‘There is a work in the interpretation of the work’

ABSTRACT

This paper provides brief context and a critical overview of the video presented as an integral part of this publication. In one hour the video documents excerpts from over five hours of an interdisciplinary seminar at Summerhall in Edinburgh, Scotland on 1 October 2016. The group assembled to consider a cluster of three post-industrial shale oil bings: as an artwork, as a form with positive and negative aesthetic value, as a living landscape and an ecosystem, and as a national heritage site. We wanted to talk about the bings in the context of mining and waste pile recovery schemes from the point of view of art and its ability to reveal divergent public interests. Furthermore we wanted to consider the bings as a unique living ecological habitat. By embracing an interdisciplinary network approach to the conflicted meanings of one specific post-industrial landscape, we intended to explore positive and negative aesthetics, ethics and moral philosophy to better understand how competing meanings reveal, complement or overshadow historic judgements, current perceptions and future values.

KEYWORDS:

• Environment
• art
• research
• landscape planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Timothy M. Collins is a principal at the Collins & Goto studio. He has worked across art, science and philosophy, developing artwork and research related to nature and post-industrial public space for over twenty years. As a senior research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University he lead work on public interest research and planning on Nine Mile Run and 3 Rivers 2nd Nature in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. More recently he has taken an interest in Caledonian forests, moorland and mine spoil sites in Scotland. Notable publications include: Collins, T. Goto Collins, R. Edwards, D. 2017. ‘A Critical Forest Art Practice’. In Landscape Research Journal (Vol. 43 #2), and Collins, T. 2010. ‘3 Rivers 2nd Nature 2000–2005, Water, Land & Dialogue’, In Carney, L. S., and Pageot, E-A, a special issue on Landscape, Cultural Spaces, Ecology. RACAR, Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review, Vol 35 Issue 3.

Reiko Goto Collins is an environmental artist, author and designer, working in the Collins and Goto Studio. She has a long term interest in nature, habitat and post industrial urban sites. She is currently focused on the development of new work dealing with empathic relationships, sentience and collaboration with an Irish Cob The Darkness aka An Dorchadas a horse native to Britain and Ireland. She is also a participant in the women's group, the Council for Uncertain Human Futures at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. Working with Tim she has recently developed The Caledonian Decoy an installation that explores the time and space of a forest. In 2017 it was exhibited in the Intermedia Gallery at CCA, Glasgow and video elements were presented at Future Stratigraphy at the University of Sydney, Australia in 2017. Plans are underway to exhibit a touring version of Plein Air at Appalachian State University, North Carolina in 2019. Notable publications include: Goto Collins, R. and Collins, T. 2017. ‘Imagination and Empathy – Artists with Trees’ In Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds. Eds. Bastian, M. Jones, O. Roe, E. and Goto Collins, R. Collins, T. 2012. Art and LIVING Things – The ethical, aesthetic impulse. In Brady, E. And Phemister, P. (Eds.) Transformative Values: human environment relations in theory and practice.

Ross Mclean is a lecturer and programme director or the MA (Hons) Landscape Architecture and programme co-leader of the MFA in Art Space & Nature at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. His research interests focus on landscape aesthetics, comparative practices across landscape design and environmental art, and strategic design of post-industrial landscapes. He has recently completed a book, Transformative Ground: A Field Guide to the Post Industrial Landscape, due for publication in Summer 2019 by Routledge. His work was the subject of a documentary short film Plastic Man, produced by artist Yulia Kovanova, which was shortlisted for the Scottish Bafta short documentary film category in 2018.

Notes

1 Craig Richardson, ‘John Latham: Incidental Person’ (2007, pp. 27–31).

2 In conversations with Barbara Steveni the notion of this ‘dismembered’ woman was a point of discussion and some tension between her and John Latham. If we view the work from an ecofeminist perspective the dismembered woman is a symbol that refers to woman but also the fertility goddess sculptures of early European cultures. The significant dismemberment of this fertility symbol relates to the resource extraction of the shale oil mining process. This narrative is further developed by reports that Latham's ashes were scattered on the heart, or the Niddry bing where mining operations have now further scattered his ashes all over Scotland. Perhaps completing the cycle of life, death and rejuvenation in a way that is unique, rigorous and significant in ways that few artists have matched.

3 For more information about the Nine Mile Run Greenway Project see http://collinsandgoto.com. There are links to the original website and its research and outputs under projects and various journal articles and book chapters under publications.

4 Professor Wemelsfelder develops scientific approaches for the study of animals as whole sentient beings (i.e. as subjects rather than objects), bringing insights from philosophy of mind and social psychology and anthropology into the study of animal emotion.