This post is based on notes I made for a lecture about the pros and cons of pursuing an independent interdisciplinary research practice, mostly within an art context. Eventually the lecture didn’t happen because of lack of funds to pay for travel and accommodation. Instead it evolved into this disclosure of the financial difficulties that are part of my practice.

Some benefits with independent interdisciplinary research practice is that it:

– Can be rewarding not to be limited by conventions and hierarchies
– Can take advantage of multiple modes of research and dissemination
– May potentially reach results that were not possible otherwise

Some drawbacks is that there is:

– No salary
– Limited structures for peer support and reviewing
– Limited or no free access to work spaces, equipment, journals and fruit baskets

When I talk to people about what I do they often wonder how it works out financially. It doesn’t, and that part often tends to overshadow the rest. For anyone who is interested here is a more detailed account of just how bad it is. Hopefully knowing how the economy works out for me can be useful for others who are considering or have already set out to pursue similar practices as mine.

A typical “production” for me might involve one or pretty much all of; producing an installation for an exhibition space, shooting and editing a short documentary film, cultivating plants for cooking, facilitating a seminar, discussion or study circle, having a lecture or presentation of some sort, arranging a workshop, and writing, designing and publishing a printed publication. The amount of work directly involved can easily corresponds to weeks or months of full time work. Sometimes material that goes into the production has been brought together over many years.

A budget for a typical production is 5 – 25 000 SEK (about 500 to 2 500 EUR), sometimes it’s zero. This is supposed to cover all material costs, printing costs for publications and travel costs etc. Even with a pretty large budget there might be as little as a couple of thousand SEK left after all directly related expenses are paid. If my “business” as a whole would be making a profit then I would also have to pay taxes and social benefits and ideally also pension and unemployment insurance. This I would by the way gladly do if I was making enough money to live off.

As it is now making a decent living on for example an exhibition production is pretty far away. To put something of decent quality together usually implies spending all of the budget and in addition to this find various unconventional money-saving solutions. To make exhibitions and other commitments work out I have for example had to resort to tenting in public parks, sleeping in boiler rooms, and bringing aquariums as carry on luggage on trains. When possible I try to rent out my one room flat.

Sometimes I have myself to blame for negotiating poorly or for being more ambitious than the available budget, and sometimes doing things like tenting can be fun adventures. Other times it’s just been inconsiderate from the host and meant a lot of hassle and crappy sleep. One could of course also argue that my work isn’t good or necessary enough to warrant more support.

Although I knew I was getting into trouble when I began to develop my own art and research practice five years ago, I didn’t realise that it was going to be as bad financially as it has been. I am particularly surprised by how art institutions don’t appear to understand (or care about) the financial realities of the people they work with and whom their practice depends on.

In art contexts request for minimum pay are often just ignored. At times I have thought that maybe I should suggest to double as sound technician while giving a presentation, or as an exhibition technician while installing my exhibition, because the technicians usually do get paid. There is an idea that all that artists want is exposure, or that they have some sort of self-sacrificing calling, so if you are labelled as an artist it often means lousy pay independent of what it actually is that you do.

Exposure might be good advertising if you produce something that can be commodified and sold. But I don’t do this. The only thing that I have produced so far which is sellable is books. I have paid the publishing costs of these myself and given copies away for free to people who have helped me out or are somehow involved in them. I have also distributed copies to art book stores and art spaces. They generally take them in on commission and don’t return them if they don’t sell, which they don’t. I don’t expect them to either, they are not mainstream books and I make them freely available on the internet for people who need the information in them. Libraries pay for them though, but they usually only buy one copy.

In addition to art institutions I collaborate with nonprofit organisations and with academic institutions. Nonprofit organisations never have any money to share, and with academic institutions it seems like you have to be happy if they want to help you out with your work or support a grant application. So no money comes from there.

Occasionally my work has been quite well funded. Artist run organisations usually pay better (when they can), because they understand how difficult it is to not get paid. I have also been fortunate to receive a couple of larger work and study grants. Unfortunately, if you look at the totality of my economy then the few times that I have gotten decently paid is not enough to compensate for the times that I haven’t been.

Over the past five years my disposable income has fluctuated between zero and slightly above what by OECD standards is considered poverty in Sweden. OECD defines poverty as 50% of the countries median disposable income. In Sweden 50% of the median disposable income amounts to around 10 000 SEK (1 000 Euro) per month, after taxes (the statistics my quick search on this turned up is not the most up to date, but it’s somewhere around this figure).

At times I have been completely broke without qualifying for unemployment benefits or other financial assistance. This despite at the same time I have juggled up to four different employments simultaneously, in addition to being committed to producing exhibitions etc. Last year the majority of my income came from moving furniture at a fair, to a salary below minimum union regulated wage and quite crappy working conditions. Unfortunately it’s often these kind of low paid jobs that remain when you need money fast and can’t commit to full time jobs.

Occasionally I work as a visiting tutor at an art and design university. I really appreciate the job and would like to do more of it. But right now it doesn’t add up to much money. Although the hourly salary is ok, preparation time is usually not included and it it often means working for just one hour a day, or working split shifts with one hour of teaching in the morning and three hours of teaching in the afternoon.

If you consider my financial situations from an artists perspective you might wonder what I am complaining about. Artist in general don’t earn much, and despite my relatively low combined income I guess I have received more grants than most artists that have been at it for five years. However, knowing that many others are in similarly precarious situations doesn’t really help, and I don’t necessarily identify myself as an artist.

If what I do is considered as research, design, or engineering, which I am also educated in and have worked professionally with previously, then the amount of money that I have been earning the past few years is a joke.

That said, I’m not striving for a well paid engineer’s wage. A regular income not too far from the previously mentioned OECD poverty limit would be a satisfying financial security for me. I could live pretty well on this, and it would still mean that I am among the wealthiest people globally.

It is not a lack of material standard that is the problem for me with what I earn now. I can find most stuff cheaply and I already have all I really need. The problem is when it becomes difficult to figure out how to make ends meet with regards to paying for more or less unavoidable costs like accommodation, electricity, phone, food, public transport and medical care.

It’s common sense, but there’s also increasing research showing the negative effect that financial trouble has on physical and mental wellbeing. I can vouch for this from personal experience. I am not at all comfortable with the financial lows that I have been through over the past few years. When I am under severe financial stress, without knowing how I will be making ends meet in the near future, I find it difficult to stay calm and content. It seems reasonably descriptive to me that under such conditions cycles of fight and flight responses are activated. But with an invisible enemy it’s difficult to do either. Often the only available way out appear to be to verbalise the frustration or to withdraw. However, withdrawing can be complicated and it doesn’t solve any problems in the long run. Unfortunately verbalising doesn’t help much either, it often happens in the wrong circumstances, which just causes more trouble.

After five years under more or less financially precarious conditions it is clear to me that my current practice is economically unsustainable and that the odds of achieving a better economy in the future are slim. Because of this I am often debating if, as soon as I have wrapped up the projects I have started, I should not be pursuing more of the kind of work that I have been doing the past five years.

In any case I am already trying to do my best to do less for free, even if that means that I will produce less or with lower quality. Not working for free, especially for institutions and organisations where others earn money, is also, I believe, necessary in order to not devalue other peoples labour and force more people into precarious situations. Hopefully disclosing how my economy works out can be useful for others who are considering or have already set out to pursue similar practices as mine.

– Erik Sjödin

[Revisiting ARARAT, Ulrika Jansson and Jan Öqvist 2015. Photos: Erik Sjödin]

In Search for ARARAT is a research project by artist Ulrika Jansson, starting out from the exhibition ARARAT – Alternative Research in Architecture, Resources, Art and Technology at Moderna Museet in Stockholm 1976.

ARARAT was an ambitious interdisciplinary project showing existing alternatives of how to build an ecologically sound society taking its energy from renewable resources. In workshops and other meetings during the course Architectural Theory and History at Mejan Arc / Royal institute of Art in Stockholm Ulrika Jansson brings together some of the original members of ARARAT with a number of people involved in architecture, art and sustainability issues today. Together the participants try to create a picture of what ARARAT was, what we can learn from the project today and how we can develop collaborations between different disciplines relevant to the challenges we face in the contemporary state of societies and culture.

At 26th of May Ulrika Jansson invited the original member of ARARAT Jan Öqvist to hold a guided walk at Skeppsholmen where ARARAT used to be situated and to show a slideshow with original images of ARARAT. Afterwards the group of invited guests participated in a workshop where we discussed two questions: What ways of working with ARARAT in 1976 do you find most interesting? And how do the challenges we face today differ from 1976 and in what ways do we need to approach them now?

Som en del av kursen “Litet bygge” inom programmet för Inredningsarkitektur & Möbeldesign vid Konstfack 2014 och 2015 fick studenter i uppgift att bygga bostäder för solitärbin. Vid båda tillfällena fick kursdeltagarna arbeta utifrån ett faktamaterial framtaget för projektet Våra vänner pollinatörerna.

Vid det första kurstillfället arbetade studenterna fritt från materialet, vilket resulterade i ett flertal intressanta konstruktioner med stor estetisk variation. Vid närmare granskning och utvärdering i Vintervikens trädgård visade det sig dock att de flesta konstruktionerna i praktiken inte fungerade som bostäder pga att de antingen inte höll för väder och vind eller attraherade bin.

Vid det andra kurstillfället fick studenterna samma faktamaterial men även information om att en felaktig konstruktion kan bli en “dödsfälla” för bin. Detta resulterade i konstruktioner med mindre variation i färg, form och material men med större potential att i praktiken fungera tillfredställande som bostäder för solitärbin.

[Three-stone fire. By Erik Sjödin at Flatbread Society / Slow Space Bjørvika in Oslo 2014. Photo: Erik Sjödin]

A three-stone fire is one of the simplest arrangements for cooking food over fire. Unfortunately three-stone fires are very inefficient cooking solutions. As little as 5-10 percent of the heat a three-stone fire produces is transferred to the cooking pot.

It is estimated that around three billion people worldwide still cook over open fire, such as three-stone fires, or using rudimentary biomass burning cookstoves. These kinds of cooking solutions are major contributors to global warming, pollution, and deforestation, and every year millions of people die prematurely and fall sick from having breathed in smoke while cooking. Inefficient cookstoves are also a source of inequality since it is mainly women who cook and gather fuel, at the expense of studying or pursuing income generating work.

[Rocket Stoves in Haiti 2010. Photo: Global Giving]

The photo above shows women in Haiti learning to use rocket stoves delivered as aid after the devastating earthquake in Haiti 2010. Rocket stoves use a vertical chimney as a high-temperature combustion chamber to achieve almost complete combustion before the flames reach the cooking surface. Because of this rocket stoves can reach thermal efficiencies up to 40% percent, which is four to eight times better than an open fire and more than three times better than electric stoves. Rocket stoves can be made quite easily and cheaply from used materials such as metal pipes and empty barrels or gas containers, or mass produced using industrial processes. Because they are so much more efficient they solve a lot of problem associated with open fires or ineffective biomass burning stoves.

Rocket stoves are one of the most famous examples of “Appropriate Technology”, a term that came to be quite well known in the 1970’s and 1980’s but is less well known today. However, many of the ideas that define appropriate technology are now key concepts within open source technology, do-it-yourself technology and sustainable technology. Social design is term which is becoming more common that also encapsulates many of the ideals of appropriate technology.

Appropriate technology can be described as technology intended to increase the standard of living in the poorer and less industrialised, parts of the world without causing injustice or environmental damage. Usually appropriate technology aim to solve problems related to the very basic necessities of life, such as access to clean water and food, basic sanitation, and problems associated with unemployment and urbanisation.

Obviously no one would argue that rocket stoves are mainstream cooking solutions in the wealthier, industrialised parts of the world. However the philosophy of appropriate technology is also valid there. Looking at appropriate technology solutions for poorer countries also helps to put living in the wealthier parts of the world in perspective.

The idea of appropriate technology can be traced back to 1955 when the British economist E.F Schumacher came up with the concept “Intermediate Technology” after visiting Burma (Myanmar), which at the time was an unindustrialised country.

Schumacher defined intermediate technology as technology that, in terms of capital intensity, labour intensity, and scale, is somewhere in-between technology in the western industrialised world and technology in so called developing countries. He argued that intermediate technology is what developing countries need, rather than the same technology as in the west.

In 1973 Schumacher published “Small is Beautiful” in which he argued against Keynesian economics and the idea of growth based on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. To get on he argued that we need an “economics of permanence”. This, he further argued, implies a reorientation of science and technology so that scientists, engineers and designers, produce methods and equipment which are:

– cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone
– suitable for small scale application
– compatible with man’s need for creativity

In “Small is Beautiful” Schumacher further discusses various, in his opinion, desirable properties of technology under headings such as “Technology with a Human Face” and “Appropriate Technology”.

In the chapter “Technology with a Human Face” he argues that it would be better if people were more directly involved in production, instead of “doing jobs that are not directly productive, or just killing time more or less humanely”. Schumacher estimated that in 1973 productive time in society was about 3.5% of total time, the rest was unproductive work.

Schumacher argued that the drift of modern technological development is to reduce production time towards zero, but he entertained an idea, which he admitted could be perceived as utopian, of what life could be if productive time instead of being decreased was increased six-fold, to 20% of the time.

If this would be done Schumacher argued that; “There would be six times as much time for any piece of work we chose to undertake – enough to make a really good job of it, to enjoy oneself, to produce real quality, even to make things beautiful. … Everybody would be welcome to lend a hand. Everybody would be admitted to what is now the rarest privilege, the opportunity of working usefully, creatively, with his own hands and brains, in his own time, at his own pace … People who work in this way do not know the difference between work and leisure. Unless they sleep or eat or occasionally choose to do nothing at all, they are always agreeably, productively engaged.”

[Some utopian characteristics of soft technology. Click for full list. Text: Robin Clarke]

In the 1970’s “intermediate technology”, “technology with a human face” and other labels for alternatives to industrial technology were brought together under the umbrella of “appropriate technology”.

Some of these labels were:

Soft technology
Democratic technology
People’s technology
Alternate technology
Adaptive technology
Capital-saving technology
Labor-intensive technology
Self-help technology
Village-level technology
Community technology
Progressive technology
Indigenous technology
Light-engineering technology
Light-capital technology

In 1983 OECD – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which includes most of the wealthy countries in the world, defined appropriate technology as technology with “low investment cost per work-place, low capital investment per unit of output, organizational simplicity, high adaptability to a particular social or cultural environment, sparing use of natural resources, low cost of final product or high potential for employment.”

As I mentioned earlier appropriate technology is usually focused on solving problems in developing countries and in areas where there is extreme poverty, which often mean rural farming areas or urban slums. In these contexts appropriate technology often focuses on solving problems related to the very basic necessities of life, such as; access to clean water and healthy food; food production, food storage and cooking; as well as basic sanitation such as toilet facilities and waste management.

Three inventions and designs that are examples of appropriate technology are “The Hippo Water Roller”, “The Universal Nut Sheller” and “The Peepoo Bag”.

[The Hippo Water Roller. Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran / UNAMID]

The hippo water roller is a device for carrying water more easily and efficiently than traditional methods, such as carrying water in buckets on the head. It consists of a barrel-shaped container which holds the water and can be rolled along the ground using a handle attached to the axis of the barrel.

It is claimed that using the hippo water roller approximately five times the amount of water can be transported in less time and with less effort than carrying water on the head. The roller can also be used to distribute other things than water, such as for example food and medical supplies, and it can be airdropped into disaster areas.

[The Universal Nut Sheller. Photo: Unknown]

The Universal Nut Sheller is a device for shelling nuts. Every year, in Africa alone, women spend about 4 billion hours shelling peanuts by hand. For many of the poorest families, peanuts are the only protein they can afford and the crop they take to the market. But there is little or no value in the shell. When shelling peanuts by hand 1 kilo an hour is a normal shelling rate. The Universal Nut Sheller does peanuts 50 times faster, at the rate of 50 kg/hr.

The Universal Nut Sheller has been designed as a kit that is easy to assemble, and once one has been assembled local builders and welders can replicate the device and make more of them.

[The Peepoo Bag. Photo: Ashley Wheaton, Sustainable Sanitation Alliance]

The Peepoo bag is a compostable bag which is put in a bucket an used as a toilet. After it has been used it is taken away and composted and eventually used as fertiliser for growing food crops.

Globally more than 2,5 billion people have no access to basic sanitation. 40% of the world’s population lack access to even the simplest latrine. Human faeces contain viruses, bacteria, worms and parasites which kill and infect people with serious diseases. In densely populated areas such as slums and refugee camps lack of sanitation can cause epidemics to brake out.

The peepoo bag is a relatively new product but it has for example been used in refugee camps in Syria and it seems to be working well.

[The PlayPump. Photo: Unknown]

The PlayPump is an example of an appropriate technology invention that has received a lot of critique. Just like any new technology, appropriate technology inventions often fail, and some things catch on and get a lot of traction for the wrong reasons. Often because the marketing is better than the actual product. The PlayPump is an example of this.

The PlayPump is a roundabout which pumps water. The idea is that kids play with it and when they play water is being pumped up. The PlayPump looks both fun and useful, and it got a lot of attention when it was launched and quickly received support from celebrities and philanthropists.

However after some time it was discovered that the PlayPump often didn’t work well because kids don’t necessarily play when water is needed, and as a water pump designed for adults it’s not the most practical solution. Of course, if kids are forced to play on the PlayPump to pump water it’s more child labour than play.

It also seems like the advertisers greatly exaggerated the efficiency of the pump. The Guardian calculated in 2009 that children would have to “play” for 27 hours every day to meet PlayPumps’ stated targets of providing 2,500 people per pump with their daily water needs. However it does seem like the PlayPump can work well in some locations and circumstances, such as on school playgrounds.

Many other inventions fail because they are technically flawed or because they are not designed with an understanding for the contexts they are to be used within and the people they will be used by.

In his classic book “Design for The Real World”, first published in 1971, Victor Papanek lists more or less good ways of working with design and technology for the needs of underdeveloped and emergent countries.

“The simplest, most often employed, and probably shabbiest, is for the designer to sit in his New York, London or Stockholm office and design things to be mad in say, Tanzania [for consumption in the West]. … Should the economy of the wealthy Western country fail, the emergent country’s new economic independence fails with it.”

Ideally, Papanek says, the designer should spend time in the country and develop designs really suited to the needs of people there. The designer would also train designers to train designers. This way there would eventually be designers that are “firmly committed to their own cultural heritage, their own life-styles, and their own needs.”

Although appropriate technology usually is used in the sense of technology intended for developing countries and the concept is rooted in the 1970’s, the philosophy of appropriate technology is equally valid in industrialised and developed countries today.

I hope the term appropriate technology receives a revival and is used more often also in relation to design and technology developed for the wealthier parts of the world. Both because of the design principles and thinking it has come to encapsulate, but also because the word “appropriate technology” in itself forces us to consider the seldom straight forward question of what is appropriate.

In the 1950’s the famous British / American physicist Freeman Dyson was part of a group that intended to build nuclear explosion propelled space ships to take people to Jupiter and beyond. Today most people would consider nuclear explosion driven space ships that would contaminate the earth with radioactive fallout to be pretty far from appropriate technology. Given what we now know about radiation Freeman Dyson himself admits that nuclear propelled space ships would be a bad idea. However, if one day an approaching meteor threatens to extinct life on Earth the idea might seem very appropriate.

The two wheeled pedal powered bicycle is my favourite appropriate technology and I want to end with some rather hopeful thoughts from Freeman Dyson, on bicycles, technology and failure:

“You can’t possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It’s a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we’ve been building them for 100 years, it’s very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works – it’s even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.”

[This post was originally written for a lecture as visiting tutor at the Interior Architecture and Design Programme at Konstfack – University College of Art, Craft and Design in Stockholm]

[This is a slightly edited english translation of part two of a two part essay commissioned by Art Lab Gnesta / Green Lab in 2013. The essay’s full title is: “Sustainable Culture – Engaging with Environmental and Sustainability Issues as Arts and Culture Workers”. This part focuses on individual artists, part one focuses on institutions and organisations.]

[Hunger, by Tue Greenfort. Photo: Courtesy of Tue Greenfort and SKOR, Foundation for Art and Public Space]

The list of individual artists and artist groups working with environmental and sustainability issues can be made long. A couple of examples of well known, well established, and currently active artists are; Amy Balkin, Futurefarmers, Peter Fend, Tue Green Fort, Fritz Haeg, Natalie Jeremijenko, Marjetica Potrč, and Superflex.

Many of these artists reveal environmental and sustainability problems through their art practices. For example Amy Balkin’s Public Smog project brings attention to pollution and the complexities of emissions markets and Tue Greenfort’s work Hunger (2009) brings attention to how overproduction of grain in Europe leads to dumping of prices on the global grain market, which in turn leads to reduced incomes and starvation in poorer parts of the world. Other artists sketch on more or less utopian solutions to environmental problems. Peter Fend has for example proposed alternative scenarios for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China and the restoration of dried up waterways in the Middle East and North Africa. Still others implement projects that not only draw attention to problems or suggest solutions, but also in themselves attempt to be the change the artists want to see. Futurefarmers has developed infrastructure for cyclists in San Francisco, Fritz Haeg has dug up lawns in residential areas in North America and Europe and turned them into productive food gardens, Superflex have developed biogas systems for poor farmers in Africa, and Marjetica Potrč has constructed community gardens. Among the artists mentioned here Natalie Jeremijenko is closest to the environment modernists. She has developed projects that encourage experimentation with biotechnology as a hobby and developed technology to visualise environmental problems and promote interaction between humans and other animals. For instance, she has placed buoys in the East River and the Bronx River in New York which are equipped with sensors that measure water quality and detect when fish swim by. LEDs on the buoys light up when fish swim near them and by sending text messages to the buoys viewers on the riverside can get information about the water quality in the river.

[Edible Estates #14 in Århus, Denmark. Photo: Courtesy of Fritz Haeg and Marie Markman]

By changing organisations and systems that we operate within we change conditions for both ourselves and for others. Introducing a system for recycling trash or a policy to purchase organic and locally produced food in an institution or organisation has a greater impact than the corresponding changes at the individual level. Therefore, it is usually most effective to work at an organisational level. But this is obviously no argument against arts and culture workers reviewing their own practice with respect to the environment and to sustainability. Arts and culture workers often have good opportunities to improve their practices from an environmental and sustainability perspective, even if they are not working with environmental issues and sustainability thematically as the above-mentioned artists.

Many arts and culture workers live nomadic lives and maintain extensive logistics operations. Exhibitions, grants, and artist-in-residence programmes that create economic opportunities for arts and culture workers often require long distance trips and transportation–often by air, which is among the least environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Alternatives to long distance trips and transports can be to find opportunities to work locally, although it might mean collaboration with lesser known and less wealthy institutions. Travel and transportation is also often less necessary today, when it is possible to communicate globally through a variety of channels. In cases where travel and transportation is irreplaceable one can try to choose bikes and trains instead of cars and airplanes, and instead of transporting large and heavy work over long distances, produce works using materials sourced where the works will be shown.

Arts and culture productions often consume large amounts of energy, technology and materials. In many cases directly hazardous materials such as plastics and electronics. It is also common for artists to have workshops and studios with tools and equipment that are unused most of the time, from pottery kilns and looms to circular saws and soldering irons. Artists consumption is often limited by their poor economy, but their poor economy can also prevent artists from choosing materials and equipment that are more expensive but better for the environment. Material selection is a large subject and it is difficult to generalise because a material’s entire life cycle must be taken into account. However, a good principle can be to primarily reuse old material, as a second option use new materials made from recycled materials, and thirdly use materials that can be recycled or are biodegradable. A great alternative to having an own studio is to be part of communities where workshops and other resources can be shared. Services that facilitate lending and rental of tools and recycling of materials is an area that could be developed considerably, but while waiting for new services to emerge there are still many opportunities to borrow and recycle instead of throwing away and buying new things.

To conclude, “environmental” and “sustainability” are concepts charged with ideas of antagonism and cooperation between humans and nature, of individual and collective responsibility, of humans as producers and consumers, and of imminent downfall and the possibility of finding permanent solutions. What stories about the past, the present, and the future, that we consciously or unconsciously subscribe to affect what we consume and produce. To improve energy efficiency, recycle, produce and consume environmentally friendly products, and consume less is obviously not everything, but they are safe bets that seldom conflict with other commitments towards a better environment and towards sustainability.

[This is a slightly edited english translation of part one of a two part essay commissioned by Art Lab Gnesta / Green Lab in 2013. The essay’s full title is: “Sustainable Culture – Engaging with Environmental and Sustainability Issues as Arts and Culture Workers”. This part focuses on institutions and organisations, part one focuses on individual artists.]

As producers and distributors of culture-that is socially transmitted patterns of living-arts and culture workers have many opportunities to contribute to a better environment and a sustainable development. In this essay I will briefly account for how a number of arts organisations and artists work with environmental and sustainability issues. I will also give examples of how arts and culture workers can improve their practices with regard to the environment and to sustainability.

Four examples of arts organisations working with environmental and sustainability issues are Wanås Art in Wanås in Skåne in Sweden, Grizedale Arts in the Lake District in England, Kultivator in Dyestad on Öland in Sweden, and Campo Adentro in Spain.

Wanås Konst is an exhibition space and sculpture garden at Wanås in the countryside in Skåne. In conjunction with the exhibition “Footprints” in 2009 Wanås Konst became members of “Svanen klubben”, an environmental certification provided for Swedish cultural institutions. For the organisation, this entailed switching from conventional to green electricity, investments in cleaner vehicles and transition to producing eco-labeled printed matter. During the Footprints exhibition Wanås Konst also encouraged visitors to use public transport by lowering the entrance fee for those who traveled to Wanås by train and bus, and as an art work in the exhibition Henrik Håkansson fenced in a 2500 square meter area in the sculpture park. The area now constitutes a nature reserve that for the foreseeable future can develop without human involvement. Since previously there is an ecological and CO2-certified farm adjacent to Wanås Konst that supply local food to the café at Wanås.

[Foraging for Mushrooms with Grizedale Arts, 2011. Photo: Erik Sjödin]

Grizedale Arts–located just outside the tourist resort Coniston in the spectacular Lake District in England–strives to operate in a local context and from there address global cultural changes. Grizedale Arts can jokingly, but also seriously, be described as a reformatory for dysfunctional contemporary artists. For example they offer a reorientation award intended to encourage artists to move from traditional contemporary art towards “something more useful”. Local food and crafts are central to Grizedale Arts and visiting artists are expected to engage in collective cooking and in managing Grizedale Arts’ livestock and cultivations. Working for a better environment and sustainable development by strengthening local communities is a major part of Grizedale Arts’ activities. The premise being that artists can play important roles in this work, but that their efforts are not always directed to where they are most needed.

Kultivator is an art and agriculture collective who on their farm on Öland provides a venue which “points out the parallels between provision production
and art practice”. Kultivator conducts ecologically certified milk production and are very familiar with the difficulties of making ends meet both in a small-scale organic farming and in artistic activities. Through activism and do-it-yourself strategies Kultivator calls for resistance against exploitation of common resources and technology driven by commercial interests (e.g, patenting of crops, land grabbing, genetically modified organisms and large-scale industrial agriculture).

[Interspecies workshop with Campo Adentro, 2013. Photo: Courtesy of Campo Adentro]

Campo Adentro, finally, is a project that aims to support culture in the Spanish countryside. Through a residence programs, exhibitions and conferences Campo Adentro create conditions for artists, farmers, academics and others to meet. Campo Adentro works from an agro-ecological perspective, where agriculture is the starting point for the development of ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable communities. In contrast to much traditional nature management, the individual is from an agro-ecological perspective not in conflict with nature. “Nature? There was never any of that back in my day.” is a quote from a Spanish shepherd which exemplifies Campo Adentro’s approach. Campo Adentro is keen to highlight the cultural and biological diversity that is lost when people leave rural areas and when small farms are replaced with industrial agriculture and large monocultures. In Spain the most biodiverse areas are low-intensity used meadows, pastures and grazed woodlands.

Together Wanås Konst, Grizedale Arts, Kultivator and Campo Adentro represent several common contemporary ideas about a sustainable future: A life closer to nature, an increased focus on organic local food and local crafts, as well as resistance to increased industrialisation and large corporations. A contrasting perspective is provided by those who British science writer and environmental journalist Fred Pierce calls “environmental modernists”. Environmental modernists are aware of the environmental problems that industrialisation has brought with it; mass extinction of species, dwindling resources and climate change that threatens to change our habitats faster than we can adapt. However, unlike many other environmentalists, environmental modernists believe that the solution to the problems are new technology, and often controversial technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and nuclear power. Environmental modernists also see no problem in people moving from the countryside into cities. On the contrary, they believe that urbanisation, despite growing populations, open up for large areas outside of cities to be re-wilded and protected as nature reserves. The environmental modernists perspective is present within the arts and cultural world especially in the sector where art, technology, and science come together, such as at Ars Electronica in Linz in Austria and the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland.

[Dokumentation från Våra vänner pollinatörerna, Stadsmuseet 2014.]

Tensta konsthall ordnar dagkonstkollon under skolloven för barn och unga mellan 10 och 19 år. Till och med den 11 januari visas resultaten från årets konstkollon i utställningen c/o Stadsmuseet på Stadsmuseet på Södermalm i Stockholm. Man kan bland annat se seriehjältar från det nya Sverige, bostäder för pollinatörer, modellmåleri och utopiska berättelser.

[Cooking on The Bike Kitchen]

During a cooking excursion with student from The Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Programme att Konstfack University of Arts, Craft and Design students from the programme experimented with cooking vegetable soup on mobile wood fired stoves and discussed various aspects of kitchen technology and in particular the historical development of cooking stoves.

The wood fired stoves were developed within We Still Carry the Fire, a project on the topic of human relationships to fire which revolves around mobile wood fired kitchens that provide various opportunities for social interaction and cooking using fire. The kitchens are continuously developed taking into account experiences from previous excursions.

[Cooking on The Rocket Stove Kitchen]

[Cooking on The Tin Can Kitchen]

The aquaponics system exhibited as part of Waiting Room at Survival Kit / Umeå 2014 is a simple ebb and flow system. Water is pumped up from the aquarium to the grow bed by a small pump. The water fills up the grow bed until the water level reaches the overflow protection (flood). As long as the pump is pumping the grow bed stays filled with water. When the pump stops the water flows back through the pump into the aquarium and the grow bed is dried (ebb).

All plants in the aquaponics system are edible and many of the plants have special nutritional properties and tastes. The plants growing to the far left in the grow bed are watercress (Nasturtium officinale). Watercress is a rapidly growing aquatic or semiaquatic plant. It is one of the oldest known leaf vegetables consumed by humans. Watercress is rich in omega-3, minerals and vitamins. Other plants growing in the grow bed are red basil (Ocimum basilicum), miner’s lettuce (Claytona perfoliata), green purslane (Portulaca sativa), minutina (Plantago coronopus), and various plants of the Brassica genus.

The plant growing on the water surface in the aquarium is duckweed (Lemna minor). Duckweed can grow very rapidly and often form thick carpets over bodies of water. It is rich in protein and fats. Duckweed is grown commercially as animal fodder but also has potential as food for humans. It tastes fresh and can be used on sandwiches and in salads.

Under the water surface grows lemon bacopa (Bacopa amplexiculis / Bacopa caroliniana) and water hyssop (Bacopa monnieri). Lemon bacopa’s taste is reminiscent of lime and thyme. It can be used as a seasoning, in salads and to make tea. Water hyssop has traditionally been used as a cognitive enhancer in Ayurvedic medicine. It is currently being studied for its possible neuroprotective properties. Health products with water hyssop are claimed to enhance memory development, learning, and concentration, and to provide relief to patients with anxiety or epileptic disorders. Water hyssop is also said to be good for Alzheimer’s and to calm the mind. Its taste is bitter.

The aquaponics system has been assembled with sustainability and food safety in mind. Not all components are the optimal choices but most of the components used are non-toxic, (relatively) locally produced, recycled, or recyclable.

The seeds from the plants grown in the grow bed were bought from Swedish ecological seed stores. Both Bacopa species were bought in a local aquarium store. The seller didn’t know where they originated from but they are most likely from Denmark. The duckweed was gathered from a local pond.

The gravel in the aquarium was sourced from a local gravel pile and washed thoroughly. The pots are made in Sweden from Swedish clay. The plants are planted in the pots with ecological soil and gravel on top. The soil provide nutrients to the water plants and the water. The gravel prevents the soil from spilling out and dirtying the water.

The blue tray has been reused from a previous project. It is made out of HDPE, a food safe plastic. The aquarium was bought new at a local aquarium store. Its origin is unknown. The lighting armatures are IP65 classified, meaning that they are protected from water splashes. Each armature uses two 14 watt fluorescent tubes. The tubes are on for 14 hours per day and should last for more than four years. The pump consumes 4.5 watts. The grow bed is flooded for 15 minutes every hour. In total the pump runs six hours per day. The pump has a three year warranty, hopefully it lasts longer. Total energy consumption is approximately 296 kWh per year.

The growth media in the tray is expanded clay pebbles produced in Sweden. The pebbles were washed thoroughly to prevent clay dust from clouding the water. Expanded clay pebbles was chosen instead of gravel because of their light weight. The installation was transported from Stockholm to Umea as carryon luggage on the train.

Nitrifying bacteria used to “cycle” the aquarium was bought at a local aquarium store. This would not have been necessary but was used as a precaution to increase the chances of the system working properly in time for the exhibition. Cycling is the process during which bacteria that convert ammonia (waste from fish, fodder and plants etc) to nitrite and finally to nitrate (plant nutrient) is established in the aquarium. Ammonia is poisonous for fish and fish should not be introduced in an aquaponic system before bacteria that can deal with the ammonia produced by the fish have established. Without introducing nitrifying bacteria through commercial products it can take over a month for the bacteria to establish.

The aquaponics system is provided with liquid fertiliser for planted aquariums. The fertiliser was bought at a local aquarium and its origin and exact content is unknown. Eventually attempts will be made to use compost as fertiliser and possibly kitchen scrap as fodder for worms or fish. At the time of writing there are snails and other small critters living in the aquarium. They came into the aquarium with the duckweed and seem to have established themselves well. The possibilities of introducing more animals, such as fish and worms, are investigated with concern for the animals wellbeing in mind. If more animals are introduced into the system they will be introduced to create a more diverse and productive ecosystem and not to be eaten.

Waiting Room was a project for Survival Kit / Umeå, a five week art festival arranged by the artist run gallery Verkligheten in Umeå, which included furnishing a waiting room in the University Hospital of Umeå (one of the festivals exhibition venues) with a fishless aquaponics system and literature related to geodesic dome architecture and aquaponics.  

The waiting room at Survival Kit / Umeå connects to the organisations Green Free Will’s and Earth Organisation for Sustainability’s ongoing efforts to build a “biodome” in Lögdeå, a small village outside of Umeå in Northern Sweden. A biodome is a dome shaped greenhouse with an aquaponics system for fish farming and vegetable cultivation. The aim with the biodome in Lögdeå is to find sustainable and comfortable solutions for local food production all year round, even during the cold and dark winters in Umeå. The waiting room aimed to introduce the biodome to a wider audience, place the biodome in a historical and contemporary context, and examine geodesic dome architecture and aquaponics. The project also included facilitating a seminar about the biodome.
The literature in the hospital waiting room included the following books: 

The Book of The New Alchemists, by The New Alchemists
Drop City, by Peter Rabbit
From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, by Peder Anker
Eating In, by Sally Silverstone
Ideas and Integrities, by Buckminster Fuller
Shelter, by Lloyd Kahn 

In the waiting room there was also a publication produced for Suvival Kit / Umeå which included an essay on domes and aquaponics and contributions from Green Free Will and Earth Organisation for Sustainability. During the biodome seminar Alexander Bascomb and Enrique Lescure from Green Free Will and Earth Organisation for Sustainability presented their organisations and their work with the Biodome in Lögdeå. 

Thanks to Survival Kit / Umeå and Verkligheten, Umeå Pantry and My Villages, Green Free Will, Earth Organisation for Sustainability, Sujy Lee, Stefano Papazian, Alexander Svartvatten, Bildmuseet i Umeå, and Längmanska kulturfonden.