MATERIAL DIALECTICS: the role of the artist in activating space and creating a sense of place on the Sydney Green Ring.

Abstract

Nicolas Bourriaud cites the 1973 OPEC oil crisis as the end of modernist promise of infinite growth, and the financialising of culture as the beginning of post-modernism. By the early 1980s Neo-Liberal economic policies, and the expansion of the debt economy pushed the world into “overshoot”, consuming annually more natural resources than the planet could replenish. M King Hubbert predicted oil production would peak in the mid-1990s. By the mid-2000s over half of the world’s population resided in urban areas. The 2008 GFC proved that laissez faire unregulated markets have been “tested to destruction”. We are approaching 400 pppm of carbon in the atmosphere when it was agreed at Kyoto in 1996 that 2˚C (350 ppm) is the safe limit. A forty-year review of the Limits To Growth, the standard run (business as usual) has proved accurate, the world will face social and economic collapse beginning around 2015. Actions taken fifty years ago are only beginning to impact on the climate. Actions take now to avert catastrophe will take another fifty years to take effect. In response to immanent collapse the Sydney Green Ring is a social practise, land, mobility and environmental art project, promoting human mobility, habitat connection and active transport. It was initiated in 2008 as a holistic project scope to facilitate knowledge sharing, social engagement and the common weal. The Sydney Green Ring and associated Botany Bay Trail are documented using fine art “aesthetic” practises to stimulate emotional responses to land and environment. Participatory events, “anti-aesthetic” practise, in the form of curated bicycle tours and events, focus on contemporary art and social histories. Tours provide physical exercise, engage the senses, reduce stress, build resilience, build audience participation, and anticipate a post-carbon lifestyle.