continued
EARTH: Art of a changing world (part 2)
The next piece of work that I really loved was both sublime and conceptual by Antii Laitinen called It’s My Island. The work consisted of three video screens and three large photographs. The video screens show him building an Island (over three months) out of sand bags. The photographs show the ideal beautiful Island scene with a tree set against spectacular skies. I feel this piece is dealing with our desire for our own paradise as well as the futility of our desires. Also with the futility of our small measures for stopping climate change.
The next piece I thought was really provoking is Thomas Saraceno’s work Endless Series. This is a series of Photographs taken in Bolivia at Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. These photographs reminded me of casper David Friedrich’s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedric…
famous painting The Wanderer above the sea of Mist, where the man stairs out over nature, his smallness and inconsequence is emphasised against the vastness and grandness of the landscape. This series made me here made me feel humble in the face of nature and sad that we had desecrated something so pure.
A highlight of the show was Lemn Sissay’s poem What if? shown as a video of a studio session with a jazz accompliment cut with images of the world. It is a powerful poem but I think it would have been better without the extra imagry, just the remarkable studio performance & let us imagine the rest.
Lemn Sissay
What if?
A lost number in the equation
A simple understandable miscalculation
And what if, on the basis of that
The world as we know it changed the matter of fact
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if we found in the ground a vial of proof
What if the foundations missed a vital truth
What if the industrial dream sold us out from within
What if our impenetrable defence sealed us in
What if our wanting more was making less
What if all this wasn’t progress
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if our wanting more was making less
What if all this wasn’t progress
What if the disappearing rivers of Eritrea
The rising tides and encroaching fear
What if the tear inside the protective skin
Of earth was trying to tell us something
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if the message carried in the wind
Was saying something
From butterfly wings to the hurricane
It is the small things that make big change
What if the question towards the end of the lease is
No longer the origin but the end of species
Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?
What if we weakened ourselves getting strong
What if the message carried in the wind
Was saying something
http://gps.southbankcentre.co.uk/poems/668/what_if…
