural dimensions of sustainability is a vast subject. Recently have I been introduced to the work of systems thinker the late Gregory Bateson. Learning about “the pattern that connects” was his life’s work. He was preoccupied with why humans frequently behave in ways that are destructive of natural ecological systems. He asked questions of holistic structures such as how does it work? what works with it? what are the relationships? how does it learn? how does it think? how does it interact? In the documentary produced by his daughter Nora Bateson “An Ecology of Mind” we see how Bateson liked to look at a thing from different angles, twist it around endlessly so as not to get stuck on a singular line of thinking. If we don’t search for this pattern that connects, in our global culture, in our educational institutions, we are likely to break it and when that happens Bateson said “you necessarily destroy all quality.”
“The planetary emergency we are facing is a crisis of culture” said Dr Cathy Fitzgerald who presented the online course ‘Essential ecoliteracy for creatives and art professionals’.
I first met artist -researcher Cathy twelve years ago in my home town of Carlow, Ireland. Her course is packed with valuable resources, video links and readings. Fellow artists, educators and policy makers from all over the globe met on the weekly zoom meeting, using the material for that week we explored ecological insights that promote paradigm shifts. The rest of this blog will touch on only a few highlights from this course.
At the beginning of the course Cathy took us through some terms such as
The Holocene : Since the last ice age 12000 years ago the earth has experienced only small scale climate shifts. However we have drifted from the Holocene since the Industrial revolution and are now currently in the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene : Our current era is where humans dominate climatic, biophysical and evolutional processes at a planetary scale.
The Symbiocene : This term was coined by Glen Albrecht which hints at more symbiotic relationship, where life thrives through interrelated mutuality between many species and we can affirm the interconnectedness of life and all living things. Albrecht also said that he saw art as a meme for the Symbiocene.
Glen Albrecht is author of the book Earth Emotions where he defines other words for our new world such as solastalgia, soliphilia, (Please see link at end of this blog for more )
To support people on the enormity of the work ahead one of the modules included psycho-, social and physical supports and practices. Every module had a ‘mind-body coherence’ session, a physical and mental exercise with Veronica Larrson. I also learned unexpected things like why ‘compassion’ was far more important to practice than ‘empathy’ from eco philosopher Dr. Nikos Patedakis.
As part of the copious resources, links and readings which were packed into each weekly module I encountered environmental activist, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology author Joanna Macy:
‘That knife edge of uncertainty illicit from us our greatest creativity and courage, we need to live with sufficient realism and dignity to know that we are living with that knife edge of uncertainty.’
Joanna Macy
Putting our interconnectedness, our courage and intelligence to good use she speaks of the shift of an industrial growth society to a more sustainable civilization. That knife edge of uncertainty feels all the sharper now as we work our way through the Covid 19 era.
Purls from the Undercut (16.6.30.a) sucrose series Niamh Cunningham 2020
We also studied the UNSDG’s Sustainable Development Goals. (This module propelled me onto another online course called “Planetary Boundaries” for which I am currently learning. I hope to write an overview blog on that experience later.) I came across an interview with Scientist Susanne Moser who also presented a positive picture for these overwhelming times and claimed one good reason to get out of bed in the morning is that we haven’t tried everything yet. “Having done miserably at communication, having done miserably at policy, having done miserably at market responses to climate change, this gives us a ton of hope because we could do so much better’ (earthisland.org)
The week we looked at Expanded Earth Ethics we considered the work of the late Scottish barrister Polly Higgins. Ecocide is the missing piece of law to assist in reframing a system to avoid business as usual. Higgins is author of the book Dare to be Great. The term Ecocide is likely to have first appeared at the time of the American war in Vietnam.
Cathy took us through some of the ideas behind the book Moral Ground edited by Kathleen Dean Moore. We then looked at the Earth Charter. Systems thinker Fritjof Capra described it as a declaration of 16 values and principles to create a sustainable, just and peaceful world.
We then explored how others expanded their ecological art practices such as Newton Harrisons’ ten minute video Apologia Mediteranneo an evocative apology to the largest inland sea. On our final week participants presented our own socio eco practices to the group, learning a little bit more of the people who had been raising questions during the previous weekly sessions. After two weeks I am still reviewing many of the readings and links on the course referencing the renowned and also the less known movers and shakers in the world of ecological thinking and eco-social art practices.
I would highly recommend this online course for artists and creatives and policy makers who wish to inform their practices / educational programs and policies.
Here is a link to Dr Cathy Fitzgerald courses site (her next course is available in September 2020 and has a waiting list)
This is a blog post by Dr Fitzgerald expanding on some of the topics above
Purls from the Undercut (16.7.5.a) sucrose series Niamh Cunningham 2020
The artwork for this blog is part of the sucrose series. The image is based on a waterfall outside Shawan, Sichuan, when visiting with other artists working on the early stages of a sculpture project in ‘Hong Fangzi’ October 2019.
Note my practice “Memory Palace of Trees” continues with upcoming tree story about Su Dong Po’s family residence in Meishan.
Biography: Niamh Cunningham is a Beijing based artist (born in Dublin).
After nine exhilarating years in China I continue to focus on landscape and portraiture, with light and transparency being a signature of my work. 2019 focussed on the portrait series building that body of work significantly . See Portrait Series. This year (2020) is a return to Nature with “The Memory Palace of Trees” . I will be engaging in various stories from different people while working on painting and mixed media on the subject of trees. The ‘Sucrose Series’ investigates nature and loss and transformation, it is a multilayered process where crystallisation is worked with other interventions.
*awarded a residency with the Zhang Jiajie International residency program in Hunan in November 2014
*received a commission for three large paintings for the Orthopedic Department in Huaxin Hospital which were installed in August 2015.8
*Presented art workshops for children in different communities in Beijing .
* commissioned to make two large sculptures as part of a land art residency in Wudi Shandong in October 2017. Solo exhibitions have been held in Dubai, Ireland and Dong Yue Art Museum in Beijing.
*awarded a residency in March 2018 at the Guanlan printmaking base in Shenzhen.
*presented artist /artist-curator talks in the Art Departments of Henan Business College, Zhengzhou and the China Women’s University, Beijing and Canvard College -Beijing Technology and Business University and other schools in Beijing.