_’To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, “all that is solid melts into air.” To be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction. It is to be overpowered by the immense bureaucratic organizations that have the power to control and often to destroy all communities, values, lives; and yet to be undeterred in our determination to face these forces, to fight to change their world and make it our own. It is to be both revolutionary and conservative: alive to new possibilities for experience and adventure, frightened by the nihilistic depths to which so many modern adventures lead, longing to create and to hold on to something real even as everything melts.’¹

To sustain means to strengthen or support physically or mentally. Sustenance is the maintaining of someone or something in life or existence. The term sustainability is employed in a number of arenas. Perhaps its most paradoxical form was the 1987 Brundtland Commission’s coupling of it with the word development, defined as the drive to ‘meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’² Forests, communities, energy, drinking water supplies, business models, schools, buildings and investing are spoken of with respect to their sustainability. Sustainability is ubiquitous, flexible and an unquestioned good.

Reflecting on sustainability and art may call to mind particular art works or movements – land art, environmental activist or perhaps community art. Issues such as the types of materials used, the longevity of projects, the transience of participants, the lifespan of funding streams and management structures may be seen as fundamental to a particular public art project’s sustainability. The SAC spoke in 2006 of securing a sustainable future for Scotland’s artists but its own future is in flux. Change seems to be an intrinsic part of modern life, and the ability of artists to adapt to change is frequently held up as an invaluable model for others living with the so-called knowledge economy’s multifarious insecurities. Clarifying what is meant by each of the terms art, public art and sustainability will help to illuminate how, why and in which ways public art could function sustainably.

Murray Bookchin wrote in The Ecology of Freedom that the ‘domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human.’³ It was Bookchin’s belief that fundamental political change and the dissolution of hierarchy were necessary prerequisites for really confronting environmental crises. For Bookchin, while environmentalism strives only to tackle the impossible, meaningless task of limiting growth within the capitalist market economy, ecology describes the advocacy of radical social and political changes to society, change for sustainability. Felix Guattari in his book The Three Ecologies⁴ also discussed the intimate connections between human subjectivity, the environment and social relations. The theory of Ecosophy, a philosophy of ecologies of which Guattari was one exponent, suggests that the environmental, mental and social worlds are interacting and interdependent and he amalgamated a recognition of each into a methodological practice. This practice was for Guattari by its very nature pluralistic and led not to holistic but rather rhizomatic outcomes. Understanding sustainability as the application of this methodology of ecologies, with its emphasis on heterogeneity, is a propitious starting point for considerations of sustainable public art.

Twentieth century modernism challenged all preconceptions concerning what art could be and the intentionality of an object to be art became what defined it as such. High culture embraced other disciplines, media and ways of working exponentially and art superceded even this object-based definition. What separated the aesthetic realm from the rest of culture and even from other cultures became opaque.

Ellen Dissanayake considers art in its widest sense as a type of behaviour and sustained practice across all human societies. ‘Making special is not being special, but is doing what human beings naturally are inclined to do. If art seems unusual or rare today, it is because of many intertwined changes in the ways we live and the ways we think about art’⁵ Approached from an ethological perspective – the examination of art’s contribution to the biological phenomenon of natural selection – Dissanayake’s anthropological evidence shows how communal artforms across cultures reinforce group cohesion and survival by making socially important activities rewarding both physically and emotionally.

If art is understood as this expansive term describing a type of human behaviour embracing any number of activities from bodily adornment to architectural decoration to gardening, then public art is an expansive description of this activity in the public arena. The public realm is a place defined by environmental, social and human ecologies. By its very nature it is volatile, quixotic and fluid. It will always have a relation to what has gone before and what is to come. The boundaries of the public arena are often unclear and frequently unspoken – between public, private and privatised spaces and the commons. Public art – temporary, permanent, interventionist, private and publicly commissioned, guerrilla and process based – can exist in all of them. Public art offers opportunities to act in public and to create communally. It provides space for encounter and expression.

Sustainable public art is that which nurtures art as a human behaviour in the wider public arena. Sustainable public art would describe ‘making special’ as a collaborative, collective activity, embedded in consideration for wider environmental, subjective and social ecologies. This does not necessarily lead to a consensual model of public art or preclude dissatisfaction, disinterest or apathy in response to it. No piece or process of public art will ever be for everyone. It doesn’t necessarily demand longevity or forgone conclusions. What sustainable public art should do is recognise all human beings as art makers, however this is made manifest.

The SAC Public Art Plan summary 2008-9 states that ‘we hope that public art can contribute to the creation of a more vibrant and stimulating Scotland, for the people of Scotland.’⁶ Whatever outcomes are expected from public art, a truly sustainable public art policy may emerge from considering the role of public making with rather than for the people of Scotland.

¹ Marshall Berman, All that is Solid, Melts into Air, (Verso, London:1983) p13-14

² Bruntland Commission, UN 1987, http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm

³ Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (Paolo Alto, California:1982)

⁴ (Continuum, London: 2008)

⁵ Ellen Dissanayake, Retrospective on Homo Aestheticus. http://www.ellendissanayake.com/publications/

⁶ SAC Public Art Plan 2008-9 (summary)
http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/information/publications/1005741.aspx

Notes

<p>To read Michelle Letowska&#8217;s article Against Masterplanning click <a href="http://www.publicartscotland.com/reflections/17">here</a></p> <p>All images are from an ongoing project called <em>Things Made Special</em>, begun in 2008 by the collective FfRWaMR, which Michelle is involved in.</p>