Friday, July 10, 2009

Paradise: Here and Now (and To Come)


Steinbrener/Dempf
"Trouble in Paradise"

Alan Weisman's The World Without Us is an imaginative and engaging consideration of what a "post-human" Earth might look like. The popular success of Weisman's book suggests that a great many readers are willing to entertain an End Times quite unlike that forecast by eschatological messianism.

Still, in the United States, a significant percentage of the populace (maybe even a slim majority!) insist that dinosaurs coexisted with early man and that Judgment Day will involve supernatural intervention. For the rest of us, however, Weisman's predictions are more tenable than messianic adjudication and, because we're living through what scientists now dub the Sixth Great Extinction, his vision of mass extinction is also more pertinent.


Steinbrener/Dempf
"Trouble in Paradise"

I thought of The World Without Us when viewing photographic documentation of Steinbrener/Dempf's intervention at Vienna's Schonbrunn Zoo, an institution celebrated as "the oldest zoo in the world." Not all of the installation images impress me, but a few are coolly beautiful. The best of them serve as both a celebration of life's ambivalent persistence and a critique of our romantic notions of wilderness.


Steinbrener/Dempf
"Trouble in Paradise"

Note: Thanks to RSA Arts & Ecology blog for the heads up

5 comments:

Cecil said...

I found The World Without Us over the summer of 2007. It's probably my favorite nonfiction book. I passed it on to one of my closest painter friends - it's one of hers now too.

Steinbrener/Dempf's works here do remind me of it, but I was always most fascinated by ideas related to those that appear in the last chapter - what from our human world lasts into geologic time (found a great book on this recently by a geologist, Jan Zalasiewicz).

And finally, since you mentioned constructed notions of wilderness in the post, I think it's appropriate to pass on this link I found to you. I wonder what your read on it is?

Hungry Hyaena said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hungry Hyaena said...

Cecil:
So far, I've only just skim read the pages of The Dark Mountain Project. I'm certainly intrigued; thanks for turning me on to their site/project.

I tend to appreciate positive reactions to the dire prospects of our immediate future. That is to say, I wouldn't deem them necessarily dire! Embracing eudaimonia, as I do, I try to find the silver lining, and I respond best when other thinkers do, too. Cliches abound when you take that path, but I'm not such a harsh critic of cliche any more. ;)

All this background on my leanings to explain why I react against the more pessimistic elements of the Dark Mountain Project, most especially the early blog rants about Ian McEwan and the doomsayer overtone. Not that all of us don't have our prejudices, of course, but it is more productive to speak to what we do believe, support, and desire.

Still, I get the feeling that the DMP cofounders are coming 'round to positive action. I will return to it, give it more time.

On a tangentially related note, I think that "Cambrian Deluge" rocks!

Thanks for reading.

Cecil said...

I agree with you that their emphasis on THE COMING APOCALYPSE seems harsh and pessimistic. Not to mention that for some reason I get a slightly Luddite vibe from them. But one part of their philosophy I do like (since it's also a major part of the way I look at the world) is getting rid of the notions of humans as removed from nature, either by fate/evolution or by our own actions. I quite like (and identify with, appreciate) the way they place trust in art and storytelling (well, storytelling more than visual art) to help change that narrative - or to write new myths (I'm a Joseph Campbell fan). I'll be interested to see what kind of content shows up on their site, once there actually is some worthy content.

And thanks for the compliment! (exactly what I need - motivation)

Peter Cowling said...

Love the first and second of these images, but the third does not chime... Not sure why, really... Anyhow thanks.