‘Digital Ecology’: On Round Lemon’s online exhibition EARTH.
Two dogs watching for a change in their reflection in a boulder-sized Golf ball; a contingent of human infants striving to suckle a cow for its milk; the roads and traffic of a continent projected into the columns of a basement. With the planet subject to the regulations of a pandemic our physical existence as human beings is beginning to diminish; in its place we are evolving new ways to be. In tandem with this, our impact on the environment too, is changing. The world, suddenly and seemingly more vacant than before, is gently turning its head toward the digital. EARTH, an online exhibition containing 51 artists from across the world, provides the images that open up a dialogue about what these changes mean for us as a species, and the effects they will have on the future of the other, non-human perspectives among us who we rely on to sustain our current lifestyle.
‘Wet Nurse’ by Helen Grundy
The works here are diverse, the artists' practices varied, most often showing off a combination of forms which laceand tangle into each other: photography blending into painting, painting into performance. Armed with an arsenal of Anthropocenal imagery provided by the last ten years, each of these artists presents a patch woven from their experience of the world as it is now. Scrolling through the exhibition, these patches gradually collate and conglomerate into a multi-dimensional canvas which provides us with a glimpse of the position and impact of environmental art on a world afflicted with an apathy for the natural.
It would be impossible for me to cover the scope of each individual artists’ works, if I were to do so I would only manage to skim the surface of what EARTH is trying here to describe, so all I can do is reduce my selection to a handful of highlights and dig into the work which, I think, best represents the message this exhibition is trying to express.
‘They Die, We Die’ by Helen Grundy
‘Let Them Eat Cake’ by Helen Grundy
Helen Grundy uses digital collage to create metaphorical scenes which literalise the dependence upon our current, consumer-based relationship with animals. She generates interesting situations by combining objects which subvert typical human behaviour and highlight the malicious nuances in the veins of our societies when it comes to how we view animals. Her pieces are essentially tableaus: almost as though in answer to a fictional ‘What If?’, they behave like a mirror held up to parody and accentuate the reality of the current world. The exponential decrease in insect population is condensed to a 20’s nurse giving CPR to a moth the same size as her (They Die, We Die). The trivial amendments of corporations after a public awakening to the already massive damage they are responsible for: a field of miscellaneous creatures drinking the jam of car-sized donuts which are filled in the background by a grinning woman and a petrol pump (Let Them Eat Cake). The thing I find most exciting about them is the many ways their narratives can be unpacked, due to the fact they are constructed with a similar mindset to that which is used when writing a short story or a play. At times though the responsive nature of her medium can make the works seem somewhat two-dimensional, as though they were conducted as a task, and make the artist seem indifferent to her own care for the problem she is trying to make us aware of. By majority I think this is perhaps due more to the found-image collage format than the investments of the artist herself, but it would be nice in the future to see Grundy creating with more personably applicable images. Overall, they are strangely magical in their use of colour and striking visuals, and more than anything I feel, will inspire other creatives to conceptualise their own narratives based upon what they find in her work.
‘Poetry of a Geography’ by Paulina Radic
An exploration into the impact of the Western exploitation of natural resources from South America, ‘Poetry of a Geography’ is Paulina Radic’s spotlight on a culture which would typically be dismissed. This transmedial documentary presents shots of the cityscape of the Andean region with voiceovers from interviewed locals; spliced among this are these same shots but projected in an unknown basement somewhere in Berlin. The result is something phantasmagorical, swimming in these visuals you can imagine would be like inhabiting a simulacrum of the reality being filmed: in the back on the brickwork a car drives through the screen; elsewhere, in another image, a colony of gulls flex in flight on the concrete floor. These contexts, translated through virtual media and projected into a physical space, act as a kind of measuring ruler against the distance and difference between the West and the countries suffering under its influence. We are presented with Concrete Basement vs Projected Image, which poses this question almost sarcastically: Which of these worlds is the one disappearing? And despite the scale of its subject, this piece, likely due to the fact it was personally recorded and took eight years to complete, doesn’t lose its disposition in all the noise that over half a decade has provided.
Abraham by Ema Lančaričova
The periphery of a pool, now drained by nature, forms the walls of a bunker which at its bottom has accumulated a blanket of red and green leaves. Armed with Kodak infrared film originally created with the intention of detecting the diseases of trees, Ema Lančaričova explores through photographs the paradox of humanity’s implementation of technology to save the environment, when these detecting devices and the systems behind them are a more prominent threat than the diseases they are trying to prevent. This does however raise the question of whether her action in taking this photograph is, in itself, somewhat counterproductive and hypocritical; although one I don’t think necessarily requires an answer. With photography it is often easier than other forms for the viewer to lose interest in or never detect the intention behind the captured image, and unless the image itself is captivating, most will turn their backs on the effort required of them to invest; and so in her statement with this piece, Lančaričova says ‘the photograph can be read as a post-apocalyptic metaphor’. Typically, I would view the intentional metaphorization of an artwork as bad practice, however in the context of this photography, the over-contrived deviation of metaphor is changed. ‘Post-apocalyptic’ - a bit cliché maybe, and washed out with the non-specific and ubiquitous application of its meaning, but I find this does taint the image well with the artists' implications. It is an impressive manipulation of perception; which she uses to gain control over what her audience thinks they are seeing, and as a natural digression from this, what it is she is wanting them to be told.
‘Falling’ by Sandrine Deumier
‘Falling’ a 360° video digital animation by Sandrine Deumier, takes the iconographies of environmental concern generated through the use of the internet and translates them into models of the species we are endangering. A helicopter waits, whales topple from the bleached white sky, a cat is held in the gravity projected by a VR headset. The video is made up of a series of nine ‘collapsology’ set pieces, tableaus where manmade digital structures intermingle with the organic and natural world. The Universal Recycling Symbol is repeatedly displayed and embedded in the bodies of the characters inhabiting the circular environment of this piece like a religious icon. Incomplete, nigh-on nonsensical phrases that address the narrators and humanity’s anxiety with their sense of self are embellished along the midriff of the synthetic humanoid character in block letters. ‘I’m not a robot.’ ‘Stay Human.’ ‘die-in.’ It is a metaphorization of the current projection of humanity’s path going into a post-future world. Once again however we run into the problem provided by depersonalised imagery: through the sheer freedom of generating augmented symbols within a three-dimensional software many of the models and sets come across plastic and cold, where they could have been used to evoke deep personal emotions. Bled entirely of colour, many often feel like a forced metaphor. Seeing a human, which it is quite clear we as the viewer are intended to identify with, makes one too aware of their own form and, instead of the concern this piece is clamouring to express, we find ourselves inserted into a narrative which lacks the necessary compassionable components to have us relate with it. Although if this piece were to be described based on its greatest achievement, it would be that of the success of its ability to make the viewer pause and truly pay attention to what it is trying to say. The slow moving nature of the work counteracts the standardised experience of interactive online works; used to receiving these things through social media rapidly, we are instead allowed the time to process and experience them as opposed to shielding our conscious and blindly consuming them. The sheer technical brilliance and innovative orchestration of this piece make it well worth the fifteen minutes you will spend sitting with it, more than anything it is admirable that Deumier has managed to come up with an alternative form by which to view and inhabit art video pieces.
‘The Persistence of White Colour’ by Erick De Gorostegui
‘The Persistence of White Colour’, a triptych of monochrome paintings, depict Erick De Gorostegui’s spatial deconstruction of the concepts of classism, racism and the drawing of divisions between people segregated based purely on their value in aesthetics and statistics. These paintings ooze with alienating unease, the landscapes depicted immediately familiar, though it is uncertain why and with which images in my mind they are reverberating; the only certainty is that the environment itself has been subtly distorted and repurposed to manipulate the bizarre nostalgia it awakens. More than any, the middle panel (Anuncio de Inmobiliaria Provincia) is evocatively phenomenal: two dogs stand on the plaque of a golf course while behind them stretch the spotlights of a vacant car park; not a person in sight. It is something of a disassembled utopia, and through Gorostegui’s writing on it we are made to feel as though a voyeur, imposing on something private intended for a single eye to see. With a sublime focus on the double meanings these landscapes and political situations can evoke, the middle painting he says ‘represents the idyllic and paradisiacal invasion between two situations that escape from human control; the wilderness breaking abrasively the landscape, at the distance not so distant.’ A capitalistic paradox, which promotes the quick turnover of cheap goods for profit, without regard to the effect on human and natural life, especially if it is seen as lower class; subverting the landscape into conveniently packaged appealing-solely-to-tourist kinds of places; breaking the wilderness for the promotion of accessibility and comfort of a specific type of humankind. As much as I enjoy this piece there is a feeling of incompleteness or inconsistency that is provoked by the difference in the presentation of the peripheral panels, they feel much flatter in comparison to their centre, which was perhaps intentional. While the imagery is still gorgeous - depicting structures similar to those presented in the best short fiction of Kafka - there is a lack of connectivity between the panels; they feel as though part of separate paintings. The result of this is jarring, but in a way that detracts from the overall atmosphere generated by the art. Perhaps instead the artist could use this format to condense the imagery of his native Mexico and use them to formulate new territories by which he can further explore the liabilities of its political landscape.
‘Eden Tree’ by Fraser Burton
These are the artists whose pieces for me stand out most brilliantly in this vast assembly of work. Although this doesn’t mean that the other work on offer here isn’t worth investigating, many other artists (to mention a few: Fraser Burton, Giacomo Bruni, Sreelakshmi K S) have also provided incredible and unique interpretations of the problem in humanity’s conflict with the planet it is inhabiting. I do wonder though if perhaps the exhibition itself could have been displayed in an alternative platform which would better enhance the audience’s engagement with it. Whilst the webpage scrolling format means that you have to engage with all of the works to reach the bottom, it gives an unfair advantage to those at the top, which perhaps using something like a virtual gallery would alleviate. Away from that though, this exhibition is a respectable achievement in the contexts of environmental and international art.
Managing to bring together a colossal amount of artists from a massive range of countries and almost every available medium is applaudable in itself,but what EARTH has managed to do here is create a dynamic, sensory, far-reaching and comprehensive collection of work, which pushes out into the world the creative and critical opinions of talented individuals who have something new to say about the future of our world; and proves that with a rapidly developing familiarity with the digital, physical galleries are no longer the sole crutch the art world is leaning on.
