Treeline

We are visiting Vitoria-Gastiez, a Biophilic city like Birmingham, Green Capital of Europe in 2012, Bilbao and San Sebastián. For artist research and to build a network of academics, artists, arts organisations, government offices and environmental bodies.

We have had great meetings with arts organisations and city council officers making plans with new partners for future projects

At Museo De Bellas Artes, Bilbao. Completely stunned by seeing Arcimboldo’s ‘Flora meretrix’ c1590. Biomimicry art created by the artist with science from 430 years ago, connecting me to our Treeline project linking the U.K. Basque Country and Norway.

Two of our new project partners have told me to look at this artist, who has painted a series of trees in a forest 45 km From Bilbao. Omako Basra.

Our visit coincides with an exhibitions of work by Margaret Harrison, inspiring to see work that relates to the feminine principle and Ecology, and a critical positioning of patriarchy and ecocide.

Frosty and hot hot flowers in Oslo.

Oslo

Arriving in the City on a late Saturday afternoon, already dark and the cold hits my cheek.
First cup of tea – a huge earl grey with a stick
And a toilet miles from the floor
Climbing the stairs of the house we are staying in
Very old and characterful – already the noise of family and friends and welcome
Shock at the cost of a beer
And hearing about the problems of drinking in Oslo
I don’t care as I don’t drink much anyway

Wondering through crowed markets on a Sunday morning
Many knitted gloves and dogs in coats
Layers and layers of graffiti and posters piled on top of each other,
Seems to be as much about what went before and what might come after
As what is there now – a urban book turning its own pages.

Music on a Sunday afternoon,
helps to take away the exhaustion of the journey
In a venue with layers of rooms and bars.
Its old jazz from the 70’s and a funky master explaining
how the english don’t share but the funky men and women of hot cultures do
even though they have less
I wonder why he now lives in London.

Hot Botanical gardens,
taking off layers and layers of jumpers and coats
Making a small film of my grown up daughter walking towards me in a black dress with flowers
Enjoyed taking photos of the flowers and plants, time stops here, no talking.
I love painting flowers and thinking about the
Poetry of the eighteenth century explorers who travelled and painted and named
the flowers and insects as exotic specimens
Now they are vanishing, vanishing – will only drawings remain I wonder, and maybe these hot gardens hidden in cold places.

Moving through meetings in cafes made out of layered plywood into sitting quietly in other cafes and talking it through
Ideas, and planning. Sharing histories and observations. Cross cultural yet the same.
Talking to artists from Oslo
We share many connections like a breed of bird who sees the world through the lens of making and thinking yet needs to fly.
Its still home when talking to artists, we carry our twigs and can settle comfortably.
Visiting the Kunstnernes Hus and feeling Vanessa Baird.
Hearing about a impassioned political private view
Visiting RAM and hearing about the plans for future events.
Its a smaller more spacious art world yet seems kind and arms held wide.

Walking through the city snow scape,
Holding each other up
Glad I packed extra warm clothes
Later travelling high up past the clouds on a empty afternoon on a empty belly.
Into woods that go on and on and a frozen lake and a dog in boots.
Perfect afternoon and a snack in the cold, we danced, merry.
On the way back down
Rows of small children climb on the tram
They are passed out at each stop to waiting parents.
The organisation!

Spacious streets
Hunting out vegan food
Hot bean soup, potato pie and salad, all shared out
Delicious tea and chocolate crepes.
Everything has more salt, the crisps, all the food and its on the snowy ground.
I wonder about the healthy hearts of Oslo!
The fast little birds dart past the pigeons to get the bread
They hide the bread under bins where the pigeons can’t reach.

Meeting art world people who used to work in Birmingham
We share my book and talk about troubled pasts
And the troubled present. A flight to the north
Might bring a adventure I may need to do.
I look forward to returning soon.

PNEK (Production Network for Electronic Art, Norway) is a national network for electronic, digital and inter-disciplinary art. Supporting a series of exhibition spaces and workshop laboratories funded by Arts Council Norway. Providing artists and organisations with project development, workshops and delivery. Developing international collaborative opportunities, seminar and exhibition programmes.

Notes on our metting with Katya, Director Office for Contempory Art, Katy spent two years working for the Ikon in Birmingham 2002/03.

OCA are working with the City Council to contribute to developing a 5 year cultural plan leading up to, and beyond, the 2019 Green Capital of Culture.

There is a triannual called Oslo architecture and there will be Oslo Pilot, exploring art in the public space, being developed by Curators commissioned by the City Council.

The OCA program empathise is on the North of Norway, in relation to Climate change, Borders, resource extraction. But especially the indigenous population of the nomadic Sami. Working on bringing visibility to and disseminating Sami culture. The region extends trans-nationally, with the indigenous area cut up by nation states. Katy’s has just taken part in an annual congress in Art, the last being ‘Sami Rage’. The Sami were subject to cultural discrimination, they had no land rights, their language and culture was disappearing. In 1989 they were granted a regional government. There is Sami House H.Q. in Oslo that is open to visit.

Olav Mathias-Eira is a reindeer-herder. He is a member of the Sami community, one of the largest indigenous groups remaining in Europe.

There is a series of court actions at the moment taken by young Sami acting as nature defenders. Green developments like the building of wind farms across rain deer tracks in Sami land, asks the question what does it mean to become Green, whose Green technology is it? What are the diversity plans. This is part of OCA’s program making.

There is a link with New York’s Eye Beam, Sally Swade’s leading a series of workshops on technology and how it can empower indigenous communities, called indigenous New York.

One of the only way to effect change is to bring in the international perspective, focusing the indigenous perspective on this international level. The situations in the other Baltic spaces are even worse.

Other project to look at is Dark Ecology, part of which was curated by Hilde Methi, who is based in Kirkenes City. There is a biennial called Liaf in Lofoten, just happened this September.http://liaf.no/?lang=en

Norway as a country is only 100 years old, and is still in a phase of nation building, a priority of which was securing the coast and so the Sami population on the coast was the most threatened.

In the north there is Pikene pa Bruce, in, Kirkeres, art centre for residencies and a gallery http://www.pikene.no/

OCA can help by proving funding for Norwegian artists working internationally, in the form of:
1. Travel and expenses for commissions and exhibitors
2. Expenses for giving lectures and presentations
3. The translation of texts.
OCA does not fund production costs, although Norwegian artists can apply to Art Council Norway for this, it can’t be matched with OCA funds

OCA will help us by a two bedroom flat and studio as part of our exchange program, depending on times.

On my first day walking around Oslo waiting to find the accommodation, I had a discussion with a shopkeeper about snow. I was hoping to experience the famous Norwegian snow covered landscape. Growing up in the UK in the West Midlands snow to me feels rarer and less spectacular than in my childhood memories. Snow that settles in the UK appears to have been replaced my rain. The shopkeeper I was chatting to told similar stories of Oslo – the amount of lying snow decreasing year on year. It is unsettling to think that a place made so magical by it’s winter climate is changing so quickly people notice it on the scale of a single adult lifetime. I began to consider how lack of snow might effect ecosystems particularly plants that shelter in the snow during the winter and how river flows might increase. As a longterm boat dweller I have been lucky enough to travel extensively on the canals and rivers of the UK and noticing changes in waterways and its effects on navigation is a common preoccupation of mine. Our accommodation was wonderful and I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to spread time with fellow artists and in reflection this time spent sharing ideas was the most valuable part of the trip.

The following day it snowed. We woke up excited as snow had settled across the ground transforming the landscape. We went to meet Madeleine Park, curator of the RAM Gallery buzzing with excitement. Following this meeting I went for a walk around the Fjord with fellow BHC artist David Checkley. We went to Losaeter  an amazing communal space encouraging art and food production initiated by the art collective Futurefarmers. Losaeter is located in Bjorvika, a former port, right on the edge of the Fjord. In the centre of the farm are two tall concrete towers that are ventilation for the road tunnel below.  Loeseter is made up of a grain field and allotment gardens and a beautiful cooking and art space building in the shape of a hull of a ship. The site is surrounded by contrasted new city developments – glass modern buildings, a new opera house reflecting a modern capital city. One of the issues I have been considering as part of this research is the global carbon emissions from ‘smart’ technology we describe as ‘virtual.’ Virtual communications have a real impact on climate change. This is increasing as the number of people using the internet increases and the data we create through IoT constantly monitoring our environment/urban spaces increases.

The power usage of my smart phone became more obvious to me in Norway as the battery ran out quickly in the colder climate. Using Google Maps to navigate in the city whilst in a car can decrease carbon emissions by drivers using more efficient routes but as a pedestrian in Norway using this service to navigate watching my phone battery decrease I realised my walking was not carbon neutral. Standing on the edge of the Fjord lead me to consider the ‘wildness’ of the landscape of Norway. As a boat dweller I consider myself to live as ‘close to nature’ as the UK allows. I feel very protected by in my environment in the UK, never far away from people or means of communication and a temperate climate. I sometimes think this can lead to a disconnect with environmental issues and an apathy towards climate change. I am interesting in exploring more of Norway and on the last day took a train into the forrest to explore. For me this was in many ways the most rewarding part of my visit. Getting out of the city and witnessing the edge of the forrest, walking for hours alone in the trees I was aware of how much of the country I did not understand and wish to return to experience.

Brann Sjel (Fire Soul): A Norwegian name for someone who is an agent for change.

Notes from our meeting with Professor Karen O’Brien, department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo.

‘How can we adapt to the reality of climate change? We can study this question through a merging of science and art, and therefore create opportunities for academic and co-production perspectives.

Sea Change is a program we run for conscious change, collaborative change, and cultural change. We challenge people to take a series of small changes over 30 days, and therefore look at their socially constructed assumptions. Sea Change produces a critical change by helping people realise that they are the power to change, whatever their sphere of influence.

Climate change is part of relationship problem that we need to fix as a whole. Allowing the oil industry to geo-engineer a solution to climate change will not solve the problems with bee colony collapse or plastic pollution in the seas. These issues are all throughly interconnected and need to be addressed in this way.

The (Oslo) city council needs a story that people own, not an elite subjectivity – we need deeper human dimensions. We have developed great plans and road maps, like electric cars, that will supposedly save us. These ideas come from a story sense of ego. We need to address the bigger narrative.

We need new paradigms, a new materialism not dualistic to infect the narrative, to activate the entanglement. The question is ‘can I have a bigger impact than my carbon footprint, the idea that we have to limit ourselves just makes us feel small.’

Paul Hawken looks at Biomimicy and how we can put carbon back in the biosphere, and at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. (Art can make a situation where you could) imagine if everything could be seen, if it was visible.

Self organised change. We are a quantum social organism – when part of the system wakes up there is a change, we can use consciousness and the capacity of reflection, we have that capacity for deliberate transformation – to get to a state of critical mass.

Photo diary:

A question in my mind is how can we oppose the conditioned and patriarchal view in contemporary that art and nature are separate? That to try to bring them together would be an exercise of pastoral regression, a romantic, and in our conditioned minds discredited, dis-assembly of our innate nature. At a time of ecocide and catastrophic climate change can we afford to still accept this patriarchal meta-narrative as truth.