Interview with David Haley

Ecological Artist

“While I was sleeping, the time changed. The tense changed too. The new paradigm is here, now – ‘eco-culture’. Welcome to the future and a liberated ecological art. No longer do artists have to be prophets of doom, thinking the unthinkable, trying to change the attitudes of others and making a stand against society. The tide turned. Artists and scientists, teachers and politicians, commercialists and industrialists learned how to make the new world work – a new way of life – ‘ecopoiesis’.”
-David Haley from Watershed: a turning point in the future of art and ecology

I am intrigued by David Haley’s dream of ‘eco-culture’. During the seminar I had the opportunity to interview Haley and I asked him what eco-centric culture would be like. He responded that eco-centric culture would recognize the interconnectedness of all life and place ecological wellbeing at the forefront of culture. Instead of corporations and consumerism driving the culture, ecological harmony would be considered in all decisions. Is this science fiction? or a possible future? or even the only possible future? With the current ecological tipping points weighing the Earth towards disaster, what is clear to me is that things need to change.

David Haley is at the forefront of ecological art and his contribution to re-imagining the future and the role of art in creating connections between humanity and nature is admirable. It was exciting for me to interview Haley since I am engaged with ecological art and questioning the role of art within an ecological context. I began by asking him the same questions that I am asking participants in my latest video project. In this project I am interviewing experts and people involved in ecological work from throughout Scotland to gage the main ecological issues that are concerning them today. My intention is to create a video linking their answers with images of the problems and solutions that they mention. Finally I intend to choose one area covered in the interviews in order to delve deeper into a specific problem using photography and possibly a second video.

Through my experience I have found that asking difficult questions that require the person to take a stand are the most revealing. While I agree with Haley in his analysis that polarising life into problems and solutions is not always helpful, I think that asking questions with polarities in which the person must choose the biggest problem, greatest fear, or even describe the essence of who they are, produce fascinating answers. I asked, what do you think is the biggest ecological problem facing Scotland today? Why?, what can we do about it? and what images come to mind when you think about your response or when you think about the problems and the solutions? Haley’s response addressed looking at life as a whole system instead of just focusing on one issue. The problems we are facing are interrelated. He mentioned population and capitalism leading to species extinction and global warming. I enjoy this answer as I think it is clear that we must look at all of the factors that contribute to ecological instability and not just at one particular element of the puzzle. In terms of solutions he mentioned the role of art in contributing to changes in perception and in the importance of asking questions.

Instead of problem-based learning Haley is advocating question-based learning. The questions themselves can lead to interesting research. As engaged as I am with asking questions, I think that there is a danger in just focusing on the questions. It is too easy to sit on the fence or remain detached and in the intellectual world. I believe that it takes courage to address problems and come up with solutions. Perhaps instead of problem-based learning it could be called solution-based learning, since in this time the reality is there are many grave problems, social, ecological and economic, and what we need is people not just asking questions but inventing, creating and designing the future.

I come back to the place that I started and Haley’s idea of ‘eco-culture’; this is an exciting example of dreaming into the future. Artists can take liberties that other professions are not able to take. Artist’s can be imaginative, surreal, unpractical, they can think big, holistically, galactically, engaging interdisciplinary collaboration, intuition, spontaneity and freedom. From this soup there is the potential for radical new ideas to come forward. It is essential that in these times hope survives, and hope stems from new ways of thinking and imagining our place in connection with nature.