Editors
Chris Fremantle is a researcher and producer.
Anne Douglas
David Haley
STATEMENT
Ecological artist David Haley believes our ability to survive Climate Change is the enactment of a complex evolutionary narrative. As the dance of creation and destruction, also, demand new opportunities and meanings for the other side of collapse, his inquiries into the nature of water, whole systems ecology and integral critical futures thinking inform his arts practice, academic research, education and community developments.
As Senior Research Fellow in MIRIAD at Manchester Metropolitan University, Haley is Director of the Ecology In Practice research group, and leads the award winning MA Art As Environment programme. His affiliations include: Vice Chair of The Chartered Institution for Water and Environmental Management, Art & Environment Network; Member of the Peer Review College, Arts & Humanities Research Council; Director, Board of Trustees, INIFAE [International Institute For Art and the Environment];and editor for Cultura21, ecoartscotland, MAiA journal and Public Art & Urban Design Observatory.
RECENT & CURRENT PROJECTS
Recent projects in the UK, China, Taiwan, and Germany include: The Writing On The Wall (2007-8), performed poetic artworks to question societies’ response to global warming, River Life 3000: Like There’s No Tomorrow (2008), sculptural installation; Rivers from the Future (2007), a critique of the ethics and aesthetics that value the ‘new suburbia’ over freshwater; A Walk On The Wild Side (2004-8), eco-urban art-walks and films that consider Manchester as a living organism; Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground Gaining Wisdom (2007-9), with Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison to determine how we might ‘withdraw with grace’ as sea levels rise; A Dialogue with Oysters: the Art of Facilitation (2008- on-going), a new creation myth between the sea, the mountains, the oysters and the people based on the interface between freshwater and rising sea levels; Trees of Grace: the Destiny of Species (2008- on-going), a thousand-year long project that proposes an analogue forest for the Mersey Basin, with ginkgo biloba as the ‘keystone’ species of tree; Making Our Futures: the Art of Sustainable Living (2008- 10) an ASEF funded research project between the cities of Manchester and Beijing to explore the creative potential of future artists and ‘non-expert experts’ to survive Climate Change; and The Art of Complexity (2010 – ongoing) a poetic dialogue and transdisciplinary discourse that may emerge as a publication.
