Third Text

Introduction »

Introduction

TJ Demos

The six essays included in this online supplement advance further the thematic engagement of Third Text 120, a special issue dedicated to contemporary art and the politics of ecology. The issue investigates the intersection of art criticism, politico-ecological theory, environmental activism and postcolonial globalization. The focus is on practices and discourses of eco-aesthetics that have emerged in recent years in geopolitical areas as diverse as the Arctic, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Europe and Mexico.

Mutations and Misunderstandings »

Sven Lütticken

Critiquing a narrow conception of bio art, this article explores the notions of nature, of ecology and of systems in order to explore possibilities for an art history that employs an extended notion of bio-aesthetic practice. Such practices include various science fictions and oneiric scenarios that are not limited by current technological, economical or social constraints, and which may help bring the complexities and contradictions of our unnatural ecologies into focus.

Detroit’s Edible Gardens »

Terri Weissman

In her essay ‘Detroit’s Edible Gardens: Art and Agriculture in a Post-Environmental World’, Terri Weissman argues that Detroit’s grassroots urban farming movement not only provides food for Detroit city residents living in food deserts, but also challenges the business-oriented strategies typically employed by American cities when faced with social and economic crisis. Before celebrating this movement’s successes, however, Weissman warns that private investment now threatens to transform the civil spaces created by guerrilla farms into the corporate space of agribusiness.

Countervisuality and the Common »

Nicholas Mizroeff

This piece assesses the place of the common, climate change and climate debt in the global social movements of 2011 and after. It asks whether it is possible to visualize climate change and the alternatives to it. Taking the contrasting examples of the Diggers and Hobbes’s Leviathan, the author shows that the common preceded the hierarchical assertion of visualized authority over land. The assertion that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than that of capitalism was, then, part of capital’s self-constitution. Another world is and has been possible.

The Sea in the City »

Emilce Heredia Chaz

Recently the seaside city of Bahía Blanca, located in the south-west of the Province of Buenos Aires in Argentina, witnessed an invasion of seagulls, crabs, flamingos and fish. A whole new aesthetic of marine fauna has burst onto the city, generated by the struggle of the socio-environmental movement that has emerged from the ecological problems faced by the city. This essay seeks to explore the artistic interventions of the movement and place them in relation to a multitude of struggles in defence of life and against the plunder and pollution of common resources that has spread throughout Latin America.

Land Rush: Ethiopia »

Uwe H Martin and Frauke Huber

Land Rush is a visual investigation into the changing landscapes of Gambella in Western Ethiopia. Huge areas of virgin land, formerly allocated to the Gambella National Park, have been transformed into plantations for sugar cane and palm oil by foreign-owned agribusiness ventures. This online piece forms part of the collaborative contribution ‘From Supply Lines to Resource Ecologies’ to the print edition of this special issue of Third Text, ‘Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology’.

Artists’ Platforms for New Ecologies »

Emily Eliza Scott

A host of recent artworks and exhibitions have confronted real-world ecological issues while at the same time seeking to advance ecological discourse itself. Such endeavours often emphasize the social, political and economic dimensions of seemingly ‘scientific’ matters, thereby calling for more critical forms of environmental thinking and action. This essay focuses on artist-generated research platforms, wherein self-organized groups probe complex, cross-disciplinary ecological subjects through the development of structures for sustained investigation, exchange and production – not only addressing (political) ecological matters, but also forging ‘ecological’ modes of art making.