Force Majeure Presentation ... Helen Mayer Harrison Newton Harrison - - PDF document

Force Majeure Presentation...

Helen Mayer Harrison Newton Harrison The Harrison Studio

Table of Contents:

• 1. Harrison Studio thinking on the Force Majeure

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• 2. Images reflecting Force Majeure Work

3 Peninsula Europe Part III 3 Peninsula Europe Part III 4 Peninsula Europe Part III 5 Tibet is the High Ground Part III 6 Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation 7 Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation 8 Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation 9

• 3. Project Definition

10 Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation: The Sagehen Watershed 11 Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation Topo Map Sagehen Watershed 12

• 4. Center for the Force Majeure

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• 5. Original Request sent to Lauren Bon dated December 7, 2011

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• 1. Thinking on the Force Majeure

On the Force Majeure We, of the Harrison Studio believe As do others, although differently That a series of events have come into being Beginning in the time of Gilgamesh and before Beginning with agriculture and the first genetic manipulation Beginning with culture of animals and ongoing genetic manipulation Beginning with globalization six thousand years ago with the Salt Route A little later, the Silk Route And later and later And later and later… Especially with science informed by Descartes’ clock And with modernity recreating the cultural landscape From the Industrial Revolution to the present Until all at once a new force has become apparent We reframe a legal meaning ecologically And name it the Force Majeure The Force Majeure, framed ecologically Enacts in physical terms as outcomes on the ground initiated over 6000 years ago to the present Everything created in the global landscape Bringing together the conditions That have accelerated global warming By acting in concert With the vast industrial processes Of extraction and production and consumption That have subtracted forests Depleted top soil Profoundly reduced ocean productivity While creating a vast chemical outpouring in the atmosphere Into the lands and waters altogether these events comprise this Force Majeure There is modest conversation about going green amidst all the noise A response to what we have called the Force Majeure As industry thinks about doing good by doing well Good being green roofs green cars Green manufacturing processes Green transformation of material Green production of all kinds Especially expanding green markets Even training new green buyers And in tandem with many groups small and large Comprise the beginnings of cultural movement toward a green society However we have come to believe

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That in the face of multiple tipping points Passed and near passed From CO2/methane to nitrates/nitrites And more and more All of these efforts and all of this work Altruistic from the best of people Greedy and mean spirited from the worst of people Is on balance Better to be doing than not to be doing But on balance, insufficient Endlessly insufficient The Force Majeure, even in the now, is generating ocean rise Forcing the ocean’s food chains to simplify Compelling glaciers and snow pack to melt Creating flood and drought at continental scale in the high grounds And then below Which is the outcome for rivers flowing down to Asia from the Tibetan Plateau to many parts of South America There is an unfortunate outcome for the 3.3 million square kilometer Peninsula of Europe Where the numbers have been crunched Revealing the trajectory of drought is predicted to proceed From Portugal to the southern parts of Germany and beyond Reducing 2.4 million square kilometers of farm land That now feeds over 450 million Europeans by almost a third within 50 years The population will grow The food supply will shrink The waters will rise People will need to move upward The rich will continue to do well Not true for the middle class And devastating for the poor We, of the Harrison Studio now think That a counter force is available And unless put in place well within the next fifty years Civil society in many places will experience perturbation then collapse Keeping company with the ecosystems experiencing perturbation and simplification The counterforce we have in mind is culturally generated acceleration of adaptation strategies at great scale Great scale being understood as adaptation at a parallel rate to the climate forcing Generated by human activity the Force Majeure

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• 2. Images reflecting Force Majeure Work

From Peninsula Europe Part III Peninsula Europe in the Present 3.3 milllion sq km of Land Area 2.3 million sq km of mostly Factory Farm 340 thousand sq km meadow land 650 thousand sq km of Forest mostly High Ground Plantations Population 420 million Data from 2001 2693 cubic km Rainfall Yearly 25 thousand sq km Urban Land Imagine the research is right How will the twenty republics drought moves across Europe six kingdoms and one duchy the temperature continues to rise that are the European Union glacial melt continues accelerating surrender enough autonomy river flow becomes intermittent surrender closely held powers flooding increases from sudden rains to create collectively The half-million sq km the new form of governance

• f mostly monocultural high ground forest

that is able to meet succumbs in the main to drought and disease a force majeure of this magnitude

4 From Peninsula Europe Part III The Harrison Studio Experiment\ The decision is taken to reject the Alpine treeline definition of the high ground instead locating where rivers begin to define the high ground discovering that rivers begin mostly at 1200 feet and above. Lifting the shape off of the map, we discover an area of 1.46 million sq km at the 1200 feet level that if rehabilitated according to the concept of the upward movement of species will dramatically reduce the impact of the predicted temperature raise, flood and drought. We suggest a water tax to fund work on the ground.

5 From Peninsula Europe Part III The prediction of drought moving from Portugal to mid Germany and beyond has the following associated consequences: 1) One third of 2.3 million sq km of farming becomes minimally productive. 2) 1/3 of 340 thousand sq km of meadowlands become minimally productive. 3) Most of the 560,000 sq km of high ground forest succumbs to insect disease, drought and fire. 4) The outcome to civil society if business as usual practice continues is unfortunate in the extreme. We predict food rationing at best. At the worst, perturbation and collapse of society as we know it.

6 Tibet is the High Ground: Part III, 2009

An Ecologically Based Proposal for the Tibetan Plateau (or Qingzang Plateau) Greening Version 1 – Beginning at the Center and Working Outward Research indicates on theTibetan Plateau the paleoecological research glaciers will shrink so much in order to locate forest That their melting borders will dry up And Savannah ecosystems Profoundly affecting Which existed in Eemian Interglacial period The Salween, MeKong, Huang-Ho When temperatures were Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Ganges Similar to those predicted in the near future And Indus River systems And thereafter That traverse inner Mongolia, to search to locate local similar China, Tibet, Autonomous-zone India ecosystems that Exist in our now Burma, Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, And to begin designing and in part Bangladesh, Kashmir and Pakistan Creating the process to Assist the A Force Majeure has come into being Migration of a palette of species In the form of global warming Able to replace or restate That will work to the disadvantage Those now coming under Extreme stress Of 1/16th of the earth’s population Thereby Generating new forest Or about 1.2 billion people And grassland Who live in the 7 drain Basins which will in good part replace That comprise over The slow water releasing 2.4 million square miles Properties of glaciers and snowmelt by in part creating Thus we make an unlikely proposal a 2 million square kilometer sponge in this highly stressed probable future To normalize rivers by generating and secure the lands from flood and drought

7 From Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation The 24,000 sq mile footprint of the Sierra Nevada is located in relationship of the Central Valley to the West and the Great Basin to the East. The Sagehen Watershed where design on the ground for the upward movement of species as located is marked but invisible at this scale. The one mapping makes visible what a 3 meter water rise would look like as it formed a large estuarial lagoon.

8 From Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation Installation Ronald Feldman Gallery, in collaboration with the Nevada Museum of

• Art. A 44 foot long floor work basically done with hi resolution satellite

photography, the floor piece accompanied by 16 watershed drawings of the major watersheds coming from the ridgelines all together give the viewer the sense of the magnitude of the range of the Sierra Nevada. It takes approximately seven 6 foot paces to traverse the work in the gallery creating a metaphor for walking the Sierras. The detail is such that people can on their hands and knees find places they have been and become aware of the vast logging operations.

9 From Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation A typical bark beetle infestation which in due course coupled with drought and temperature rise will affect large areas of forest in the Sierra Nevada setting the conditions in place for extensive fire, an argument on the ground for assisting the migration of species.

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• 3. Project Definition: A Draft Experimental Design

The Project is designed to field test in a formal research setting core concepts that the Harrison Studio has been working with for the past 35 years. The Project will be designed to answer the following question, posed earlier, on the ground: Are there ecologically available responses that will, in good part, replace the value provided by disappearing glaciers to river systems and the human cultures they support? The methodology to find an initial set of probable answers to these and related questions at a manageable scale will include:

• 1. Establishing a transect from the highest point in the Sagehen watershed,

dropping 2,700 ft. over a 6-mile span to the outfall of the Sagehen Creek into the lake. The transect (see map) is designed to touch all major ecotomes: meadow, riverine, forest types and shrublands.

• 2. We estimate (subject to precise evaluation on the ground) that approximately

40-50 site variations will be found over the 6-mile transect.

• 3. On each site we identify, we will place two wood frames enclosing a total area

the size of a tennis court (approximately 250 square feet), although shaped according to the nature of the site.

• 4. We will leave one tract alone as a control. We will use the other as a test site

for an aspect of the yet to be determined species palette. The species palette will be designed to accept warming, intermittent heavy rains and

• drought. It will be continually reevaluated over the research period for its

capability to hold back erosion, enhance topsoil and to function in a fire- tolerant manner, above all, the intention is that such a palette will enhance the sponge dynamics in the earth in such a way that the earths, as far as possible, will hold and release the waters, once supplied by snow pack and glacial melt, to river and stream.

• 5. Toward this end, we are seeking research monies to enable funding the team
• f scientists and the artist group to begin this work.
• 6. As the experiment begins to take place, we will establish a 6-mile path through

the site, an ongoing changing narrative, informed in good part by that which is discovered.

• 7. The path will pass through the frame sites on a 6-mile trajectory. It will function

as a complex hybrid of scientific experiment, educational program designed to inform diverse communities, and powerful physical presence. The physical work on the ground will be associated with a lucid poetic narrative designed to evolve in response to new information. In addition to providing creative and educational connections with the museum and the community at large, it will also serve to train students.

11 From Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation: The Sagehen Watershed Trajectory of 20 double blind sites that will be used to test the concept and potentially value of designing species palettes that will respond favorably to the flood and drought expected in the high grounds as a result of rapid (forced) global warming. Species groupings will be selected to favor fire resistance, biodiversity, drought tolerance and the ability to sequester waters.

12 From Sierra Nevada: An Adaptation Topographic Map: Sagehen Creek Watershed Tentative site selections and tentative site for 100 meter deep core drilling. The core and depth is to discover species types and diversity from a paleoecological perspective and will be designed to reach the Eemian interglacial period 115,000-130,000 years ago when weather conditions were very similar to those predicted to prevail in the next 50-100 years.

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• 4. Center for the Force Majeure

THE CENTER FOR THE FORCE MAJEURE STUDIES ESTABLISHED ON

THE UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ CAMPUS HAS FOUR PRIMARY MISSIONS.

1) BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS AND EXPERIMENTATIONS THAT WILL ASSIST THE

MIGRATION OF SPECIES UPWARD TO COMEPENSATE FOR SPECIES LOSS, FLOOD AND DROUGHT DUE TO ACCELERATED GLOBAL WARMING IN THE HIGH GROUNDS PARTICULARLY MOUNTAIN AREAS. THE CENTER WILL BE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF GENERATING ECOSYSTEMIC DESIGN DIRECTED TOWARD ADAPTATION AT GREAT SCALE

2) THE CENTER EXPECTS TO DEVELOP EXPERIMENTATION TOWARDS THESE

ENDS WORKING WITH THE PERSONNEL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

BERKELEY RESEARCH STATION LOCATED IN THE 8000 ACRE SAGEHEN WATERSHED. 3) GENERATING A PALEOBOTANICAL LIBRARY WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS PLACED

ON UTILIZING INFORMATION GAINDED FROM THE EEMIAN PERIOD IN PALEOHISTORY APPROXIMATELY 115,000-130,000 YEARS AGO WHEN THE TEMPARATURES AND WEATHER CONDITIONS WERE SIMILAR TO THOSE PREDICTED WITHIN THE NEXT 50-100 YEARS PARTICULARLY IN THE SIERRA

NEVADAS 4) A PARALLEL FORM EMERGING AS AN ACTIVITY OF THE CENTER ARE

ECOLOGICAL GAME STRUCTURES BASED ON THE CONCEPTS EMBEDDED IN OR FLOWING FROM THE ECOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF THE FORCE MAJEURE.

THE CENTER WILL BE UTILISING THE RESOURCES OF THE UNIVERSITY WHICH

IS ONE OF THE FOUR PRINICIPAL ACADAMIC GAME GENERATING INSTITUTIONS IN THE US.

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Center for Force Majeure Studies

Established on the UC Santa Cruz campus

The Center for Force Majeure Studies will enable artists and scientists to develop new collaborative insights, disciplines and methods to create, design and execute projects that elaborate the research and work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. The mission of the Center for Force Majeure Studies (“the Center”) is to generate long-term research projects that address the emerging stresses of the Earth’s largest ecosystems by co-joining the processes of art-making and the Sciences within the uniquely and specifically-framed perspective of work by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, understood as the Harrison Studio. The scope of mission of the Center includes work beyond typical categories and is in support of an evolving Art/Science hybrid form. The central theme is adaptation to climate change at scale, asking such questions as: Are there ecologically available responses that will, in good part, replace the constant flow of waters to river systems endangered by disappearing glaciers? The Center will reach out to cultural and educational institutions and execute on-the-ground projects that will engage scientists, artists, lawmakers and the public with the urgent complexity of humanity’s essential participation in the stress that the Earth’s ecology is experiencing. The Center’s work intends to enrich public discourse concerning ecology and inform policy development. More importantly, the center intends to add new information to the intense discourse on adaptation now taking place in scientific institutions and at government policy level.

The Concept of Force Majeure

The Harrison Studio applies the legal term Force Majeure to designate the co-evolving set of circumstances that work against the well being of both the human cultures and the ecosystems as we now know them, thereby imperiling the survival of both. The inclusion of the wording Force Majeure in the Center’s title references the nature of the global environmental stresses imposed by humanity’s

• veruse of planetary resources and the resultant contribution to climate change. Force Majeure

when framed ecologically delineates human-accelerated global warming acting in transaction with the vast industrial processes of extraction and CO2 production. These processes have resulted in destroyed forests, depleted topsoil, a severe lessening of ocean productivity, and a vast chemical

• utpouring into the atmosphere, the earth and the water.

A number of tipping points have already been passed. For instance, least well understood is the long- term impact of the vast over production of nitrates. The most obvious example is the rising atmospheric CO2 level - now above 390 ppm. Although 450 ppm atmospheric CO2 looks likely to be reached well before the end of this century. We will be lucky if atmospheric CO2 levels stop rising at

• 600ppm. Ocean rise, drought, and erratic weather are inevitable; and temperature increase—

particularly in the high grounds—is happening as this document is written.

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Complexity theory suggests that multidimensional problems do not yield or find resolution with simple cause-and-effect solutions, such as putting iron filings in the ocean, algae upwelling systems, burying CO2 underground, substituting atomic energy for coal, and the like. We have come to believe that problems of the kind that humanity now faces, such as the reformatting of the global weather systems from the predictable Holocene to the unpredictable Anthropocene, must be met by a whole-systems

• approach. We believe that human well being in our shared and uncertain future will require

adaptation on a vast scale, both ecologically and culturally. The formation of the Center for will manifest this belief in physical terms. The Center will engage in studies of “adaptation at scale”, a core aspect of the Force Majeure project. This large-scale perspective will be maintained in examining the likely

• utcomes from glacial melt on the Sierra Nevada, the Tibetan Plateau and the trans-

European mountain ranges and poses the following question, which has embedded in it the issues of art and science, regional planning and ecostructural design which can

• nly happen at large scale if both accepted and supported at policy levels:

The Center believes that ecologically available responses can be discovered that will, in good part, replace the value provided to both ecosystems and cultures by the disappearing glaciers. For instance, as erratic river flow and drought, brought on by glacial melt and loss of snow pack, negatively affects a predicted 25% of Europe’s ability to produce its own food while its population increases over the next 50-75 years, then the probability of civil strife is high unless reEcostructures™ation at great scale is invented.1 Toward answering this question in several geographies, the work of the Center will include:

• 1. The location of sites in mountain ranges where receding glacial melt will, in the near future,

negatively affect the constant flow of waters into rivers. The research will address the selection and the balancing of plant species from the region that can adapt to the new climate conditions biased toward generating topsoil and enhancing the Sponge phenomenon in the earths available.

• 2. Paleo-botanical research that will locate species that lived in the affected region prior to

glaciation at a time when the climates were equivalent to those projected. This research has two intentions. a. To locate species in the region that might not have been considered as part of a viable plant palette.

1 This proposal avoids such terms as “inter-disciplinary”, “inter-disciplinarity”, “trans-disciplinary”, and “multi-

disciplinary”, because all of the Center’s work will set out to engage with problems that spring from questions that no single disciplinary format can adequately frame. The Center will powerfully encourage the education

• f inspired generalists.

2 Force Majeure, when framed ecologically, refers to the environmental outcomes

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b. To suggest close relatives that might now exist in nearby locations that, after appropriate testing, would niche into the new environmental conditions beneficially; that is to say, without behaving as exotics.

• 3. An examination of newly revealed glacial earths and to inquire about what a first succession

might be like.

• 4. A more careful exploration of the hydrology reflected in carbon sponge dynamics, with the

intention of adding value to the system.

• 5. Looking at the potential for carbon sequestration over great scale, e.g., how much carbon

would be sequestered were the Tibetan Plateau to be significantly regenerated by using the evolving principles of the Harrison Studio.

Local Research Model

At present, the Harrison Studio, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the 9,000-acre Sagehen Creek Research Station of the University of California are engaged in and committed to a 50-year long research project (“the Project”) that is a work of art, a work of science, a work of bio-regional planning, and a work that calls for policy change. As a result of this confluence of interests and

• utcomes, this initial work embodies the type of projects that the Center will generate, i.e., work that

is revelatory to observers and participants. The initial project is fundamentally a hybrid effort; multi-layered and cognizable by different disciplines, wherein what each interested discipline may be perceived as a foreground. Furthermore, by hybrid, we mean not only a form that is extremely complex in its manifestation, but also has an educational function, both at university levels and to the public, and it is in this sense that is the Center’s mission is designed in such a way that its outreach will both deepen public engagement and inform public policy. The Project is designed to field test in a formal research setting core concepts that the Harrison Studio has been working with for the past 35 years. The Project will be designed to answer the following question, posed earlier, on the ground: Are there ecologically available responses that will, in good part, replace the value provided by disappearing glaciers to river systems and the human cultures they support? The methodology to find an initial set of probable answers to these and related questions at a manageable scale will include:

• 8. Establishing a transect from the highest point in the Sagehen watershed, dropping

2,700 ft. over a 6-mile span to the outfall of the Sagehen Creek into the lake. The transect (see map) is designed to touch all major ecotomes: meadow, riverine, forest types and shrublands.

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• 9. We estimate (subject to precise evaluation on the ground) that approximately 40-50 site

variations will be found over the 6-mile transect.

• 10. On each site we identify, we will place two wood frames enclosing a total area the

size of a tennis court (approximately 250 square feet), although shaped according to the nature of the site.

• 11. We will leave one tract alone as a control. We will use the other as a test site for an

aspect of the yet to be determined species palette. The species palette will be designed to accept warming, intermittent heavy rains and drought. It will be continually reevaluated over the research period for its capability to hold back erosion, enhance topsoil and to function in a fire-tolerant manner, above all, the intention is that such a palette will enhance the sponge dynamics in the earth in such a way that the earths, as far as possible, will hold and release the waters, once supplied by snow pack and glacial melt, to river and stream.

• 12. Toward this end, we are seeking research monies to enable funding the team of

scientists and the artist group to begin this work.

• 13. As the experiment begins to take place, we will establish a 6-mile path through the

site, an ongoing changing narrative, informed in good part by that which is discovered.

• 14. The path will pass through the frame sites on a 6-mile trajectory. It will function as a

complex hybrid of scientific experiment, educational program designed to inform diverse communities, and powerful physical presence. The physical work on the ground will be associated with a lucid poetic narrative designed to evolve in response to new information. In addition to providing creative and educational connections with the museum and the community at large, it will also serve to train students. In summary, the research model of the Project is a 50-year program, which will require several generations of artists/scientists/thinkers to bring to a useful conclusion. We, the principals of the Harrison Studio, have invented the Center for the most part to enact the ideas thus far

• expressed. However, we also envision the Center as a legacy process and expect to begin a

discussion on how the Center will continue and how new leadership will be trained. We, the present principals of the Harrison Studio, expect to begin the transfer of leadership within the next four or five years.

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Executive Directors

Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison (interim)

Staffing

The Center will function with an Executive Director, a Development Manager and retain clerical support as soon as funding permits. Consultant grants writers, researchers and analysts will be engaged as required on project-specific bases. Graduate students of UC Santa Cruz will conduct research and assigned members of the Advisory Committee will provide academic advising.

The Advisory Committee

Members of the Advisory Committee of the Center include: Betsy Damon, Artist, Keeper of the Waters George Lakoff of UC Berkeley Warren Sack, Chair DANM UCSC Ronnie Lipschutz, Professor in Department of Politics UCSC Brent Haddad, Professor of Environmental Studies UC Santa Cruz Georg Grabherr, Head of Department and Professor of Conservation Biology, Vegetation-and Landscape Ecology at the University of Vienna Ranil Senanayake, Chairman at Rainforest Rescue International and Director at Ecological Restoration Ltd. We intend to expand the Advisory Committee to include at least nine advisors, including the addition of both a paleo-ecologist and a plant ecologist, whose respective scopes of research would preferably comprise Sierra Nevada species. In addition, we are looking into leading experts in the economics of climate change and carbon sequestration.