A talk for the students at the Burren School of Art, Co. Clare Ireland 30 November, 2016 by artist | researcher Cathy Fitzgerald Ph.D

1. Developing an effective
eco-social art practice
Talk for Burren School of Art students, Ballyvaughan,
Co. Clare, Ireland, 30 November 2014
Cathy Fitzgerald: eco-social artist | researcher

2. ! Summary video [next slide]: from my ongoing Hollywood
forest transformation project 2008 – diverse material /
learning developed through video work, photography –
! unfolding reflection / new story of alternative ecoforestry
practice developed through a critical, cumulative open
blogging practice (Ihlein, 2014)
! How did I start; motivations, diverse skill set, deep
listening, mutuality
! Articulacy is crucial! Why developing a guiding theory-
method framework for long-term ecological art practices is
important for the art and ecology field
Outline of talk

3. How did I start my slow art practice?
! Since late 1990s, I have admired the
pioneering practice of US artists
Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton
Harrison, with their long-term eco-art
explorations of lands, forests and
watersheds.
! Reviewed their practice and journal
articles for my under-grad thesis
! See new book detailing their
tranversal practice over 4 decades:
The Time of the Force Majeure: After 45
Years Counterforce is on the Horizon
(2016)

4. How did I start?
It was not until much
later in 2008, when I
had gained skills across
different fields, that I
considered I had the
potential and possibility
to explore this way of
working, this even
though I had lived
within in a conifer
plantation since 2001.

5. Soft social skills as important
as artistic skills:
I see myself embedded in eco-social
communities
Thus, effective long term eco-art practice
require skills of mutuality, deep
listening/looking, reciprocity, to build trust
with others working in non-art domains
( I work against the idea of the solitary genius
artist)
See Mutuality Matters! TED–talk and books by
Kare Anderson

6. social skills (continued):
recognising that creativity does not only reside
in art practice is vital; art is just one way of
knowing, others’ diverse knowings are equally
valid

7. I call such practices ‘eco-social art practice’
to emphasise that they have potential to change
practitioners’ and audiences’ social and mental
ecologies, as well as transforming environments

8. my eco-social art
practice is a gathering
of skills, lifeworld
experiences and
actions.
My life world experience, disciplinary, artistic and digital skills
worked in research
biology for 10-years
amateur forester these
past 8-years
involved in Green
Party since 2004
amateur filmmaker
since 2002
developed comprehensive online
community-building skills
since 2007

9. 8-year background in research science:

10. ! helps me decipher scientific knowledge; contextualise
my forestry work against background of planetary
boundary science – which shows industrial culture is
creating a systemic crisis
! working in teams; understood knowledge/creativity can
often develop faster with group input
! under-stand and can ‘copy’ scientific methods in more
artistic ways
! also understand the challenges of working in science/
professional fields – I have some appreciation of how
foresters and others scientists’ work, their constraints
and their worldview.
Science experience:

11. amateur forester – learning from leading
foresters since coming to Ireland 21 years ago:
involved with Crann (1996-7, 2005-6) and ProSilva Ireland (since 2009) –
Irish Forest NGOs

12. Forestry experience:
! have been on continuous cover forestry study trips to
Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, UK and
around Ireland, with leading foresters and others
interested in permanent forestry alternatives
! by volunteering to look after close-to-nature continuous
cover forestry websites in Europe (2010-2015) and
(Ireland 2009 –ongoing), I am in the center of
conversations, learning and new training developments
for an alternative, non-clearfell, mixed species forestry

13. Politics – learning from former Green Deputy
Leader and TD Mary White:
I was Carlow/Kilkenny group secretary 2004 – 07; now Green’s forest spokesperson

14. politics
! understood the other side of politics, the day-to-day work;
! grass-roots campaigns
! the glacial work in developing new policy: slow, consensus,
gathering expert information
! drafted national forest policy during my PhD; was fortunate
that my theory supervisor was Dr Paul O’Brien, also active
in Green politics – his advice: “go for it!”; theorise your
work after
! developed a political ‘voice’ to introduce motion to support
developing law against crime of ecocide (2013)

15. artistic skills: in photography, video, new media:
ecocriticism field (developed from Literary Theory): really important to critically
reflect on my and others’ cultural workings of nature

16. online community building skills:
MA in virtual realities, also managed a online community of 1300 creative practitioners
for South East Artlinks professional development programme (2007-10)

17. ‘connected learning’ model
! is useful to understand the under-explored potential of
online social media to collate, be a scaffold for the virtual
ecologies my work develops – the writings, policy work,
photography and video
! similar to socially engaged artist/researcher, Lucas Ihlein
(2014), I see blogging as a creative practice essential for eco-
social art practices over long time periods – collating
artefacts and enabling digital conversations with myself and
others – an open, multi-media, networked practice

18. ‘connected learning’ (Ito et al., 2013)
Model is useful to understand the potential of accelerated,
supportive, peer-to-peer, peer-to-mentor; I see it as a powerful
development of the visual diary. Also, you can build an audience
as you develop your practice.

19. Jensen summarises my approach: What do you
love… what does your landbase need to survive?
Author of: A Language without Words, The Myth of Human Supremacy,
Strangely Like War: The Global Assault On Forests, EndGame etc

20. Maintaining a practice: science
knowledge is important but deep
knowing, love of place and keeping it
fun, ensures you won’t burn out
“I am willing to bet that even the survival of the species or
the well-being of your grandchildren isn’t the real motive for
your environmentalism. You are not an environmentalist
because you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t act.
You are an environmentalist because
you love our planet.”
Charles Eisenstein (2013)

21. Articulacy is important! A clear
guiding theory-method framework may
help the marginalised art and ecology
field, which has struggled to convey
such practices’ complexity and value
‘Articulacy has a moral point, not just in correcting
what may be wrong views but also in making the
force of an ideal that people are already living by
more palpable, more vivid for them;
And by making it more vivid, empowering them to
live up to it in a fuller and more integral fashion.’
Charles Taylor, cited in Dean Moore, 2016

22. When others confirm we are living
in a sociopathic society…
Sociologist Charles Derber, 2014

23. …I looked to psychotherapist
Guattari’s lifetimes’ work on the
theory and applications of
transversality
and his last writings of ecosophy and
chaosophy to deepen understanding
of ecological art practices
Transversality: a means to describe the potential of
assemblages of practices between individuals-
collectives, weaving together lifeworld (lived)
experience and disciplinary knowledges to create
new, life-sustaining values / practices /policies.
The late ecosocial activist-
therapist-theorist and new
media enthusiast, Félix
Guattari (1930-1992)

24. Guattari’s ecosophy
! we need to advance “the three
ecologies”, the mental, social and
environmental spheres together,
speaks to the aim and potential of
long term eco-social art practices
priorities
! I call ecological art practices “eco-
social art practices”, to underline
that these practices are not only
about environmental restoration or
resilience, but act politically as a form
of creative resistance
Guattari understood through applied therapeutic practice and
his lifelong political activism, why and how capitalism, particularly
globalised capitalism, and the western worldview is sociopathic
and why we need to advance the “three ecologies”,
the mental, social and environmental spheres together
to advance effective societal change

25. Elliott (2012) briefly applied transversality
and Guattari’s last writings of ecosophy and
chaosophy to ecological art practices
While not examining eco-art practices
specifically, Iain Biggs (2014a,b,c, 2015)
analyses in applying transversality to deepen
understanding of multi-constituent, art-led
practices are also important
Guattari’s writings explain why such practices
are inevitably entangled and driven by aesthetic,
ethical and political processes

26. Guattari argues
the means to advance
resistance to capitalism lies in
micropolitical assemblages that
operate transversally, that
‘softly subvert’ the status quo
So my transversal practice aims
to softly subvert the
stranglehold of unsustainable,
industrial monoculture forestry

27. Through Guattari we
can learn that
sustainability is
contingent, emergent
Rather than a one-size fits
all sustainability directive,
enacting sustainability is an
ever-evolving state that is
enriched deep knowings of
place, democratic
participation and different
ways of knowing the world.
So, Guattari’s ecosophy
identifies the target, main
components and
potential of transversal
practices

28. 2) A methodology
approach for eco-social
complexity
action research is not a prescriptive
model but a reactive pathway, each
step allows plenty of opportunity
for creativity and serendipity, action
and reflection. Accessible as it is
already widely used and understood
in education and health fields.

29. A means to articulate the main method stages
of eco-social art practices

30. This is what you might have encountered
If you had asked what my practice was
at the start of my
Hollywood forest project …

31. action research… identifies and
characterises my activities in
a recognised cycle of stages

32. practical challenges:
In articulating my practice
action research identifies and
orders a repeating cycle of
method stages, from worthwhile
purposes to….
Employing the practical skills and learning of
continuous cover forestry from forestry contractor,
Sean Hoskins

33. Action research helps me identify and value
many ways of knowing (experiential, lived,
traditional, Indigenous knowledge)
Being-in-the-forest experiential knowing reminds
me and others of the complex interconnections
that foster a thriving forest – industrial forestry
ignores this interdependent complexity

34. Action research also embraces
propositional, theoretical
and scientific knowing

35. Artistic knowing
is essential
in action research for
sustainability, to
translate
experiential
knowing and overall,
to weave other
ways of knowing
into cohesive and
engaging projects
(artist and action
research academic,
Chris Seeley, 2008-11, 2014)

36. ! Hollywood forest is a home to others
participation and
democracy stage:
action research
acknowledges different
voices, non-experts,
different
knowledge holders,
even non-human
entities

37. participation and democracy stage:
may lead to new knowings and
new life-sustaining policies
New sustainable forest policy

38. action research
prioritises an emergent
communicative space
for exchanges and
learning
Inviting and sharing views with foresters, landowners, carpenters,
art officers, artists, curators, tree lovers: Hollywood forest, 2014

39. Action research therefore
confirms what pioneers of long
term ecological art practice, the
Harrisons, have long argued:
that the most valuable outcome of
their multi-constituent practice is
‘conversational drift’ :
how questions, new images, texts,
diverse perspectives, develop a
communicative means for
envisioning new values,
possibilities, practices and policies
for a specific context and
environment

40. Importantly,
action research’s recognised terms, overcome the
confusion such exploratory practices create and
encourage peer-to-peer learning
And, in these urgent times, we need a recognised
means to compare effective practices and to
encourage more creative engagement with eco-
social concerns.

41. SUMMARY:
through my research I argue that the guiding:
Guattari ecosophy - action research framework
significantly improves the articulation of long-term
eco-social art practices
best means to develop and maintain transversal
practices and compare effective strategies employed
by others
Potential for such a non-prescriptive framework to
advance understanding of transversal practices for
the emergent art & ecology field.

42. audio-visual ebook and print-on-demand
version, coming soon!
Sharing the guiding theory-method
ecosophy - action research framework:

43. Thank you!
Follow ‘the little wood that
could’ at: