Emily Brady

The Aesthetics of Agricultural Landscapes and the Relationship between Humans and Nature

The continuum between nature and artefact is occupied by objects and environments that embody a relationship between natural processes and human activity. In this paper, I explore the relationship that emerges through human interaction with the land in the generation and aesthetic appreciation of industrial farming in contrast to more traditional agricultural practices. I consider the concept of a dialectical relationship and develop it in order to characterise the distinctive synthesising activity of humans and nature which underlies cultivated environments. I argue that a more harmonious relationship, and greater aesthetic value, may be located within traditional farming landscapes. This position is supported and illustrated through a discussion of two agricultural practices in the UK, hedge-laying and stonewalling.

Aesthetics in practice: Valuing the natural world

Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards the environment. I then discuss how aesthetics has played a role in scientific study and the use of evaluative aesthetic concepts in science, such as variety and diversity. The final section shows the connection between the beneficial effects of aesthetic engagement with nature and the restorative value of nature for human well-being.

Environmental aesthetics and rewilding

This paper explores the practice of rewilding and its implications for environmental aesthetic values, qualities and experiences. First, we consider the temporal dimensions of rewilding in regard to the emergence of particular aesthetic qualities over time, and our aesthetic appreciation of these. Second, we discuss how rewilding potentially brings about difficult aesthetic experiences, such as the unscenic and the ugly. Finally, we make progress in critically understanding how rewilding may be understood as a distinctive form of ecological restoration, while resisting the assimilation of rewilding into wilderness discourses.

Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art

Recent work in environmental ethics has seen a pragmatic turn that emphasises the importance of developing positive relationships with nature through practices involved in, for example, ecological restoration and community gardens. This article explores whether environmental and land art-making encourages positive aesthetic–moral relationships between nature and humans. It critically examines a particular type of aesthetic objection to these kinds of artworks and defends the work of Robert Smithson and Andy Goldsworthy, among others, against this charge. It is argued that rather than constituting an ‘aesthetic affront’ to nature, some forms of environmental and land art show ‘aesthetic regard’ for nature.

Human-environment relations : transformative values in theory and practice

Introduction PART I: TRANSFORMATIVE VALUES IN THEORY 1. The Value Space of Meaningful Relations 2. Relational Space and Places of Value 3. Conserving Natures Meanings 4. Revaluing Body and Earth 5. Holderlin and Human-Nature Relations 6. Toward History and the Creaturely: Language and the Intertextual Literary Value Space in Jonathan Safran Foers Eating Animals 7. The Intimacy of Art and Nature PART II: TRANSFORMATIVE VALUES IN PRACTICE 8. Embodying Climate Change: Renarrating Energy through the Senses and the Spirit 9. Make, Do, and Mend: Solving Placelessness through Embodied Environmental Engagement 10. Art and Living Things: The Ethical, Aesthetic Impulse 11. The Embodiment of Nature: Fishing, Emotion and the Politics of Environmental Values 12. Ethics and Aesthetics of Environmental Engagement Index

Introduction to ‘Environmental and Land Art’: A Special Issue of Ethics, Place and Environment

Artists, art critics, and art theorists have discussed environmental art, land art, earth art, and ecological art at least since the 1960s. In the last decade, driven by growing environmental concerns, the emerging significance of ecological art, and new trends in the artworld, the importance of this genre has been marked by major exhibitions, retrospectives, and several new books (e.g., Beardsley, 1998; Kastner & Wallis, 1998; Andrews, 1999; Boettger, 2002; Spaid, 2002; Tufnell, 2006). In comparison, discussion by philosophers has been patchy. There have been several articles over the years, especially as the area of environmental aesthetics has slowly grown (e.g., Crawford, 1983; Humphrey, 1985; Carlson, 1986; Ross, 1993; Heyd, 2002; Saito, 2002), a book on Smithson by Gary Shapiro (1997), and two special issues of journals with some philosophical articles (Ethics and the Environment, 2003 and IO: Journal of Applied Aesthetics, 1998). The articles in this special issue contribute toward filling the philosophical gap by debating a range of problems and issues related to artworks that are site-determined, often situated in natural environments, and, in many cases, composed largely of non-human natural processes and materials. What, more precisely, is the subject matter of these articles? How might the category of ‘environmental art’ and ‘land art’ be defined? Given the great diversity of artworks associated with these terms, some quite similar to each other and others quite different, it might be advisable to adopt a ‘family resemblance’ approach along Wittgensteinian lines rather than to seek a definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. One starting point, then, is to consider just what artworks and practices are usually associated with these terms. Within ‘earth art’ and ‘land art’, Malcolm Andrews includes: minimal and ephemeral interventions in a site (e.g., works by Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, Michael Singer); large-scale sculptural earthworks on site (e.g., Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson); ‘unmediated installation in an art gallery of materials gathered from a landscape site’ (e.g., Walter De Maria and early Smithson); ‘landscaped reclamation or planned naturalization of industrial wasteland’ (Smithson); and ‘acts of conservation of natural land that

The Ugly Truth: Negative Aesthetics and Environment

In autumn 2009, BBC television ran a natural history series, ‘Last Chance to See’, with Stephen Fry and wildlife writer and photographer, Mark Carwardine, searching out endangered species. In one episode they retraced the steps Carwardine had taken in the 1980s with Douglas Adams, when they visited Madagascar in search of the aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur. Fry and Carwardine visited an aye-aye in captivity, and upon first setting eyes on the creature they found it rather ugly. After spending an hour or so in its company, Fry said he was completely ‘under its spell’. A subsequent encounter with an aye-aye in the wild supported Frys judgment of ugliness and fascination for the creature: ‘The aye-aye is beguiling, certainly bizarre, for some even a little revolting. And I say, long may it continue being so.’

Animals in environmental art: relationship and aesthetic regard

ABSTRACT Earth, wood, stone, water, plants, light and other organic and inorganic natural matter and processes have provided the material for works falling into the amorphous range of contemporary art forms described as land, environmental, land and ecological art. Insects and other tiny non-human creatures have often played some role in these works, either intentionally or only incidentally. Larger non-human creatures — amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish and mammals — have played a much smaller role. In this article, I outline the different ways animals (broadly understood) have featured in these art forms and what sorts of human—nonhuman relationships these interventions with nature express or embody. Given these relationships, I critically explore just how we might square such interventions with attitudes of care and respect for nature. Introducing animals into artistic practice brings with it a set of worries and tensions. Alongside encouraging engagement and intimacy with creatures other than ourselves, problems of aestheticizing, sentimentalizing, trivializing, manipulating and just plain ‘interfering’ trouble our artistic interactions with animals. How do artistic expressions and interests regard and show regard for animals? These questions are addressed through a range of artists and works, including art and ecological restoration/species reclamation; trans-species art; activist/performance art in environments; and art in wildlife conservation.

Climate Change and Future Aesthetics

Philosophical discussions of climate change have mainly conceived of it as a moral or ethical problem, but climate change also raises new challenges for aesthetics. In this chapter I show that, in particular, climate change: (1) raises difficult questions about the status of aesthetic judgements about the future, or ‘future aesthetics’; and (2) puts into relief some challenging issues at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. I maintain that we can rely on aesthetic predictions to enable us to grasp, in some sense, aesthetic value in environments affected by climate change and, through a discussion of three hypothetical cases, I argue that although moral considerations will press on aesthetic judgements, aesthetic value will not necessarily be trumped by them.

What Is It Like to Be a Bird? Epistemic Humility and Human-Animal Relations

Birds are everywhere. One of the reasons for this ubiquity is the power of flight, allowing the exploitation of a wide range of habitats which might be otherwise inaccessible. That they participate in so many domains and do remain relatively abundant, allied with at times breathtaking beauty, has meant that they have provided a rich source of aesthetic, cultural and scientific reflection. These deliberations can provide an opportunity for us to reflect on the very boundaries of our own human perspectives on the world. This diverse group of organisms may provide a heuristic device to think of ourselves as if from nowhere, freed from the entanglements of being human. In this chapter, we consider some of the ontological, epistemological and, ultimately, ethical issues thrown up by an attempt to become placed outside of ourselves, imagining the terms of other beings with very different lives to our own, lives largely indifferent to our own. We argue that the ‘difference’ of these winged creatures might help us, in this potential age of the Anthropocene, to develop a stance of ‘epistemic humility’. Such humility recognizes the limits of our knowledge in a way that enables us to become receptive to listening to nature’s story.