Anne Douglas and I have been invited to put together panel discussions and give a keynote lecture to complement the ‘Helen and Newton Harrison California Work’ four venue exhibition curated by Tatiana Sizonenko for La Jolla Historical Society as part of the Getty’s PST initiative.
We have taken the Harrisons’ idea of ‘Conversational Drift’ as our inspiration, aiming to both explore the works and also relate them to the aspects of the global environment crisis. ‘Conversational Drift’ for the Harrisons was part of their experience of ‘joining a conversation of place’ and also the way in which a work might develop it’s own life in the world following it’s exhibition.
Participants, panelists and audiences, in the conversations in San Diego will include artists
whose work focuses on ecological issues, designers, farmers, civic leaders and
representatives from Native American groups whose knowledge has been vital to the
Harrisons’ understanding of local ecologies.
We will be giving a lecture and convening four panels, one at each exhibition venue:
Panel at California Center for the Arts Escondido
9 November 2024, 2:00-4:30 pm
‘The Lagoon Cycle: How Do We Feed Ourselves?’
Panel at San Diego Central Library Gallery
12 November 2024, 5:30-8:00 pm
‘How do We Regenerate a Forest?’
Panel at La Jolla Historical Society (organising venue)
16 November 2024, 10:00 am-12:00 pm
‘Envisioning the Future of Our Cities’
Lecture at University of California San Diego (Structure and Materials Engineering SME 149)
19 November 2024, 6:30 pm
‘Thinking with the Harrisons: Re-imagining the Arts in the Global Environment Crisis’
Panel at The Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego
23 November 2024, 2:00-4:00 pm
‘Future Gardens as Eco-Cultural Collaborations’
See below for further details.
We have been helped enormously by Tatiana, Heath Fox (former Director of La Jolla Historical Society) the venues (Lauren Lockhart at La Jolla; Gina Lopez and Rokhsane Hovaida at California Center for the Arts, Escondido; Bonnie Domingo’s at San Diego Central Library; and Ceci Moss at UCSD’s Mandeville Art Gallery). We have benefited from the insights and support of Ruth Wallen and Lauren Bon in developing the programme.
‘Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work’ is the first retrospective to encompass the more than 50-year practice of the Harrisons. It forms a key part of ‘Art and Science Collide’, the 2024 edition of the Getty Institute’s PST (Pacific Standard Time) initiative.
Lecture
University of California San Diego (Structural & Materials Engineering SME 149)
Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 6:30 pm
Title: Thinking with the Harrisons: Re-imagining the Arts in the Global Environment Crisis
Summary:
Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, known as ‘the Harrisons’, dedicated five decades to exploring and demonstrating a new form of artistic practice, centered on “…doing no work that does not attend to the wellbeing of the web of life.” Their collaborative practice pioneered a way of drawing together art and ecology. They closely observed, often with irony and humor, how human intervention disrupts the dynamics of life as a web of interrelationships. The authors ‘think with’ the Harrisons, critically tracing their poetics as a re-imaging and reconfiguring of the arts in response to the unfolding planetary crisis. They draw parallels between the artists’ poetics and rethinking in the philosophy of science, particularly drawing on the philosopher of science, Isabelle Stengers.
Thinking with the Harrisons is for anyone concerned with the implications of ecological thought and practice as a reimagining of public life, including the interaction of art and science. Throughout their joint practice, the Harrisons sought to engage policy makers, governments, ecologists, artists, and the natural world, sensitizing us to the crises that emerge from grounded experiences of place and time.
Anne Douglas is a Professor Emerita, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Scotland, exploring the changing place of the artist in public life. This research has increasingly focused on art and the environmental crisis from a practice-led research perspective. She co-produced the Harrisons’ work On the Deep Wealth of this Nation, Scotland (2017) in collaboration with Newton Harrison and the Centre for the Study of the Force Majeure, University of California Santa Cruz.
Chris Fremantle is a researcher and producer of award-winning projects. He was producer on the Harrisons’ project Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom. He is a longstanding member of the international ecoart network and co-editor of ‘Ecoart in Action’, a collection of activities, case studies and provocations drawn from the network. He lectures at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Scotland.
Panels
All panels are moderated by Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle.
California Center for the Arts Escondido
Saturday, November 9, 2024, 2:00-4:30 pm
Title: “A Panel Discussion on The Lagoon Cycle: How Do We Feed Ourselves?”
The program will start with a gallery walk led by Tatiana Sizonenko, exhibition curator, and will continue with readings from the Harrisons’ poetry composed for The Lagoon Cycle. This will be followed by the panel discussion, including Q&A with the audience. The event will conclude with a reception.
“How do we feed ourselves?” This is the central question in Helen and Newton Harrison’s masterwork, The Lagoon Cycle. This question is explored by the Lagoon Maker and the Witness, two characters on an epic journey that takes them to Sri Lanka and then the Salton Sea in California and leads to questions about our relationship with the natural world
Join us for the panel to discuss how this and other artworks in the exhibition reflect on our current challenges. Panelists include:
- Betsy Damon is an ecofeminist artist whose practice is focused on water, influenced by her activism in women’s, gay, and environmental rights. For Damon the world’s living systems are endlessly exciting and constantly humbling in their complexity. Her skills as an artist allow her to center water as the foundation to all life.
- Monica Manolescu, Professor of American Literature and Art at the University of Strasbourg, France, and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, whose chapter on the poetics of the Lagoon Cycle is featured in the exhibition catalog.
- Ruth Wallen, artist and long-time collaborator with the Harrisons.
San Diego Central Library Gallery
Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 5:30-8:00 pm
Title: “How do We Regenerate a Forest? Thinking with the Harrisons.”
The program will start with the panel discussion, including Q&A with the audience. The event will conclude with a reception. There will be an opportunity to tour the exhibition with the Curator at 5.30.
How do we regenerate the Pacific Forests? This is the central question in artworks made by Helen and Newton Harrison, starting with The Serpentine Lattice in 1993 and continuing to the present day with their research initiatives led by the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure at UC Santa Cruz. Their earlier work addresses forest clear-cutting, while the more recent work focuses on how forests are impacted by related public policy and climate change itself.
Join us for a panel to explore how artworks in the exhibition speak to the current crisis in our forests. Panelists include:
- Joelene Tamm, founding member of the Southern California Fire, Fuels, and Forestry Cadre.
- Wesley Ruise Jr. third generation wildland firefighter and fire chief of the La Jolla Reservation Fire Department.
- Megan Jennings, Conservation Ecologist, Climate Science Alliance advisor, and Co-Director of San Diego State University’s Institute for Ecological Monitoring and Management.
- Josh Harrison, the Harrisons’ son and current Director of the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure at UC Santa Cruz.
- Ruth Wallen, artist and long-time collaborator with the Harrisons.
La Jolla Historical Society
Saturday, November 16, 2024, 10:00 am-12:00 pm
Title: ‘Envisioning the Future of Our Cities: Thinking with the Harrisons.’
What does remaking civic environments entail? What does remaking artworks mean?
This panel will link the Harrisons’ early works, which take the form of DIY instructions and backyard farming installations as an ecological practice, with the challenges of ‘greening’ urban environments today. Drawing on the expertise of panelists involved in significant and innovative ecological work, the discussion will address questions of ownership of the commons – both of ideas and of essential requirements for life, such as water and green spaces.
Panelists include:
- Lauren Bon, Environmental Artist and the Director of the Metabolic Studio, Los Angeles
- Teddy Cruz, Professor of Public Culture and Spatial Practice, Visual Arts Department, UC San Diego
- Fonna Forman, Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice, UC San Diego
- Cris Scorza, Director of Education, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
- Gabriel Harrison, son of Helen and Newton, Co-Director of the Helen and Newton Harrison Family Trust and designer.
The Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego
Saturday, November 23, 2024, 2:00-4:00 pm
Title: ‘Future Gardens as Eco-Cultural Collaborations’
https://mandevilleartgallery.ucsd.edu/events/index.html
The Harrisons describe their first Future Garden, the Garden of Hot Winds and Warm Rains (1995), proposed for a museum in Bonn as “…a multi-layered story told with artifacts, media events, texts, and living materials, which all together engage the probable Greenhouse future directly. It is a work of art that will be garden, prediction, and promenade, a voyage of sorts… The task we set for this work is the exploration of eco-cultural collaborations that would make for a future no longer based on extraction. … these gardens look at what a future could be like if conscious, mutually beneficial collaborations between human cultures (civilizations in all their complexities) and the cultures of nature (the life webs complicating and diversifying up to the space and energy available) became a norm.”
What does this multi-layered story look and feel like in the present?
Join us for a panel discussion with people who have collaborated with the Harrisons on Future Gardens including current on the ground proposals. Panelists include:
- Laura and Benny Fillmore, Elders of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California who worked with Helen and Newton Harrison on the Future Garden at Sagehen and continue to advise that project.
- Josh Harrison, son of Helen and Newton and currently director of the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure at UC Santa Cruz.
- Gabriel Harrison, son of Helen and Newton, Co-Director of the Helen and Newton Harrison Family Trust and designer.
ecoartscotland.net 
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