Living Artworks
Working together to create meaningful and mutually respectful
cultural and contemporary artworks
Hussein Watta, Director of ROBA, speaks about the role of the arts and living artworks in 'Trees for Life'
What are Living artworks?
FORM
Living artworks are the arrangement of flora planted in the shape of visual forms or symbols. Living artworks are about increasing biodiversity in local environments while increasing cultural awareness and legacy about flora and fauna. Another key aspect of living artworks is about creating art or living land art patterns that can be seen by satellite. By creating green forms that can be seen from the air or even outer space, these artworks offer opportunities to monitor climate mitigation through changes in flora over time.
COLLABORATORS AND AUTHORS
Living artworks are designed to honor Oromo Indigenous partners and values in Kofele, Ethiopia. This work is led by director, Hussein Watta, of ROBA (Rural Association for the Betterment of Agro-Pastoralists) with assistance by Geleta Aman in Ethiopia and is co-created with climate artists, Sylvia Grace Borda and J.Keith Donnelly. The whole collective team of non and Indigenous members are collaboratively working, authoring and co-creating the world's first earth observation climate artworks. Living artworks is a collective term adopted by Hussein Watta (Ethiopia) and the project artists (Borda+Donnelly/B+D) to express how Nature can be a central part of art creation processes.
LIVING
From a Western and Indigenous perspective living artworks are just that 'living' For Oromo communities tending the plants and enabling their success is paramount to enabling vibrant biospheres.
For the artists unlike land artworks created in the 1970s where art was placed on the land - living artworks integrate Nature, culture and community working together through social engagement to strengthen land care.
The artists realised that the most powerful unit in a land artwork is Nature. It is this perception of Nature as subject rather than as object - Nature becoming its own co-author was critical to the successes and future of this work.
The ancient skills of being aware of Nature and becoming a knowledge holder for the artists is similar to being that of an artist. For both artists and knowledge holders keen observation can help illustrate what is present or absent. Such observation skills are extremely useful in maintaining and living in balance with Nature as well. The artists believe that being connected with communities through social practices, culture and art-making there is an opportunity to build resilience, hope and well-being for now and into the future.
In co-originating the concept of living artworks with Oromo communities, artists, Sylvia Grace Borda and J.Keith Donnelly also wanted to play with Western conventions of art and commodity. Duchamp's readymade in their paradigm sees Nature as a building block for art-making.
Living artworks activates local audiences from the ground up. The artwork is accessible in Google Earth and can be found by anyone with online access to watch and monitor its progress overtime. Living artworks also enable Oromo participants to see their activities and achievements in situ as they flourish and change from a different perspective of space or earth observation. It also acts a model of how learning and sharing can combine traditional knowledge, climate art and science can successfully balance and bring lenses of Indigenous knowledge and that of Western arts and science together.
Resulting living artworks conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics and values with complex ideas. Living artworks have been co-designed to ask viewers online and communities about how art and Indigenous culture can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility to communities and Nature. Recognizing the importance of tradition-bearers to support ecological knowledge, ROBA will continue to design produce projects that pass on these skills to the next generations.
Overall Oromo communities, ROBA, artists, and the wider project team hope to illustrate how the trees and art are alive, physically and spiritually through the lens of the works. They have collectively worked hard to share Nature as a source being part of our humanity for good and healing during the dramatic climate variations we are all facing as the climate crisis continues.
COMMUNITY PROCESSES
Living artworks are activating Oromo communities. Oromo elder and farmer groups. These Oromo community members are sharing and mentoring younger participants with specific ethno-botanical and agro-forestry knowledge. Such intergenerational learning is bolstering the capacity of Oromo communities to manage their own lands based on thousands of years of learning. Oromo community efforts are ensuring that participants are continuing to tree and tend plants based on their own ecological climate traditional knowledge and sciences. Such trees are well adapted to the area making the land more resilient, bio-diverse for current and future generations.
Borda and Donnelly (B+D) understand social impact is created by meaningful artworks created through inter-cultural dialogue, mutual respect and collaboration. B+D realised this project could assist in Oromo communities having a global platform from which to showcase their own lands, cultures, peoples, identities, Nature and , of course, urgent problems today related to climate change. The participants also realised that living artworks can be endlessly refabricated and produced at the cost of materials. The Oromo communities and artists, in other words, did not conceive their project work to turn a profit. They have also been careful not to use art as a way to show what’s already known or can be done. Instead the art acts as a conceptual-community co-authored work visualising and showing global communities and governments how actions can mitigate climate change through small but powerful gestures. Living artworks acts as a new hybrid form of public art that is aiding critically in the facilitation of cultural, social, and economic regeneration of both human and bio-communities.
Bringing multiple visions to the foreground
What is beautiful about living tree artworks is that they have been designed to hold multiple meanings consecutively together in order to respect Indigenous and contemporary art communities and values together.
Throughout the Oromo communities and climate artists have aspired that both types of knowledge - Indigenous and those of art, can be equally experienced and read in the living artworks. The artists wanted to blur the difference where Science and Western ideologies that sees often Nature as an object but instead to honour and position the viewers to understand an Indigenous lens where Nature is a subject. It's through culture, language, and learning where we are taught that something is separate from us or alive.
By active listening, and understanding each others essences of knowledge new vocabularies and languages have been built. Rather than enabling one vocabulary Art, Eurocentric, Western or Indigenous to foreground the endeavour - through grounded group efforts by the team, they have collectively worked together to bring two knowledge systems together through transformative change and thus have enabled two perspectives to be brought into alignment. Of note in Eastern Canada such partnerships between different science and traditional knowledge holding communities is referred to as 'two-eyed seeing,' relating to seeing and bringing two world views together from different learning perspectives.
Living artworks are a starting point of conversation illustrating that when everyone can work together, understand and respect our mutual and different histories that have came before us - we can create a more caring and resilient future.
As climate artist Donnelly stated 'Rather than communicating in a way where no one will listen or see the problems, it is so important to make our collective art actions impactful and beautiful as well as respectful across communities. We need to stimulate our own curiosity, we need to work out problems and to strengthen our communities, and Nature care. We need to support Indigenous communities as better allies and to become stewards of Nature, seeing these as part of all our own wider kinship systems, too.'
Hussein Watta describes in the video (see top) that by respecting Indigenous rights, and by understanding two-eyed seeing we can activate culture and sustainability which can bring us even closer together. Ultimately our actions can awaken us and motivate communities to direct us towards better futures.
Living Artworks speak to local, national and global audiences. These artworks connect ourselves and the natural world around us in new and surprising ways. Living artworks offer
1) ongoing dialogue between disciplines: Indigenous knowledge, Nature, Art, Science, ways of Seeing and contemporary art delivery;
1b) an exploration of the Anthropocene and climate change with an example of how to activate Community and Nature care;
2) a set of artwork principles and processes that can be shared for local and global audiences - an intertwining of relationships between people, hope, respect, Earth, Nature and the Environment;
3) extensions of the concepts of biodiversity and building resilience;
4) communication between land, air, space;
4b) communication between Earth and satellite observation;
4c) a celebration of support and partnership with NASA's Crew Earth Observation at Johnson Center, Houston, Texas
5). an illustration of how social and interactive contexts can use frugal technologies such as Google Earth to monitor land change over time;
6) examination of frugal technologies and cultural rights;
7). sharing and learning platforms about living materials across new spaces;
8) public respect and appreciation for Nature and Indigenous knowledge;
9) expansion of present practical and conceptual boundaries of art-making to incorporate Nature as subject and process
10). new forms of collaborative processes for co-creating land artworks
11) communities guides from which to begin and build their own earth observation climate artworks for humanity
What are Living artworks?
FORM
Living artworks are the arrangement of flora planted in the shape of visual forms or symbols. Living artworks are about increasing biodiversity in local environments while increasing cultural awareness and legacy about flora and fauna. Another key aspect of living artworks is about creating art or living land art patterns that can be seen by satellite. By creating green forms that can be seen from the air or even outer space, these artworks offer opportunities to monitor climate mitigation through changes in flora over time.
COLLABORATORS AND AUTHORS
Living artworks are designed to honor Oromo Indigenous partners and values in Kofele, Ethiopia. This work is led by director, Hussein Watta, of ROBA (Rural Association for the Betterment of Agro-Pastoralists) with assistance by Geleta Aman in Ethiopia and is co-created with climate artists, Sylvia Grace Borda and J.Keith Donnelly. The whole collective team of non and Indigenous members are collaboratively working, authoring and co-creating the world's first earth observation climate artworks. Living artworks is a collective term adopted by Hussein Watta (Ethiopia) and the project artists (Borda+Donnelly/B+D) to express how Nature can be a central part of art creation processes.
LIVING
From a Western and Indigenous perspective living artworks are just that 'living' For Oromo communities tending the plants and enabling their success is paramount to enabling vibrant biospheres.
For the artists unlike land artworks created in the 1970s where art was placed on the land - living artworks integrate Nature, culture and community working together through social engagement to strengthen land care.
The artists realised that the most powerful unit in a land artwork is Nature. It is this perception of Nature as subject rather than as object - Nature becoming its own co-author was critical to the successes and future of this work.
The ancient skills of being aware of Nature and becoming a knowledge holder for the artists is similar to being that of an artist. For both artists and knowledge holders keen observation can help illustrate what is present or absent. Such observation skills are extremely useful in maintaining and living in balance with Nature as well. The artists believe that being connected with communities through social practices, culture and art-making there is an opportunity to build resilience, hope and well-being for now and into the future.
In co-originating the concept of living artworks with Oromo communities, artists, Sylvia Grace Borda and J.Keith Donnelly also wanted to play with Western conventions of art and commodity. Duchamp's readymade in their paradigm sees Nature as a building block for art-making.
Living artworks activates local audiences from the ground up. The artwork is accessible in Google Earth and can be found by anyone with online access to watch and monitor its progress overtime. Living artworks also enable Oromo participants to see their activities and achievements in situ as they flourish and change from a different perspective of space or earth observation. It also acts a model of how learning and sharing can combine traditional knowledge, climate art and science can successfully balance and bring lenses of Indigenous knowledge and that of Western arts and science together.
Resulting living artworks conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics and values with complex ideas. Living artworks have been co-designed to ask viewers online and communities about how art and Indigenous culture can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility to communities and Nature. Recognizing the importance of tradition-bearers to support ecological knowledge, ROBA will continue to design produce projects that pass on these skills to the next generations.
Overall Oromo communities, ROBA, artists, and the wider project team hope to illustrate how the trees and art are alive, physically and spiritually through the lens of the works. They have collectively worked hard to share Nature as a source being part of our humanity for good and healing during the dramatic climate variations we are all facing as the climate crisis continues.
COMMUNITY PROCESSES
Living artworks are activating Oromo communities. Oromo elder and farmer groups. These Oromo community members are sharing and mentoring younger participants with specific ethno-botanical and agro-forestry knowledge. Such intergenerational learning is bolstering the capacity of Oromo communities to manage their own lands based on thousands of years of learning. Oromo community efforts are ensuring that participants are continuing to tree and tend plants based on their own ecological climate traditional knowledge and sciences. Such trees are well adapted to the area making the land more resilient, bio-diverse for current and future generations.
Borda and Donnelly (B+D) understand social impact is created by meaningful artworks created through inter-cultural dialogue, mutual respect and collaboration. B+D realised this project could assist in Oromo communities having a global platform from which to showcase their own lands, cultures, peoples, identities, Nature and , of course, urgent problems today related to climate change. The participants also realised that living artworks can be endlessly refabricated and produced at the cost of materials. The Oromo communities and artists, in other words, did not conceive their project work to turn a profit. They have also been careful not to use art as a way to show what’s already known or can be done. Instead the art acts as a conceptual-community co-authored work visualising and showing global communities and governments how actions can mitigate climate change through small but powerful gestures. Living artworks acts as a new hybrid form of public art that is aiding critically in the facilitation of cultural, social, and economic regeneration of both human and bio-communities.
Bringing multiple visions to the foreground
What is beautiful about living tree artworks is that they have been designed to hold multiple meanings consecutively together in order to respect Indigenous and contemporary art communities and values together.
Throughout the Oromo communities and climate artists have aspired that both types of knowledge - Indigenous and those of art, can be equally experienced and read in the living artworks. The artists wanted to blur the difference where Science and Western ideologies that sees often Nature as an object but instead to honour and position the viewers to understand an Indigenous lens where Nature is a subject. It's through culture, language, and learning where we are taught that something is separate from us or alive.
By active listening, and understanding each others essences of knowledge new vocabularies and languages have been built. Rather than enabling one vocabulary Art, Eurocentric, Western or Indigenous to foreground the endeavour - through grounded group efforts by the team, they have collectively worked together to bring two knowledge systems together through transformative change and thus have enabled two perspectives to be brought into alignment. Of note in Eastern Canada such partnerships between different science and traditional knowledge holding communities is referred to as 'two-eyed seeing,' relating to seeing and bringing two world views together from different learning perspectives.
Living artworks are a starting point of conversation illustrating that when everyone can work together, understand and respect our mutual and different histories that have came before us - we can create a more caring and resilient future.
As climate artist Donnelly stated 'Rather than communicating in a way where no one will listen or see the problems, it is so important to make our collective art actions impactful and beautiful as well as respectful across communities. We need to stimulate our own curiosity, we need to work out problems and to strengthen our communities, and Nature care. We need to support Indigenous communities as better allies and to become stewards of Nature, seeing these as part of all our own wider kinship systems, too.'
Hussein Watta describes in the video (see top) that by respecting Indigenous rights, and by understanding two-eyed seeing we can activate culture and sustainability which can bring us even closer together. Ultimately our actions can awaken us and motivate communities to direct us towards better futures.
Living Artworks speak to local, national and global audiences. These artworks connect ourselves and the natural world around us in new and surprising ways. Living artworks offer
1) ongoing dialogue between disciplines: Indigenous knowledge, Nature, Art, Science, ways of Seeing and contemporary art delivery;
1b) an exploration of the Anthropocene and climate change with an example of how to activate Community and Nature care;
2) a set of artwork principles and processes that can be shared for local and global audiences - an intertwining of relationships between people, hope, respect, Earth, Nature and the Environment;
3) extensions of the concepts of biodiversity and building resilience;
4) communication between land, air, space;
4b) communication between Earth and satellite observation;
4c) a celebration of support and partnership with NASA's Crew Earth Observation at Johnson Center, Houston, Texas
5). an illustration of how social and interactive contexts can use frugal technologies such as Google Earth to monitor land change over time;
6) examination of frugal technologies and cultural rights;
7). sharing and learning platforms about living materials across new spaces;
8) public respect and appreciation for Nature and Indigenous knowledge;
9) expansion of present practical and conceptual boundaries of art-making to incorporate Nature as subject and process
10). new forms of collaborative processes for co-creating land artworks
11) communities guides from which to begin and build their own earth observation climate artworks for humanity
