‘SILENT SPRING’: ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS AND ACTIVISM IN THE SCULPTURAL ARTS SINCE THE 1960S. FOUR CASE STUDIES: HANS HAACKE, PIERRE HUYGHE, ANNE DUK HEE JORDAN, DIANA LELONEK

Abstract

Based on György Kepes’s call for ecological consciousness in the arts (1972) and taking Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) as a departing point, this paper examines the continuous growth of interconnectedness between art and ecological issues, using examples such as Hans Haacke’s Non-Human Living Sculptures and biological systems (1965–72), Pierre Huyghe’s sculptural situations1 Untilled (2012) and After ALife Ahead (2017), Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s critters and food sculptures, and Diana Lelonek’s Center for the Living Things (2016–) and The Seaberry Slagheap stand (action). Looking back over a timespan of around 60 years, the relationship between the arts and what has been called ‘nature’ has undergone major shifts as a historical, cultural and scientific concept. Various theories of post-(human)nature and ecofiction have become influential over the last decades; a fact that is well-established. Leaving behind confirmed dualisms, an expanded idea of ecology might help to approach these artistic positions and their specific sculptural aesthetics of the living.