Nature and Natural Disaster
"No matter how alienated we may become, we produce patterns that mirror the natural world" (Victoria Vesna). From spending 1.45 billion dollars to elevate the East River park seawall in Lower Manhattan by 8 feet, $6.4 billion dollars to ensure the new Bay Bridge can withstand earthquakes, and $5.9 billion dollars to create floodgates to protect Venice from the sea, we continually reckon with the forces of nature. On one hand, under the pretense of the Anthropocene era that we live in, it may seem that humans undoubtedly exert an overbearing impact on nature. But on the other hand, the inevitability of time, erosion, and immensity of nature humbles human attempts to counter such forces.
The book “Nature,” edited by Jeffrey Kastner, is a book of essays documenting major themes and ideas on nature in contemporary art. Here are four of my favorite passages from the book:
"In Fulton's art, walking is presented as one man's most basic dialogues with nature, a dialogue not coincidentally central to the nomadic 'landscape' in the traditional sense of a still image, but as a physical experience." (37 Michael Auping, 'A Nomad among Builders' 1987)
"But around them our ancestors also saw other objects, far more mysterious: rocks, rivers, mountains, the thunderstorm, the rain, the stars in the sky. If these objects exist it must also be for a purpose; to nourish it they had also to have a spirit or soul. Thus was the world's strangeness resolved for those early human beings: in reality there exist no inanimate objects. For such a thing would be incomprehensible. In the river's depths, on mountaintop, more subtle spirits pursue vaster and more impenetrable designs than the transparent ones animating men and beasts. Thus were our forebears wont to see in nature's forms and events the action of forces either benign or hostile, but never indifferent—never totally alien." (83 Jacques Monod 'Chance and Necessity' 1970)
"The world we live in is a revelation that can be 'read', experienced. Everything we experience or are able to experience is significant for itself and for everything. We can find this significance everywhere around us. But plastics, cars, computers and ice cream have in the first place significance for our human life and culture, plants, trees, birds flying, earth and the streams of water are of more general significance, because they form part of our primary reality, nature. That many of us do not know anything anymore of this primary reality is dramatic, makes life poor, makes culture poor, but does not change the actuality of its primarity." (163 herman de vries 'the world we live in,' 1992)
"I think natural disasters have been looked upon in the wrong way.
Newspapers always say they are bad, a shame.
I like natural disasters and I think that they may be the highest form of art possible to experience.
For one thing they are impersonal.
I don't think art can stand up to nature.
Put the best object you know next to the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, redwoods.
The big things always win.
Now just think of a flood, forest fire, tornado, earthquake, typhoon, sand storm.
Think of the breaking of the ice jams. Crunch.
If all of the people who go to museums could just feel an earthquake.
Not to mention the sky and the ocean.
But it is in the unpredictable disasters that the highest forms of art are realized.They are rare and we should be thankful for them." (24 Walter De Maria, 'On the Importance of Natural Disaster' 1960