The Ecological Turn

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The Ecological Turn: Living Well with Forests To Articulate Eco-Social Art
Practices Using a Guattari Ecosophy and Action Research Framework [PhD
thesis 2018; Part 2]
Thesis · November 2018

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14062.46409
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The Ecological Turn: Living Well with Forests

To Articulate Eco-Social Art Practices
Using a Guattari Ecosophy and Action Research Framework

Submitted for the Visual Culture PhD by Practice.
School of Visual Culture, The National College of Art and Design,

A Recognised College of the National University of Ireland.
Supervisors Dr. Paul O’Brien, Dr. Iain Biggs, Prof. Jessica Hemmings
Date: 2018

Declaration
I hereby declare that this dissertation is entirely my own work and that it
has not been submitted as an exercise for a diploma or degree in any
other college or university.
I agree that the Edward Murphy Library may lend or copy the thesis
upon request from the date of deposit of the thesis.

Word Count: 69 914
Signed:
Dated: October 2018
Title of Practice Presentation (eBook):

The Hollywood Forest Story: Living Well with a Forest
To Explain an Eco-Social Art Practice
Using a Guattari Ecosophy-Action Research Framework
Hollywood forest, a Close-to-Nature continuous cover forest growing under the Blackstairs
Mountains, South County Carlow, Ireland. It is the muse and site of Cathy Fitzgerald's eco-
social art practice The Hollywood Forest Story ongoing since 2008. Photo: Martin Lyttle
2015.

Thesis Title:

The Ecological Turn: Living Well with Forests
To Articulate Eco-Social Art Practices
Using a Guattari Ecosophy and Action Research Framework

Abstract

Eco-social art practitioners routinely foster cycles of multi-constituent
translation, reflection and action, across lifeworlds, art, science, and
other socio-political domains to progress new life-sustaining knowledge.
This enquiry, however, reveals the absence of a guiding theory and a
clearly articulated methodology for such transversal practices. A lack of
a general theory and methodology, I argue, significantly hinders the
4

education, practice, and appreciation of such practices’ value and,
inevitably, understanding of the art and ecology field as an innovator of
creative practice particularly suited to respond to 21st century eco-social
concerns. As a consequence, the central research objective of this
enquiry is to model, through creative practice and theory analyses, why,
and how, a selected theoretical-methodological framework may
articulate a clearer understanding of eco-social art practice. This
framework formulates a foundation to advance sophisticated transversal
practice responses, and makes a contribution to knowledge for the art
and ecology field in articulating an accessible, transferable framework
for eco-social art practice.
The proposed framework builds on my ongoing Hollywood Forest Story

eco-social art practice, ecological knowledge and actions, and critical
review of a suitable theory and methodology. From 2008, this includes
transforming Hollywood forest, the monoculture conifer plantation
where I live in rural South County Carlow in Ireland, into a permanent
forest.
This thesis is framed by critical reflection on and is an extension of new

mappings of the emergent art and ecology field. Suzi Gablik (2004),
Sacha Kagan (2011), David Haley (2011a; 2016), Linda Weintraub
(2012) and others chiefly view transdisciplinarity as best describing
long-term art practices that aim for a deeper understanding of
sustainability in emergent eco-social contexts. While transdisciplinarity
is evident in such practices, I propose a hybrid theoretical-
methodological framework to fully articulate the overarching purpose
and common methodology of transversal eco-social art practices.
I apply Félix Guattari’s theoretical concept of ecosophy, which

articulates transversality, with an action research methodological
approach. I thus define eco-social art practices as working creatively in
an ecosophical-action research mode to develop ecoliteracy and agency
for their practitioners, collaborators and audiences. Such practices
encompass emergent transversal endeavours directed by innovative, yet
recognisable pattern of social enquiry. My research draws attention to
recent advances in understanding the value of artful activities in action
research for sustainability from Chris Seeley and Peter Reason (Seeley,
2011b; Seeley and Reason, 2008) and the usefulness, and under-
explored potential of online social media to support the connected
learning and sharing of eco-social art practice. The significance,
challenges and transferability the eco-social art practice framework
advances are characterised and evaluated in application to my practice
5

and the exemplary eco-social art practice of Helen Mayer Harrison and
Newton Harrison. From these studies, I conclude that the eco-social art
practice framework has potential to advance understanding that
transversal practices are as critical as scientific, economic and political
responses to advance a life-sustaining, ecological turn.
Keywords: art and ecology, eco-social art practice, Guattari,

transversality, ecosophy, action research, ecoliteracy, agency, blogging,
continuous cover forestry, social art practice
Table of Contents

Author’s declaration 3
Abstract 4
Table of contents 7
List of illustrations 13
Acknowledgments and dedication 19
PART ONE - INTRODUCTIONS 21
1. Origins of the enquiry 22
1.1 Reading the thesis 23
1.2 Introduction to the enquiry 25
1.3 Motivations for research arising from my practice 31
1.4 Reviewing the development and current characterisation of 34

eco-social art practice to identify the value of a guiding theory-
method framework
1.4.1 Current field of eco-social art practice 35

1.4.2 Review of literatures characterising eco-social art 44
practices
1.4.3 Environmental ethics guide eco-social art practice 46
1.4.4 Eco-social art practices advance a radical ‘connective 48
aesthetic’ toward transdisciplinarity
1.4.5 Toward theorising eco-social art practices utilising Guattari’s 52
ecosophy
1.4.6 Toward a methodology for eco-social art practice utilising 55
action research
1.5 Outline of the thesis that proposes a new guiding ecosophy- 58

action research framework to articulate eco-social art practice
2. Research Design, Methodology and Methods 61
2.1 Introduction 62
2.2 Using an interpretive research design to articulate qualitative 64
findings arising from my creative practice
2.2.1 The physical research audit trail 65

2.2.2 The intellectual research audit trail 72
2.3 Aims and objectives of the enquiry – toward developing an eco- 77

social art practice research approach
2.4 What is ecoliteracy? Developing ecoliteracy for this enquiry 80

from The Hollywood Forest Story eco-social art practice
2.4.1 Understanding and simplifying the science: Planetary 82

Boundaries Science
2.4.2 Guidance from the humanities and ecological humanities 85
2.5 Six core drivers: eco – ethical – social – artful – action – 93

practice, of an interwoven eco-social art practice methodology
2.6 Actions of the enquiry 97
2.7 Presentation of the research for this enquiry 99
100
2.7.1 The cultural artefact: The Hollywood Forest Story eBook
104
2.7.2 The exegesis
105
2.8 Summary
3. Critical components of The Hollywood Forest Story eco-social 108

art practice
3.1 Introduction 109
3.2 Practising Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry: A new- 110

to-Ireland ecoforestry approach
3.2.1 Practical detail of transforming Hollywood forest 114
3.3 Articulating an outward-facing, eco-social art practice method 123

using a blog
3.3.1 Blogging for an eco-social art practice; for developing and 126
sharing ecoliteracy
8

3.3.2 Slow storytelling: using a blog to grow values, actions and 132
audiences from extended eco-social art practice
3.3.3 Social media and forests: casualties of capitalism’s 144
political economy?
3.4 Summary 156
PART TWO: DEEPENING UNDERSTANDING OF 159

ECO-SOCIAL ART PRACTICE USING THE
ECOSOPHY-ACTION RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
Introduction to Part 2 160
4. A guiding theory-method framework to articulate eco-social 161

art practice: Why connect Guattari’s ecosophy with action
research?
4.2 Utilising Guattari’s ecosophy – understanding the context, 163

motivations and potential of eco-social art practice
4.2.1 Why Guattari’s ecosophy? 4163

4.2.2 Application of Guattari’s ecosophy to ecological art 169
217
practice
4.2.3 Guattari’s ecosophy terminology for eco-social art 240
174
practice
4.2.4 Limitations of Guattari’s ecosophy to fully articulate eco- 179
social art practice
4.3 Utilising action research to enact and explain an ecosophical 180

practice
4.3.1 Why and how action research complements Guattari’s 180

ecosophy
4.3.2 How the action research template provides a clear 185
methodology
4.4 Introducing the case studies 186
9

5. Case Studies Part 1: Analysing the validity of the 189
ecosophy mode of the proposed framework as applied to
The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
5.2 Employing Guattari’s ecosophy to articulate the context, 191
aims, ethos and social mechanisms of eco-social art
practice
5.2.1 Ethics as an integral driver and consequence of 196
ecosophical practice
5.2.2 Understanding why eco-social art practices promote 199

alternative, life-sustaining worldviews to counter global
industrial capitalism
5.2.3 Developing indigeneity to counter capitalism’s 202

destructive worldview
5.2.4 Guattari’s post media and machinic animism explains 207
the value of social media for eco-social art practice
5.2.5 ‘A sense of place, a sense of planet’: 220
ecocosmopolitanism and trans-corporeality for developing an
expanded ethic toward ecological citizenship in The
Hollywood Forest Story
5.3 Guattari’s transversality theory and refrain concepts: 228
understanding how eco-social art practice operates to
engender ecoliteracy and agency for social transformation
5.3.1 Tranversality accounts for progressive multi-constituent

229
social practices that comprise diverse disciplinary knowledge
and lifeworld experience
5.3.2 The transversality of The Serpentine Lattice and The 236

Hollywood Forest Story evolve intrinsic values and ‘World’s-
yet-to-come’
5.3.3 Keeping it all together; playing The Serpentine Lattice 243

and The Hollywood Forest Story refrains
5.3.4 Outcomes of eco-social art practice: new ‘lines of flight’ 249

from The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
252
5.3.5 Guattari’s ecosophy articulates the political ecology of
eco-social art practice
5.4 Summary 264
10

6. Case Studies Part 2: Analysing the validity of the action 267
research mode of the proposed framework as applied to The
Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
6.1 Introduction: Using action research to identify 268

methodological commonalities and the method pathway of
6.2 Action research’s ‘worthwhile purposes’ clarifies how 271

eco-social art practice are initiated
6.3 Action research identifies the ‘practical challenges’ of 274

eco-social art practice as a key method stage
6.4 Action research identifies ‘many ways of knowing’, as the 276

crucial next method stage in eco-social art practice
6.4.1 Action research identifies the primacy of ‘experiential 278

knowing’ for eco-social art practices
6.4.2 Action research identifies how ‘artful knowing’ 279

translates valuable ‘experiential knowings’ for eco-social art
practitioners, their collaborators and audiences
6.4.3 Action research identifies that a ‘propositional 287

knowing’ stage fosters ecosophical thinking
6.4.4. Action research’s ‘participation and democracy’ reveals 289

the inclusive nature and social skill required for effective eco-
social art practice
6.4.5 Action research emphasises the critical dialogical 298

outcomes of eco-social art practice
6.5 Summary 305
7. CONCLUSION 310
11

APPENDICES…………………………………………………… 3330
Appendix A. A History of Forests in Ireland: A Brief Overview 331
A.1 ‘Wolfland’ - Ireland in the 17th Century: A Land of Forests, 332

Wood Kerne and Wolves
A.2 Forestry in Ireland since 1950 335
A.3 Ireland’s adoption of industrial forestry - trees planted and 337
‘organised like a chessboard’
Appendix A: Conclusion 340
Appendix B. Guattari’s ecosophy among other environmental 341

philosophies
B1: Guattari’s ecosophy among other environmental philosophies 341
BIBLIOGRAPHY
346
12

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Cathy Fitzgerald, Once I counted birds, 2009. Video 25
still. (Fitzgerald, 2016, The Hollywood Forest eBook, p. 32)
Fig. 2. Helen and Newton Harrison. Serpentine Lattice. 1992-3. 36

Video still. http://theharrisonstudio.net/?page_id=458
Fig. 3. Insa Winkler. Acorn Pig. 2006. Video still. YouTube 38

https://youtu.be/tmKHmLZZvpE

Fig. 4. Simon Read. Describing practice. 2015. Video still. 40
http://www.simonread.info/

Fig. 5. Deirdre O’Mahony. Installation-archive, T.U.R.F. (since 41
2012) Screengrab. http://www.deirdre-
omahony.ie/artworks/2000s/list/67-turf.html

Fig. 6. Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares The Land Grant: 42
Forest Law project, exhibition, video and bilingual book. 2014.
Screengrab. www.geobodies.org

Fig. 7. Linda Weintraub. Helen and Newton Harrison 50
schematic, 2012. Graph. In: To Life! Eco-Art in Pursuit of a
Sustainable Planet. Kindle edition. Chapter 4.5.
Fig. 8. Linda Weintraub. Schematic of Eco Approaches, 2012. 67

Graph. In: To Life! Eco-Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet.
Kindle edition. Chapter 1.
Fig. 9. Unknown. Photograph of Felix Guattari writing. Date 74

unknown. Source: http://www.critical-theory.com/say-stupid-
shit-guattari-on-writing-anti-oedipus/
Fig. 10. F. Pharand-Deschenes/Globia. Nine Planetary 84

Boundaries.
Fig. 11. Dean Moore, 100 Moral Statements. Presentation 89

image, Kathleen Dean Moore.
Fig 12. Smith. ‘What is Practice? Practical Reasoning’. 97

Diagram. www.infed.org/biblio/b-praxis.htm.
Fig. 13. Cathy Fitzgerald. Natural regeneration of ash, oak and 100
sycamore trees occurring amid the shelter of mature alder and
Sitka spruce conifers. Hollywood forest, 2010. Photograph.
Pictured: Joan Fitzgerald. Cover of The Hollywood Forest Story
13

eBook.
Fig. 14. Cathy Fitzgerald. My setup for creating The Hollywood 102
Forest Story eBook: using iBook Author 2 software. 2014.
Photograph.
Fig. 15. Cathy Fitzgerald. Natural regeneration of ash, oak and 110
sycamore trees occurring amid the shelter of mature alder and
Sitka spruce conifers. Hollywood, 2010. Photograph. Pictured:
Joan Fitzgerald. Cover of The Hollywood Forest Story eBook.
Fig 16. Cathy Fitzgerald. Forester Paddy Purser (co-founder 111

ProSilva Ireland) with independent Irish EcoEye TV
broadcaster, Duncan Stewart, discuss Close to Nature
continuous cover forestry for the first time for national Irish
RTÉ TV. (Broadcast 2 February 2016). Photograph.
Fig. 17. Gwen Wilkinson. First Steps: 1) Tree-Marking. 2008. 119

Photograph. Fitzgerald, 2016, The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook, p. 56.
Fig. 18. Cathy Fitzgerald. Photograph of forester Sean Hoskins, 119

insert, Chris Hayes, thinning Hollywood forest. Photograph.
Fitzgerald, 2016, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.x
Fig. 19. Cathy Fitzgerald. Photograph of setting up quadrate to 120

measure biodiversity in Hollywood forest. Photograph.
Fitzgerald, 2016, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.x
Fig. 20. Cathy Fitzgerald. Photograph of increasing 120

biodiversity in Hollywood forest. Photograph. Fitzgerald, 2016,
The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.x
Fig. 21. Cathy Fitzgerald. Photograph of under-planting with 121

other tree species in Hollywood forest. Photograph. Fitzgerald,
2016, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.x
Fig. 22. Cathy Fitzgerald. Photograph of the Hollywood forest 121

Enumeration folder. Photograph. Fitzgerald, 2016, The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.x
Fig. 23. Nisbit, Hixon, Dean Moore and Nelson. Four cultures: 125
new synergies for engaging society on climate change. Graph.
2010. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 8 (6), p. 330.
Fig. 24. Cathy Fitzgerald. Screengrab from Reversing Silent 130

Spring video, Hollywood Forest blog, and from Nicola Brown’s
video. www.nicolabrown.ie
14

Fig. 25. Telling the story of Hollywood forest and my 132
developing ecoliteracy in conversation with others, in
Hollywood forest, November 2014. Photograph: Gwen
Wilkinson
Fig 26. Gwen Wilkinson. First Steps: 1) Tree-Marking. 2008. 135

Photograph. Fitzgerald, 2016, The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook, p. 56.
Fig. 27. Kathleen Dean Moore. The Logic of Two Premises. 137
2014. Video still. Centre for Humans and Nature.
http://www.humansandnature.org/earth-ethic-kathleen-dean-
moore
Fig. 28. Helen and Newton Harrison. Serpentine Lattice. 1992- 138
3. Video still of exhibition documentation. HarrisonStudio
website http://theharrisonstudio.net/serpentine-lattice,
https://vimeo.com/21284820
Fig. 29. Lucy Neal [editor]. Playing for Time: Making Art as if 140
the World Mattered. 2015. Cover image by Hey Monkey Riot.
Fig. 30. Cathy Fitzgerald. Examining the ‘slow art’ of The 142
Hollywood Forest Story, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.
39.
Fig. 31. Matt Ratto and Megan Boler [eds.] DIY Citizenship: 144
Critical Making and Social Media. (2014) Cover Image.
Photographer unknown.
Fig. 32. EADTU. MOOC education status report for Europe. 148
2015. Report cover image.
eadtu.eu/documents/.../Institutional_MOOC_strategies_in_Euro
pe.pdf
Fig. 33. Enough Project. ‘Conflict minerals’ are used in the 153
manufacture of mobile technologies. 2015. Video animation
still. http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict-minerals
Fig. 34. Gwen Wilkinson. Conversations between Hollywood 162

forest, myself, students, Wexford, Campus School of Art and
Design, Carlow Institute of Technology. 2015. Photograph.
Fig. 35. Unknown. Guattari. 2013. Book cover photograph. 163

Guattari: Qu’est-ce que L’écosophie? (Guattari: What is
Ecosophy?) edited by Stéphane Nadaud.
15

Fig. 36. Cathy Fitzgerald. Living inside an eco-social-art 178
project. 2016. Screengrab. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook
p. 38.
Fig. 37. Insa Winkler and Koeford. The Flower of 181

Sustainability. 2009. Photograph. see http://www.flower-of-
sustainability.eu/
Fig. 38. Peter Reason et al. Five key dimensions of action 186
research. Diagram. 2009. In: Insider Voices: Human
dimensions of low carbon technology.
Fig. 39. Cathy Fitzgerald. The dominant ‘sustainable forest’ 193

landscape in Ireland. 2016. Screengrab. The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook p. 17.
Fig. 40. Helen and Newton Harrison. The Serpentine Lattice – 194
Washington to Alaska [detail]. 1993. Reed College Gallery
[online].
Fig. 41. TeAra N.Z. Kaitiakitanga. 2010. In: Te Taiao Māori 203
and the Natural World. Photograph. p. 182.
Fig. 42 Cathy Fitzgerald. ‘Tending the Wild’. The Hollywood 204

Forest Story eBook p. 59.
Fig. 43. Joséphine Guattari and François Pain. Min a La Borde. 211
1986. Video still. https://youtu.be/VgErye7jXbI.
Fig. 44. Cathy Fitzgerald. Burning bright. 2008. Video still. The 213
Hollywood Forest Story eBook p. 67.
Fig. 45. Cathy Fitzgerald. Screengrab: Eradicating Ecocide: ISSUU 214

publication, 2013.
Fig. 46. Helen and Newton Harrison. Green House Britain: 216
Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom. 2009. Installation
photograph. Harrisonstudio.net.
Fig. 47. Mark O’Toole. Introduction to CiviQ. 2015. Video still. 218
http://www.civiq.eu/about/
Fig. 48. Cathy Fitzgerald. Traversing ‘the three ecologies’. 225

2016. Screengrab. Hollywood eBook p. 86.
Fig. 49. Cathy Fitzgerald. Discussions on ecoforestry. 2014. 228

Screengrab. Hollywood blog. https://
hollywoodforest.com/2014/04/23/earth-day-2014-hollywood-
16

green-sod-ireland/
Fig. 50. Cathy Fitzgerald. Select disciplinary skills and 236

lifeworld experiences that I employ for my eco-social art
practice. 2016. Screengrab. Hollywood eBook p. 42.
Fig. 51. Cathy Fitzgerald. Cathy Fitzgerald shadow ‘playing’ 243

The Hollywood Forest Story refrain 2014. Photograph.
Fig. 52. Helen and Newton Harrison. The Serpentine Lattice – 245
Washington to Alaska [detail]. 1993. Reed College Gallery
[online].
Fig. 53. Cathy Fitzgerald. Hollywood forest eco-social art 248

practice as being potentially a 40+ year ‘slow art’ residency.
2016. Screengrab. The Hollywood Forest Storyebook ebook p.
39.
Fig. 54. Cathy Fitzgerald. Alan Price in front of Nicola Brown’s 251
ash forest planting. 2014. Photograph.
Fig. 55. Cathy Fitzgerald. Neighbours. 2013. Video still. The 257
Hollywood Forest Storyebook eBook p. 76.
Fig. 56. Cathy Fitzgerald. Action research to explore the 269

methodological stages of my practice. 2016. Screengrab. The
Hollywood Forest Storyebook eBook p. 49.
Fig. 57. Peter Reason et al. Five key dimensions of action 271
research. Diagram. 2009. In: Insider Voices: Human
dimensions of low carbon technology.
Fig. 58. Cathy Fitzgerald. Premises of my practice. Screengrab. 272

The Hollywood Forest Storyebook eBook p. 14.
Fig. 59. Cathy Fitzgerald. Practical Challenges: forester Sean 275

Hoskins undertaking the practical and necessary work of
thinning Hollywood forest. Screengrab. The Hollywood Forest
Storyebook eBook p. 52.
Fig. 60. Cathy Fitzgerald. Many ways of knowing. Screengrab. 277

The Hollywood Forest Storyebook eBook p. 14.
Fig. 61. Reiko Goto Collins. Figures 5 and 6 of The Serpentine 282
Lattice referred to in Goto Collins’ research. (Goto Collins,
2012, p. 63)
Fig. 62. Outcomes. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 80- 300
17

81.
Fig. 63. Draft of poster for Ireland’s commemorative Farming 311

and Country Life 1916-2016 event (Fitzgerald, 2016).
Fig. 64. Cathy Fitzgerald. Reversing Silent Spring at Visual 328

392
Carlow (pictured: Cheep, the robin, on my window ledge)
Screengrab of blog post.
https://hollywoodforest.com/2016/07/05/reversing-silent-spring
397
Fig. 65. John Derricke. ‘Rorie Oge, a wild kerne and a defeated 332
rebel, in the forest with wolves for company‘. 1581. Woodcut
from The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne.
http://irishcomics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Image_of_Irelande
18

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my supervisors Dr. Paul O’Brien, Dr. Iain Biggs and Professor
Jessica Hemmings for their experience, guidance, trust and good humour in
supporting my research and practice journey. I thank my family, Martin Lyttle
and Holly, Mary and Michael Dawson, Joan and Bruce, Alannah and Karine
and many friends who have supported me constantly. I would also like to thank
Jan Alexander for the original inspiration behind my forest work, the ProSilva
Ireland continuous cover forestry committee, and Dr. Michael Lee and Dr.
Rhys Jones for steering me so well in my journeys between the shores of art
and science. Thanks also to Prof. Tara Brabazon and the late Prof. Steve
Redhead; your podcasts, enthusiasm and knowledge of what constitutes
excellence in doctoral scholarship supported my work in countless ways. As my
work is a transversal endeavour, I acknowledge many more contributions from
many fields in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook. Most importantly, I
acknowledge Hollywood forest and all who reside there.

Dedication
I dedicate this work to my late mother, Mary Cowie Fitzgerald Dawson,

thanking her for the countless, joyful ways she supported me through life
and to the memory of my late father, Kevin Fitzgerald.
19

20

PART ONE:

INTRODUCTIONS

21

Chapter 1:

Origins of the enquiry

22

1.1 Reading this thesis

This creative, qualitative enquiry is in two parts:
1) this written thesis and
2) an eBook of select practice material.
I invite the reader to first read The Hollywood Forest Story eBook as a
key introduction to this creative enquiry. The eBook provides an
interactive, audio-visual experience of a typical multi-faceted ecological
art practice, what I term ‘eco-social art practice’, which in this case
centres on the transformation of a small tree plantation in Ireland.
Importantly, the eBook gives an overview of the thesis that has arisen
from a developed eco-social art practice. In particular, the eBook
supplies evidence from my practice to support the thesis’s arguments for
the significant value of a guiding theory-method framework to articulate
eco-social art practice. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, therefore, is
the supporting cultural artefact of this enquiry.
The Hollywood Forest Story eBook can be read via APPLE’s iBook app,
ideally on an iPad but also on MACs (some eBook content, videos, and
online articles require a WIFI connection). Additionally, a print version
of the eBook with an accompanying DVD has been prepared if for some
reason the eBook is not available to read.
As this is a creative practice-theory enquiry, there is interplay between

the eBook and thesis documents. At times in the eBook, there will be
references to thesis material and vice versa. For clarity, both documents
are set out in chapter form with numbered pages, with additional
material in the Appendices of both documents. In the thesis Appendix,
an overview of Irish forests contextualises the new forestry approach
pursued in this study, and an exploration of the relationship of Guattari’s
ecosophy to other ecological philosophies contextualises the choice of
23

the former. Both the thesis and eBook documents can, therefore, be read
as standalone documents, but each is significantly enhanced when both
are read.
This enquiry’s research specifically explores and analyses ‘eco-social art

practices’. In this term, ‘practice’ identifies the proposed guiding
framework that develops both theory and practice dimensions as in the
academic understanding of praxis. For readability, the term practice is
used rather than praxis. I discuss this point further in this Chapter 2.5
A note on citations:
At times in this thesis, there are references to digital eBooks I consulted

for this study. I identify if I am referring to an eBook edition, Kindle1 or
otherwise in the bibliography. Some eBook versions are exact copies of
printed texts, and so the numbering is the same as the printed text.

1
As Kindle eBooks, for example, do not use a page number system, the Harvard
reference guide explains that chapter or section numbers are sufficient to point to the
particular part of the book that is referred to, as electronic searching will make it
possible to find any direct quotes quickly and easily. From the University of Reading
notes on electronic citations for Harvard reference style. For example ‘brief citation in
text/footnote: Matthews, 2010, chapter 6; full citation in bibliography: Matthews, D. J.
(2010) What Cats Can Teach Us. [eBook], London: Penguin.’ See
https://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/studyadvice/StudyResources/Reading/sta-
citations.aspx
24

1.2 Introduction to the enquiry

If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate
change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives
low down on the ground with its arms around the people, who go
to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains, and
their rivers. Because they know that the forests, the mountains, and
rivers protect them.
Arundhati Roy (2011) Broken Republic: Three Essays, p. 214.

Fig. 1. Image from the video Once I Counted Birds [filmed in 2000 by the author on
the unpeopled Suwarrow Atoll in the South Pacific, whose unique wildlife populations
are threatened by warming oceans and sea level rise]. Fitzgerald, 2009, The Hollywood
Forest Story, eBook p.32.
“10 000 miles away… it’s connected, I think;

each forest we tend, each small action we take…”
Cathy Fitzgerald, Once I Counted Birds, 2009, video, 1:00.
Pioneering ecological art practices like those evolved by Helen and

Newton Harrison (hereafter referred to as ‘the Harrisons’), which foster
ecoliteracy and agency for practitioners, their collaborators and
audiences, have existed for several decades (Harrisons, 2016). However,
despite the existential threat in the Earth’s unfolding ecological
25

emergencies, these critical creative practices remain little understood in
contemporary art education or valued in broader society.
As ecological art practices are emblematic of an essential cross-sector

cultural response to ecological emergencies, this thesis explores why and
how long-term ecological art practices operate. Accordingly, this thesis
employs analyses from my ongoing creative practice, The Hollywood
Forest Story and the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1992-3), to argue for
a guiding theory-methodology framework to significantly increase
understanding and recognition of the value of ecological art practices. A
key motivation for the research is that this accessible framework may
encourage more creative people to engage in the most pressing concerns
of this century.
Ecological art practices are less understood for a number of reasons. In

Ireland and elsewhere, these practices are overlooked when
contemporary art education, national art policy development and the
general public’s understanding fall victim to political and media wars
that deny the gravity of what are unprecedented planetary ecological
emergencies.
Meanwhile, scientific consensus confirms that we are living in a time of

great planetary peril. Humanity has recently received a second ‘Warning
to Humanity’ notice from the largest independent Alliance of World
Scientists of 20,000 signatories (and growing), following its original and
unheeded warning over twenty-five years ago2, that humanity has failed
to make progress in solving critical environmental challenges (Ripple et
al., 2017). Revisiting the trends for environmental issues noted in the
original 1992 warning, today’s scientists from around the world are
revealing, alarmingly, that most environmental conditions, from

2
‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.’ (1992) Union of Concerned Scientists:
Available from: http://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html (Accessed: 25
June 2013).
26

potentially catastrophic climate change to the unprecedented mass
species event caused by human activity, are accelerating, so much so
that industrial society is rapidly imperiling the capacity of the Earth to
support life within this century (ibid..).
Today’s scientists implore that time is running out. They assert there is a
moral imperative that humanity immediately transitions to sustainable
activities, to address: unsustainable population growth and consumption,
the polluting fossil fuels currently in use, and our reliance on erroneous
growth economics and unsustainable agri-aqua culture. They identify
that sustainability initiatives will be diverse and will require evidence-
based advocacy and civil-society pressure (ibid..) Thus, accepting these
warnings reveals that extraordinary societal change on a scale never
taken before is in front of us.
However, it is important to realise that the scientific data used to plot the
depth of the planetary crisis tacitly frames the crisis to be solvable (at
least by a majority convinced that the environmental situation can be
averted) by science’s rational engines of progress, technology, and
economics. We can see this unquestioned worldview operating in the
absolute faith in science (scientism), and technology promoted by those
advocating an ecomodernist techno-scientific agenda, as in the authors,
scientists, and campaigners who launched the Ecomodernist Manifesto
(2015)3.
Unfortunately, the dominance of science over-shadows critical analyses

from the humanities and arts that understand that the ecological
emergency is, at its roots, a cultural crisis of industrial civilization not
appreciating its inherent unsustainability. C. P. Snow’s seminal The Two
Cultures (1959) lecture on the deep division between the two cultures of
science and art remains relevant here and, with the earth’s ecological
emergency already upon us, the dangers of this separation are acute. In

3
See http://www.ecomodernism.org/
27

this way, there is a worrying lack of critical understanding of how
globalised Western industrial culture, in particular, perpetuates global
ecological challenges, and likewise, how a new cultural activity must be
mobilised as a critical means to overcome them. The way we live
together and understand the values for life is through cultural activity.4
Accordingly, clarifying the aims and activities of ecological art practice

in this thesis can be seen as: part of broader art and ecology practice
development; reflecting the concerns of the emergent ecological
(environmental) humanities research field5; and following advances in
international cultural policy (Culture | Futures, 2009; International
Federation of Art Councils and Creative Agencies, IFACCA, 2014,
2015; United Cities and Local Government (UCLG) 2010, 2016), that
confirm creativity as critical for localising and envisioning sustainability
for communities. This growing body of research and policy development
confirms that culture has a fundamental if a still little-acknowledged
role, alongside science, to engage the hearts of the broader public toward
sustainable living.
However, a paradigm shift toward an ecological turn presents challenges

for contemporary art practice that aim to inspire their audiences toward
meaningful change. Effective ecological art practices are characterised
by long-term creative engagement with communities and environments
to foster understanding of local eco-social wellbeing. These practices
appear seemingly diverse because they involve complex constellations
of art and non-art activity; thus, they are radically distinct from
modernist artworks that may refer to environmental, nature or landscape

4 The internationally accepted definition of culture is ‘the set of distinctive spiritual,
material, intellectual, and emotional features of society’ that continuously evolve
through our art, traditions, faiths, even our sports (UNESCO, 2002). Previously,
UNESCO maintained an “arts and literature” definition of culture. The 1982 World
Conference on Cultural Policies (MON- DIACULT, Mexico City, 1982) marked a
major change following advances in an anthropological understanding of culture.
5
This field, which includes ecocriticism, has an important role in advancing critical
understandings of how contemporary Western culture has fostered the ecological crisis.
28

themes. Their nature more resembles and reflects an awareness of
expanded social art practice that is now a critical aspect of contemporary
art practice education. In this way, to emphasise the inherent social
dynamism of ecological art practice, in this thesis I offer and prefer the
term ‘eco-social art practices’. I also propose this new term to articulate
the vital correspondence for social art practice practitioners who may be
interested in engaging in critical eco-social concerns.
Like social art practice, eco-social art practice abandons the autonomous
artwork that avoids engaging with social or political concerns and
readily seeks collaboration and connection. A desire to act responsibly
for a specific place’s wellbeing motivates eco-social art practices. Of
critical importance, local activity in these embedded-in-place practices
simultaneously speaks to urgent, global, eco-social concerns (as echoed
in my video above where my sustainable forest actions in Ireland are a
response to knowledge of warming oceans and rising seas elsewhere).
Embracing ethical, embodied, experiential, political, traditional,

scientific knowledge, as well as artistic processes, eco-social art
practices instinctively mirror ecological complexity and so radically
challenge accepted conventions that define modern art. Also, because
these practices value and comprise lived lifeworld6 experience they are
more than transdisciplinary endeavours. They exhibit the value of
transversality–a critical Guattarian concept that is explored in this thesis
to understand how eco-social art practices integrate lived experience and
disciplinary knowledge to foster new possibilities for an ecological
worldview.
However, when eco-social art practitioners routinely perform art and

non-art practices over extended periods, sometimes years, and do not
prioritise the production of singular artworks, the most familiar response

6
A term Iain Biggs (2015) borrows from theologian Roger Corless who appreciated
different spiritual lifeworlds without ignoring their distinct contradictions (p. 262).
29

is–“But is it art?” (This is the long-standing argument also expressed
against social art practice). Indeed, the production of creative works,
although a critical presentational stage, is only part of an eco-social art
practice. More critical is utilising a creative sensibility to encircle an
eco-social concern, and to weave many ways of knowing to envision
engaging ways of living differently. The totality of eco-social art
practices that often develop over years thus enacts a philosophy for
living well, living responsibly with this Earth and its inhabitants.
Critically, eco-social art practitioners who pursue personal, in-depth

studies of place with a keen awareness of global eco-social concerns,
develop embodied, skilful understanding of ecoliteracy rather than
artistic talent (ecoliteracy as an essential development for all education
is discussed in Chapter 2.4). Examining any eco-social concern: from
the destruction of a forest to the degradation of an ocean, a river, a lake,
a bog, a meadow, an estuary or a park, can be used to foster ecoliteracy
for diverse rural or urban communities.
Importantly the ecoliteracy that eco-social art practice evolves, the

ability to identify the social and political mechanisms enacted locally
and globally that make industrial civilization grossly unsustainable,
violently ecocidal and inter-generationally unjust, is the catalyst for
developing practitioners’, collaborators’ and their audiences’ political
agency for alternative, sustainable futures. Advanced eco-social art
practice is evident in the examples I give below, and ecoliteracy informs
British art and sustainability programmes: Julie’s Bicycle in England
and Creative Carbon Scotland that have, in the last decade, developed
sector-wide and art institutional strategies with their respective national
arts council organisations – Arts Council England and Creative
Scotland. My research has important local relevance, as Ireland, unlike
Britain, lacks cultural and art education policy about sustainability
despite the scientific consensus that confirms the enormity of ecological
emergencies.
30

To summarise, research and policy that determines culture’s critical role
to engage society toward sustainability are currently under-
acknowledged, both within and beyond the art world and particularly in
Ireland. Thus efforts to clarify critical cultural responses to the
ecological emergency, as presented in this thesis, are particularly
warranted.
1.3 Motivations for research arising from my practice
Eco-social art practices embrace the complexity of an interconnected,

dynamic and emergent world. However, real-life complexity sets
challenges to conventions of contemporary art practice. Even with my
background in science, I struggled to develop an eco-social art practice.
These challenges hindered both my learning in developing an effective
practice, and my efforts to communicate its aims, its wide-ranging
activities, and similarly diverse art and non-art outcomes. This thesis
arises primarily from addressing these difficulties.
A pivotal motivation to continue my practice and this research arises by

recognising, intuitively at first, the moral need to respond to ‘the great
acceleration’ of environmental concerns that I understand through my
previous research science background and more recent reading of
planetary boundary science. My scientific knowledge, with my long
interest in contemporary art has heightened my awareness of the
ecological humanities field, of which art and ecology endeavours are an
important if yet under-acknowledged cultural response. Specifically, I
was interested in understanding how eco-social art practice, often
unexpectedly, evolves valuable environmental learning and new policy
outcomes for practitioners and their communities.
31

Awareness of some international art and education organisations propels
my continued motivation to engage and promote understanding of eco-
social art practice. I was present at the 2009 Culture | Futures7 meeting
that was held alongside the UN Climate Change negotiations and which
evolved an agreed joint statement from arts councils and other art
organisations from around the world that argued that:
[c]ulture can support the bridging between politics, policies and

communities and help with the understanding that dealing with
climate change is part of a transition to a more sustainable future.
The combined effort of cultural actors will be one of the most
powerful agents for change that the world has ever seen. (Gerlach-
Hansen, 2009)
This meeting was particularly inspiring. I became intensely aware during

high-level presentations of the Culture | Futures meeting of the abyss
that is the ecological emergency and of the new international cultural
policy that is responding to the issue8. To date, however, and due to
other developmental priorities and low eco-literacy in Ireland,
alarmingly, the Irish art sector is not responding in a way commensurate
to the gravity of the scientists’ repeated warning to humanity.
Thus, I recognise that eco-social art practices persevere as a marginal,

yet increasingly critical contemporary art practice which is little
understood. I, therefore, target my analyses for myself but also for a
small but crucial developing constituency. I extend this research to
others who may have worked in this area for a long time, especially

7
Culture|Futures is an organisation formulating international art policy and art and
sustainability (predominantly city) initiatives which was led by the Danish Culture
Institute for the 2009 UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen (see
www.culturefutures.org). The inaugural meeting was attended by UNESCO, and
initiated policy discussion from arts and cultural councils from around the world: the
British Council, Asia Europe Foundation (ASEF), European Union of National
Institutes for Culture (EUNIC,) the UK RSA (Art & Ecology programme [discontinued
in 2010]), International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA)
and art-ecology-city and rural based organisations and practitioners. Although no
official representative attended from Ireland, I attended and wrote articles on my
general ecoartnotebook.com site during 2009-10 [now archived] and managed the
Culture|Futures website during 2010-11).
8
My blog post after attending the 2009 Culture|Futures summit:
https://hollywoodforest.com/2009/12/15/vigil-for-climate-justice-on-mt-leinster-joins-
others-across-the-world/
32

those who might object to the idea that theorising such diverse, complex
practices is impossible, or of little value, or too prescriptive for such
creative practices.
I maintain awareness of this developing constituency in my analyses: in

my theoretical research in the following Chapters and, in review of my
creative practice and the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice; I strive in the
accompanying The Hollywood Forest Story eBook to present a more
accessible voice to relate practice experience as evidence for this
research, and to visualise how my proposed methodology operates for
such practices, to newcomers to the art and ecology field. The online
audio-visual format brings to life the transformative potential and social
power of eco-social art practice.
Chiefly, I persevere in developing my creative practice and research by

following others’ developed creative practices. From the late 1990s, in
my undergraduate art education, I have been intrigued by how the
Harrisons’ practice consistently evolves essential community and
political agency, serving as a pivotal touchstone to develop my practice
and this thesis (Harrisons, 2016).
Through my practice experience and reflection, and after considerable

study of the seemingly different critical accounts of the Harrisons’ and
others’ eco-social art practices for this thesis, I noted similar aims; ideas
and common method approaches exist for these practices. As mentioned,
I realise that if I, with a considerable science and contemporary art
background, struggle to develop and communicate an effective eco-
social art practice, this lack of understanding must be preventing many
others from engaging with the most pressing concerns of our time.
With this realisation, I began researching relevant theory and

methodology to better understand the totality and under-acknowledged
value of eco-social art practices. Guattari’s The Three Ecologies and
33

Chaosmosis as inflected by reading Paul’s Elliott’s Guattari Reframed
[for the Arts] (2012) has been pivotal to direct my application of
Guattari’s ideas to articulate eco-social art practice (he briefly applies
Guattari’s ecosophy to the Harrisons’ practice).
A consequence of developing my theory-method framework that

employs Guattari’s ecosophy, including his key ideas of transversality,
and an action research methodology is that it gives considerable insight
into the motivations and workings of others’ exemplary practices. I now
more easily identify the iterative components, operation and potential for
eco-social learning and change in exemplary eco-social art practice I
admire. Correspondingly, I can now identify similar features developed
or underdeveloped in my and others’ practices and have helped others
understand these processes.
Overall, my proposed framework, evolving from these motivations,

answers my aim to give newcomers to the field, a simple, clear guide as
to why and how eco-social art practices develop and operate. It has
become the guide I wish I had to hand when beginning my eco-social art
practice. Underlining my claim for the validity of this framework I
present existing research on eco-social art practice below.
1.4 Reviewing the development and current characterisation

of eco-social art practice to identify the value of a guiding
theory-method framework
In this section, I first give a brief overview of the current field of eco-
social art practice by presenting some exemplary practices. Next, I
examine how eco-social art practices are seen as developing over recent
decades following increased scientific understanding of rapidly
worsening ecological realities. I then analyse present understandings of
these practices in how they are viewed primarily as transdisciplinary
34

activities. The scope of this review, however, is limited to relevant
source materials in English (chiefly from North America and some
European contexts). 9 I focus on these contexts rather than local Irish
discourse since Irish practice, and discourse of art and ecology is
limited, as observed in Irish educator Paul O’Brien’s review article ‘Art,
Politics, Environment’ (2008) where he identifies a handful of
practitioners with developed practices.10
1.4.1 Current field of eco-social art practice
To complement the presentation of a live eco-social art practice, as

documented in the accompanying Hollywood Forest Story eBook, and to
further reveal the importance and distinctive emergent form of these
practices, I give a brief descriptive overview of five exemplary eco-
social art practices below. A close reading of critical reviews of these
practices was influential in developing a deeper insight into the similar
general aims, method stages and the potential of eco-social art practice
to develop practitioners’, collaborators’ and their audiences’ eco-social
learning and agency.
The first practice I examine, the forest-centred Serpentine Lattice (1992-

3) acknowledges, the efforts of the Harrisons who over the last four

9
Environmental practices have arisen across the world as ecological challenges have
become increasingly recognised but from an English-speaking context, reviews and
analysis of the emergent Land and Environmental Art first gained traction
predominantly in North America, then later Europe.
10
O’Brien (2008) identifies painter Barrie Cook, print artist Andrew Folan, Dublin-
based urban wildlife artist Holly Asa, my practice, Northern Ireland collaborators,
Patrick Bloomer and Nicolas Keogh and practitioners living in the County
Leitrim/Roscommon area; Carol Ann Connolly, Gareth Kennedy, poet Alice Lyons,
Christine Mackey, Anna MacLeod. This is not an exhaustive list. Art and ecology
education in Ireland (and elsewhere) is recent; for example through an elected module
at the National College of Art & Design from Paul O’Brien (until his retirement in
2015), and the first MA in Art and Ecology was undertaken at the Burren College of
Art in 2013 (it since provides art and ecology as a theme at doctoral level). These
developments reveal the very recent discourse in this area in Ireland. In England, there
are limited courses and modules, and some have been developed over many years, for
example, the MA | MFA Art and Ecology programme at Schumacher College, Devon.
35

decades (Harrisons, 1993, 2003, 2007, 2016) have pioneered the form of
eco-social art practice and helped inspire the developing art and ecology
field. Later in the thesis, I reflect on The Serpentine Lattice as the critical
case study, along with my practice, to explore and analyse the validity of
my proposed framework.
1. Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison: The Serpentine

Lattice (1993),11 California, USA.
Fig.2 Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison: Image still from video
documentation of The Serpentine Lattice (1993).
The Serpentine Lattice evolved in 1992 from an invitation to the

Harrisons from the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery12 at the
University of Oregon. The Harrisons were asked to respond to the large-
scale deforestation and industrial monoculture clearfell (clear-cut)
forestry management practices of the Pacific Northwest of the United

11
A year-long project, the bioregional Serpentine Lattice project built on the Harrisons’
significant career to date that included the 12-year, transdisciplinary, dialogical, and
metaphor-generating Lagoon Cycle (1974-84) project. The form of the Lagoon Cycle
became a model for The Serpentine Lattice and most of their successive projects. See
http://theharrisonstudio.net/serpentine-lattice.
12
Archival material of The Serpentine Lattice is available at the Reed College Gallery
website
http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/cooley&CISOPTR=1631&
CISOBOX=1&REC=9.
36

States, a region covering thousands of miles. The work has continued
relevance as seen in the recent video created by the Harrisons that
reflects on California’s increasing forest-related wildfire destruction,
Saving the West: A Whole Systems Proposal in Brief (2017, see
https://vimeo.com/224508715)
The Harrisons developed a broad scientific and community-wide

response to re-imagine and visualise a proposed eco-social restoration of
this bioregion.13 Their Serpentine Lattice demonstrates a comprehensive
range of methods; steps and processes that I regard as exemplary for
eco-social art practice. This prolonged work (one of the shorter of the
Harrisons’ endeavours) sought to combine different ways of knowing
from different community stakeholders and fostered a range of aesthetic
and scientific activities with which to explore the complexity of a now
devastated forest bioregion.
The chief cultural artefact of The Serpentine Lattice was a sound-work

made from the Harrisons’ and others’ comments that created a narrative
for a mural-sized triptych slideshow (Fig. 2) of photographic images of
deforestation and monoculture forestry in the final exhibition. Read by
the Harrisons (see the video, http://theharrisonstudio.net/serpentine-
lattice), this eco-poetic dialogue represented the diverse ‘lattice’ of non-
art and art participants’ voices that were engaged in the collaboration.
This sound-work included comments from scientists, architects, artists,
engineers, Indigenous Americans, students, and themselves, and
observations to acknowledge ‘the voices’ of the forests, rivers and
wildlife. The photographic slideshow and maps visually conveyed the
Serpentine (‘snake-like and green’) Lattice’s form and its physical

13
‘A bioregion is a “life region”. A geographical area described in terms of its unique
combination of flora, fauna, geology, climate and water features—the whole of which
distinguishes it from other bioregions […] Watersheds, being an important physical
feature of bioregions, are often used to define their boundaries [as in the Harrisons’
works]. A bioregion refers ‘both to geographical terrain and a terrain of
consciousness—to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that
place.’ Bioregional Congress, http://biocongress.org/about/ [Accessed 19 November
2014].
37

bioregional boundary. From the conversations developed, an important
outcome was that the Harrisons submitted a policy to the US White
House administration (unfortunately not adopted) proposing an eco-
security system14, whereby 1% of GNP (gross national product) would
support ‘an environmental act of restitution and act as a counter pressure
to endless ecocidal extraction.’15
2. Insa Winkler: The Acorn Pig (2003 – 2006) Saxony, Germany
Fig. 3. Image from Insa Winkler’s video essay Eichelschwein (The Acorn Pig), 2006:
15 min.
In this work of ‘transdisciplinary cooperation,’ Winkler artfully explores

traditional versus EU (and global) industrial pig farming by examining
how Saxon pigs are industrially raised, fattened and then sold as famous
Tyrolean bacon. She investigates afforestation, ethics, the politics of
Agenda 21, carbon emissions of the industrial agriculture sector,
economics, and local traditions and innovations.

14
An ‘eco-security system, [is] a system not unlike the social security system, using
1% of the Gross National Product as an environmental act of restitution and as a
counter pressure to endless [timber] extraction.’ See
http://theharrisonstudio.net/?page_id=643. This proposed policy was prescient of
alternatives to Gross National Product (GNP) indices that have, in the decades since,
developed in some other countries, e.g. the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
developed in Maryland, U.S., and the Gross Domestic Happiness Indicator of Bhutan.
15
See http://theharrisonstudio.net/serpentine-lattice
38

Winkler imagines through her practice an alternative, more life-
sustaining and cultural affirming ‘Saxon Acorn Pig’. Her diverse
activities included: dialogue with pig farmers, land acquisition,
authorisation to house pigs outside, buying and fattening pigs with
acorns, discussions with other artists, drawing, photography, sculpture
installations, developing red ‘acorn wings’ to highlight the
interconnection between oak forests and pigs, and a summary, video
essay displayed in a mobile Acorn Pig Cinema (see
http://www.artecology.de/ the Acorn Pig Projekt page).
Winkler’s Acorn Pig, like the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice, evolves a

multi-constituent practice of different aesthetic activities, ‘real-world’
experience and exploration of industrial animal practices and policies.
Winkler’s work, like the others presented, is emblematic of how an eco-
social art practice may serve to advance initiatives of sustainability
relevant to specific regions.
3. Simon Read: Falkenham Saltmarsh Tidal Management Scheme,

Suffolk, UK (begun in 2011)
Fig. 4. Image from a video in which Simon Read describes his practice.
Simon Read’s Falkenham Saltmarsh Tidal Management Scheme, the

third work in a series started in 2009, is described by Read as an art-led
transdisciplinary project, through which Read explores, restores and
develops ideas of policy for managing a salt marsh on the River Deben.
39

Read, an artist and university art educator, developed an eco-social art
practice through artistic practices of drawing and imaginary map-making
of the estuary that serve to prompt conversations with other stakeholders
and the local community. He ‘proposes a role through [a] practice of
holding a conversation with natural processes and through this, it fosters
an enhanced understanding at a community level of how estuarine
systems work’. (See http://www.simonread.info/falkenham-saltmarsh-
tidal-management-scheme/).
Read’s work is particularly instructive to consider how eco-social art

practice may develop from keen observational skills and traditional art
techniques. In this way, Read employs his significant drawing practice
to develop an artistically engaging, open-ended, multi-constituent eco-
social art practice. Moreover, in all the exemplary practices selected we
can recognise artistic strategies have a crucial role in the development
of, and audience engagement with, eco-social art practice.
4. Deirdre O’Mahony: T.U.R.F. (Transitional Understandings of

Rural Futures), (since 2012) Ireland
O’Mahony describes T.U.R.F as ‘a project designed to activate a cultural

space that openly examines the regulation and future management of
peat bog land in Ireland and interrogates the process of decision-making
on the designation of habitats, the loss of property rights and the future
economic value of raised bogs as carbon sinks.’ (O’Mahony, undated;
http://www.deirdre-omahony.ie/artworks/2000s/list/67-turf.html)
40

Fig. 5. Image from Deirdre O’Mahony’s installation-archive, ongoing project T.U.R.F.
Art workings and cultural artefacts from the project included: the
T.U.R.F. archive, a turf stack built in the exhibition venue by Colm
Harrigan, and film and photographs by O’Mahony.
An important outcome from the T.U.R.F project was a public mind

meitheal16 conversation ‘process that links situated, place-based
knowledge with academic, cultural and institution-based knowledge’
held during the related LAND LABOUR CAPITAL conference, which ran
from 26 - 28th September 2013. (ibid.) As in Guattari’s ecosophy, there
is an acute awareness in O’Mahony’s practice that the public’s mind, as
much as environmental practices, needs to be examined to advance eco-
social change.

16
Meitheal is a Gaelic word for describing ‘community’ and the rural Irish custom of
people coming together to help on a neighbour’s farm.
41

5. Ursula Biemann (Swiss art practitioner, researcher) with Paulo
Tavares (London-based architect, urban researcher) The Land
Grant: Forest Law (2014), Ecuador, Amazon forest region.
Fig. 6 Stills from Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares’ The Land Grant: Forest Law
project, exhibition, video and bilingual book (2014).
The Land Grant: Forest Law (2014), a collaborative, multimedia art

installation, refers to the Ecuador Amazon in South America and was
originally exhibited at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum,17
Michigan State University (MSU). Discussing the cultural artefacts that
evolve and engage others in the eco-social art practice, Biemann writes:
‘Forest Law is a synchronised 2-channel video projection shot with two
cameras, a photo-text assemblage unfolding the background to these
cases, collected soil samples and an artist’s book. Taken together, the
collection of personal testimonies and factual evidence presented here
expose the multiple dimensions of the tropical forest as a physical, legal,
and cosmological entity’.
Similar to other exemplary eco-social art practices, Biemann’s practice

emerged from dialogues—between Biemann and Tavares’ practices, the
camera and the forest, and with the many people whom they
encountered in Amazonia in November 2013 (ibid.).

17
A residency programme of the Broad Museum, Michigan State University (MSU),
that commissions projects to ‘study localised struggles that speak about shared global
concerns.’ (Umulo, p. 8)
42

Biemann describes the project as detailing the eco-social injustices
arising from the transnational fossil fuel ‘cosmopolitics of Amazonia’
(Biemann, 2014, http://geobodies.org/art-and-videos/forest-law).
Biemann’s diverse practice excels at visualising:
global flows of people, resources, and information. [...] Through the

display of a synchronized double video tableaux, maps, and an array
of materials and samples collected in this embattled territory,
Biemann unravels the complex assemblage of land rights, ecological
and mineral wealth, and private and public interests that animate the
physical, mythical, and legal dimensions of the tropical forest.
(Broad Art Museum, 2014)
Like other exemplary eco-social art practices, the work also offers
alternative life-sustaining ideas. Land Grant: Forest Law introduces
philosopher Michael Serres’18 ‘natural contract’ as holding potential to
direct a new social contract between society and nature. This ecological
philosophy centres on raising awareness of the developing ‘Rights of
Nature’ legislation pioneered in Ecuador as challenging ‘the very
foundations of modern humanist definition of nature’ (Biemann, 2015,
p. 16) and its unsustainable exploitation.
Biemann’s practice, like the Harrisons’ and others’ eco-social art

practices, demonstrates how these practices can powerfully situate local
issues as inevitably ensnared with global eco-politics.
Facets from the above exemplary practices, and a closer analysis of the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice and my practice are used in this thesis to
develop the argument that a guiding theory-method framework
significantly increases understanding of these practices. However,
critical insights toward initially ascertaining the value of the proposed
framework lay in an extensive review of eco-social art practice
literature, as follows.

18
French philosopher Michael Serres’ book The Natural Contract (1995), Michigan:
University of Michigan Press, was a key reference for this project.
43

1.4.2 Review of Literature Characterising Eco-Social Art

Practices
The following resources are central to this thesis’ aim of developing and
arguing for a new term—’eco-social art practice’—and underline the
relevance of developing a guiding theoretical-methodological
framework to increase understanding of these practices: art critic Suzi
Gablik’s books (1984, 1991, 1995) and subsequent articles, 1991, 1992,
1992b, 1995, 2009; curator Barbara Matilsky’s Fragile Ecologies:
Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations and Solutions (1992); the art
practices, artist and curatorial statements found in the US exhibitions
Ecovention (Spaid, 2002) and Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields,
Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots (Spaid, 2012); practitioners Helen
and Newton Harrison’s journal articles and texts about their eco-social
art projects, (Harrisons, 1993, 2003, 2007, 2016); the practitioner-
researcher led practice and theory conference involving some of the
same artists and theorists from the Ecovention exhibition in The
Monongahela Conference (Collins and Goto, 2003); the chapter on
‘Implementation’ practices in the Phaidon survey review of Land and
Environmental Art (Kastner and Wallis, (eds.) 1998); the five-year UK
(2005-2010) RSA and Arts Council England’s Art & Ecology
programme and textbook anthology of exemplary practices—Land, Art:
A Cultural Ecology Handbook (Andrews (ed.), 2006)19; a review of Irish
art and ecology by educator Paul O’Brien, 2008; journal publications
about eco-art practices including analyses by poet-artist, art and ecology
educator, David Haley 2008; 2010a, b; 2011a, b; 2016; writings by art
educators (Neperud, 1997; Blandy et al, 1998; Garoian, 2012;
GreenHerlagh, 2014); an overview of UK public art and environmental
art education (Lister, 2003); the schematic survey of exemplary eco-

19
Unfortunately much of the RSA Art & Ecology programme achievements (interviews
with artists, curators, scientists, reviews of exhibitions, articles solicited by members,
including myself) has been lost with the discontinuation of its comprehensive website
and online participatory members’ network in 2010. Although I am based in Ireland, I
was an active contributor to this programme and originally suggested the online
members’ platform for peer-to-peer learning.
44

social art practices issues, genres and art strategies (Weintraub, 2012);
eco-aesthetic theory analyses (Miles, 2013), eco-aesthetic and political
ecology criticism (O’Brien 2008, Boetgger, 2013, 2016; Demos, 2009,
2013, 2016a, b), doctoral sociological analyses and advanced scientific
review of systems thinking, complexity theory and transdisciplinarity for
identifying ‘ecological art’ for sustainability (Kagan, 2011, Kagan et al.
2012, 2014a, b); doctoral art practice research including review of the
Harrisons’ practice (Goto Collins, 2012); review of Transition Town
eco-social art practice and projects (Neal, 2015); and doctoral art
practice research of the rural (O’Mahony, 2012, 2014, 2015).
Analysis of the sources above identifies characteristics, challenges and

consequences of artistic practices that engage with an ecological
worldview, and offers an explanation of the marginalisation of
ecologism20 in contemporary art over recent decades. In this way, their
publication dates reveal that it has taken considerable time to effectively
articulate critical characteristics of innovative practices that attend to
increased ecological understanding. For the direction of this thesis,
research level review of these practices in the last decade is useful to
determine common aims and the potential in eco-social art practice for
social engagement and change, and to identify common methodological
stages and activities.
Gablik’s early writing is essential to understand the ideas that prompted

pioneering creative practitioners to attend to eco-social concerns. She
notes that comprehensive cultural discussions in the art world of ‘the
ecological imperative’21 in the 1980s set the agenda in this area. Gablik’s
three books Has Modernism Failed? (1984), The Re-Enchantment of Art
(1991), and Conversations Before the End of Time (1995) and

20
Ecologism is understood as an ‘ideology [that] presents a scientific and political
critique of contemporary political, economic and social developments’ from an
ecological point of view. Michael Quinion, Worldwide Words -
http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-eco1.htm [Accessed 13 November
2013]
21
Title of article: Gablik (1992) Art Journal, 51(2) pp. 49-52.
45

subsequent articles are useful to mark the critical analyses of emergent
practices that evolved in new directions from the earlier Land Art22
movement. They are also particularly useful to anchor some of the key
developments, characteristics, and challenges for eco-social art practices
that radically depart from a modernist aesthetic. A second important
point of reference is the Harrisons’ pioneering eco-social art practice as
mentioned that is well documented in critical reviews since the 1970s.23
Gablik’s texts connect critical concerns of an ecological paradigm to

identify the characteristics of innovative practices. There is overlap in
her review as developing social art practices informed and influenced
her understanding of emergent eco-social art practices at this time.
Having identified the key textual material, I will now discuss some of
the established characteristics of eco-social art practice below.

1.4.3 Environmental ethics guide eco-social art practice

In this section, I identify that environmental ethics guide eco-social art
practice development, even if practitioners do not always explicitly
acknowledge them.
Gablik (1991) frames dynamic, participatory and dialogical practices

that relate to an ecological paradigm turn on increased compassion for
the Earth and its inhabitants (p. 182). She observes in her review of
innovative practices: ‘[t]he new questions that are being raised are no
longer issues of style or content, but issues of social and environmental

22
Land Art is an art movement whose practitioners created large earthworks outside of
the gallery system at the end of the 1960s. The aims of the work were not centered on
environmental concerns but often critiqued the institutions of the contemporary art
world.
23
See Adcock, 1992; Kester, 2006; Boetzkes, 2010; Haley, 2008; Kagan, 2011;
Weintraub 2012; Garoian, 2012; and Elliott, 2012.
46

responsibility.’ (ibid. p. 4) She proposes that these arts practitioners ‘are
no longer merely the observers of our social fate but are participating co-
creators […]’ (ibid. p. 26) amidst other communities (human and non-
human). Incorporating an eco-ethic, Gablik explains, is why these
practices ‘will be not-object-based, not concerned with aesthetics and
commerce but focused on specific questions of local, ecological and
social transformation.’ (ibid. p. 27) She predicted in 1991 that:
I believe that what we will see in the next few years is a new
paradigm based on the notion of participation, in which art will
begin to redefine itself in terms of social relatedness and ecological
healing […] (ibid.)
Gablik was early to articulate a moral imperative in such practices and

quotes philosopher David Kleinberg Levin, to argue that what is at stake
with such practices is the potential to ‘transcend the ego-logical, fixed
self of Cartesian and Kantian traditions’, which Levin describes as
prerequisites for a ‘moral community.’ (1991), p. 114) Gablik (1995)
acknowledges that an ethical ‘intersubjectivity’ drives such practices. (p.
82)
The ethical impetus in the Harrisons’ practice is highlighted in critical

reviews, see Adcock, 1992; Kester, 2006; Boetzkes, 2010; Haley, 2008;
Kagan, 2011; Weintraub 2012; Garoian, 2012; and Elliott, 2012. For
example, a key outcome in the Harrisons’ seminal ten-year Lagoon
Cycle (1974-84) and many of their subsequent projects is a dialogical
form that they name as ‘conversational drift’; this exhibits ethical
inclusivity when the voices and sounds (sometimes non-human) of the
many participants are acknowledged (Harrison and Harrison, 1993).
More recently Simus argues that public ‘creation, appreciation and
critiquing environmental art, artists, audiences and critics reinforce
‘ecological citizenship’ for communities.’ (Simus, 2008, p. 36)
Furthermore, Biggs (2014b), reading Guattari’s Three Ecologies (1989),
describes art practitioners developing ‘communities of transverse action’
47

(CTA), who ‘willingly enter into multi- and extra-disciplinary
discourses, conversations, and interventions in ways that have actual
power and influence’ for eco-social change. (p. 918). Articulating the
ethical driver of such practices became essential to develop my practice
and the proposed framework (Chapter 2.5), and I consider it an essential
part of a necessary ecoliteracy for eco-social art practitioners (which I
discuss in more detail in Chapter 2.4).
1.4.4 Eco-social art practices advance a radical ‘connective

aesthetic’ toward transdisciplinarity

In this section, I identify that eco-social art practices advance
transdisciplinarity. Gablik (1992b) suggests this in observing that
durational eco-social art practices exhibit a radical ‘connective
aesthetic’; one that is ‘oriented toward the achievement of shared
understandings and the essential intertwining of self and other, self and
society’ (p. 6). Similarly, Miles (2013, chapter 1) views eco-aesthetic
practices as ‘expanded fields’ similar to many other social art practices
as previously defined by art historian Rosalind Krauss (1979). They
involve processual dialogues (or participation), that often include de-
materialised activities across a number of constituencies: for example,
art critic Grant Kester (2004) analyses the Harrisons’ practice as
collaborative ‘dialogical arts activism’ (pp. 63-66). Shelley Sacks,24 the
developer of the international University of Trees (UoT)25, values Joseph
Beuys’ definitions of expanded aesthetic practices as ‘social sculptures.’
Beuys’ suggested ‘that everyone (involved) is an artist’, and
acknowledged the potential for engaging a wide public ‘as a curriculum
for enabling an ecological way of being […]’ (Sacks, 2011, p. 81).
Boettger (2016) agrees, characterising art in this context ‘as a nexus of
networks, operating ecologically.’ (p. 677) In this way, many other eco-
social art practitioners, including myself, develop practices that connect

24
Director of the UK Social Sculpture Research Unit based in Oxford.
25
Online from 2010 to present, see http://www.universityofthetrees.org
48

cultural activities to scientists, local politicians, educators and holders of
local and traditional knowledge for creative synergy, correctly intuiting
that such comprehensive practices are most likely to fully engage
audiences toward more profound sustainability (see Andrews, 2006;
Weintraub, 2012; O’Mahony, 2012; Demos 2013; 2016).
Kagan (2011) considerably extends understanding of eco-aesthetic

practices as transdisciplinary with new insights from complexity theory
and quantum physics (pp. 153-216). He identifies the degree to which
transdisciplinary formations are enquiry-driven, which David Haley
(2011a) develops as a Question-Based Learning (QBL) approach for
ecological art practice. Art practice researcher Deirdre O’Mahony (2012,
p. 19; 2014, p. 8), who refers briefly to Guattari’s ecosophy, similarly
explains such practices as transdisciplinary. However, I will argue in this
thesis that Guattari’s ecosophy that advances the more encompassing
theory of transversality, more comprehensively articulates eco-social art
practices, than does transdisciplinarity. Transversality, I argue in this
thesis, fully characterises eco-social art practices’ aims, operations and
their important potential to foster new values and agency for eco-social
learning for practitioners and their communities.
The idea of describing eco-social art practices as transdisciplinary,

however, remains a focus in recent surveys of these practices. Linda
Weintraub’s schemas in To Life: Eco-Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable
Planet (2012), corresponds to Kagan and others’ research to apply ideas
of transdisciplinarity theory from science to these practices. Weintraub’s
schema visually maps and summarises Kagan’s complex research, and
she similarly views eco-social art practices involving transdisciplinary
strategies. I acknowledge that Weintraub’s schema is useful to visualise
the diverse disciplinary knowledge and artistic genres and strategies
explored in exemplary eco-social art practice. Weintraub’s schema of
Harrisons’ practice (see Fig. 7 below) was particularly useful during the
49

initial stages of my research to reflect on my similar art and non-art
disciplinary influences and activities.
Fig. 7. Weintraub’s schematic of the Harrisons’ practice highlights why these practices
are currently understood as transdisciplinary endeavours.
Viewing eco-social art practices as having an over-arching

transdisciplinary form is useful in distinguishing work in the wider art
and ecology field that might approach environmental concerns purely as
a topic or theme.
However in the art world today, and to some extent in the art and
ecology field, transdisciplinarity appears much less understood as an aim
and activity (its basis in theoretical physics from the work of physicist
Basarab Nicolescu is little known26) than the recent interest in
interdisciplinary endeavours. For example, there is increasing support in
recent decades for ‘art-science’ interdisciplinary projects and
26
See Nicolescu’s Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity, SUNY 2002.
50

exhibitions, but there is considerably less mention of transdisciplinary
projects (the Scottish Nil by Mouth, a collaboration focused on food and
farming for sustainability, is a comprehensive exception, see
http://chris.fremantle.org/producing/nil-by-mouth-2013/).
For initiating, developing and sustaining eco-social art practices,

understanding the distinction between disciplinary, interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary endeavours is critical,27 and it is a necessary step in
appreciating Guattari’s transversality. For instance, while valuable
knowledge accrues in disciplines, and interdisciplinary exchange
between art and specific disciplines is to be encouraged (and both are an
essential part of eco-social art practices), defining such activities
primarily within interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary models may lead
to limited advances. For example, from my experience and observation
of others’ practices, like artist Mark Dion who regularly navigate natural
science domains, many art-science collaborations operating in the
confines of interdisciplinary curiosity too often inadvertently and
uncritically celebrate science and its ideologies as the main engine of
societal progress (Fitzgerald, 2001).
Kagan (2014a) is correct to argue instead that transdisciplinary

excellence is more than urgently required by society if it is to engage
effectively with the ecological challenges of the 21st century. However,
practitioners who adopt transdisciplinary models, where art and a range
of disciplinary knowledges are consulted to advance more integrated
knowledge formations to respond to emergent eco-social complexity,
nevertheless, often fail to acknowledge or clearly articulate the valuable
experiential, creative or traditional ways of knowing the world beyond
disciplinary knowledge.

27
Kagan (2011) cites Nicolescu to define interdisciplinarity as activity that ‘concerns
the transfer of methods from one discipline to another’, whereas ‘transdisciplinarity
concerns that which is at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines,
and beyond all discipline. Its goal is the understanding of the present world, of which
one of the imperatives is the unity of knowledge. […] This implies the construction of
an integrative, patterning knowledge.’ (p. 204)
51

In contrast, in this thesis, my key argument derived from my eco-social
art practice experience and research insists that the “three ecologies”
thinking and transversality theory, developed by French philosopher-
activist-therapist and new media enthusiast Félix Guattari,
comprehensively increases understanding of the broad disciplinary and
life-world knowledge-gathering scope of eco-social art practices.
Guattari’s theory articulates why eco-social art practices have significant
potential for crucial ecoliteracy and increasing political agency. Having
indicated Guattari’s theory is relevant for this thesis, I will now examine
aspects of Guattari’s work below.
1.4.5 Toward theorising eco-social art practices utilising

Guattari’s ecosophy
Guattari’s relevance to this thesis flows from his profoundly ethical

commitment to social and nascent Green political activism and his
positive regard for the power of independent communication
technologies to transmit ideas for social change. His theorising of
transversality (the bringing together of many ways of knowing and lived
experience to develop new values and practices for being in the world) is
persuasive in the context of this thesis because it relates to an awareness
of how wellbeing always connects to and is a result of intersecting
individual, societal and environmental factors – “the three ecologies”.
Paralleling Gablik’s recognition that eco-social art practice is driven by
an ethical imperative discussed above, Elliott argues ‘[Guattari’s] work
represented an attempt to make compassion a philosophical device’
(2012, p.142), for people and the planet.
Elliott’s reference to the Harrisons’ practice (2012, pp. 135-137)

indicated the value of undertaking analyses of Guattari’s Three
Ecologies (1989), Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (1992)
and ‘Re-Making Social Practices’ (1992) to articulate why ‘eco-activist
52

art’ has the potential to transform a community and their environment.
In these late works, Guattari highlights why ethically directed aesthetic
assemblages, with new communicative technologies and understandings
of chaos theory, have a social power to envision and enact equitable,
life-sustaining values for living well amidst the emergent complexity of
life on Earth.
Guattari’s substantial theory that he confirmed in practice in his life-long

therapeutic work and political activism, therefore, gave me pause to
consider the current emphasis and limitations of theorising eco-social art
practice as chiefly a transdisciplinary activity. Analysing art and
ecology, and art and sustainability research literature, with Guattari in
mind, suggested that potentially useful writers such as Collins, 2007,
Haley, 2008, Kagan 2011, O’Mahony, 2012, and Bourriaud (2002)
lacked the insight offered by Guattari’s development of transversality
theory and a comprehensive ecosophy. However, in addition to Elliott
(2012), I have drawn on the suggestions and findings offered by other
researchers whose understanding of the motives and social potential of
eco-social art practices are informed by Guattari’s ecosophy (Demos,
2013, 2016; Biggs 2014a, b, c).
I detail recent critical review of Guattari’s application for understanding

eco-social art practices more fully in this thesis, but the following gives
some account of the present status of research in this area. Demos (2013)
in a comprehensive review of ‘contemporary art and the politics of
ecology’ argues that the ‘transversal’ approach of Guattari’s ethico-
aesthetic paradigm […] has extended a mandate to artistic practice that
has yet to be fulfilled.’ (p. 2) Correspondingly, Brunner, Nigro and
Raunig (2013) in Demos (2013) demonstrate that Guattari’s ecosophy
‘aims at an opening towards a very broad ethico-political plane of
immanence.’ (p. 10) They argue that:
53

[Guattarian] ecosophy is the name indicating new ways of
imagining and analysing production; the mode of thinking, living,
experimenting and struggling in another way. In other words, it
concerns not the attempt to unify diverse forms of antagonisms but
the invention of new modes of being, new ways of living in the
molecular space of existence, within urban spaces, family,
relationships, work, etc. (ibid.)
Additionally, Demos (2016) in the accompanying essay of the 2015 The

Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas exhibition
(Nottingham Contemporary curated by T. J. Demos, Alex Farquharson,
with Irene Aristizábal), usefully identifies artistic strategies but does not
utilise Guattari’s ecosophy to theorise why these practices confidently
negotiate the complex and intersecting ecologies of Western and non-
Western Indigenous eco-social issues and knowledge.
Biggs (2014a, b, c) argues Guattari’s fundamental concept of

transversality, developed over his working life and central to his
ecosophy, can help describe how place-centred practices typically
negotiate complex subjective and socio-political realms to create new
knowledge. It is also interesting, and confirming for this thesis, that
Haley’s (2016) notion of ‘transpoiesis’, and reference to
transdisciplinarity and post-disciplinarity, which he sees operating in
developed art and ecology practice, appears similar yet is not as
developed as Guattari’s theory of transversality (pp. 53-54).
Later in the thesis (Chapters 4 and 5), I detail the context in which
Guattari’s ecosophy theorising contributes to increased understanding of
the ‘why’ of eco-social art practice: why Guattari’s ecosophy
comprehensively contextualises the aims, operational form, drivers and
potential for eco-social learning and agency in these practices. However,
while I am convinced of the efficacy of Guattari’s theorising to help
understand the motivations and potential of these practices, I was at the
same time, given my struggles to fully develop and explain an effective
eco-social art practice, equally interested in understanding and
54

explaining more simply the practical, day-to-day knowledge of how one
develops, maintains and communicates the diverse activities of eco-
social art practice. My research analyses that helped establish that eco-
social art practices are under-theorised, also alerted me that there now
exists a body of exemplary eco-social art practice in which one could
now more easily perceive common methodological traits.
1.4.6 Toward a methodology for eco-social art practice

utilising action research
To date, art and ecology literature has primarily focused on

characterising ecological art projects’ concerns and art activity, rather
than observing methodological commonalities.
Previous attempts to identify a standard methodological approach appear

to have been complicated by the fact that artists are primarily trained to
prioritise individual styles. This difficulty is evident in Tim Collins’
summary of the important Monongahela Conference on Post-Industrial
Community Development28 (organised by Collins and Goto Collins,
2003) that involved eco-social art practitioners, such as the Harrisons,
Jackie Brookner, and the eco art-activist group PLATFORM. Collins
recognises the common ground in the eco-social concerns pursued, but
observed heated debates about artistic methods arising from these
participants’ experience and preoccupations. Accordingly, he notes that
these practitioners argued for a diverse array of ‘individual’ methods: 24
primary methods, 11 critical methods, 18 applied methods, to apply to a
range of artistic, social, theoretical workings, as well as environmental
actions.

28
Proceedings of this conference papers have been digitised. See GreenMuseum.org
http://moncon.greenmuseum.org/ and http://moncon.greenmuseum.org/recap.htm.
55

Interestingly, the most useful discussion of what might constitute a
broad and useful methodological approach for eco-social art practices is
to be found in North American contemporary art education, rather than
in the art and ecology field itself. Neperud highlights Gablik’s
‘connective aesthetic’ (1995) as enabling re-considerations of artistic
activity within an ecological context (Neperud, 1997, pp. 15-20).
Neperud argues that a connective aesthetic approach helped the
educators recognise that supplying conventional art materials resulted in
‘traditional ways of making art’ (p. 17) and limited two-dimensional
landscape or nature studies.
Instead, Neperud characterises a broad range of new activities to explore

how contemporary art practice curricula might link art and ecology.
When Neperud identifies key activities, and with the hindsight in how
exemplary eco-social art practices have since developed, we can observe
common method strategies for eco-social art practices. For instance, he
notes that a creative practice attending to an ecological connective
aesthetic involves developing personal subjectivity, social responsibility
and interdisciplinary29 workings – practitioners, their collaborators and
audience strive for an ecoliteracy. He also notes the importance of first-
hand phenomenological experience and observes that considerable time
and space were needed for critical reflection and subsequent aesthetic
workings. Crucially, he notes inter-personal social skills were a
necessity to allow the camaraderie of a collaborative effort to evolve
multi-cultural sensitivity, ecosystem learning, and multi-dimensional
networking (pp. 19-20).
The points made in Neperud’s summary closely resemble critical

activities within action research, the methodological approach I choose
to complement Guattari’s ecosophy to fully articulate the everyday
activities of eco-social art practice. Action research, a social enquiry

29
Transdisciplinarity would not have been a familiar concept, as the first World
Congress on Transdisciplinarity was in 1994 (Kagan, 2011, p. 200).
56

methodology used frequently in education and health sectors, explains
how social enquiries, such as eco-social art practice are best organised to
effect a community’s agency for societal and political change.
My interest in action research as a means to articulate key method stages

and activities of eco-social art practice stems from its recent
applicability to instil ecological understanding, and hence sustainability
learning. Action research’s suitability for an ecological context has been
advanced in the last decade and chiefly championed by leading UK
action research academic Peter Reason. (Reason et al., 2009; Reason and
Canney (2015)30 Importantly, Chris Seeley’s scholarship (a doctoral
researcher supervised by Reason) also gave me considerable insight to
explain specifically how and when art practices are essential to
developing engaging eco-social art practices.
In this thesis, I argue for the validity of action research as an approach to

articulate the key method stages, activities and dialogical outcomes of
eco-social art practice through employing an action research framework
to the Harrison’s Serpentine Lattice and my Hollywood Forest Story
eco-social art practice (Chapter 6). Action research, therefore, forms a
pragmatic articulation of Guattari’s ecosophy. In other words, action
research enables a more straightforward, everyday understanding of the
critical iterative method stages and activities and outcomes of eco-social
art practice.
Furthermore, the importance of my decision to pursue action research as

a methodological approach to clearly articulate common iterative stages
in eco-social art practice is confirmed when leading eco-social art

30
Peter Reason was co-editor of key SAGE Handbooks on action research (Reason and
Bradbury, 2001, 2006, 2008), former director of the UK Centre for Action Research in
Professional Practice (CARPP) and co-founder of the MSc in Responsibility and
Business Practice. I was particularly fortunate that the late Chris Seeley saw me present
my developing transversal practice and research at the 2012 ‘The Home and the World’
art & ecology creative summit in Devon, see http://artdotearth.org/the-home-the-
world/. Much of her research is available at http://www.wildmargins.com/Home.html
57

practitioners Collins and Goto (2016) continue to argue that confusion
about how their and others’ similar practices operate remains, and that
this serves as an ‘ever present gatekeeping’ that negates the art and
ecology field from developing further (p. 88).
To summarise, this Chapter details why first-hand struggles to develop

and clearly articulate my eco-social art practice, and review of relevant
art and ecology literature lead me to propose a guiding theory-method
framework to more clearly identify the shared aims and iterative
methodology of eco-social art practices. Thus, my aim to analyse the
proposed ecosophy-action research framework seeks to contribute new
knowledge to the art and ecology field by articulating an integrated view
of different eco-social art practices. This research will be of use to the
field of art and ecology and the visual arts more generally. The research
also alerts others in non-art domains the, as yet under-acknowledged, but
critical value of creative practices for developing relevant, context-
specific sites of ecoliteracy and agency toward sustainability.
Therefore, as a result of the literature surveyed above, I propose a hybrid

theory-method framework, combining Guattari’s ‘three ecologies’
ecosophy with recent advances in action research for sustainability as
the critical focus of this thesis.

1.5 Outline of the thesis that proposes a new guiding
ecosophy-action research framework to articulate eco-social
art practice

This thesis consists of two Parts and seven Chapters. Part 1 introduces
all aspects of the research, my practice evidence and its presentation and
the literature review that identified the niche in the art and ecology field
to which my research contributes. Part 2 offers analyses of the proposed
theory-method framework through the analyses of two case studies, the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice and my Hollywood Forest Story.
58

Chapter 1 above attempts to argue that eco-social art practices are an
essential local response to unprecedented global eco-social concerns and
help envision new life-sustaining values and practices for eco-social art
practitioners, collaborators and their audiences. However, after many
decades, these important cultural responses to the ecological emergency
remain little recognised, and hence little taught, or if recognised, are
seen as idiosyncratically complex both in their form and their different
eco-social concerns and outcomes. In response, I introduce my
arguments that my proposed guiding theory-method framework can
significantly articulate these critical, creative responses.
Chapter 2 presents the research design of this enquiry, which is based on

an interpretative research analysis of both the theoretical and practice
components of eco-social art practice using my practice as an example. I
detail the physical and intellectual research audit trails, define
ecoliteracy, reveal the scientific and humanities research that propels this
research and my practice, and identify the six core drivers of eco-social
art practice. The key actions and presentation of the research for this
enquiry are detailed.
Chapter 3 details the critical components of The Hollywood Forest Story

practice: its exploration of practising Close-to-Nature continuous cover
forestry: A new-to-Ireland ecoforestry approach and how an outward-
facing, eco-social art practice method utilises a social media blog.

In Part 2, Chapter 4, I introduce how Guattari’s ecosophy can articulate
the context, motivations and socio-political potential of eco-social art
practice. However, I discuss that articulating the practical
methodological detail of an ecosophical practice, which is a social
enquiry, is best explained through an action research approach. Thus, the
proposed guiding theory-method framework employs Guattari’s
ecosophy and action research to fully describe the motivations and
59

methodology of eco-social art practice. I introduce the two case studies
to which I apply and analyse the proposed theory-method framework.
Chapter 5 involves the first part of my case study analyses, in which I

analyse the validity of the ecosophy mode of the proposed framework as
applied to The Hollywood Forest Story and The Serpentine Lattice.
Chapter 6 involves the second part of my case study analyses, in which I

analyse the validity of the action research mode of the proposed
framework as applied to The Hollywood Forest Story and The
Serpentine Lattice (this section corresponds to and references material in
The Hollywood Forest Story eBook).
All these analyses serve to present evidence of the utility, value, and
transferability of the proposed eco-social art practice framework and are
the contribution to knowledge for the art and ecology field.
Chapter 7 is a summary of my research findings that argue the value and

validity of the proposed framework. I discuss some positive
consequences of the research for my practice and the emergent art and
ecology field and indicate potential future research directions.
60

2. Research Design, Methodology and Methods
61

2.1 Introduction

The critical research enquiry of this thesis addresses why and how the
proposed guiding ecosophy-action research framework may deepen
understanding of eco-social art practice. I choose a creative enquiry
approach for this thesis for two main reasons: first, because it parallels
how transversal practices creatively operate to embrace diverse cultural,
experiential, and disciplinary knowledge; and second, I argue that
creative enquiry is critical in the urgent context of eco-social challenges
to make academic knowledge more comprehensive, engaging and
accessible.
The first part of this chapter discusses the reasons why evidence arising
from my and others’ creative practice is presented as interpretive
research.
Second, recognising that analyses of my practice form a portion of this

research I clarify my enquiry as an interpretive endeavour of two main
parts; practice and theory. To account for how the research design
developed through these two strands, I detail both a physical and
intellectual research audit trail.
The third part of this Chapter is concerned with identifying the aims and
objectives of this qualitative, creative enquiry. This discussion reveals
the relationship between the parts of the enquiry and the development of
eco-social art practice that evolves The Hollywood Forest Story.
Fourth, and importantly, I discuss how my eco-social art practice

research methodology (and practice) is advanced and develops an
ecoliteracy for its practitioners and audiences.
62

Next, I argue that eco-social art practice operates specifically through six
key drivers — ‘ethico’, ‘eco’, ‘social’, ‘artful’, ‘action’ and ‘practice’.
Detailing the multiple activities in eco-social art methodology clearly
explains how such practices consistently foster new possibilities toward
toward sustainable living.
Concluding this Chapter, I articulate the actions of the enquiry and detail
why and how the presentation of this thesis’ research comprises a
cultural artefact and written exegesis.
Overall, the research methodology and the methodology of my eco-social

art practice was selected and developed first, for the improved viability
of the emergent and complex, the other-than-human community of
Hollywood forest, whom I live with and second, to develop a transferable
guiding theory-method framework to articulate eco-social art practice to
improve knowledge for the art and ecology field.
2.2 Using an interpretive research design to articulate

qualitative findings arising from my creative practice
I select an interpretive research paradigm for this enquiry to cater for the
diverse evidence and outcomes arising from practical and creative
activities that are common to eco-social art practice. According to
Marian Carcary (2009), an ‘interpretivist paradigm emphasises
qualitative research methods where words and pictures, as opposed to
numbers [as in science], is used to describe situations.’ (p. 12) The
evidence in this enquiry arising from my developing eco-social art
practice and analyses of others’ exemplary practices synthesises:
1) art workings (art processes and artworks)
63

2) new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry
management interventions grounded in activities (chiefly
professionally-advised forest thinning every three years) that attend
to restoring a specific ecosystem and bioregion (chiefly a small
conifer plantation situated in the South East of Ireland called
Hollywood forest in which I live)
3) theoretical and critical analyses, and
4) the utilisation and critical review of new social media

technologies, a blog, a learning-reflective practice and method tool
to collate and share such practices.
However, as interpretivism relies on the researcher undertaking personal

reflection of material collected and activities pursued, there is potential
for researcher bias (ibid. p. 13). Problems arise, for instance, when such
research is evaluated for validity and reliability, and for repeatability and
generalisability (its potential to be transferred to other settings) and
whether it is suitable for further enquiry (p. 15). To address this concern,
and followed in this enquiry, Carcary (2009), citing Heopfl (1997), Kock
(2006), Ackerman et al. (2006) and Seale (1999), argue that an ‘audit
trail’ represents a ‘means of assuring quality in qualitative studies’.
Quoting Rice and Ezzy, (2000:36) Carcary adds that ‘maintaining and
reporting an audit trail of methodological and analytic decisions allows
others to assess the significance of the research.’ (ibid.)
Thus, I present an ‘audit trail’ below to describe the trajectory and

research design of this enquiry. Furthermore, because this is an enquiry
analysing complex theory and methodological practices, like Carcary
(2009) I divide the audit trail into two and provide an ‘intellectual audit
trail’ and a ‘practice audit trail’ (p. 19) to more easily identify the
components, key decisions, and research design development.

64

2.2.1 The physical research audit trail
A physical audit trail documents the stages of a research study and

reflects the key research methodology decisions.
Carcary, 2009, p. 20.
Identification of the research problem: Initially I conducted this

research in late 2010 by concentrating on one part of my eco-social art
practice, namely my video work. However, during 2012-2013 I found
that other parts of my practice were evolving important non-art outcomes
in national forest policy and ecojurisprudence awareness and that
analysis of my entire practice methodology might be of value to the
emergent art and ecology field. The research problem developed when I
found it difficult to articulate how my and other’s similar practices
operate to deliver ecoliteracy and valuable social power for practitioners,
collaborators and their audiences.
Developing the research proposal: In developing an eco-social art

practice the transversal methodology evolves from core questions and
interests, which arise from self-initiated and self-directing activities (see
The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, pp. 30-31). Core questions of how to
advance an eco-social art practice that includes engagement with a forest
are complicated, as forests contain the Earth’s most diverse array of
other-than-human communities and processes intersected by human
social activity. Engaging with forests (or any other ecosystem) suggests
that any single, disciplinary approach will be inadequate. Accordingly,
and reflected in the Literature Review (Chapter 1), eco-social art
practices that engage with environments are necessarily transdisciplinary
and multi-constituent (Kastner and Wallis, 1998; Spaid 2002; Kagan,
2008, 2011, 2014b; Wallen, 2012; Weintraub, 2012; Demos, 2013;
2016).
As mentioned (in Chapter 1) after presenting my work at the ‘The Home

65

and the World’ art and ecology summit (2012), Chris Seeley suggested
my experiential actions, artistic activity, theory and policy workings
could be explained more easily through advances in using an action
research methodological approach, particularly her research with Peter
Reason that highlights the value of art practices to progress new
knowledge of sustainability.
Becoming confident about a new research direction, I began collating my

thoughts, findings, writings, video works, and documentation of my
forest management work on a blog hollywoodforest.com from January
2013 (to present). Iain Biggs, who had been aware of my work since
2010, joined my research supervision as art practice advisor in 2013. At
this point, I identified key drivers of eco-social art practice to begin to
characterise a hybrid theory-method framework to improve the
articulation of eco-social art practice significantly.
A valuable resource for developing an eco-social art practice

methodology is also in sensing the potential for new knowledge
formations in others’ developed eco-art practices that involve forests. For
example, the Harrisons’ multi-faceted eco-aesthetic investigations of The
Serpentine Lattice (1992-3), Joseph Beuys’ 7, 000 Oaks - City
Forestation Instead of City Administration (1982-7) and Agnes Denes’
Tree Mountain (1992-6). Such examples of eco-social art practices add to
my previous forest-art project work and direct my research about
commonalities in eco-art activity across the art and ecology field.
In addition, Linda Weintraub’s (2012) four schematic diagrams to

visualise the 1) ‘Art Genres’, 2) ‘Art Strategies’, 3) ‘Eco Issues’ and 4)
‘Eco Approaches’ that eco-artists routinely engage, also prove useful in a
general way to identify and ‘map’ the core questions that are embedded
in the thematic and artistic strategies of my and others’ eco-social art
practice, and this art practice research.
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Indeed, as mentioned, Weintraub’s (2012) schematics (see Fig. 8 below),
visualising crisscrossing transdisciplinary endeavours are a useful
starting point to consider broad commonalities of eco-social art practices.
Fig. 8. Weintraub’s diagram 4 (detail): Schematic of Eco Approaches.
For example, from Weintraub’s fourth ‘Eco Approaches’ schematic, my

practice can be identified as: exploring deep ecology (Weintraub defines
deep ecology as ‘the philosophy that envisions the metaphysical
unification of humans and their surroundings, as opposed to relying on
reason, to guide environmental reform’) and restoration ecology (which
Weintraub describes as recreating ‘a function or a condition that existed
67

in an ecosystem prior to the onset of a disturbance’ (ibid., chapter 1) and
sustainable development).
In my practice, deep ecology, restoration ecology, and sustainable

development principles are embedded in the Close-to-Nature continuous
cover forestry management I apply to the conifer plantation in the centre
of this study (Chapter 3). A direct consequence of following these eco
approaches alerts me to alternatives that contrast the technocratic, single
economic focus and human supremacism involved in industrial forestry;
for example, the developing international law against the crime of man-
made ecocide has been argued to have its roots in deep ecology
philosophy (Higgins, 2010, 2011) as it extends a legal ‘duty of care’ for
the intrinsic value of all life. Importantly, I advocate a Close-to-Nature
continuous cover forestry management approach because it mimics forest
dynamics to restore viable, and biodiverse forest ecologies (Vitkova et
al. 2013). Additionally, the eco-social-economic priorities of Close-to-
Nature forestry classify the approach as being inherently sustainable in
the long term if compared to industrial forestry. These and Weintraub’s
three other schematics visualise the genres, issues and artists’ strategies
that I, and other practitioners routinely select.
However, and critical to this thesis’ argument, I argue that Weintraub’s

mapping fails to explore commonalities of methodologies between eco-
social art practices. Generally, disclosures of art methodologies that
enable eco-social art practices to evolve over many years are often only
briefly described in the source review texts that I note in Chapter 1.
Depending on the workings of the artist or artists involved, some eco-
social art practice activities are more implicitly than explicitly described
and often they are not analysed in detail. This situation is however not
particular to the art and ecology field. Shaun McNiff, detailing
methodologies of art-based research, notes that artists have ‘a certain
reluctance to recognise and trust personal creative resources’ (McNiff,
1998a, p. 39) as a methodology. Anecdotal comments from eco social-art
68

practitioners commonly assert that the art workings or aims of their
projects speak for themselves, or that art processes are necessarily
distinct from scientific methodologies or that they lack the skills or
interest for a written review of their methods.
McNiff stresses the value within contemporary artistic research of artists

building on various artistic traditions, amalgamating these with their
workings to ‘create a new personal method of enquiry.’ (ibid.) The
Harrisons, for example, resist conveying a conventional method, arguing
their process is an open, dialogical form.31
While McNiff recommends personal method development as the

preferred methodology of art-based research rather than artists framing
their work within more standardised humanities methodologies acquired
from other non-art fields (as I suggest as part of the proposed model), he
does recognise the significant struggle for artists to create and articulate
new, personal methodologies. It puts a burden of explication solely onto
the artists to fully disclose their workings, workings that often seem a
confusing array of experience, personal interest, intuition, actions, and
serendipity, as much as deriving from the artistic experiment of selected
materials.
Art criticism also questions whether artists are the best to analyse their
workings and intentions (Wimsatt and Beardsley, 1954). Thus, for this
thesis, I argue that developing individualistic methodologies, despite
their potential for creativity, limits recognition of common method stages
among eco-social art practices. In other words, the current lack of a
methodological approach, I argue, significantly hinders appreciation of
and limits conventional and peer-to-peer learning of these important
cultural responses from the art and ecology field to the ecological
emergency.

31
See moncon.greenmuseum.org/papers/harrisons.pdf, p.3.
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Accordingly, this enquiry’s theoretical-methodological framework rests
on comprehensive application and analyses of theory and a recognised
methodological approach from sociology. Specifically, the framework
evolves from detailed theoretical analyses of Guattari’s ecosophy, new
ideas of action research for sustainability, and analyses of my and others’
eco-social art practice.
Reviewing the literature: Reviewing the development of the art and

ecology field (Chapter 1), I determine that eco-social art practices are
marginalised practices yet exhibit broad contextual and methodological
commonalities. I conclude that any critical awareness of how these
practices’ common aims and activities might be articulated and theorised
is largely absent. I propose that Guattari’s ecosophy offers a means to
analyse the socio-political context, and accordingly, the aims and form of
eco-social art practice. However, a major deficiency in ecosophy is that it
is not suitable for analysing or teaching the everyday method steps of
such practices. Hence, to expand and simplify ecosophy’s application
and highlight common method steps for eco-social art practice, I add an
action research methodology to my hybrid framework.
Designing a research framework: As the proposed ‘guiding framework

to understand eco-social art practice’, brings together Guattari’s
ecosophy and action research, key decisions on how to best utilise
evidence from my practice and from others’ eco-social art practices, were
developed as follows:
Selection of case studies: To enable in-depth critical reflection, I applied

Guattari’s ecosophy to my practice and the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice.
Evidence analyses: I present my analyses of Guattari’s ecosophy in Part

2 of this thesis, in Chapter 5 (I discuss the development of these analyses
in more detail in the intellectual audit trail that follows).
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I present my findings of an action research approach applied to my
practice, in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook (chiefly in pp. 49-51 and
Chapters 5-7), and through critical evaluation of its application to the
Harrison’s Serpentine Lattice (1992-3) in Chapter 6 of this thesis.
Managing and analysing the empirical evidence: Before this research,

I had intuitively created a blog (ecoartnotebook.wordpress.com) to
review others’ eco-art practices, and I found it invaluable to collate and
document the beginnings of what was to become a ‘whole-life’ creative
practice.
In the initial stages of this research, I was unsure how to view my

blogging activities; this was made difficult as the critical review of
blogging as an art practice research method is very recent (Ihlein, 2014).
However, as before, my new blog (hollywoodforest.com) begun in 2010
proved an effective way to collectively present and track my various
diverse activities, and build an audience for the work. I realised that my
blog overcame difficulties in presenting diverse art and non-art activities,
which often make extended ecological art practices incomprehensible to
others as a contemporary art practice. For this reason, like Ihlein (2014),
I similarly see blogging as a primary art practice research method to
capture the new story that an eco-social art practice evolves.
Adopting a narrative approach: O’Donnell (2006) clarifies how

blogging is both a pedagogic practice and a means to create a narrative-
forming cultural artefact that facilitates dialogical learning between the
blogger and their audiences. Using a blog emphasises a chronological
narrative for this enquiry’s research development and helped provide a
communicative, dialogical space to share workings and outcomes of a
new story of sustainable forestry to followers of my practice, both near
and far.
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Distillation of a New Theory [of practice]: My blog is a primary
collating tool for my practice (and this enquiry); it contains many
different postings of various activities, personal reflections, and research
from over several years.
However, as the blog grew I found it was not suitable to present as a

clear overview of my practice or my research findings for the proposed
framework. Instead, creating a ‘cultural artefact’ (Brabazon and Dagli,
2010) of selected material from the research blog material enables me to
develop a succinct summary of my practice in The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook. Critically, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook provides
material evidence of the effects of applying the proposed framework to a
live ‘real world’ eco-social art practice. I discuss the presentation of my
research in more detail in Section 2.7.

2.2.2 The intellectual research audit trail

Starting philosophical position:
In exploring the literature, only a few others theorise eco-social art

practices’ development in a research context and then only for specific
attributes of these practices. For example, Reiko Goto Collins’ (2012)
doctoral art practice research32 theorised her and others’ art-tree/forest
works for increasing environmental empathy, although her recent
interviews with the Harrisons as key thinkers and practitioners of eco-art
practice supported my decision to research the Harrisons’ practice
further.
As my interest in alternative forestry propels my practice, initially I

looked to deep ecology theory and in particular theory-forestry scholars,

32
Reiko Goto Collins (2012) Ecology and Environmental Art in Public Place. Talking
Tree: Won’t you take a Minute and Listen to the Plight of Nature? [Thesis: Doctor of
Philosophy], Grays’s School of Art, Aberdeen University.
72

Alan Drengson33 and Duncan Taylor (1997; 2009). These researchers
who seek to join deep ecology theory to ecoforestry, and often highlight
sustainable Indigenous forest practices from around the world, deepened
my understanding of my and others’ eco-social art practices that circle
forest concerns. I retain some appreciation for deep ecology and
acknowledge Drengson and Taylor’s survey of ecoforestry as invaluable
for a return to a more ecological forestry. However, my ecocritical
research, particularly of the work by John Tinnell (2011), alerted me to
deficiencies that deep ecology would have in theorising the broader
aesthetic and socio-political concerns of eco-social art practice (I discuss
this further in Chapter 5).
My blogging became a primary practical activity for thinking about and

developing knowledge of suitable theories; some blog articles became
exploratory essays see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook (Appendix 1,
pp. 91-98).

33
Drengson was an academic colleague of Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, who
developed deep ecology philosophy in the early 1970s. Drengson, over several decades,
has co-edited a number of key texts on deep ecology and forestry: Ecoforestry: The Art
and Science of Sustainable Forest Use (1997) and Wild Forestry: Practicing Nature’s
Wisdom (2008).
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‘The search for a philosophical stance’:

Fig. 9. Intellectual-activist-therapist-new media enthusiast Félix Guattari (1927-1992)
was not an academic but a prolific writer and theorist.
Before examining deep ecology, I had come across Guattari’s ecosophy

writings. In 2009, after attending the RSA and UK Forest Commission’s
seminar on ‘Art and Forestry’ I visited the RSA library, and I saw
Guattari’s The Three Ecologies book. The opening lines of this book, to
which he directs his ecosophy theory, indicated an author deeply familiar
with the ecological challenges that life on Earth is facing:
[t]he Earth is undergoing a period of intense techno-scientific

transformation. If no remedy is found, the ecological
disequilibrium this has generated will ultimately threaten the
continuation of life on the planet’s surface. (Guattari, 2010, p. 19)
But, as Kagan (2011, p. 395) and others have commented, Guattari’s text
is dense and conceptual and while I could sense the work may have
relevance for the art and ecology field it was difficult to translate to my
experience. It is also not helped by the fact that Guattari leaps from idea
to idea over a single page: one minute he writes about ecological
catastrophe; the next, of the necessity that society adopts a universal
‘basic income’; and then the need for women to be more fairly
74

represented in public and political life. He also advances a powerful
critique of capitalism using a range of ideas in terms he invented or co-
invented:34 ‘Integrated World Capitalism’, ‘rhizomatic
assemblages’, ‘deterritorialisation’, ‘reterritorialisation’, ‘transversality’,
‘refrain’, ‘lines of flight’, ‘micropolitics’, ‘molecular revolutions’,
‘becomings’, ‘schizoanalysis’, ‘ecosophy’, ‘chaosophy’, ‘machinic
ecology’.
I was also both intrigued and then frustrated by other writers (Collins,
2007, p. 29; Haley 2008, p. 200; Kagan 2011, p. 395) referring to
Guattari’s “three ecologies” theory but who offered little specific
analysis for the art and ecology field (Chapter 1). With more research of
Guattari’s ecosophy it appears that critics such as David Haley, were
viewing his ‘three ecologies’ text in isolation, not realising Guattari’s
ecosophy was a distillation of previous decades’ work on transversality,
and substantially expanded upon in his last book Chaosmosis: An Ethico-
Aesthetic Paradigm (1992) and essays published after his Three
Ecologies book (first published in France in 1989).
As discussed, Elliott’s Guattari Reframed (2012), summarises and

explains Guattari’s many concepts and innovative terms and their
relevance for contemporary eco-social art practice. Biggs has also
helpfully discussed Guattari’s concept of transversality (Biggs, 2014 a, b,
c) and used it to describe other multi-constituent art-led practices,
although many of these practices have concerns on the cultural
construction of place rather than a critical eco-social focus.
Personally motivated to investigate Guattari’s ecosophy, I realised that

my transversal lifeworld journeying (see The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook) mirrors some of Guattari’s approaches. His continual shifting
between political activism and academia, then to aesthetic-social

34
Some of these terms arose from previous collaborative texts he wrote with
philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
75

experimentation, is a condition with which I could identify. He was also
intrigued by the potential of independent ‘tactical media’ communication
technologies for social change, offering intriguing possibilities for
analysing my blog as a primary research method and practice.
Additionally, Gary Genosko’s (2002, 2009, 2012) more in-depth research

and Hroch’s analyses of Guattarian concepts for new ideas about
sustainability appear important, given Kagan’s (2014a) argument for the
need to develop a new ontology to progress and evaluate art-led, art-
based transdisciplinary endeavours. A common meta-methodology and
new terminology, such as Guattari’s ecosophy, would seem necessary to
advance how eco-social worldviews develop and operate.
Altogether, these many facets and Guattari’s real-world experience as an

activist-intellectual-therapist-new media enthusiast made his ecosophy
appear relevant for understanding the workings, aims, and challenges
faced by eco-social art practitioners who negotiate diverse disciplines
and lifeworld experiences and who commonly use social media
technologies to pursue eco-social transformation. Although one cannot
ascertain whether any theory will be adequate for multiple contexts or,
even if it is understood that it will be utilised, Guattari’s theory appeared
very worthy of examination as he formulated, then tested ideas of
transversality in a diverse range of real world, individual-collective
situations over his lifetime.
‘Interpreting the evidence’: After seeing the benefit of applying

ecosophy to further understandings of how my practice operates (see The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook, particularly chapter 8 ‘Outcomes - Forest
Tendings: Toward an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm’ pp. 79-85), and
following my further analysis of Guattari’s theory (Part 2), I selected
Guattari’s ecosophy as the theory part of the framework proposed for this
thesis. I interpret and argue that ecosophy significantly advances
theoretical understandings and arguments of why eco-social art practices
76

operate, and hence, their transformative potential to create sites of social
agency and resistance (‘molecular revolutions’) against the ecocidal
destructiveness of capitalism.
‘Distillation of new theory from the body of evidence’: I develop

insights on the theoretical aspect of the hybrid model for eco-social art
practice by assessing my practice activities, motivations, and outcomes to
Guattari’s ecosophy. In my conclusion (Chapter 7), I argue that
Guattari’s theory simultaneously illuminates why my work unsettles
conventional notions of contemporary art practice (and doctoral research)
and why it progresses valuable art and non-art knowledge for aesthetic
understanding, and forest science and policy development. My analysis
of Guattari’s post-media theory serves to deepen understanding of the
potential of blogging for eco-social art practice.
2.3 Aims and Objectives of the Enquiry – toward developing

an eco-social art practice research approach

This practice-led, practice-based enquiry, as defined by Candy (2006) in
that it develops art practice understanding as well as new forestry and
forest policy knowledge, has two central aims. Firstly, to demonstrate the
socio-environmental need for a new field called eco-social art practice,
and secondly, to develop a theory-method framework to articulate
exemplary eco-social art practices in this emergent field.
Aims
In articulating the methodology of this thesis’ research approach, there

are two main aims:
1) to define the essential characteristics and activities of the research

methodology and describe the method and tools used, and also why,
77

when and how they are utilised in the practice. This will identify the
research design of the enquiry (Chapter 2);
2) to analyse theory and characterise the composition of a standard

methodology to best articulate a multi-constituent, transversal practice,
so as to comprehensively define the characteristics for a new field called
‘eco-social art practice’ (Chapters 5 and 6).
Objectives
From these aims emerge six primary objectives listed as follows:
1. develop a comprehensive ecoliteracy to contextualise the aims of

this enquiry and to understand the development and value of
exemplary eco-social art practice, including my own (Chapter
2.4);
2. utilise Weintraub’s (2012) eco-art schematics as a starting point

to ‘map’ the diverse workings, issues and fields eco-social art
practitioners engage with (Chapter 2.2);
3. demonstrate that the six key drivers of an eco-social art practice –

’eco’, ‘ethico’, ‘social’, ‘artful’, ‘action’ and ‘practice’–
interweave to create an unbounded assemblage method of
working that enables new knowledge formations (Chapter 2.5). I
use these drivers to identify why integrating Guattari’s ecosophy
and action research forms an effective theoretical-methodology
framework to articulate eco-social art practice;
4. simultaneously evaluate Guattari’s ecosophy in this thesis

(Chapter 5) and examine the five stages of an action research
cycle (as applied to articulate the critical method stages of my
work, illustrated and outlined in The Hollywood Forest Story
78

eBook, (Chapter 5-7)). Detailed analyses in Part 2 of this thesis,
(Chapter 6) determines action research’s effectiveness to
articulate the key methodological stages in both The Hollywood
Forest Story and the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice;
5. define and contextualise the environmental practice component of

my eco-social art practice, the new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature
continuous cover forestry approach, which is an alternative to
industrial clearfell forestry that is widely practised in Ireland and
other countries (Chapter 3.2 and Appendix A);
6. articulate an outward-facing art practice research method and a

key component of my practice in the context of a blog (and social
media networks). Discuss these media technologies both as an art
practice research method to collect the material workings of a
multi-constituent practice (Ihlein, 2014), and as a pedagogical
tool for self and public learning and a repository of practice
activity and evidence for this enquiry’s aims (Chapters 2.7 and
3.3).
These objectives are detailed for this enquiry below and in subsequent
Chapters.
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2.4 What is Ecoliteracy? Developing ecoliteracy for this

enquiry from The Hollywood Forest Story eco-social art
practice
Ecoliteracy consists of developing an ecological ethic and is defined as

cultivating ‘the knowledge, empathy and action required for practising
sustainable living’ (Goleman et al. 2012, chapter 1)35. Ecoliteracy rests
on ecological knowledge and artist Joseph Beuys is notable in the 1980s,
but regrettably little heeded in the decades since, for arguing the urgent
necessity of teaching ecology as a core subject in every university course
across all disciplines (Sacks, 2011, p. 93). In Ireland, today’s art students
are disadvantaged in developing eco-social art practices because even a
rudimentary ecoliteracy is not prioritised in their education. Similarly,
Weintraub (2012) highlights the importance of ecoliteracy in her review
of exemplary eco-social art practices.
A comprehensive ecoliteracy guide for general education is given in the

publication by the US Centre for Ecoliteracy: 36 EcoLiterate: How
Educators are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence
(Goleman, Bennett and Barlow, 2012). Ecoliteracy characterised by
significant research, links emotional and social intelligence learning with
academic achievement and ecological well being. Thus ecoliteracy
corresponds to Guattari’s ecosophical concept of ‘three ecologies’, which
attend to environmental, and social and subjective spheres.
The ‘Five Practices of Emotionally and Socially-Engaged Ecoliteracy’

that appear equally relevant for exemplary eco-social art practice focus
on the necessity of collective learning, with two core dimensions: the
development of empathy for all forms of life and the cognitive

35
‘Ecological Literacy’ was a term first used by Professor David Orr, a staff member at
the US Centre for Ecoliteracy, in the seminal text Ecological Literacy: Education and
the Transition to a Postmodern World (1992) New York: SUNY Press.
36
Established in Berkeley, California in 1995, by author and systems thinker Fritjof
Capra, farmer-philanthropist, Peter Buckley and sustainability educator, Zenobia
Barlow.
80

understanding that ‘nature sustains life by creating and nurturing
communities.’37 (Goleman et al, chapter 1) The ‘Five Practices’ are as
follows:
1. Developing Empathy for all Forms of Life

2. Embracing Sustainability as a Community Practice
3. Making the Invisible Visible
4. Anticipating Unintended Consequences
5. Understanding How Nature Sustains Life (ibid.)
Some of the above points are already well addressed in some eco-social
art practices. For example, making the ‘invisible visible’ applies to the
artful translations of environments that many eco-social-art practitioners
undertake, and understand intuitively, as important in their practices (for
example, Simon Read’s drawings of the river system he has long studied,
see Chapter 1).
Furthermore, these ethical positions signal possible directions in the

development of political agency. Eco-activist-poet Drew Dellinger
(2014) quotes eco-philosopher Joanna Macy to stress that realising the
‘sense of connectedness with all beings is politically subversive in the
extreme.’38 Thus, a consequence of becoming ecoliterate explains why
eco-social art practices frequently involve or even contribute, to politics
and policy development. This is evident in the alternative economic
policy proposal for the US White House promoting biodiversity in the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1992-3); advocacy for ‘Rights of Nature’
in the Harrisons’ Force Majeure (2007-present), Ursula Biemann and
Tavares’ Forest Law (2014), The Rights of Nature exhibition (Demos et
al. 2015), and my own political actions to develop a sustainable national
forest policy (2010-12), The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 85; and to

37
Quote from Fritjof Capra cited in Goleman et al. (2012, Chapter 1).
38
At the Findhorn New Story Summit, see
http://drewdellinger.org/pages/blog/823/drew-dellingers-speech-to-the-new-story-
summit [Accessed 24 January 2015].
81

highlight the necessity for developing accompanying legislation against
the crime of manmade ecocide (2013), ibid., pp. 78-79, 86.
Nevertheless, some might argue that eco-social art practices that develop
political tendencies are merely a novel form of eco-activism. However,
as Nikos Papastergiadis (2013) argues in ‘Where does the environment
end?’ eco-social art practices are distinct because they incorporate
‘sensory awareness of the world’ and foster ‘forms that connect
differences’. Papastergiadis argues accordingly that such practices ‘move
beyond the ethics and politics of eco-activism.’ (ibid.)
My developing ecoliteracy evolving from The Hollywood Forest Story

and for this enquiry has also been strengthened by my prior and
continuing reading and writing from science, humanity and art domains
that engage with the planetary eco-social emergency. The following
sections display my evolving ecoliteracy. There are no doubt other ways
to gain this knowledge but the material collected may be useful, if
modified, as an ecoliteracy primer for the arts.
2.4.1 Understanding and simplifying the science: Planetary

Boundary Science
From the science domain, I find planetary boundary science (Steffen et

al., 2015 and see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.17) provides a
systemic understanding of the greatest existential crisis humanity has
ever faced. This science is also a basis to contextualise my endeavours to
explore an alternative to unsustainable, clearfell monoculture forestry.
Planetary boundary science summarises the vast, diverse and complex

Earth science’ data from many decades in a simple pie-chart (Fig.10).
From this chart it is possible to gain an overview of the effects caused by
the profound and unprecedented acceleration of globalised, growth-at-all-
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costs industrial land (and aquaculture) practices and the exponential
growth of the human population: vast land-system degradation, nearly
inconceivable rates of biodiversity extinction39, major disruption of
biogeochemical systems, and life-threatening ocean acidification and
climate change. Planetary boundary scientist, Alex Steffen noting the
ecocidal effect of ‘global socio-economic and earth system trends’ (2004,
p.2) has popularised the term ‘The Great Acceleration’40 to emphasise
the run-away emergency emblematic of this Anthropocene41 age; where
industrial mankind’s activities threaten the very viability of Earth to
support life as we know it.

39
The Earth is currently experiencing unprecedented and accelerating human-induced
levels of species extinction, the scale of loss similar to the catastrophic reduction of life
caused by asteroids, which saw the collapse of the dinosaur age. See Elizabeth Kolbert
(2014) The 6th Great Extinction: An Unnatural History. London: Bloomsbury.
40
A profound acceleration of ‘global socio-economic and earth system trends’ was
noted by Steffen et al. (2004 p.2). The term ‘Great Acceleration’ was used in Steffen’s
2010 TEDx talk and has gained more widespread usage from the report and diagrams in
Steffen et. al (2015) ‘The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration’,
Anthropocene Review.
41
‘Anthropocene’ is the proposed and still debated geological term for the current
epoch that refers to how modern mankind’s activities have noticeably impacted the
Earth’s planetary systems, including anthropogenic climate change. The term was
widely popularised by atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen in 2000.
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42
Fig. 10. The nine planetary boundaries accepted at the 2012 UN Rio+20 summit and
further substantiated and reconfirmed in 2015.
I employ planetary boundary science as a scientific frame to consider

how aspects of ecologically-informed forestry, as I explore in my eco-
social art practice, overcome the life-limiting aspects of industrial
clearfell forestry practices.43 This is because the new model of forest

42
Steffen et al. (2015) identify the ‘The Nine Planetary Boundaries as: 1. Climate
change, 2. Change in biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction), 3.
Stratospheric ozone depletion, 4. Ocean acidification, 5. Biogeochemical flows
(phosphorus and nitrogen cycles), 6. Land-system change (for example deforestation),
7. Freshwater use, 8. Atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the
atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms), and 9. Introduction of novel
entities (e.g. organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and micro-
plastics)’.
43
I argue the planetary boundary image and science is useful for eco-social artists who
may initially pursue a singular environmental concern as it provides awareness that
industrial-growth society’s effects are unsustainable over a range of environmental
parameters, and are interconnected and complex. Importantly, such science also
contextualises others’ more developed practices and helped frame my past local project
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management explored in this study is integrative (as is the proposed eco-
social art practice model) focussing on multiple aims to foster the
wellbeing of complex and dynamic forest ecosystems and the human and
non-human communities they support. For example, Close-to-Nature
continuous cover forestry practices (CCF) encourage greater biodiversity
as well as sequestering carbon and improving soils for the long term. The
importance of ecoforestry practices is confirmed when leading climate
scientists James Hansen et al. (2016) urge ‘that it may be feasible to
restore planetary energy balance via improved agricultural and forestry
practices’ […] (p. 3801).
This enquiry, therefore, makes the a priori assumption based on this

science and other international scientific data44 that all sectors of global
society in the 21st century need to urgently implement ecologically-
sustaining practices to the Earth’s lands, forests, rivers, oceans, and
atmospheres. This underlines that my creative practice that explores an
alternative ecoforestry management system is a critical response to both
local and global environmental concerns.

2.4.2 Guidance from the humanities and ecological
(environmental) humanities
Looking to the humanities has also been an important critical strategy to

develop my eco-social art practice. Examining how unsustainability is
culturally perpetuated and why it is now accelerating is an important
initial step for anyone engaging with this context. From various

revisited 2006 art-community-forest work; see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook pp.
28-29).
44
The large body of peer-reviewed international scientific data gathered from many
disciplines from the late 1960s onwards and analysed by various international
organisations: The Club of Rome Limits to Growth books and reports, 1972, 2004,
2012; Union of Concerned Scientists statement 1992; The 2006 Stern Report on the
Economics of Climate Change; World Bank reports: Turn Down the Heat: why a 4ºC
warmer world must be avoided (2012), Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes,
Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience (2013); and most comprehensively, the
5th Assessment report, Climate Change 2013: The physical science basis from the
International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC 2013).
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disciplines and perspectives, writers, thinkers, educators, academics, and
activists explore the dissonance in contemporary industrial society that
perpetuates the destruction of critical ecological systems. Those who
have influenced my knowledge and this thesis include: early
environmental thinkers and writers, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo
Leopold, farmer and author Wendell Berry to scientist-writers like
Rachel Carson and James Lovelock; environmentalists like Bill
McKibben and Naomi Klein, sociologists William Catton Jnr., Charles
Derber and Marxist scholars Fred Magdoff and Bellamy Foster; deep
ecologist and forest academics Alan Drengson and Duncan Taylor, geo-
theologian Thomas Berry, deep green author Derrick Jensen, political
theorist Hannah Arendt, environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean
Moore, farmer and sustainability philosopher Glenn Albrecht,
ecofeminist Susan Griffin, Buddhist teacher, educator and activists Thich
Nhat Hahn and Joanna Macy, eco-psychologists such as Carolyn Baker,
neuroscientist and political commentator George Lakoff, peak oil
commentators such as John Michael Greer, Richard Heinberg, David
Korowicz and Rob Hopkins (of Transition Towns) and organisations like
the Club of Rome who produced the influential 1970s book Limits to
Growth.
The importance of ‘thinking without bannisters’ – Hannah Arendt
Ideas from the authors above have been influential in developing my

thinking of how unsustainability and ecocide threads through society in
plain view and why cultural activity is a valuable response. I examine
some of these ideas in exploratory articles (See Appendix 1, The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook). In particular, by writing ‘The absence of
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thinking—Hannah Arendt and the totalitarianism of ecocide’45 (see

Appendix 1, The Hollywood Forest Story ebook, p. 98). I found Arendt’s
prescient thinking on recognising the ecological emergency in the early
1970s and offering a means to circumvent it has been important for this
study: Arendt’s associate and biographer, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl
observed that
— Arendt could imagine the ideologists of Economic Progress

recommending and committing not just genocide but what she
called, ecocide, destruction of the entire ecosystem on the earth. […]
(Young-Bruehl, 2011)
Berkowitz argues that Arendt believed a response to the darkness of

totalitarianism calls for ‘relentless examination of issues from multiple
points of view, with an emphasis on unimagined and unintended
consequences—what Arendt called “thinking without bannisters”’.
(Berkowitz, 2012) Arendt saw a crucial necessity to view thinking as a
creative practice, which requires remembrance, story-telling,
imagination, courage and independence (Villa, 2001, p. 279). From my
perspective, I see the life experience and cross-disciplinary knowledge
gathering of eco-social art practices echoing Arendt’s urgent call for a
thinking without bannisters approach.
Often, however, as an individual, I feel overwhelmed by the scale and

acceleration of the ecological emergency and concerned by the lack of
commensurate societal response. With my background in science, it is
also hard to ignore leading Earth scientist James Lovelock and others
who dismiss calls to stop global warming, as he believes it is now

45.
‘Ecocide’ is a relatively new term that came into use at the end of the Vietnam War
and was initially used to describe the effects of new toxic herbicides such as ‘Agent
Orange’ that can remain in ecosystems over many decades. The etymology of the word
is detailed in The Invention of Ecocide: Agent Orange, Vietnam and the Scientists Who
Changed the Way We Think about the Environment (Zierler, 2011, pp.14-32). In a legal
context, ecocide describes the internationally recognised crime of destroying life-
supporting ecosystems during Wartime. Today, efforts are underway to recognise the
crime of ecocide outside of War, led by environmental law campaigner Polly Higgins,
Thomas Linzey and others.
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inevitable (Knapton, 2014). In this respect, I find environmental
philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore and cognitive linguist George
Lakoff’s writings that review recent neuroscience knowledge particularly
helpful to guide my creative efforts as a form of moral reasoning and to
further confirm the under-acknowledged, and critical role, creativity has
alongside science to foster life-sustaining societal responses.
Moral reasoning to guide eco-social art practice: Kathleen Dean

Moore
Dean Moore (2010) identifies industrial society’s slow response to act

and argues it is a general moral failure in Western thinking toward the
environment (although there are many factors why modern society fails
to act; limited ecoliteracy education leads to poor understanding of the
crisis in the public, politics and the media). However, I refer to Dean-
Moore’s moral reasoning in some detail below because these
understandings are rarely discussed so clearly in the art and ecology field
and because they articulate a key motivation to develop and continue my
eco-social art practice as a response to the environmental emergency.
Why must the arts act for eco-social concerns?
In particular, moral reasoning from Dean Moore’s ecophilosophy is

more-than helpful in underlining why we in the art world should act in
these grave times (Fig. 11).
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Fig. 11. Some of the 100 moral statements of value collected by philosophers Kathleen
Dean Moore and Michael Nelson (2011).
In responding to a question from a student: ‘why bother taking action

when any efforts would appear futile to effect real eco-social change?’
Dean Moore argues that:
[w]e in the western world have inherited a bizarre moral tradition.

It’s an aberration in the moral history of the universe. But because it
has infused our ways of thinking, we think it’s the normal—or the
only—way to think. The name of the tradition is consequentialism,
and its central principle is that an act is right if it has good
consequences; otherwise it is wrong. […] And of course, the student
is completely disempowered—but not by hopelessness. He’s
disempowered by this bizarre idea that the only acts worth doing are
those that will have some sort of payoff.
Dean Moore (2011) urges those of us (and I include eco-social-art

practitioners) who may at times feel defeated by the scale of reported
eco-social calamities, not to ask:
[…] Will my acts save the world? Maybe they won’t. But ask, do my
actions match up with what I most deeply believe is right and good?
This is our calling—the calling for you and me and everybody else
in the room: To do what is right, even if it does no good; to celebrate
and care for the world, even if its fate breaks our hearts. (ibid.)
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She explains moral reasoning further:
What I want to tell the student is that there is a huge, essential

middle ground between hope and despair. This is not acting-out-of-
hope, or failing-to-act-out-of-despair, but acting out of virtue, an
affirmation of who we are and what is worthy of us as moral beings.
This is integrity, which is consistency between belief and action. To
act lovingly because we love. To act justly because we are just. To
live gratefully because this life is a gift. (ibid.)46
Importantly, clarifying the morality of a societal response, Dean Moore

and others argue that culture activity (in the arts, humanities, religions,
and other cultural traditions) is the key mechanism in generating new
social values to foster societal behaviour change (Dean Moore and
Nelson, 2011; Dean Moore 2010, 2011b, 2014a, b, 2015, 2016). Dean
Moore (2014a) articulates art’s societal value-making potential for
sustainability explicitly:
These are powerful ways to connect to the values we live by,

whether they are values of community, connection and collaboration,
or of the dominant narrative of commodity and consumerism.
Having an "art-shaped space" allows us to dream and experience
empathy and make meaning.
Dean Moore and others recognise that new cultural activity is the
necessary but overlooked complement to scientific consensus in the
unfolding environmental emergency. Dean Moore argues culture is the
critical behaviour-changing lever to re-frame and restore industrial
society’s relations to the Earth. (ibid.) In an interview with environmental
writer and former activist Derrick Jensen, she identifies that the values
that build ‘social tipping points’ primarily arise in on-going, ‘lived’
cultural activities, and that this has always been the case in past social
change movements: for emancipation, civil rights, and women’s rights
(Jensen and Dean Moore, 2014).47 Similarly, I argue, that in their value-

47
We can witness moral reasoning of values arising (if rather belatedly) in the
international fossil fuel #Divestment ‘Keep It In the Ground’ campaign (a joint initiative
from 350.org climate justice campaign and The Guardian from 17 March 2015, see
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creating activities, Earth-aligned eco-social art practices that traverse art,
science and other socio-political domains, have a critical, if still widely
unacknowledged, contribution to make in this context.
Utilising moral, environmental perspectives, and the previous summary

provided by planetary boundary science helps develop an understanding–
–an ecoliteracy, that the Western worldview promotes violent and
reckless unsustainability. That these perspectives are not commonly
understood or examined in the contemporary art world explains why
many cultural practitioners have been slow to engage in this area, and
consequently, why art and ecology practices continue to be marginalised.
Poor ecoliteracy in the arts, for instance, helps to explain US
environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben’s cries for art for
climate change:
Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddam operas?
Compare it [climate change] to, say, the horror of AIDS in the last
two decades, which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that,
in turn, has had real political effect. (McKibben, 2005)
Moreover, Dean Moore and others’ arguments that advocate cultural

activity, including those from organisations like Culture | Futures and
IFACCA that I mentioned previously, are a missing but necessary
response towards creating life-sustaining values and action. Furthermore,
neuroscience research advances these arguments, which I discuss below.
Cognitive framing to radically improve societal environmental

understanding requires science and the arts: George Lakoff
Drawing together insights from cognitive linguistics, cognitive

psychology and recent neuroscience, George Lakoff (2010) argues that

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/keep-it-in-the-ground), developing into
the weeks of global direct action in the #Breakfree2016 campaign, in the Roman
Catholic (see Pope Francis’ Laudato Si environmental encyclical, June 2015) and other
churches’ urgent calls for greater environmental stewardship (Dean Moore and Nelson,
2011).
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we navigate the world through learned neural ‘frames’ of reference
(p.71), and explains that some ‘frames’ obscure the ability to absorb
unprecedented global environmental realities. However, neural ‘frames’
involved in understanding do evolve, and Lakoff stresses that cognitive
understanding develops not on reason or evidence alone. He explains:
[neural] frame-circuits are directly connected to emotional regions of

the brain. Emotions are an inescapable part of normal thought.
Indeed, you cannot be rational (a neurological impossibility
apparently) without emotions. (ibid. p. 72)
Lakoff contends this research confirms the difference between previous

successful Civil Rights and Feminist movements that led to widespread
social change and in turn why many have not engaged with today’s
worsening ecological realities. He argues these movements developed
new cognitive frames that comprised new information with emotion.
Composed of both subjective and objective information—the songs,
poetry, art and stories of these movements fostered new frames of
understanding for equality from the Civil Rights and Feminist’s
movements. Cultural works of this era, spread via mass media spread
new understandings of equality relatively quickly to successfully
overcome previously dominant and erroneous frames of inequality. The
ubiquity of social media has potential to spread new frames of ecological
understanding across society even faster (witness the global awareness of
bee health and ocean plastic pollution via social media in recent years).
Overall, the perspectives discussed above highlight why cultural and

artistic endeavours might lead to significant civic engagement for the
planetary crisis. They also indicate why my (and others’) eco-social art
practice that weave facts together with subjective perspectives and
images to create new stories, as in a small plantation becoming a forest,
are valuable and timely, particularly if social media is employed. As
Lakoff comments, ‘[f]rames are communicated by language and visual
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imagery. The right language is absolutely necessary for communicating
the real crisis.’ (2010, p. 74)
As I have mentioned in Chapter 1, pursuing an eco-social art practice

both requires and develops eco-literacy. But to understand the dynamics
of seemingly complex multi-constituent eco-social art practices, I found
it necessary and important to characterise the key elements further that
propel such a practice.
2.5 Six core drivers: ethico – eco – social – artful – action –

practice – of an interwoven eco-social art practice
methodology

I identify six key drivers, ‘ethico’ – eco’ – ‘social’ – ‘artful’ – ‘action’ –
‘practice’, that propel the development of my eco-social art practice and
the research methodology for this enquiry. I argue an eco-social art
practice aligns with an ethico eco-aesthetic paradigm as outlined by
Guattari in The Three Ecologies (1989), and his later writings, where an
assemblage of drivers work synergistically to develop ideas and practices
that ultimately advance emergent and situated eco-social understandings.
The following are brief definitions of the six drivers for this enquiry and
for a model of eco-social art practice:
1) ethico
In my reading, particularly from Guattari and the eco-humanities, I

understand that moral reasoning guides my and others’ eco-social art
practices, although this is often implicit rather than explicitly detailed. I
develop an ecoliterate ethic by living within Hollywood forest (South
County Carlow, Ireland);
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2) eco: eco-logical,48 eco-centric, eco-literate
In this enquiry I define a new forestry practice as the eco-logical driver

of this enquiry; the new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature continuous cover
forestry approach that has as its overall aim the development of forestry
methods that are ecologically sustainable and which advance social and
economic values, in contrast to industrial forestry, see Chapter 3.2.
3) social
I emphasise that skills of sociality and mutuality are a key driver of my

and others’ practices, yet this is often under-acknowledged and thus
poorly articulated in methodological discussions of long-term ecological
art practices (Chapter 6); and that the social sharing ethos of Web 2.0
Internet technologies (which I discuss in section 3.3) also interweave and

48 Modern ecology developed into a rigorous interdisciplinary field of science from the
beginnings the 19th century. The term ecology was coined in 1866 by German
naturalist, illustrator and philosopher, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), from a combination
of the Greek words oikos — “home” and logos — “speech the study of” — it translates as a
speaking or a studying, of home. Ecology is closely related to and has been informed by
evolutionary biology, genetics, and ethology (animal behaviour). As an over-arching
science, ecology engages with great complexity as it attempts to understand nested sets
of interconnecting and dynamic material systems.
Ecological concepts are radical (as they decenter mankind’s superiority) and
consequently, have had a broad cultural impact. In recent decades, as witnessed across
the humanities: in ecophilosophy, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, politics and economics;
evolving and influencing fields of other ecologies: human ecology, urban ecology; in
industry: cybernetics, systems theory, network theory. As discussed, the concept of
ecology in these situations has led to varying definitions and usage. Also, ecologism
underpins the social movement of environmentalism and Green politics.
However, even though the scientific understanding of ‘ecology’ is particularly
necessary for determining today’s increasing threats to life on earth, the prevalence of
the word (and as the prefix ‘eco’) in everyday language means that it is often a ‘much-
abused’ word carrying considerable ‘political and cultural baggage’ (Greer, 2009, p. 3).
Related concepts, such as ‘ecosystems’, where nature is likened to a ‘machine’ and
which have also been adopted beyond science, have been questioned by some, although
perhaps not rigorously. Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’s thesis in the 2011
BBC2 series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, argues that ecological
and ecosystemic self-regulating concepts have been used for more sinister political and
destructive ‘free market’ ideologies over the 20th Century (Curtis, 2011). However,
while these cultural observations are of some merit, the consensus of most scientists and
ecocritical scholars is that humanity must become cognisant of its place in the ecology
of the Earth and move toward life-sustaining, ecologically grounded practices, if
humanity and much of the Earth’s biodiversity is to survive.
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advance contemporary eco-social art practices. When Lucas Ihlein49
(2014) argues for blogging’s effectiveness as a method for socially-
engaged practice (collating and sharing practice materials, reflections and
dialogue online), I similarly view blogging as integral to eco-social art
practice, in that it ‘models a new form of process-based aesthetics, by
“creating a record of its own making”’ (p.38). Although Ihlein’s context
is different, blogging enables me, immersed, as I am in a forest in a rural
community in South East Ireland, to ‘share my activities across the “real
world” rather than restricting its operations to a local art gallery context.’
(ibid.)
4) artful
I define artful as characterising any artistic means of translating life

experiences. In my practice, I predominantly employ the artful
(presentational) practices of filmmaking, photography, and blog diary
entries to explore my experiential perceptions of, and subsequent
relations to, the other-than-human world of Hollywood forest (see The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook pp. 66-70). I refer to Seeley and Reason
(2008) and others who advance the potentially under-acknowledged
productiveness of artful knowing in action research for sustainability
(Chapter 6.4.2). Like Ihlein (2014) I also develop blogging as a creative
practice and research method to collate the material evidence of a
processual, ephemeral practice for my practice and research. Blogging
facilitates the narrative quality of extended eco-social art practice and
captures its valuable outcomes.

49
From his award-winning doctoral thesis, Lucas Ihlein (2014) develops the
understanding that ‘blogging had begun to intervene in the very process of localized
social engagement —contributing to a cycle of action, reflection, and discussion,
documented and instrumentalised through the public sphere created by the blog itself.
Blogging had become an integral part of what was, for me, a new way of doing art. (p.
39, emphasis in original)
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5) action:
Action is implicit in the activities of eco-social art practice that foster

communities eco-social behaviour toward environments, and articulated
in the action research approach I choose to explain them. From Arendt’s
view of action in The Human Condition (Arendt, 1958), I define action as
initiating beginnings to enable change. Action’s value to drive an eco-
social art practice is, therefore ‘the capacity of beginning something
anew’50 (Arendt, 1958, p. 9). Arendt recognises that action, involving
unique individuals and differing contexts, rests upon the contingent and
unpredictable; that a ‘startling unexpectedness is inherent in all
beginnings and in all origins.’ (ibid. p. 178) Arendt also comprehends
that action’s results can be positive or negative. If committed to plurality,
action creates vital spaces in the public realm that have the potential to
overcome stagnant societal conventions.
6) practice: a ‘practical reasoning’

As introduced in Chapter 1.1, for an eco-social art practice I define
‘practice’ as theoretical workings and practices that intermingle to evolve
integrated and emergent knowledge. In this way, my use of the term
‘practice’ in this enquiry embodies the understanding of the term ‘praxis’
that historically includes theory and practical actions. I develop this
understanding from Beth Carruthers (2006), who references Mark Smith
(1999, 2011), that praxis encompasses interplay between theory and
action to arrive at a process of ‘practical reasoning’. Smith summarises
that the development of practical reasoning is ‘practice’, and that it also
evolves in recognisable steps (see Fig. 12 below). These steps are used to
articulate how the ‘practice’ ethic of an eco-social art practice advances.

50
In the Introduction to Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, 1998 edition, Margaret
Canovan describes Hannah Arendt as ‘pre-eminently the theorist of beginnings’ (p. vii).
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Fig. 12. From ‘What is practice?’ Smith, 1999, 2011.
Overall, these six drivers identify universal, critical impulses in eco-

social art practice. As these practices routinely comprise transversal
ethico-aesthetic and action-orientated activities, I argue they are
analogous to Guattari’s ‘ecosophic object’ assemblages (Guattari, 1992,
p. 119-135) that he argued have a valuable social power. Also,
characterising these drivers confirmed the suitability of an action
research approach to clarify the methodology of eco-social art practice.
Guattari’s ecosophy and action research were thus identified as the two
constituents of the proposed hybrid model that I analyse and evaluate in
Part 2 of this thesis.
2.6 Actions of the enquiry

To recap the course of this enquiry, and its complex research design,
several priorities emerged as means to realise its objectives. The primary
activities were to:
• undertake the transformation of a monoculture conifer plantation
at my home location using the new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature
continuous cover forestry management approach—the forestry
practice becoming a constituent of my multi-constituent
transversal eco-social art practice; this involved transformative
thinning and other actions, see The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook;
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• assess qualitatively and chronologically the transformation of the

forest by collecting and reflecting on audio-visual material
(photographs, video and sound materials) and by compiling the
material onto online photo and video management social media
sites, primarily a blog; also collect limited quantitative survey data
during the enquiry of the forest intervention history, biodiversity
data and future forest management plans in a folder (referred to, in
forestry, as a forest ‘enumeration’ file, see The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook Appendix 3, p. 100);
• explore different disciplines and fields by critically examining

recent knowledge pertinent to this enquiry in blog posts, some of
which are developed as exploratory articles (examples in The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook, Appendix 1, pp. 90-98);
• identify various ‘tools’ (theories, concepts, terminology) to map,

define and contextualise eco-social art practice, and, to form
criteria to present and assess the eco-social art practice framework;
• adopt and develop a research method as a means to document an

emergent, multi-constituent, transversal eco-social art practice; its
form, development stages and processes. This will account for the
emergent creative ecology of practice as it developed for this
enquiry, primarily facilitated by developing various categories of
content on the blog site www.hollywoodforest.com;
• and use social media as a research art practice to: disseminate

findings of this eco-social art practice to interested parties and
peers, and so develop audiences for the practice and research.

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2.7 Presentation of the practice for this enquiry
In an era of changing planetary circumstances, personal attention

to immediate surroundings seems like a manageable first step
toward some huge cultural shift. Amid the transformation, the
role of technology shifts as well, away from a means to overcome
the world toward a means to understand it.
Malcolm McCullough (2013) Ambient Commons:

Attention in the Age of Embodied Information, p. 13.
As discussed earlier in this Chapter, the composition of my scholarship

for this thesis rests in testing, elaborating and evaluating the central
research questions via two interconnecting academic modes; selected
practice material submitted as a digital cultural artefact in The Hollywood
Forest Story eBook and the written thesis. Material from my practice in
the eBook is in particular dialogue with the written exegesis analyses of
Part 2 of this thesis.
Thus, both practice and thesis elements are analysed together as far as
possible. The synthesis of these two academic modes, the eBook and the
written exegesis, reflect and interpret the dynamism of practice-based art
research that I use to comprehensively confirm the theoretical and
methodological modes of the framework proposed in this thesis.
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2.7.1 The cultural artefact: The Hollywood Forest Story eBook

Fig. 13. The cover of The Hollywood Forest Story eBook being prepared using the
iBooks Author software (APPLE, launched 2012).
I chose to create an eBook to present evidence for this thesis from my

practice as although the Hollywood blog (www.hollywoodforest.com
begun 2010) is a critical creative practice and research method for The
Hollywood Forest Story, a blog nevertheless raises significant issues for
audiences, particularly those who engage with it some time after the
practice was established.
My blog can confuse new readers because it contains a diverse amount of

material collected over many years (since 2008); it has currently over
130 blog posts and a lot of archive material. Thus, it is not the ideal form
to convey a succinct presentation of my practice or reveal the usefulness
and validity of the eco-social-art practice framework, as it contains all the
experimentation and informal commentary, and the minutiae of a
developing eco-social art practice.
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A printed book form is an alternative51. However, I continue to discount a
print form as it cannot present the audio-visual richness of Hollywood
forest whose inhabitants’ presence and ‘voices’ I can share in my short
videos, or the ecological form of an eco-social art practice that an online,
hyperlinked blog can convey so well. For my situation and resources, I
argue, the sensorial, always connected media form of a blog can collate
my information as a live diary and engages ‘followers’ far more than I
can achieve with a printed form.
In developing an appropriate cultural artefact to overcome

communicating the significant accumulation of material of a blog, yet
present the engaging and hyper-linked qualities of a blog, I was fortunate
in observing developing social media trends. I began noticing the
growing phenomenon of Kindle and other eBook forms and realised the
further potential of the new interactive, audio-visual eBook authoring
software iBook Author shortly after it was launched by APPLE Inc., in
2012 (Fig. 13). I particularly noted its uncomplicated software and pre-
designed templates to allow high school teachers to make interactive,
audio-visual eBooks with their students.
After testing, I found the iBook Author software stable (there is currently
similar but inferior software available52) (Fig. 14) and as easy, if not
easier to use, than a blog. It has the features of both a printed book if one
wishes, allowing the material to be set out in chapter-and-page form and
also all the hyperlink sharing connectivity potential of a website. I would
argue that the audio-visual, interactive eBook form is ideal to convey a
cohesive story that arises from an eco-social art practice that employs
social media, and thus, it is an appropriate cultural artefact form for this
creative enquiry.

51
A print-on-demand printed version of the eBook, with a DVD of the video material
included, was created for the doctoral examination. It is another useful, if conventional
means, to convey the practice to others.
52
Other eBook software incorporating images and video do not compare visually to the
design developed by APPLE.
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Fig. 14. My setup for creating The Hollywood Forest Story eBook: using APPLE iBook
Author 2 software on my computer and testing it on my iPad. The finished eBook will
be available to be downloaded and read on iPads.
Importantly, by using this software to create The Hollywood Forest Story

eBook as digital ‘chapters’ and ‘pages’, I was able to organise the
evidence from the present practice to support my thesis enquiry. As both
my practice and thesis evolved at the same time, The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook contains an edited selection of key audio-visual records of
my eco-social art practice: photographic documentation, video essays,
sound recordings, exploratory articles, and essential reference material.
Arranging the material in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook in digital

chapters loosely follows the thesis structure and the evolution of the
research project to date. The eBook, however, following the hyperlink
form of the Internet and my blog, does offer the reader different
pathways through my practice (see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook
Contents p.13). Being digital, the eBook is potentially an open document,
as the material can be updated, edited or deleted as the research
continues, and my practice evolves.
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I thus designate The Hollywood Forest Story eBook as the cultural
artefact to distinguish it as evidence for this research. In defining The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook as a ‘cultural artefact’, rather than art, I
refer to Brabazon and Dagli’s (2010) views on presenting creative
material in doctoral research:
When the language of practice-led research transforms from “art’’ to

“artefact” and the exegeses explore the why of scholarship rather
than the how, then there is greater parity between doctoral modes,
facilitating rigour through examination. (p. 31) [emphasis added]
The aim is to create artefacts (a stock of knowledge) that constitute

new information. […] Art is not a doctorate. It can create a new way
to think about evidence. It can be the basis of research. It is not the
research (p. 32).
Overall, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook offers an audio-visual-

textual means to enter Hollywood forest and the lifeworlds my research
and practice navigate. It allows me to translate and share the lived
experience; the sights and sounds of Hollywood forest and its human and
non-human residents and it qualitatively conveys many initial questions,
experiments, the specific social, and temporal constituents of the creative
enquiry and eco-social art practice, and my, and others, developing
subjectivities.53
Crucially, the eBook allows me to present my ‘real world’ application of

Guattari ecosophy and action research framework in an accessible,
engaging audio-visual format. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook
increases the clarity and confidence of my practice and research, and it is
a record (with potential for online sharing to peers) of the actions-to-date

53 Linda Weintraub, author of To Life! Eco-art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet
(2012) has recently written that a characteristic of eco-artists is they create work for
various audiences and fields of knowledge - ‘inter audiences’ (Weintraub 2014;
http://lindaweintraub.com/blog/item/eco-art-interdiscipline-interaudience [Accessed 16
June 2014]. Iain Biggs refers to such work as ‘aimed at multiple constituencies’ (Biggs,
2014) http://www.iainbiggs.co.uk/2014/06/identity-contemporary-art-and-ecology/
[Accessed 16 June 2014].
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that substantiates my arguments for the value of a guiding theoretical-
methodological framework for eco-social art practice.
Importantly, like the blog, the eBook form has considerable potential to
spread this example of eco-social art practice, and a working model of
alternative Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry, as a meme far and
wide. This fulfils Albrecht’s (2016) claim that examples of
symbiomimicry, like Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry
management that fosters diverse, thriving and permanent forests, are
needed to direct society in new life-sustaining directions. He argues, ‘[i]n
order to counter all these negative trends within the Anthropocene we
clearly need, within popular politics and culture, visions and memes of a
different future […] The new foundation [of the Symbiocene], built
around a new meme, will need to be an act of positive creation.’ (p. 13)
Furthermore, when I employed various digital forms (video and digital

photography, a blog, and an online magazine platform to house longer
articles from my blog in the eBook) to comprise the accompanying
digital cultural artefact, this underlines my understanding that multi-
modality, the ability to transfer information across different modes and
platforms (that may involve audio-visual, interactive digital literacies), in
addition to language literacy, is becoming a regular feature of
exchanging knowledge effectively in an increasingly globalised,
networked world (Kress, 2009)54.
2.7.2 The exegesis
In this thesis, practice and exegesis synergistically enrich, support and

inform each other.

54
See Gunther Kress (2009) Multi-modality: A Social Semiotic Appproach to
Contemporary Communication. Kindle edition: Routledge.
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In Part 2, the exegesis complements and extends The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook material. The exegesis develops from iterative and cyclical
exchanges of practice and theoretical work over the course of the
research. This thinking-writing process allows me to analyse that which
cannot be addressed solely by the practice and avoids overloading the
eBook form. For example, the exegeses allow me to contextualise and
critically reflect on my practice with the media and theories I employ.
Also, the exegeses inform my arguments for the action research
methodological approach I use and apply to my practice, and which I
extrapolate to others’ practices in the art and ecology field. The exegeses,
however, can never fully ‘translate’ the rich complexity of open-ended,
transversal eco-social art practices; the cultural artefact, to a limited
extent, attempts to overcome the limitations of analytic writing.
Due to the linear nature of how this thesis is read, I place the primary
theoretical analyses of developing and presenting eco-social art practice,
Guattari’s ecosophy, and the action research modes of the framework
sequentially in Part 2.

2.8 Summary

In this chapter, recognising that analysis of my practice forms a portion
of this research I clarify my enquiry as an interpretive endeavour of two
main parts: practice and theory. To account for how the research design
developed through these two strands, I detail both a physical and
intellectual research audit trail.
In the physical research audit trail, I highlight Weintraub’s (2012)

schemas as a useful starting point to consider the over-arching theoretical
and methodological commonalities of eco-social art practice, that from
my review (Chapter 1) I establish is not common. After discerning the
beginnings of an eco-social art practice methodology (Chapter 1), I
105

introduce my arguments for advocating an existing methodology
approach, action research, to counter individual art and ecology
practitioner’s, art critics and curators, confusing array of methods and
terms. Utilising a widely accepted social enquiry methodology identifies
the critical commonalities of purpose, practice and potential of eco-social
art practice and is part of the contribution to knowledge that this study
advances.
In the intellectual research audit trail, I discuss how my interest in

Guattari’s ecosophy developed. Research by Elliott (2012) in particular,
who summarises Guattari’s key theories and then briefly applies
Guattari’s ecosophy to the Harrisons’ and others’ eco-social art practice
supports my growing interest that ecosophy significantly deepens
understanding of these practices. Reading Genosko (2009), Hroch (2013,
2014) and others’ recent Guattarian research supports this approach
further.
I then set out the aims and objectives involved in developing the research
design of this qualitative enquiry.
However, a significant means to develop my eco-social art practice and

the thesis arguments rest on my developing an ecoliteracy. I next detail
how my ecoliteracy develops from new planetary boundary science,
moral eco-philosophy and cognitive learning understandings from the
humanities and neuroscience fields. I analyse these advances to argue
that moral action, fuelled by new cultural value-making activity, must
necessarily complement scientific knowledge to move society toward
more life-sustaining living. I suggest elements of my developed
ecoliteracy may form a useful ecoliteracy guide for contemporary art
practitioners.
Next, to comprehensively understand the workings of exemplary eco-

social art practice I identify six core drivers of eco-social art practice.
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Reflecting on my practice, this clarifies the critical activities of my
practice and research. Importantly, identifying these drivers parallels the
critical constituents of Guattari’s idea of the ‘ecosophic object’. Also,
characterising that these drivers exhibit some convergence with action
research, introduces the suitability of action research to articulate a
standard methodology for eco-social art practice.
To recap the main points of how this multi-constituent research design

evolved, I identify the primary actions of this research. Two key actions,
my use of Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry and blogging, are
presented in more detail in the next Chapter (more graphic detail of the
forestry employed is presented in Chapter 5, The Hollywood Forest Story
ebook, pp. 52-60).
Next, I review decisions on how to best present the evidence from my

creative practice and research. I experience creative workings via social
media blogging as a powerful means to expand my eco-social art practice
and research. Blogging has made my practice and academic enquiry
engaging and accessible in an increasingly networked world.
However, as my practice grew I have realised that my blog, while an

effective creative practice and a means to develop audiences, is,
however, not ideal for presenting my practice or research succinctly.
Consequently, I choose an eBook form as the primary cultural artefact
for this thesis as the most appropriate summation of evidence from my
practice to argue the validity of the proposed framework.
Together, I employ the cultural artefact of the eBook and written

exegeses to support my arguments for a guiding theory-method research
framework for eco-social art practice.
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Chapter 3:

Critical components of The Hollywood Forest Story
108

3.1 Introduction

In this Chapter, I describe the two key aspects of the research
methodology as it parallels the development of my transversal eco-social
art practice activities.
First, I discuss the historical context for why I pursue the new-to-Ireland
Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry approach. I then present the
critical forest interventions that have been undertaken in Hollywood
forest to date to adopt this approach that aims to transform a monoculture
tree plantation into a mixed species, mixed age, continuous cover forest.
Second, I identify blogging (real-time reflective writing, video-making

and photography) as my unifying art practice activity and research
method for a whole-life creative practice of regenerative practices toward
a new story of life-sustaining forestry. The blog
http://hollywoodforeststory.com, I argue, is effective to collate,
document and share my findings: to engage and build an audience for
this new story of ecoforestry, near and far.
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3.2 Practising Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry: A

new-to-Ireland ecoforestry approach

Fig. 15. Natural regeneration of ash, oak and sycamore trees occurring amid the shelter
of mature alder and Sitka spruce conifers. Hollywood forest, 2010. Pictured: Joan
Fitzgerald.

It is recognised that truly sustainable forests serve economic, social

and ecological functions equally. So how can we manage our [Irish]
forests in a truly sustainable way without separating these functions?
The answer is through what has become known in Europe as “close
to nature” forest management.
Paddy Purser (2006) ‘Close to Nature Forest Management -

The way forward for Irish Forests’.
As previously stated (Chapter 2.4.1), exponential human population

growth and mass consumerism, exacerbated by industrial, societal
processes, ignore the Earth’s inherent ecological complexity, sensitivity,
and its limits. Industrial processes of agriculture, forestry, aquaculture
and energy extraction all fuel today’s near-global modern capitalistic
culture, but they are also the critical activity causing an avalanche of
environmental and social justice emergencies.
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Since the 1950s, industrial clearfell plantation forestry has been the
mainstay of the forest sector in Ireland (see Appendix A for ‘A History
of Forests in Ireland—A Brief Overview’55) and while it returns
economic profits, it typifies many of the worsening environmental effects
noted in the 2009 and 2015 UN Planetary Boundaries Science studies.
Monoculture tree plantations in factory-rows offer poor biodiversity
value; they disrupt soil fertility and nutrient cycles and cause soil erosion
or compaction. Clear-felling also negates the flood control, carbon
sequestration, amenity and natural heritage potentials of a forest56 and
such forestry often requires the use of artificial pesticides for the next
rotation of trees. Severe winter flooding in Ireland in 2009-10 and 2015-
16 highlights the necessity to increase riparian (riverside) planting to
prevent flooding. Increasing afforestation for carbon sequestration will
also be necessary for Ireland to meet its climate change commitments in
the coming decades.57
Fig.16. Forester Paddy Purser (co-founder Pro Silva Ireland) with independent Irish
Eco Eye TV broadcaster, Duncan Stewart, discuss Close to Nature continuous cover
forestry for the first time for National Irish RTÉ TV. Broadcast 2 February 2016.
Naturally regenerating conifers in a commercial forest plantation in Co. Wicklow can
be seen in the background.

55
See Appendix A3.
56
ibid.
57
Change in land use in Ireland away from agriculture to limit CO2 emissions is likely
to be highly contentious amongst the farming community. See Moran (2016).
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In contrast, Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry (CCF)58 (Fig. 16)
retains trees of mixed species and age profiles in perpetuity with only
select percentages of trees being removed at any one time. Close-to-
Nature CCF greatly improves biodiversity, soil, and nutrient values, and
contributes positively to waterway function and land stability (Purser,
2006; Vitkova et al. 2013) and supplies steady incomes from thinnings
and timbers for rural economies (Purser et al. 2015). This type of forestry
closely mimics forests’ ecological dynamics as complex adaptive
systems; hence, across Europe, this approach is known as ‘Close-to-
Nature’ forestry.59 Such forest management also offers improved
resilience against increasing disease and pests, a growing threat from
climate change (Kuchli, 2013) and from the risks of globalised tree
nursery operations, which may spread disease.60 In time, these forests
have a potential to become a high-value amenity and heritage forests, an
essential aspect for Ireland that has lost its original forests.61
For my forest transformation practice, I chiefly refer to the introductory

guide written by the former President of Pro Silva Europe ‘What makes
Close to Nature Forest Management an attractive choice for Irish
farmers?’ (Morgan, 2006), recent Irish forest research journal articles
that analyse findings of conifer plantations being transformed into forests

58
The Close-to-Nature continuous cover forest model employed in this inquiry was
developed over several generations in Eastern and Central Europe. It is reported to
deliver significantly improved sustainability as well as long-term economic values
compared to the predominant industrial forestry (short rotation (40-60 year), clearfell
plantation) methods used in Ireland’s forest sector (See Purser, 2006; Vitkova et al,
2013).
59
In Ireland, the abbreviation ‘CCF’ from continuous cover forestry is commonly used,
but there is a danger that the complex adaptive dynamics of forests are not highlighted
with this term, in contrast with the term ‘Close-to-Nature’ forestry. The latter term is
preferred in Europe.
60
Unfortunately, Ireland has not sought to invest in its own tree nurseries, the
consequence of which has seen tree diseases arrive in Ireland from overseas nursery
stock. This has been the case with the arrival of ash tree-dieback disease in recent years.
Leading botanical writer Oliver Rackham OBE argues in the The Ash Tree (2014) that
the ‘greatest threat to the world’s trees and forests is globalisation of plant diseases: the
casual way in which plants and soil are shipped and flown around the globe in
commercial quantities, inevitably bring with them diseases to which the plants at their
destination have no resistance. This has been subtracting tree after tree from the world’s
ecosystems; if it goes on for another hundred years how much will be left?’ (pp. 8-10)
61
See Appendix A.1.
112

by this method62 (Vitkova et al. 2013; Vitkova and Ni Dhubhain, 2013)
and other texts published by Pro Silva Europe professional foresters63
who live in countries where this forestry approach is better established.
My involvement as a committee member of the sister organisation Pro
Silva Ireland (established in 2000) since 2008 has been a principal means
to interact and learn from leading Irish foresters who have adopted and
are leading a conversation toward continuous cover forestry in Ireland.
Some of these foresters, particularly Paddy Purser and Padraig O’Tuama,
Sean Hoskins and Chris Hayes, have given professional advice and
reviewed the forestry management interventions I have employed to
transform the conifer plantation I live with to become Hollywood forest –
a Close-to-Nature continuous cover forest.
Ultimately, the Close-to-Nature forestry management approach relates to

forests, such as Hollywood forest, as comprised of complex, adaptive
living communities rather than seeing a forest as only a timber resource;
this new type of forestry is, therefore, ecological: socially sensitive,
environmentally restorative as well as economically viable. Puettmann et
al. (2009) reviews these developments in A Critique of Silviculture:
Managing for Complexity:
The entire philosophical approach to silviculture, including how

silviculturists choose and apply individual practices, needs to be
critically assessed […] in light of changing societal views of forests,
our broader understanding of forested ecosystems, and the potential
impacts of global warming on forests. (pp. xiii-xiv)

62
From the 2010-2014 COFORD (Irish Forest Research Council) ‘Low Impact
Silviculture System’ (LISS) study.
63
I refer here in particular to two eminent Pro Silva Europe foresters deeply familiar
with European Close-to-Nature forestry, whose work and visits to Ireland contributed to
first Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry guides published by ProSilva Ireland:
Approaches of Close-to-Nature silviculture in Sitka pioneer plantations in Ireland
(Prof. Hans-Jürgen Otto, 2005) and a Tribute to Talis Kalnars MBE 1927-2005 (2005).
Additionally at the beginning of this inquiry, Irish forester and co-founder of ProSilva
Ireland Paddy Purser’s article ‘Close-to-Nature Forest Management: the way forward
for Irish Forests’ (2006) provided important contextual information on this new forestry
approach. All these guides and papers are available at www.prosilvaireland.org. My
familiarity with these guides was enhanced when as a committee member of Pro Silva
Ireland I undertook their design and publication for the Irish forest sector.
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Interestingly, Puettmann’s review parallels how ecologism similarly
propels eco-social art practitioners to comprehend emergent eco-social
complexity.
Thus, examining and implementing this new-to-Ireland forest

management approach to the Hollywood tree plantation offers a relevant
example of relating to a complex and emergent land ecosystem in a
deeply sustainable way (in response to the scientific premises raised in
Chapter 2.4.1). Crucially, the viability of Hollywood forest improves
from exploring this new ecoforestry approach through a transversal eco-
social art practice; emergent and situated cultural values arise that
complement forest science knowledge. Blogging my practice has enabled
me to share my improving Close-to-Nature forest ecoliteracy; some
people in the neighbouring area have implemented Close-to-Nature forest
management – they are early adopters who are contributing to a growing
conversation about a new, life-sustaining type of forestry for Ireland.
3.2.1 Practical detail of transforming Hollywood forest
I collate and reflect on the practical detail of transforming Hollywood

forest (a monoculture of Sitka spruce planted in the early 1980s) since
2008, on the Hollywood Forest Story blog http://hollywoodforest.com
under the section ‘Forest Management’ (this section chronologically lists
all the blog posts on the forestry interventions I have recorded in text and
images since 2008.) Summary detail of these forest interventions can be
examined in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, Chapter 5.
Furthermore, in the Appendix of the eBook, a blog post that I developed
as an article, The Art and Politics of Forests (2012), reviews my and
others’ eco-social art practices that centre on forests and my developing
political awareness of the gross unsustainability of industrial forestry
management. Some images from the eBook are presented below and
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highlight the primary forest practice interventions that have occurred in
transforming a mostly monoculture plantation into Hollywood forest.
Close-to Nature continuous cover forestry management for

Hollywood forest
In Hollywood forest, following the Close-to-Nature forestry management

approach, 25-30% of trees are removed every 3-4 years, and Hollywood
forest to date has had two major thinning operations to transform it into a
continuous cover forest, in January 2009 and in December 2013. I
organised a training workshop in Hollywood forest, in May 2008 (Fig.
17) when I began The Hollywood Forest Story work. I and interested
neighbours and a Green politician, Cllr. Malcolm Noonan64 received
training from leading Close-to-Nature forestry advocate Jan Alexander
(founder of CRANN – the Irish broadleaf tree initiative established in the
mid1980s and past Chair of Pro Silva Ireland). Forester Chris Hayes gave
advice on how to ‘mark’ the trees for removal and helped us identify
more valuable ‘future forest’ trees that will grow to improve the integrity,
age and species diversity of the forest.
Tree-marking in Close-to-Nature forestry involves training the eye and

mind to perceive the more valuable straight and healthy trees. Foresters
are trained to note very subtle tree diversity that may indicate a tree’s
future commercial or biodiversity potential but also to consider favouring
other species that are in the under-story (younger or other tree species
that are developing under the forest canopy of older trees).
Due to the tall height of the conifer trees in Hollywood forest (they were
close to 25-years in age at the first thinning), they were felled by
professional foresters. Critical areas in Hollywood forest were designated

64
Malcolm became a key supporter of my introducing Close-to-Nature continuous
cover forestry as the vital principle of the 2012 Green Party of Ireland and Northern
Ireland forest policy.
115

for more substantial thinning than others; wind stability of the remaining
trees was a factor as was the potential for new trees to naturally
regenerate in the cleared spaces. Ideally, removing select trees created
‘chimney-shaped’ columns of light. These columns draw up younger
trees that will grow faster with better light and shelter from the
surrounding trees. Opening small spaces also counters the likelihood of
damaging wind-throw (which I discuss further below).
Some foresters, such as Philip Morgan, admit when they are continually
looking upwards to assess adequate light openings in a forest’s canopy,
that “forestry is a way of sculpting with light” (in-the-forest discussion,
2009). This observation also explains why this forestry is called Close-
to-Nature forestry, as the selective thinning of trees to encourage
increased natural regeneration is mimicking natural tree regeneration that
happens when the wind (or tree death) creates light pockets in a forest.
Most surprising to me, and which confirmed the validity of such forestry
was how quickly the forest floor of our monoculture plantation changed
within 12-24 months from being a thick barren layer of pine needles to
supporting armies of small ash tree and some oak and other ground-cover
species seedlings. These seedlings quickly took advantage of the new
light entering the forest floor from the thinning and the remaining older
trees provide shelter. I created two experimental video essays, Burning
Bright (2009) and Transformation (2011), to share the insights I was
gaining and to record the changes in Hollywood forest from learning this
new type of forestry.
Forest management practice activity is intermittent. Too sudden a

change, for example, removing too many trees too quickly, can
destabilise the structural stability of a forest leading to an increased
occurrence of wind-throw – unintended valuable trees falling during
storms (wind-thrown trees can affect large groups of trees, and can be
dangerous to harvest; professional foresters need to manually clear such
areas carefully as crisscrossed fallen trees, once cut, can spring back and
116

roll easily on workers). In hindsight, the slow nature of forest
transformation allowed much time for creative practice and critical
reflection necessary for a doctoral study and some time for part-time
work.
From its size, a little over 2.5 acres, Hollywood forest has become what I
affectionately call it, ‘the little wood that could’. This is because
Hollywood forest is contributing to: a national survey for forest research
(see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p.83); the forest practice has
helped me advocate for new Green Party forest policy and political
advocacy against the crime of ecocide’; it is providing ~70 tonnes of
wood (for fuel) for us every 3 years (see The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook, p. 58), and as a consequence, we now heat our home with a wood
gasifier (a highly efficient wood-burner heating system) rather than what
is common in Ireland, using imported heating oil from conflict regions;65
and also there is increased biodiversity (Fig. 19 and 20) and birds are
now seeding some species in the forest too (Fig. 21).
My interaction with leading Irish and some European professional

foresters who are embracing Close-to-Nature rather than clearfell forestry
have supplied critical transversal impetus and knowledge exchange for
my continuing eco-social art practice and The Hollywood Forest Story. I
am fortunate to have been trained and advised by professional foresters
from Pro Silva Ireland (www.prosilvaireland.org) such as Paddy Purser
and Padraig O’Tuama, who are spear-heading new Close-to-Nature
forestry in Ireland. My involvement with these foresters has been
cemented through my long-term involvement as a voluntary committee
member for Pro Silva Ireland (I manage public relations for Pro Silva
Ireland transmitting new information through publications and their blog
site to over a 100 Pro Silva Ireland members: forest owners, foresters,
forest educators and students in Ireland who are committed to alternative,

65
See my blog http:// hollywoodforest.com/2015/02/13/hollywood-divests-from-fossil-
fuels/.
117

sustainable forestry). I am motivated to be involved as I am continually
learning for Hollywood forest, and in a modest way, I contribute and
signal changes in national forestry to a wider public.
In The Hollywood Forest Story eBook and its Appendix, I detail some of
the critical forest intervention activities and outcomes, and how these
have been recorded in a ‘Forest Enumeration file’ for Hollywood forest.
A selection of images, Figures 17-22 below, conveys the main forestry
transformation activities that recur every 3-4 years in Hollywood forest.
My forestry colleagues advise that it will be several decades before
Hollywood forest is entirely thriving as a naturally regenerating mixed
species forest.
Fig. 17. The critical step in beginning and then continuing to transform a tree plantation
into a Close-to-Nature Continuous cover forest – is ‘tree marking’; learning to decide
which trees should remain, and which trees should be removed to improve the overall
integrity and long-term viability of the forest. It will take many decades of thinning and
tree growing before Hollywood forest is a thriving biodiverse forest.
118

Fig. 18. Following tree-marking, 20-25% of Hollywood’s trees are removed by

professional foresters every 3-5 years; Chris Hayes worked on the initial thinning and
Sean Hoskins now regularly maintains the thinning protocol that we set out in the
management plan for Hollywood forest.
Fig. 19. Setting up permanent quadrates is a means to record the new species
establishing in Hollywood forest.
119

Fig. 20. Some of the biodiversity of Hollywood forest growing since its transformation
to being a continuous cover forest.
Fig. 21. We have planted a few native species to quicken the transformation process.
Birds are now helping distribute these others species throughout Hollywood forest.
120

Fig. 22 An Enumeration file for Hollywood forest is an essential record of the

interventions and its increased biodiversity. It is an essential document for future
caretakers of the forest and is used more frequently in forested European countries that
understand practical forest knowledge is a valuable legacy to help sustain permanent
forests. See Drengson and Taylor below.
The new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry approach

that I am applying to the Hollywood forest plantation can be viewed as a
practice of ecoforestry. Ecoforestry or wild forestry approaches are
defined from Ecoforestry: The Art and Science of Sustainable Forest Use
(Drengson and Taylor 1997) and Wild Forestry: Practising Nature’s
Wisdom (Drengson and Taylor, 2009) as an ecocentric rather than an
anthropocentric forestry practice, which closely attends to wild forest
growth dynamics. Drengson and Taylor argue:
[t]he primary goal of ecocentric forestry (ecoforestry) is to maintain

and restore full function, natural forest ecosystems in perpetuity,
while harvesting forest goods on a sustainable basis. This goal must
be grounded in clear ecological criteria that can be monitored so that
human activities in forest ecosystems can be assessed and modified
as needed. The achievement of this goal is a foundation for
sustainable economic and social conditions. (1997, p. 35)
121

I detail how on-going selective thinning emulates natural forest
dynamics, such as storm damage that opens the forest canopy so young
trees can develop, in Chapter 5 of The Hollywood Forest Story eBook.
Importantly, employing Guattari’s ecosophy increases understanding of

the social-political elements of industrial forestry as opposed to
ecoforestry, as an unsustainable land practice propelled by capitalistic
priorities.

122

3.3 Articulating an outward-facing, eco-social art practice

method: using a blog
Artists practising in relation to rural contexts had long struggled

against a presumption by the metropolitan art world that their
work must be somehow regressive, undoubtedly romantic,
probably parochial and almost certainly politically uninteresting.
Online platforms were crucial in overturning this view, as
distinct, disparate and isolated cultural explorations in rural
places came into view, generating a political dialogue of
singularity and multiplicity, opening up new avenues of thought
about collectivity, material production, praxis and aesthetics.
Ian Tully and Fiona Woods (2013) Yak Yak: Rural/Art Dialogues, p. 3.
Initially, and still, the most crucial on-going legacy of my eco-social art
practice, is Hollywood forest itself. However, it is difficult to succinctly
present my art-forestry-political whole-life work to those without a forest
interest or those at a physical distance. Visitors to the forest cannot easily
apprehend the practical forestry learning and occasional interventions,
the creative and theoretical workings, and the dialogues and outcomes
that have arisen from living within this transforming plantation-into-a-
forest that has occurred over many years. As a result, I found blogging a
useful practice and research method to collate and present my eco-social
art working process and outcomes, and it helped develop audiences for
The Hollywood Forest Story.
Thus blogging at http://hollywoodforest.com is both critical eco-social

art practice and method tool for my practice and for this thesis’ research.
My blog, linked to other aggregating Web 2.066 networking social media
technologies, is a sophisticated and accessible67 digital scaffolding tool,
to contain and chronologically document the transversal and often
ephemeral activities of extended eco-social art practice.

66
Internet researcher Bryan Alexander (2006) defines ‘Web 2.0’ as social media
technologies that, since the mid-2000 onwards, have prioritised the sharing of content
across online services.
67
Here recognising that social media use is contingent on access to the technology and
internet web skills.
123

As a creative practice and research method, blogging enables one to
accommodate the ‘slow art’ of transforming a tree plantation into a
permanent, continuous cover forest, and share what are often continuous
data, artistic and social knowledge generating endeavours. Usefully, a
blog’s web-like form and its social sharing and capturing functionality
match the unbounded form of eco-social art practice assemblages.
Articulating my blogging as a primary activity and socio-communicative

device grew with my engagement with activist-intellectual Guattari’s
enthusiasm of independent ‘post-media’ to share the outcomes of ethico-
aesthetic assemblages—‘ecosophic objects’ (Chapter 5) and from my
exploration of participatory action research where developing a
‘communicative space’ is also valued as a critical means for social
learning and change. In this respect, I was aware of the Harrisons’
prescient view, that ecological art’s most valuable practices lay not in
producing new cultural artefacts alone but in generating insights from
what they called the ‘conversational drift’, namely their dialogues68
between art and ecology (Adcock, 1992) (I discuss their emphasis that
eco-social art practice is a story-telling exercise in the next section). My
blogging practice also rests on my earlier review of social media
networks for the art and ecology field (Fitzgerald, 2011, The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook, Appendix, p. 94).
From other research, I am aware that diverse disciplinary leaders,

Matthew Nisbet (communications researcher), Mark Hixon (zoologist),
Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael Nelson (environmental philosophers)
(2010), advocate social media’s potential to bring together the ‘four
cultures’–the environmental sciences, philosophy and religion, creative

68
The notion of conversations as central to some eco-art practice is notable in the
emergent art and ecology field, as in the work of Hans Haacke, Christo/Jeanne Claude
and Joseph Beuys, see Kastner and Wallis (1998) Land and Environmental Art: Themes
and Movements.
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arts and professionals, and social sciences, to rapidly engage society
about the environmental emergency (see Fig. 23 below).
Fig. 23. ‘Transforming the ‘four cultures’ (coloured circles). (a) The present: the four
cultures address environmental problems independently, or sometimes in pairs or triad
collaborations (as illustrated by double-sided arrows between isolated circles), which
have not yet fostered sufficient action. (b) The vision: the four cultures engage fully and
equally with each other (as indicated by the star symbol within overlapping circles),
where novel synergies foster rapid and effective societal responses to environmental
challenges.’ (Nisbet et al. 2010)
From this study, creative artists employing social media were highlighted
as critical societal change agents:
[w]ith the aid of environmental and social scientists, and inspired by

moral and religious philosophers, these creative artists and
associated professionals can accurately communicate about science
in imaginative, compelling, and novel ways.
Perhaps more importantly, they can provide the context for values
based discussions of how we ought to act in the face of the
challenges presented by climate change and, increasingly through
digital media and innovative deliberative forums, the resources and
opportunities for direct participation by the public.
Nisbet, Hixon, Dean Moore and Nelson (2010), p. 330.
Dean Moore and Lakoff’s research, as discussed (Chapter 2), argues that
culture is the critical behaviour-changing lever to re-frame modern
society’s relations with the Earth. Value-making and value-affirming
activities arising from cultural practices that we collect and share with
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social media, quickly promoting moral certainty about why we
must act in new ethical and sustainable ways toward the Earth. Thus, I
see my eco-social art practice (and the social media tools that I employ)
as critical for engagingly framing much needed new ecoforestry
knowledge for others in Ireland (and much as it is revealing a practical,
lived application of Guattari’s ecosophy).
3.3.1 Blogging for an eco-social art practice; for developing

and sharing ecoliteracy
Blogging offers an embodied and engaging ‘real world’ dialogical

practice; its immediacy in ‘real-time’ seems appropriate to the concerns I
engage with, and the audiences I seek to reach. It erases geographical
obstacles and connects my practice with general audiences beyond the
confines of mainstream art world agendas that too often ignore the
crucial environmental systems that underpin society.
Importantly, as social art and eco-social-art practitioners are often limited

in income streams to develop their work, the ubiquitousness of social
media has helped document and present these complex projects within
the practitioners’ sphere of resources and online skills.
Blogging and other social media have facilitated the diverse, multi-
constituent and temporal elements of some eco-social art practices
beyond traditional, and the still few, printed publications.69 Much peer-
to-peer learning about the art and ecology field now occurs informally
online (including some critical reviews), and to some extent, this has
supported the field when arts education institutions have been slow to
recognise growing eco-social challenges or lack ecoliteracy knowledge.

69
This adds weight to my exploratory review ‘Networking the Arts to Save the Earth’
(2010) that concluded that the strategic use of social media by individuals and groups in
the art and ecology field is under-realised. An extract was later published in the Visual
Artists Ireland Newssheet ‘Networking to Save the Earth’ (Fitzgerald, 2011, Jul/Aug, p.
20). See the original article in the Hollywood eBook, Appendix, p. 94.
126

Weintraub (blog post-2012; undated) does recognise that relational art:
coincided with the introduction of dating sites and online forums

that anticipated the revolutionising developments in social
networking and social media in the early 2000s.
Weintraub only briefly wonders if these technologies further fulfil the

artistic missions of early and contemporary eco-artists such Beuys and
Tirvanija (ibid.) and merely notes Tirvanija has access to social media
but doesn’t use it.70 Weintraub (2014) also recognises that the art and
ecology field has given little attention to the ‘interaudience’, the diversity
of recipients that eco-art practice engages with and which social media
easily expands.
Similarly, curator Sue Spaid in Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields,

Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots (2012) only briefly mentions artist
Fritz Haeg in Baltimore, USA, who blogs to engage audiences in his
commissioned front-yard Edible Estates (2008) (ibid. p. 40). There is no
discussion of how blogs or social networks facilitate the collation of such
complex projects, or how practitioners have employed social media skills
to develop independent audiences in advance of, and following an
exhibition.
Kagan (2011), while stressing the necessity of eco-artists to engage with

complexity theory beyond systems thinking, also fails to consider how
social media network technologies are either supporting or shaping such
complex practices or their reception. Shelley Sacks (personal
communication, 2011) of the Beuys-inspired UK Social Sculpture Unit
(SSU), argues that one should distrust social media entirely, which seems
at odds with Beuys’ later emphasis on ‘social’ sculpture and his interest
in new media. This distrust in social media appears a loss to peer-to-peer
art and ecology learning when Sacks acknowledges that over eighty ‘art

70
However, recent participants at Tiravanija’s project, like Seoidin O’Sullivan, created
a blog prior to and during her residency at The Land 2008-12.
127

and forest’ practitioners and groups from across the world have
expressed interest in joining the SSU’s ‘University of Trees’ project.71
Therefore, there seems an oversight in how social media can be

employed to enliven and narrate long term, multi-constituent projects
while developing peer-to-peer learning and Weintraub’s ‘interaudiences’.
Instead, the use of social media for these practices is in limited critiques
where activism, ecocriticism and media intersect (Tinnell, 2011), and in
developing discussions of creative-political ecologies (Brunner et al.
2013).
For instance, Ganaele Langlois’ (2014) social media research is useful

for rethinking the application of social media in eco-social art practices.
Langlois sees every advance in communications technology further
shifting the point where meaning is produced and how one relates to the
wider world: ‘meaning is now no longer simply a human process but […]
one that is increasingly dependent on media technologies.’ (p. 24)
Langlois observes that, while commonly celebrated as inclusive, social
media ‘is, in a sense, ideological [… its] software enacts a series of
decisions as to how a set of meanings will be formatted and
communicated. In this way, software influences interpretation.’ (ibid. p.
13) She adds, when we employ social media we discover ‘a radical
transposition has occurred: we do not make sense; software makes sense
for us.’ (ibid. p. 16) Consequently, meaning making ‘becomes a machinic
process’ (a term and concept from Guattari’s ‘machinic animism’
(Chapter 5.2.4). For eco-social art practice, this research suggests that
social media convey meaning in and of themselves. There is meaning
when social media behaves like an open ecological system; and,
arguably, art practitioners who use such media are formally mirroring
ecological complexity and emergence.

71
This view may be changing as University of the Trees is in the process of becoming a
social enterprise due to significant funding changes announced in 2014.
128

I predict, however, as the social media analysis field matures, more
critical appreciation of social media for the art and ecology field will
ensue as to why social media operate beyond providing a useful collating
and communicative device. In Chapter 5.2.4, I utilise Guattari’s ideas on
post media and machinic animism to theorise the value of social media
for eco-social art practice. Along with devising a guiding framework for
eco-social art practice, I believe my theorising of social media for such
practices, is also a significant and timely contribution to the art and
ecology field.
Developing awareness of social media’s value for eco-social art

practice
As dangerous eco-social situations continue to unfold, the immediate

publishing capabilities of online platforms can be used as a rapid
response more advantageously than the organisation time, limited venues
and economic constraints involved in a conventional exhibition.
Blogging and other social media network platforms, even ones as

accessible as Facebook, can offer an alternative, independent means to
help develop new narratives to complement exhibition and publication.
From using social media over many years, the necessity to exhibit work
in museum or gallery settings is much reduced. Social media can
significantly spread ideas of eco-social agency informally and develop
new and diverse audiences, beyond gallery walls. They foster a form of
real-time, peer-to-peer learning and interest when eco-social art practices
advance over an extended period.
For example, capturing comments and ideas via social media blogging,
as seen in The Hollywood Forest Story blog builds valuable audience
engagement. My blog ‘followers’ are curious to know the unpublished
trials and successes of eco-social art practices and some have since
forested lands and are excited to be part of a growing conversation about
129

new permanent forestry in Ireland (Fig. 24 below). Thus, I argue, social
media can be an essential means for inter-subjective empathies to
develop, as noted in Weintraub (2015).
Fig. 24. Interview and video on my blog hollywoodforest.com, 9 March 2015, with blog
follower Nicola Brown, who has since planted a small forest in South Carlow.
Social media practice allows practitioners to step beyond art-world

conventions and trends that mostly ignore unfolding eco-social realities
and which too often only speak to small elite art audiences (Fitzgerald,
2011, p. 20). This view is similar to Land Artist Robert Smithson’s
earlier understanding:
130

that in the coming information society, location and artefact must
necessarily be destabilised and mixed; hence the use of the terms
‘site’ and ‘non-site’ in his work; hence its conglomeration of
texts, pictures, films, proposals, [site-specific] sculpture etc. […]’
(Kastner, 2006, p. 23).
The employment of social media for eco-social-art practice also appears

to address Gablik (2009, p.61) and Boettger’s (2016, pp. 665-666)
concerns of environmental art exhibitions being compromised by their
entanglement with the art market.
Overall, developing social media skills for eco-social art practice, to my

mind, is essential in this Internet age (the importance of social media to
transmit the outcomes of eco-social art practice is discussed in Chapter
5.2.4, and the necessity of developing interpersonal social skills for
effective eco-social art practice is discussed in Chapter 6.4.4).

131

3.3.2 Slow storytelling: using a blog to grow values, actions

and audiences from extended eco-social art practice

Fig. 25. Telling the story of Hollywood forest and my developing ecoliteracy in
conversation with others, in Hollywood forest, November 2014.
We’re often encouraged to see the earth as landscape, which is

scenery—something to look at, but not to participate in. But when
we collapse the distance between the land and ourselves and allow
ourselves to become part of the story of a place, we give ourselves
over to intimacy [...]
From love grows action.
Ann Pelo, 2009, ‘A Pedagogy for Ecology’, p. 35.
When my blog details the story of forest flourishing as a result of a new

forestry approach and an emergent eco-social art practice it is an example
of what Dean-Moore (2016, part II) explains is vital for this planetary
emergency, a ‘moral refugia72 of the imagination’—where refugia are
‘places where ideas are sheltered and encouraged to grow.’ Furthermore,

72
‘Refugia’ is a population biology term that refers to how pockets of biodiversity can
develop within areas of ecological collapse, which can later spread when conditions
become more favourable. See Dean Moore (2014b) explains her use of the term in a
video presentation on ‘Ethics and the Climate Crisis’. Whidbey Institute.
https://vimeo.com/92852396. [Accessed 4 March 2015].
132

it is ‘practical imagination—the ability to imagine that things can be
different from what they are now.’ (ibid.) In this way, I view that my
blog nurtures ideas and practices that resist unsustainable, extractive land
practices to my blog followers. To my peers, my blogging practice
illustrates how transversal practice may effectively engage and transmit
critical responses to eco-social concerns.
In a recent keynote, Dean-Moore (2015) urges that our actions in this

critical ‘hinge decade’73 be ‘wildly inclusive’, [provide] self-replicating
models for others, [and that they must be] self-sustaining’. In keeping
alive such activity she recognises these actions must be ‘joyous’, and that
is one important thing I have noticed—blogging, sharing, learning with
others, either on or offline, is motivating, rewarding and often fun.
Thus, I find blogging my eco-social art practice an engaging (for myself

and my followers), and a relatively inexpensive means to narrate a study
of sustainability. In a way, blogging a personal response gave me a
means to control and create an eco-social narrative. Such activity often
feels psychologically helpful to deal with the overwhelming negative
statistics of ecological degradation one encounters in this work (see
Hollywood Forest Story eBook, pp. 47-48). However, there are many
more aspects of blogging, which identify it as a critical activity for an
effective eco-social art practice.
Due to its chronological, first-person narrative functionality, blogging

has the potential to develop an accessible personal-public story of life-
sustaining ideas and actions. My blogging skills: learning net-etiquette to
interact confidently and respectfully with online audiences, adopting a
personable writing style and intuitively recognising that short videos
engage online audiences, all help shape and share the Hollywood Forest
Story. With the endeavour now at ten years, I continue to use my blog to

73
Dean Moore (2016, part II), like some scientists, sees this current time as a ‘pivotal
decade when we either found our way forward or did not.’
133

reflect on and narrate my diverse, multi-constituent practice; a transversal
activity that quietly resists Ireland’s, and the world’s dominant ‘story’ of
unsustainable, industrial forestry.
Biggs (2015) further explains that lifeworlds engaged with in eco-social

art practice are multidimensional, and are thus complex to relate to and
require ‘multiple narratives, telling and retelling […]’ (p. 264).
Therefore, very practically, my blogging builds motivation and social
momentum so I can continue to narrate what others may view as a story
that is too big, too complex and too long to tell. Reviewing related digital
storytelling for ‘[…] visioning community and context’, Brabazon (2015)
explains ‘learning requires motivation’ and that there is ‘a passion and
electricity that emerges’ when users digitally narrate and ‘situate their
personal experiences, hopes and expectations into the broader sweep of
history and geography.’
My blog also easily enables me to develop and track diverse activities

and perspectives I draw from others (for example, from professional
foresters, philosophers, Green politicians, cultural geographers,
environmental lawyers) when I cross different lifeworlds. At my
first Hollywood forest tree-marking workshop in 2008, I deliberately
asked people from different walks of life with little knowledge of
forestry to attend. Similarly, through blogging, I imagine a mixed
audience relating to different activities and to the ecoliteracy that arises
from my transversal practice (see Fig. 26 below).
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Fig. 26. Artists, a farmer, a Green politician, musician, nature writer, landowners and a
craft-textile fine artist, gathered at Hollywood for the first workshop, led by Jan
Alexander (CRANN founder and past Chair Pro Silva Ireland - the organisation that
promotes continuous cover forestry) and forester Chris Hayes (lightfootforestry.ie) in
May 2008. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook p. 56.
Additionally, my Hollywood Forest Story blog enables me to maintain a

link to the people who came to my first Hollywood forest workshop and
my more recent in-the-forest talks. When they become ‘followers’ and
sign up to the Hollywood Forest Story blog to get updates on the project,
depending on their interests in sustainable forestry or eco-social art
practice, they often become advocates and sometimes practitioners for a
new story of forestry and new art practices.
Thus, a blog’s ability to join with and influence others’ ‘mental

ecologies’, is powerful if an unpredictable effect of sharing an eco-social
art practice via a blog. Blogging my eco-social art practice has increased
the profile and distribution of my work in Ireland and internationally
despite my living in a rural location. The online conversation with peers
and with those from other fields through my social media practice is an
on-going and important characteristic of the development of my eco-
social art practice and consequently, how and why I share eco-social-art
135

workings. Therefore, I concur with Nicolas Bourriaud, writing in
Network Publics (2008), that my practice resembles that of ‘artists [who]
no longer prioritise originality but intuitively recognise that their
artworks exist within networks and that the meaning of such works
depends on their relation to others and their use.’ (p. 51) Furthermore,
embedding eco-social art practice in online social networks
metaphorically echoes how complex adaptive living systems, as in
forests, are also social, responsive and open networks.
Importantly, I argue my blog allows me on more courageous days to

become what eco-philosopher Kathleen Dean-Moore (2016, part 3) calls
‘the radical imaginary’, one who embodies and envisions creative
resistance for others (this parallels’ Guattari’s idea of ecosophic
objects—transversal endeavours that have the potential to develop
valuable ‘micro-political resistance’ against stagnant social norms, which
I further discuss in Part 2 of the thesis).
Dean Moore articulates the logic behind why new radical storytelling, as
a value-creating and value-affirming process, is necessary for effective
eco-social action (2014a). She explains that creative processes that
define, illustrate, and engage with ‘normative, ethical’ positions of ‘what
we value, what we believe is right’ lead us to take actions toward ‘how
the world ought to be.’ (ibid., emphasis in original, see Fig. 27 below).
Calling this a ‘practical syllogism’, she illustrates these two premises
working together: how knowing how the world is (which we can learn
from science) and knowing what we value (that we can foster and renew
through the arts and other cultural activity), is at the root of what is
needed to inspire necessary ethical action in our communities.
136

Fig. 27. Kathleen Dean Moore (2014a) slide from a filmed keynote presentation argues
the logic of how two premises (P1 and P2) operate to advance social action.
The critical value of narrative for effective eco-social art practice has
long been raised by leading eco-social art practitioners. For example, the
Harrisons stress the narrative value in their practice for imagining new
ideas, actions and policies:
[e]veryplace is telling the story of its own becoming and an

opportunity to enter into a context is one to influence the direction of
that story. (Thackeray, 2001, p. 39)
Goto-Collins (2012) discusses the Harrisons’ use of metaphors (both

literary and visual) to ‘flip’ normative perceptions of land and
waterways. Goto-Collins argues that the use of creative ecological
metaphors ‘can affect not only policy and decision-making and processes
for planning and development, but also challenge morality in
environmental practice.’ (ibid. pp. 70-71)
137

Fig. 28. Image of the video documentation of the Serpentine Lattice audio-visual
slideshow.
Reviewing the Harrisons’ early art-forest project The Serpentine

Lattice (Fig. 28) that, as mentioned previously, was an endeavour to re-
imagine forest restoration along the US Pacific Northwest that has been
devastated by industrial logging, Goto-Collins (2012) discusses how this
metaphorical re-storying works:
In The Serpentine Lattice the dysfunctional metaphor is the forest as

a perpetual ‘wild’ resource to be harvested. It is rationalised by the
result of dying forests, natural systems and human economies. The
Harrisons’ ‘metaphorical flip’ re-situates the forests as a generative
ecosystem. They suggest a watershed-based practice that focuses on
natural boundaries, forest cycles and process. The metaphor draws
imagination of free-flowing water that supports diverse and healthy
populations of wildlife such as salmon fisheries. This new
understanding of the place makes ecological and economic
transformation possible. (ibid. p. 71)
Many years later, Newton Harrison reflected that their metaphoric

description of the entire 55,000 square mile area (ibid. p. 154) as a
‘bioregion’, rather than as forests bounded by State boundaries, had a
profound effect on how the public and policy-makers perceived it as an
interconnected forest-watershed:
138

[w]e may have succeeded because, in the beginning, people were not
working with watersheds. After The Serpentine Lattice, they started
to work in the Pacific Northwest with watersheds. Then, about five
years after that, they started to group watersheds. I think that we
influenced the discourse. […]
The issue is engagement with the formation of the cultural

landscape; being self-empowered, sufficiently, to act; then taking
action; and then expecting consequences. (ibid. p. 143)
The Harrisons’ storytelling enables ecological thinking. Thus, The

Hollywood Forest Story may also be viewed as a metaphor for a new
story of forestry in Ireland. The story deepens and becomes more
engaging when my eco-social art practice, enabled through my blogging,
fosters iterative cycles of multi-constituent translation, reflection and
action across art, science and other socio-political domains.
More recently the value of a story is discussed in a comprehensive

review of community ‘transition art’ projects organised by the grassroots
international Transition Towns’ movement in Playing for Time - Making
Art As If The World Mattered (Neal, ed., 2015) (Fig. 29). Here I view
transition art as eco-social art practice, as Bridget McKenzie (2015)
mentions my practice in this book, p. 122.
139

Fig. 29. Playing for Time: Making Art as if the World Mattered, is the first book to
detail how artistic practice plays a pivotal, yet sometimes invisible role in communities
moving toward sustainability in the international Transition Towns movement (Neal
[ed.] 2015).
With Transition Town co-founder and former artist Rob Hopkins, Editor
Lucy Neal explains the key if under-acknowledged activity of story-
telling in engaging Transition Town projects for community
sustainability learning. Similar to the Harrisons’, the Collins’ and my
view that story-telling is a crucial part of eco-social art practice, she
explains in her review that:
[...] experience of the arts comes from the idea of being an active
participant in the stories we make [...] [transition town art
is] inspiring people to work imaginatively, to re-think the future, to
examine the art of the possible, whilst looking straight at the
challenges faced. (Hopkins, 2015).
Neal usefully compares transition art to theatre, defining eco-community

art as a form of invisible, live-story-making (ibid.), yet the Transition
Towns’ rapid audience growth, I suspect, also reflects more their
widespread use of social media. In no small part, the use of social media
by the Transition Town movement has enabled a global movement in
less than a decade.
140

Similarly, Ihlein’s (2014) suggestion of blogging as an art practice
method for social art practices of place have potential for developing
‘correct relations’ to ‘Country’ [Australia]—an unconventional form of
“aesthetic-ethnography” [... in being] able not only to access aspects of
everyday life […] but also to radically transform the researcher’s
relationship with the surrounding world’ (p. 47). This perspective
compares with transition artist Charlotte Du Cann’s blogging experience.
Developing a community blog over many months, Du Cann describes
was a means
to capture those moments, thoughts and feelings, as we refashioned

our lives, individually and together. For many of us, it [blogging]
became our own transitional arts practice. (Neal, 2015, p. 398)
Similarly, I value social media for my practice and research as it allows

me to join the necessarily urgent and growing conversations about living
differently, living well, with nonhuman environments.
The ability of blogs to house different types of activity indefinitely

makes them indispensable to share the stories arising from extended eco-
social art practice. As Kester (2011) remarks in his international review,74
collaborative arts practice is a ‘slow process of learning and un-learning’
to develop social and political (and environmental) agency.
EarthLines editor and author Sharon Blackie notes the time needed to
create an engaging new story:
[y]ou can’t short-circuit the process. We’re too quick these days to
want to fix things. But some things can’t be rushed. They have to
grow. Slowly. And deeply. (Blackie cited in Graugaard, 2012)
Thus, in my intended 40+ year residency at Hollywood forest, blogging

captures the ‘slow art’ of an eco-social art practice (The

74
Kester reviewed the Harrisons’ practice in 2004 in Conversation Pieces: Community
+ Communication in Modern Art, pp. 63-66.
141

Hollywood Forest Story eBook p. 39; Fig. 30 below) and the developing
agency for my followers and me to rethink forestry.
Fig. 30. Examining the ‘slow art’ of the Hollywood Forest Story, The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook, p. 39.
Together, the Harrisons, Neal, du Cann, Kester, Blackie and Heise’s

observations add weight to influential eco-theologian Thomas Berry’s
seminal article ‘The New Story’, (1978) which calls for a ‘new story’ to
foster an ecological age: 75
[i]t’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we

do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story,
the account of how we fit into the world, is no longer effective. Yet
we have not learned the new story (Berry, 1978, p. 1)
However, whether a wider public and the art and ecology field, will
explicitly utilise social media to advance rapidly new knowledge and

75
The oldest eco-village in the world, Findhorn, organised an international summit in
2014 of over 300 delegates (at which I was invited) for its recent ‘New Story’ summit
based on Thomas Berry’s writings. See ‘Change the Worldview, Change the World’ for
a recent review of Berry’s influence on ecological thought (Dellinger, 2018
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/new-cosmology-and-social-justice/)
142

promote an ecological age is impossible to predict, although analyses by
Rifkin (2009)) and others (whom I discuss later in this Chapter) are
optimistic.
However, I also am deeply cognizant of environmental and social

concerns against internet developments, particularly in their
production.76 In the next section, I present analyses and criticism of social
media and discuss how such technology problematises some objectives
of eco-social art practice. This is a complex, rapidly changing area, but I
highlight further reasoning as to why I presently employ such media and
why I am interested in how social media continues to develop.

76
See Fitzgerald, 2011, p. 20.
143

3.3.3 Social Media and Forests: Casualties of Capitalism’s

Political Economy?

Fig. 31. Cover image: DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media (2014)
How do various platforms infiltrate everyday communicative and

creative habits, and what power do users and owners have to
shape online sociality?
José van Dijck (2013) The Culture of Connectivity:
A Critical History of Social Media, p. 19.
But ultimately, the answer to that question is up to all of us. Like

all technologies before it, the Internet is what we make of it. It is
ours. We need to remember that before it slips through our grasp.
Ron Deibert (2014, foreword) DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social
Media.
After its beginnings little more than a decade ago, online social media
now offers a relatively independent and powerful means to network, and
to instantly share work and invite dialogue with broad audiences.
However, recent theories of social media (discussed below) raise the
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issue that social media has rapidly become part of a global phenomenon
that supports the political economy of capitalism, and so promotes its
inherently unfair and unsustainable processes. Social media also
fundamentally challenge our understanding of how and where we make
meaning of the world. In this section, I offer recent analyses and concepts
to critically review my support for social media, as a valuable, if
problematic (and still evolving) practice and audience-building tool for
the art and ecology field.
A communication revolution
Since the global rise of social media has been likened to a societal shift
as profound as the invention of the printing press, it is somewhat
surprising that critical reviews of how social media are affecting
ecological art practice methods and their audiences are uncommon
(Fitzgerald, 2011, p.20; see also The Hollywood Forest Story eBook
Appendix p. 94). However, the phenomenal speed with which these
technologies have evolved in the last decade means that critical academic
discussion of social media is very recent.77
It appears that many eco-artists favour their on-the-ground environmental

restoration or other aesthetic activities rather than consider the computer
technologies they use. Some seem to wonder, as others do in wider
society, if these new technologies are connected to industrial or rather,
post-industrial society’s unsustainability. However, this ‘taken-for-
granted’, or outright distrust of technology (unless practitioners have
developed political activist agency or media experience), limits

77
For example: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Carr, 2011);
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet against Democracy
(McChesney, 2013); The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media
(van Dijck, 2013), ‘Post-Media Activism, Social Ecology and Eco-Art’ (Brunner et al.
2013); the Sage book of Social Media: A Critical Introduction (Fuchs, 2014); Meaning
in the Age of Social Media (Langlois, 2014) and, similarly, for the arts, DIY
Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media (Ratto and Boler [eds.] 2014).
145

understanding of the potential of social media. Also, as we enter an age
where millions do not know the world without the internet, informed
understanding appears crucial to navigating the complex contradictions
and opportunities social media and online social learning are bringing.
To improve the art and ecology field, critical understanding of how social
media works and an awareness of the politics and eco-social costs behind
their development is essential.
Media analyst Robert McChesney in the Digital Disconnect (2013,

chapter 1) argues that no one can predict how the Internet and social
media will unfold and that we are only at the beginning of understanding
its ramifications and potential. Van Dijck’s (2013) social media review
reveals that since the Web 2.0 concept of connected sociality was
popularised in 2004, over a billion users logged onto social media sites in
2011 (p. 4), and that ‘online sociality and creativity has emerged,
penetrating every fibre of [globalised Western] culture today.’ (ibid.)
Similarly, social media has affected the art and ecology field. For
example, living in a rural area, I recognise that my ecoliteracy learning
and sharing, my connection with peers and others from different
disciplines (many of whom are overseas), are enabled by Internet access
and social media (Fitzgerald, 2011, p. 20). I also realise that my eco-
social-art practice, by negotiating with the promises and dilemmas of the
Web 2.0 world, partly mirrors the same tangled politics of capitalism that
promote unsustainable industrial forestry. Social media use is
complicated, and in a very short space of time the world has looked on as
new collective ‘networked public spaces’ have become incorporated
networked spaces, owned by powerful companies who seem all too
willing to merge the original community ethos of Web 2.0 with their
profit agendas. (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 10)
Moreover, social media continues to evolve rapidly. Distinct new forms

of Web 2.0 are now identifiable and have been quickly adopted: social
146

network sites, like Facebook and Ning sites, are used to host eco-art
networks like the Dark Mountain Network;78 and individual artists are
contributing to eco-art conversations by creating or re-purposing user-
generated content on blogs.
In 2016, it appears we are poised to witness a tsunami-like change in

education, including art education, as Massive, Open, Online Courses
(MOOCs) develop. MOOCs are open-access (generally free but some
now are becoming monetised, especially if accredited), weekly online
courses (generally 5-6 weeks) that consist of uploaded audio-visual and
written documents, data-collection capability for participants to enter
their contributions, and forums for sharing ideas and comments. After the
course is finished, the course resource material is available as an
information resource or archive for its participants.
The advance of MOOCs is evident when ‘the total number of students

who signed up for one course [in 2014] crossed 45 million—up from an
estimated 17 million last year’ and when they doubled again in 2015.79
As a result, MOOCs with potential global online audiences and offering
economic advantages are beginning to challenge the expensive and elite
US and Europe education markets and models (Alannah Fitzgerald,
2015; personal communication80) see also the European Association of

78
Although the latter is being discontinued in 2016 as the network anticipates a lack of
resources to moderate the network.
79
Dhawal Shah (2015) founder and CEO of Class Central writes ‘Student enrolments in
MOOCs doubled this year [2015]. In fact, more people signed up for MOOCs in 2015
than they did in the first three years of the “modern” MOOC movement (which started in
late 2011—when the first Stanford MOOC enrolments surged).
80
FITZGERALD, A. (alannahfitzgerald@gmail.com) Concordia University. 15 August
2015. ‘MOOCs development’. Email to C. Fitzgerald (cathyart@gmail.com)
147

Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU, 2015) MOOC status report
(Fig. 32).81
Fig. 32. EADTU (2015) MOOC education status report for Europe.
I highlight these developments as MOOC designer and educators’

abilities to rapidly pool ‘open-access’ resources of engaging, interactive
audio-visual content from key figures may supplement, or perhaps
sideline contemporary art colleges where art and ecology education is
poorly developed. As yet MOOCs for art education are few but growing.
For example, through the Goethe-Institut and Leuphana University of
Lüneburg Digital School department, Kagan contributes art and
sustainability knowledge through video presentations and reading lists
for the last week of the accredited MOOC ‘Managing the Arts: Cultural

81
I became familiar with MOOC platforms as an open-access means to obtain
information from afar during my research and through my sister’s doctoral higher
education MOOC research. For example, exploring an edX MOOC (developed by a
non-profit consortium of Harvard and MIT) on ‘framing’ was useful to review others’
work that were pursuing ideas similar to Lakoff’s framing research (Chapter 1). Also,
on MOOCs and their effect on education, employment, see Martin Ford, The Rise of the
Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2016) reprint edition. New
York: Basic Books.
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Organizations in Transition’ (14 April to 14 July 2016, see
https://www.goethe-managing-the-arts.org/).
As yet, MOOCs are currently a contested education format.82 With social

media platform development and higher education protocols advancing
learning through digital literacy, they appear to advance a ‘connected
learning’ model much discussed for general education in the US (Ito et
al. 2013). Moreover, given global economic decline and reduced
traditional art education budgets, it is an area to watch for art and ecology
education.83
The political economy of social media
The advance of social media and social learning appears to offer

significant advantages to those working in the art and ecology field,
(Fitzgerald, 2011, p. 20). However, McChesney (2013) signals what
‘celebrants’ (advocates) and ‘sceptics’ of the Internet almost entirely
ignore—‘the elephant in the room’, that is, the political economy of
capitalism that the Internet supports and promotes:
[a]ny big-picture assessment of the internet that disregards the

very real and immediate threat of inequality to self-governance
and freedom is going to be flawed from the get go. (Chapter 1)

82
Initial MOOC platform have had challenges: they don’t replace ‘real world’ teacher-
pupil-pupil interaction and some research highlights many do not complete courses
(Zhenghao et al. 2015) although others have noticed that recent MOOCS that offer
accreditation incentivises course completion significantly (Shah, 2015).
83
Particularly as MOOCs are evolving to utilise the motivation of ‘group’ learning and
group conference technologies, such as the free Uberconference,
https://www.uberconference.com/ and Facebook Groups). For example, McGill
University’s MOOC for groups—a GROOC, prioritises collective learning as it
employs a number of facilitators to lead, encourage and respond to group activity over
the length of the course (see https://www.edx.org/course/social-learning-social-impact-
mcgillx-groocx). A well-developed and well-moderated MOOC with an eco-social
learning focus and weekly group meetings is the Game Changer Intensive online course
organised by the Pachamama (Mother Earth) Alliance
(http://www.pachamama.org/engage/intensive).
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McChesney argues that employing a political economy critique of the
internet will not necessarily hinder advocates or detractors of the internet,
but improve critical understanding of how such internet technologies are
working in a broader sense, and thus, how they can be better employed.
Understanding the political economy of social media gives a criticality
for eco-artists who use such technologies, and as McChesney observes:
[w]hen celebrants incorporate political economy into their

analyses, they do not become sceptics and certainly not cynics,
but they do become much more aware of the importance of
politics. They need not abandon their vision of digital promise;
they simply have to accommodate that vision to the political
economic world in which they actually live. Likewise, when the
most militant sceptics (of the internet) engage with political
economy, their powerlessness and defeatism can be trumped by a
better appreciation for what human agency can accomplish via
technology. (ibid.)
Fuchs’ (2014) social media analyses suggest that critical theory

approaches (and some of Karl Marx’s writings, for example in the
Grundisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie84 [Outlines of the
Critique of Political Economy] (1857/1858, p. 161) where he described a
global information network) help identify social media technologies’ role
in ‘domination and exploitation’, and the ‘normative features’ that
promote the ‘political economy’ of capitalism. (Chapter 1.3) For the art
and ecology field, Fuchs’ and others’ similar arguments will be essential
for claims for social media’s potential to usher in a more just, fairer
society.
In other words, Fuchs and others remind us that political economy

critique and critical theory are necessary to determine questions of power
(Fuchs, 2014, chapter 1.2) that reside invisibly in current and future uses

84
Unfinished manuscript first published in 1939-41, Marx-Engels Institute: Moscow.
150

of social media.85 Yet, McChesney (2013, chapter 1) concedes that
enormous challenges exist in highlighting the political economy of the
Internet as it directly questions ‘business as usual’ and the largely
unquestioned ideology of the ‘free market’ that has driven global
economic wealth. From an eco-social justice perspective, a globalised
‘free market’ economy is anything but free when it deals with the hidden
externalities of endless social misery, declining democracy and
accelerating environmental destruction.
McChesney (2015) acknowledges explicitly the perilous environmental

situation when he reflects on the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) report, commenting that it ought to ‘terrify any
sentient being’ (p. 14), and concludes that ‘capitalism as we know it will
have to go.’ (p. 15) Magdoff and Foster (2011) citing David Harvey put
it another way, if capitalism’s externalities such as environmental and
social costs are attended to, ‘[i]t [capitalism] will go out of business. It is
the simple truth.’ (2011, p. 97) While this is a complex debate, there is
value to McChesney’s (2015) projected analyses of a post-capitalist
democracy where he argues that it will be vital to reclaiming the media
and the Internet from corporate monoliths.
The contributors of DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media

(2014) also acknowledge the necessity of political economy critique
following the disturbing mass surveillance revelations (from Assange and
Snowden this decade), and the seemingly inescapable commercialism
that now directs social media platforms. Usefully for the art and ecology
field, they offer debates and some examples of how informed critical art
workings (and critical making), bridged with social media, can subvert
commercial aspects of social media to offer nodes of resistance to
normative capitalistic politics. Brunner et al. (2013), mentioned above,

85
Magdoff and Bellamy Foster in What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About
Capitalism (2011) and Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.
the Climate (2014) and film (2015), while not discussing social media (or industrial
forestry) specifically, offer valuable political economy critiques of capitalism.
151

also offer a Guattarian post-media analysis of why new media is useful
for eco-art and activism.
Ganaele Langlois in Meaning in the Age of Social Media (2014) reveals

this dichotomy when discussing how Facebook makes social media
workings the product of its fortunes (p. 17). However, she also alerts us
to the developing counter ‘politics of software’ championed by the open-
source community who are attempting to embed democratic laws into the
code of the Internet (p. 13). Langlois (2014), in a different way to
McChesney, and building on Guattari’s semiotic ideas and new relational
psychoanalysis, optimistically argues that ethics of encounter could be
integrated into future social media software design.
Thus, for its use in the art and ecology field, we can use McChesney, van
Dijck, Fuchs, the DIY critical makers, Brunner et al. and Langlois’
analyses to both appreciate the politics of social media and its potential
social power.
The ethical dilemma of social media
Complicating realities of the present include unequal global access and

the questionable long-term sustainability of the Internet given its
demanding energy requirements (see Hollywood eBook Appendix p. 94).
The components of mobile Internet technologies that fuel social media
are also directly linked to repressive and violent regimes, as in Eastern
Congo, a significant source of the ‘conflict minerals’ used in their
production (Enough Project, begun in 2006, see
http://www.enoughproject.org/86). Unfortunately, these shocking realities
only make occasional headlines.87

86
Concerns for mobile technology workers’ health in China and other parts of Asia are
also documented.
87
The war in the Congo is rarely mentioned in international media even though it ‘is
home to the deadliest conflict since World War II’ (Enough Project, 2015).
152

Global capitalism’s horrors are hidden because means of production is
externalised; social media technology production is thousands of miles
from Western consumers’ lives. Part of the ‘membership’ of industrial
culture, as authors Jensen (2002), Macy (2012), Derber (2013), Baker
(2013) and Young Brown (2015) stress, is that we exist in a state of
profound cognitive dissonance as our culture and corporations ignore and
hide the evidence of industrial culture’s sociopathy in its pursuit of
unfettered economic growth.
Paradoxically, social media are also used to raise awareness of these

ethical dilemmas. The Enough Project shares videos (Fig. 33) and articles
on the immense conflicts and the externalised eco-social costs that
support such celebrated Information Age technologies.
Fig. 33. Conflict minerals are used in the manufacture of mobile technologies.
Encouragingly, the Enough Project has developed corporate ‘anti-conflict

material’ legislation for the US market (Dodd-Frank Section 1502;
signed into law by Obama in 2010), and encourages online consumer
pressure to ensure ‘conflict-free’ supply chains. APPLE, whose iMac,
iPad products and iBooks Author software I use to create The Hollywood
Forest Story eBook, answer general criticisms of their products by
claiming through the independent Conflict-Free Sourcing Program that
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they are leading in the complex work to create a conflict-free supply
chain in the Congo (Wakabayashi, 2015). Holly Dranginis, a senior
policy analyst of the Enough Project recently reported that security for
mines and their workers is significantly helped by this legislation,
although this is only the start to economic and social security in the
Congo (Dranginis, 2016).
These programmes are only very recent and initial measures. The on-
going harsh realities support the arguments of the researchers mentioned
above who call for a more in-depth understanding of the implications of
social media technologies. In social media production as much as in
forestry practice, a greater understanding of all the eco-social costs
within industrial production is urgently needed.
We, therefore, might agree with the criticism of environmentalists, and

eco-artists, for using such technology. For example, I have been
questioned about my use of an iPad rather than artistic media. However, I
cannot envisage how one could undertake transversal practices
effectively without technology. Focusing on personal decisions of
whether we use social media or change to eco-light bulbs distracts
attention from much more significant political and eco-social injustices.
Nuanced political understanding brings some cultural practitioners who
use Internet technologies to advocate policy changes. Raoul Martinez,
whose documentary Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth (2013)
highlights the profound dangers of industrial society’s absence of critical
thinking, is an outspoken critic of the ‘big oil’ policy that funds
prestigious UK cultural institutions. Usefully for art and ecology
practitioners, Martinez reminds us that entanglement with unethical
situations was also a dilemma for many abolitionists and shows how they
remained focussed on changing larger, structural injustices:
[i]n various ways, many of the abolitionists fighting to end

slavery would have been beneficiaries of this [slave] wealth, but
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that did not undermine their argument that the system should be
replaced. (Martinez, 2014)
Expanding Martinez’ arguments is worthwhile. From surveying

environmental debates over many years I believe there is a pattern to
discredit people, be they environmentalists, climate scientists, Green-
thinking politicians or eco-cultural practitioners, who raise the call that
we must urgently change direction, drastically challenge unsustainable
industrial practices and policy and advocate the necessity of art and
ecology education. In the context of climate change debates, Dean Moore
(2016) recognises a variety of fallacious means that undermine real
debate, and she reflects that the ‘discourse about values—the
conversation about what we most deeply value in our lives, about what
we most owe the future—has gone missing.’ (Part III, section 6).
In sum, it is crucial to be aware of objections to social media, but this

should not obscure the fact that these technologies offer sophisticated
functionality to narrate complex transversal practices and offer
compelling means to deliver new ideas and values to broad audiences
beyond art gallery contexts.

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Chapter 3.4 Summary
I present the Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry management

approach I adopted and performed since 2008 as a means to significantly
improve life-sustaining interaction with forests and their essential
biodiversity. This ecoforestry approach radically contrasts the eco-social
limitations, ecological violence and inherent unsustainability of industrial
clearfell forestry practised widely in Ireland and other parts of the world.
(I provide in-depth historical context about why industrial forestry
became established in Ireland since the 1950s (and many other colonised
countries), and review Ireland’s past and widespread deforestation over
many centuries, in Appendix A).
I discuss and present images of the intermittent tree-marking and

selective thinning activities that are the primary interventions in
transforming Hollywood from a plantation into a thriving mixed species,
mixed age permanent forest over some years. The activities of Close-to-
nature continuous cover forestry management employed in Hollywood
forest from 2008 are detailed further in the accompanying eBook,
Chapter 5 (a full chronological detail of the forestry interventions
employed at Hollywood forest since 2008 can be found on my blog
http://hollywoodforest.com, under the ‘Forest Management’ section).
Also in this chapter, I cumulatively argue through user experience,

theoretical analyses and recent social art practice doctoral research how,
and more importantly, why, I advocate a mode of practice of social
media blogging for eco-social art practice. I discuss some formal
considerations of how, and why, social media practice radically alters the
presentation and development of audiences for eco-social art practice. I
argue that social media can be used to creatively extend the limitations of
a physical exhibition for eco-social art practices and its narrative, real-
time publishing functions are appropriate for extended practices that are
responding to urgent eco-social challenges. Social media’s value is
156

confirmed when Dean Moore and others advocate the specific potential
of social media to engage society concerning the environmental
emergency quickly, and when they recognise creative artists who employ
social media as critical societal change agents.
Moreover, I argue that a digital storytelling practice facilitates the

essential narrative quality of eco-social art practice for audiences; digital
storytelling formats offer engaging audio-visual and interactivity
functionality with ‘real-time’ publishing. Furthermore, online storytelling
platforms have value as a relatively independent and cost-effective
means of collating the diverse activities and artefacts of transversal
practices. However, I realise that social media use is problematic in its
production and political economy and that it radically destabilises where
meaning is situated and accessed. Social media is nevertheless still
developing, and I argue that debates about whether or not such
technologies should be used must not overshadow the graver debates of
eco-social emergencies. Overall, these analyses of social media offer a
significant contribution to the art and ecology field where, to date, little
analysis of social media is available.
This section concludes Part One of this thesis. To recap, the primary
motivation in undertaking this research is to better articulate the context,
motivations, mechanisms and value of my own and others’ eco-social art
practices. As discussed, this research is particularly warranted, when the
potential of cultural responses to complement advances in scientific
knowledge to engage a broader public in more sustainable living are
confirmed in eco-philosophy and cognitive science and recent
international cultural policy.
I advance my evidence for the validity of the proposed guiding theory-

method framework to articulate the many aspects of eco-social art
practice in Part 2 of this thesis. Part 2 comprises theoretical research and
case study analyses, including critical reflection of outcomes from
157

applying the framework to The Hollywood Forest Story and the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice.
158

PART TWO:

DEEPENING UNDERSTANDING OF ECO-SOCIAL ART PRACTICE
USING THE ECOSOPHY-ACTION RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
159

Introduction to Part 2

Part 2 analyses and discusses the proposed theory-method framework to
improve articulation of eco-social art practice. Specifically, I confirm the
efficacy of the ecosophy-action research framework following its
application to two case studies: The Hollywood Forest Story (on going
since 2008) and the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1992-3).
In the first Chapter of this section (Chapter 4), I discuss why I mobilise
Guattari’s ecosophy and action research together to develop a
comprehensive theory-method framework to articulate eco-social art
practices.
As the proposed framework is forged of two parts, I analyse and discuss

how the two modes of framework are mobilised to deepen understanding
of the case studies in two Chapters:
Guattari’s ecosophy increases theoretical understanding of the case

studies’ aims, drivers and their potential socio-political power
(Chapter 5);
and action research presents a clear, well-accepted methodological

approach to clarify the common iterative method stages of effective
eco-social art practices (Chapter 6).
The end of Part Two summarises the findings of the research and
concludes that the proposed ecosophy-action research framework
contributes to comprehensive articulation of eco-social art practice. As
such, the proposed framework contributes new knowledge for the art and
ecology field (Chapter 7).
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Chapter 4:

A guiding theory-method framework to articulate
eco-social art practice:

Why connect Guattari’s ecosophy with action research?

161

4.1 Introduction

Fig. 34. Conversations between myself, students and a lecturer, from Wexford, Campus
School of Art and Design, Carlow Institute of Technology in Hollywood forest, April
2015.

This Chapter discusses the proposed theory-method framework to
improve articulation of eco-social art practice. It explains why the
framework is formed of two complementary parts: Guattari’s ecosophy
and action research.
In the first section of this Chapter, Section 4.2, I introduce and detail
Guattari’s ecosophy, which comprises his lifetime’s understanding and
practice of transversality. This is mobilised in the proposed framework to
articulate the why of eco-social art practice. I propose that Guattari’s
theory comprehensively details the context (ethical, social and aesthetic
motivations) and unpacks the social and political potential of, such
practice.
However, while Guattari’s ecosophy excels at explaining the context,

motivation and potential of developing an exemplary eco-social art
practice (see the case studies analysed with Guattari’s ecosophy, Chapter
162

5), such practices remain complex endeavours, especially to newcomers
to the art and ecology field. Consequently, in the second part of this
Chapter (Section 4.3), I propose that action research complements
Guattari’s ecosophy, providing a clear and well-accepted methodological
approach for eco-social art practice enquiry. I detail how incorporating
action research with Guattari’s theory is particularly pertinent to increase
understanding of how eco-social art practice develop and are maintained.
In this way, I argue that action research significantly helps to characterise
and clarify the common method stages to develop and maintain an
effective eco-social art practice.

4.2 Utilising Guattari’s ecosophy – understanding the

context, motivations and potential of eco-social art practice
4.2.1 Why Guattari’s Ecosophy?

The Earth is undergoing a period of intense – techno-scientific
transformations. If no remedy is found, the ecological
disequilibrium this has generated will ultimately threaten the
continuation of life on the planet’s surface. Alongside these
upheavals, human modes of life, both individual and collective,
are progressively deteriorating…. Political groupings and
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executive authorities appear to be totally incapable of
understanding the full implications of these issues. Despite
having recently initiated a partial realisation of the most obvious
dangers that threaten the natural environment of our societies,
they are generally content to simply tackle industrial pollution
and then from a purely technocratic perspective, whereas only an
ethico-political articulation – which I call ecosophy – between the
three ecological registers (the environment, social relations and
human subjectivity) would be likely to clarify these questions.
Felix Guattari, Three Ecologies, 1989, p.19-20.
Guattari’s ecosophy is one half of the two-part eco-social art practice

framework proposed in this thesis. My appreciation of the depth and
breadth of Guattari’s vision and the relevance of his ecosophy developed
as my project grew over its duration. Surprisingly, it was useful when my
work grew in many unexpected directions toward non-art activities,
moving from visual culture to Green politics, and on into social media
and forest research. As a consequence, when I sought to articulate and
defend my eco-social art practice, Guattari’s ecosophy proved powerful;
both as an encouragement to my diverse activities and as a ‘plan for the
planet.’ (Stivale, 2009, p. 17)
What is ecosophy? Guattari’s ‘Three Ecologies’
Guattari’s ecosophy88 is a three-stranded theory, centered on

understanding that the three and always inter-related ecologies of the
individual, society, and the environment, must be addressed
simultaneously to advance ecological well-being.
Developed towards the end of Guattari’s career, his ecosophy (ecological

philosophy) is presented chiefly in his books The Three Ecologies
(Guattari, 1989), Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (Guattari,
1992), and his summary article ‘Re-making Social Practices’ (Guattari,

88
To understand how Guattari’s ecosophy departs from Deep Ecology and other
environmental philosophies, see Appendix B.
164

1992). It should be noted that Guattari’s ecosophy is barely contained in
his slim Three Ecologies volume. Rather, Guattari’s ecosophy rests on
the distillation of his previous three decades’ work and is much expanded
upon in his last posthumously published book Chaosmosis: An Ethico-
Aesthetic Paradigm, and in other writings that continue to be translated.
Ecosophy evolved from Guattari’s profoundly compassionate study of

individual and collective change in therapeutic situations over many
decades. It also rests on his lifelong involvement in political activism and
organisation (including the nascent French Green party [les Verts] of the
1980s) and includes his analysis of how independent communicative
media technologies can work to facilitate or hinder societal change. His
analyses framed in a compelling and prescient critique of globalised
industrial capitalism (developed earlier with Gilles Delueze), are useful
to contextualise eco-social art practice.
Guattari developed ecosophy to increase clarity about the mental and

social roots of environmental decline, and to instil awareness of how new
formations of social practice operate to counter this decline. Guattari’s
ecosophy involves his connective theory of transversality to articulate
how environmental and other lifeworld experience within ethico-
aesthetic practices may be mobilised to effect transformative social
change. It seeks to increase understanding of the degree to which new
societal values or subjectivities arise in individuals and groups—his later
ecosophy works all center on ‘the production of subjectivity’ (Guattari,
1995, p.1)—as an ongoing and essential process to develop more life-
sustaining well-being. In his own words: ‘[t]he only acceptable finality of
human activity is the production of a subjectivity that is auto-enriching
its relation to the world in a continuous fashion.’ (ibid. p. 21)
Guattari’s ecosophy is relevant for this study in signalling that new

ethico-aesthetic practices, which eco-social art practice embody, are
paramount to foster Earth-aligned subjectivities—new thinking of how to
165

relate sustainably to the Earth. In a review of Guattari’s relevance for the
arts, Elliott (2012) explains:
[o]nly through art, Guattari asserted, could we even hope to face

the challenges that would be thrown at us in the twenty-first
century. Only the affective power of the aesthetic experience
could offer us a way out of the overt scientism that has both
caused and prolonged the social and environmental damage of the
past 100 years. Contrary to popular opinion, Guattari believed in
the power of art to reach us deeply. For him it could jolt us out of
acquiescence, it could open new existential vistas, offering a line
of flight from the humdrum of the everyday. (p. 126)
Thus, Elliott (2012) and others look to Guattari to deepen understanding

of sustainability from what ecomodernists and others may prescribe. In
Elliott’s brief review, he writes that Guattari insisted that if any one of
the three ecologies is not attended to; for example, by relying too heavily
on short-term fixes and science to address environmental problems—
which is currently the dominant response, we will find that we have
created even more problems (ibid. pp. 128-129).
Gary Genosko (2009) reveals a helpful image to emphasise this point in

the unpublished manuscript ‘The Great Eco Fear’ where Guattari
describes the ‘three ecologies [and more] as an iceberg; the tip, above
water and visible, are the environmental disasters. Below the waterline
and more dangerous is the less acknowledged “degeneration of social
relations” [… and] mental pollution caused by media infantilisation and
passivity-inducing post-political cynicism, to which may be added the
traumas of globalisation and anti-terrorism.’ (p.74) As Elliott
summarises, Guattari’s ecosophy argues that we cannot create lasting
change unless we confront each of these three areas together and see
them as part of the same integrated problem (p. 127). In this way,
Guattari’s “three ecologies” ecosophy advocates that an integrated
response of enacting transversality is crucial to address these complex
problems; therefore, an effective ecosophical practice will always
166

involve mental and social ecologies be transformed, as the primary
means to relate sustainably to our environments.
Thus, Guattari’s ecosophy can be persuasive if one understands that

industrial society’s unsustainability, which is undermining the Earth’s
life-support systems (Chapter 2), is essentially a cultural crisis, which
will be little addressed by faith in current ‘sustainable development’,
recycling and renewable technologies.
Additionally, Guattari’s thorough critique of globalised or ‘Integrated

World Capitalism’ (IWC) as a cause of social and environmental
degradation, demonstrates the degree to which capitalism takes over an
individual’s capacity to think differently. As he puts it, ‘capital is a
semiotic operator’ [that] ‘seizes individuals from the inside.’ (Cited in
Genosko, 2012, p. 149) Consequently, Guattari’s ecosophy is helpful to
eco-social art practitioners in increasing understanding of how industrial
(and financial), corporate-led, globalised capitalist culture is
fundamentally ‘sociopathic’.
Charles Derber’s detailed examination of collective sociopathy in

Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States (2013),
confirms the value of Guattari’s ecosophy today when he analyses the
causes and extent of society-wide sociopathy89:
[s]ociopathy is antisocial behaviour by an individual or institution

that typically advances self-interest, such as making money, while
harming others and attacking the fabric of society. In a
sociopathic society, sociopathic behaviour, both by individuals
and institutions, is the outcome of dominant values and power
arrangements. A sociopathic society, paradoxically, creates
dominant social norms that are antisocial—that is, norms that
assault the well-being and survival of much of the population and
undermine the social bonds and sustainable environmental

89
Derber views climate change as the most dangerous sociopathy—‘Since climate
change is manmade, and US leaders have rejected essential policies to slow or halt
climate change, [hurricane] Sandy lives as a nightmarish symbol of the most dangerous
sociopathy of the twenty-first century.’ (2013, p. 202).
167

conditions essential to any form of social order. […] [emphasis in
original, p. 4]
Derber (2013) thus confirms Guattari’s thinking when he concludes that

‘environmental government and corporate practices, along with mass
consumerism by the general population [replicated by an exponentially-
surging global population], now threaten the long-term survival of civil
society and are undoubtedly the most dangerous sociopathy in the United
States today’ (p. 9). Additionally, he realises, as do environmental
lawyers such as Polly Higgins and Thomas Linzey, that ‘most of the
sociopathic behaviours of industrial culture are perfectly legal and are
perpetrated by governments, financial institutions, and corporate
capitalism.’ (Derber, 2013, p. x)
Guattari would have endorsed Derber’s thesis that concepts of sociopathy

must be expanded beyond an individual’s cognitive horizon to consider
the problems of capitalist society as a whole. I argue that first
understanding the pattern of sociopathy (or indeed unsustainability or
ecocide) threaded within industrial society is essential to bring
sociopathic society to an end. Indeed, an astute understanding of Western
globalised society’s erroneous faith in industrialism and human
supremacy90 identifies the context that directs effective and insightful
eco-social art practice responses. As Guattari and Derber indicate, the
undoing of sociopathy will require new social movements to urgently
champion life-sustaining values (ibid. p. 27). Derber cites feminist (ibid.
p. 238-239) and Green politics (pp. 291-303) as useful in this regard, to
which I would add eco-social art practice.

90
In the context of contemporary art discourse, T.J. Demos (2016) argues that human
supremacism could be seen as the insidious ideological weapon of the colonial project.
His research uncovers the fact that marginalised Indigenous worldviews are being
replicated, perhaps colonised further, by recent Western philosophy (p. 144). And, an
important recent text on the wider de-bunking of the near-universal belief in a hierarchy
of nature and the superiority of human beings, is Derrick Jensen’s The Myth of Human
Supremacy (2016).
168

Derber’s research on the hidden-in-plain-view violence and insanity of
industrial capitalism also complements others’ analyses. Magdoff and
Bellamy Foster (2011) among others, argue ‘that capitalism is unique
among social systems in its active, extreme cultivation of individual self-
interest or “possessive individualism”’ (p. 82) that leads to an insatiable
economic drive to commodify and consume finite resources and ignores
the plight of others.
Crucially, Magdoff and Bellamy Foster recognise a cultural blind spot

regarding capitalism in that the ‘traits fostered by capitalism are
commonly viewed as innate to “human nature.”’ (ibid. p. 80) Against
this, they stress that the deterministic biological view of humankind as an
insatiable consumer of environments is erroneous, given that many other
pre-capitalistic cultures have not had this ecocidal drive and lived more
sustainably over longer periods (pp. 81-83). Thus, they echo Guattari’s
important premise that alternatives to capitalism and neoliberal
economics exist (further confirmed by recent Indigenous research:
Anderson, 2006; Gammage, 2012, Kimmerer 2014 and Deep Green
theory analyses from Jensen91 (2002; 2003; 2006), (discussed in Chapter
5)).
4.2.2 Application of Guattari’s ecosophy to eco-social art

practice

Before I further detail why Guattari’s ecosophy theory is particularly

relevant for deepening our understanding of eco-social art practices, I
must first address criticism of his theories from the ecological art and
ecocritical fields.

91
Author and deep green activist Derrick Jensen has similar conclusions in his many
books, including A Culture of Make Believe (2002), Strangely Like War: The Global
Assault on Forests (2003), Endgame (2006) Vol. I and II. He has detailed in
considerable depth and from personal experience of violence, the often ignored and
insidious brutality of capitalist societies toward non-capitalistic, yet more life-sustaining
cultures and their nonhuman communities.
169

Criticism of Guattari’s “three ecologies”
Some critics claim that Guattari’s ‘three ecologies’ represent merely a

nascent and perhaps unfinished theory (Haley, 2008; 468; Tinnell, 2011)
or they are misunderstood by his critics, and hence not valued or
explored further (Kagan, 2011, p. 392-395; Brunner et al. 2013, p. 10).
Others, such as Kagan (ibid.) indicate that a few art organisations and
curators92 refer to Guattari’s “three ecologies” ecosophy, however,
Guattari’s key thesis of transversality is only briefly discussed.
For example (and as mentioned in Chapter 1), contemporary art curator

Nicolas Bourriaud popularised Guattari’s “three ecologies” ecosophy at
the end of his Relational Aesthetics (1998), an influential text that sought
to characterise the significant rise of relational, participatory art practice
over those that create discrete art objects. However, Biggs (2014c) argues
that advocates of ‘relational aesthetics,’93 largely misunderstand and
under-appreciate Guattari’s ecosophy and his concept of transversality,
which describe new and radically transformative social art practices that
connect deeply with place and their communities (p. 910).
Indeed, Biggs believes that artists who begin as ‘object makers’ are far
better able to work ecosophically than those who subscribe to relational
aesthetics; for example, he describes the work of Christine Baeumler
(University of Minnesota) and Mary Modeen (University of Dundee) as:
[p]roviding communities with both content and context. Each

works through a performative, process-based approach, and each
is creatively engaged with a variety of communities of interest
and practice and with the place-based communities of which they
are active members. (ibid.; emphasis in original)

92
See Latitudes and Bonacossa in the Turin Greenwashing. Environment: Perils,
Promises and Perplexities (2008) exhibition.
93
Bourriaud defines ‘relational aesthetics’ as: ‘a set of artistic practices which take as
their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their
social context, rather than an independent and private space’. (1998, p. 113)
170

Similarly, curators of the exhibition ‘Greenwashing’ (2008), from the
group Latitudes94 and Ilaria Bonacossa, invoke Guattari as an influence
on their curation. Some of the artists’ work they curate appears to reveal
a greater understanding of transversality and Guattari’s ecosophical aims
than Bourriaud. In their publication Shades of Green: A Conversation
Between the Curators (Latitudes & Bonacossa, 2008), they argue that
Guattari’s conception of new values arising from transversal activities,
those that cross mental, social and environmental spheres, more aptly
describes the art practices apparent in the exhibition (ibid., p. 29). They
also indicate that Guattari’s transversality, and the response of particular
artists to the worsening natural environment, represent a decisive break
from the legacy of Joseph Beuys’s work ‘as a shamanic negotiator
between the human and the non-human world, culture and nature.’ (ibid.)
However, I believe these curators under-estimate Beuys’s final ‘7000
Oaks’ (1982) and his development of ideas that these practices were
important ‘social sculpture’95 and, although not substantially theorised
(Sacks, 2011, p. 90) do align with, and are better understood through,
Guattari’s ecosophy and ideas of transversality. Beuys, in his last work,
like Guattari, emphasises the necessary ‘social’ innovation of ecological
art practices. (ibid. pp. 79-97)
Absorbing Guattari’s thinking and Beuys’ intuition of the social power of

‘social sculpture’, correlates with Gablik’s prescient review that social
activity is critical for creative practices that aim to fully engage
audiences’ for an ‘ecological imperative’ (Chapter 1) (in Chapter 6.4.4,

94
The curators at Latitudes edited the comprehensive UK RSA Land, Art: A Cultural
Ecology Handbook (2006) that includes artists’ practices that I would determine are
ecosophical eco-social art practices, for e.g. Insa Winkler.
95 ‘Art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary [(re)evolutionary] power capable of
dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system to build a SOCIAL
ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART. This most modern art discipline —Social
Sculpture/ Social Architecture —will only reach fruition when every living person
becomes a creator, a sculptor, or architect of the social organism. Only then would the
Happening be fulfilled. [...] EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who —from
within his state of freedom —learns to determine his position in the TOTAL
ARTWORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.’ Joseph Beuys, ‘I am searching for
field character’, 1973. [capitals in original] (Tisdall, 1974)
171

interpersonal social skills as a requisite for effective transversal practice
are discussed).
Over time, this emphasis on the social drivers of durational ecological art
practices led me to question terms such as ‘ecological art’ practice, often
shortened to ‘eco-art’. Too often debates in the art and ecology field and
wider art world arise because the terms are misapplied to landscape
artworks, land art (often large-scale interventions in the land itself) or to
works that have a nature theme. The term ‘ecological art’, although
correct in a holistic sense, is too close to the word ‘environmental’ for
most to appreciate the difference. To me, ‘environmental art’ concerns
artworks with a nature theme whereas ecological art practice is a
durational social practice. I argue, the term ‘ecological art’ and ‘eco-art’
are limiting ready appreciation, especially to newcomers to the art and
ecology field, that durational ecological art practices are fundamentally
social art practices. This clarification is important because effective
creative practices for the ecological turn, thus require developed social
skill in addition to artistic skill, which I discuss further below.
A new vocabulary and term: ‘eco-social art practices’
My development of a new term – ‘eco-social art practice’ – is therefore

innovative, arising from reflections upon my creative practice and
Guattari’s concept of transversality that emphasise social innovation.
This term mirrors Guattari’s ecosophy concept of “three ecologies” and
follows in the spirit of his endeavours to signpost for these urgent times a
much-needed expanded epistemology and ontology (I discuss the
usefulness of his vocabulary below). Eco-social art practice as a term, I
argue, better reflects Guattari’s knowledge that humanity’s ‘becoming’
ecological, rests on advances in all three spheres: the environment, the
social and the individual. From my research, these are the three spheres
that eco-social art practices regularly observe or negotiate.
172

I also use the word ‘practice’ to correlate with recent and ongoing
debates in social (socially-engaged) art practice criticism.96 In this
context, Helguera argues that social activity should be recognised as
primary, rather than the artworks created. He argues that the term ‘social
practice’ thus avoids ‘object-making and authorship’ conventions and
‘the capitalist market infrastructure of the art world’ (Helguera, 2011,
Definitions, 1). This view coincides with Gablik’s (2009) observations
when she identifies eco-social art practices similarly resist art market
conventions.
A guiding ecosophy-action research framework, not a manifesto
Moreover, when Helguera (2011, introduction) argues that ‘education for

socially-engaged art’ is not a manifesto for best practice, I similarly
position my research as offering a guiding framework and not a
manifesto. Thus, I agree when Helguera writes that:
understanding the social process we are engaging in doesn’t

oblige us to operate in any particular capacity; it only makes us
more aware of the context and thus allows us to better influence
and orchestrate desired outcomes. (ibid.)
Importantly, with the term ‘eco-social art practice’ I signal to

experienced social art practitioners how eco-social art practices operate
similarly to social practice, with the critical difference being that eco-
social art practices prioritise holistic ecological outcomes for
communities and their environments. Indeed, the continued bracketing-
out of environmental concerns in social practice, given the context of the
environmental emergencies that are unfolding, while understandable as

96
Social practice researcher Pablo Helguera in Education for Socially-Engaged Art: A
Materials and Techniques Handbook (2011) argues how ‘socially-engaged art’ is better
described as ‘social practice.’
173

ecoliteracy is currently deficient in art education, should not be
promoted.97
Improving understanding, to engage more creative practitioners toward

eco-social art practices is the aim of this thesis. Experienced social
practitioners would be an important constituency for this research, along
with art and ecology, and general art educators. The research also has
relevance for others who contribute art practices and non-art work for
collaborative, transversal practices.

4.2.3 Guattari’s ecosophy terminology for eco-social art
practice
Perhaps the big project of the nonhuman is to find new

techniques, in speech and art and mood, to disclose the
participation of nonhumans in “our” world. This would require
the invention and deployments of a grammar that was less
organised around subjects and objects […]
Jane Bennett (2015, chapter 9) ‘Systems and Things:

On Vital Materialism and Object-Oriented Philosophy’
in The Nonhuman Turn.
Guattari’s ecosophy looks beyond his understanding that there is more to

the environmental emergency than the environment itself. It introduces a
new vocabulary with which to discuss how ethico-aesthetic practices can
negotiate eco-social change within and across human-nonhuman
ecologies. Elliott (2012) reminds us that Guattari’s seemingly ambiguous
terms and metaphors map uncharted thinking to ‘overcome semiological
and linguistic traps of the past’ (p. 142) and resist the dogma of
capitalism in particular. Employing Guattari’s concepts and terminology,
I argue, allows us to re-think, define and chart how individual-collective-
environmental change arises through practices that attend the
interconnected “three ecologies”.

97
Garoian (2012) following an analysis of the Harrisons’ practice argues that eco-social
art practices suggest a holistic model for education that is presently not acknowledged.
174

I derive my analyses of these concepts, terms, and critique, both from
recent research and their application from my practice. The analyses
suggest how Guattari’s ecosophy might enable us to re-frame eco-social
art practice and, more specifically, to help name and picture the form,
constituents, processual mechanisms and, (in the next chapter of case
studies analyses) to identify what is commonly at stake, aesthetically,
ethically and politically, in eco-social art practice.
Below, I critically review a select number of concepts, concerns and

terms Guattari refined over his working life and that he brings together in
his ecosophy theory. These include: ‘ecosophic cartographies’,
’molecular revolutions’, ‘transversality’, ‘refrain’, ‘machinic animism’,
‘machinic ecologies’. I also refer to his detailed critique of capitalism
(what he called ‘Integrated World Capitalism’; more commonly known
in the decades since as globalised, neoliberal corporate capitalism).
Eco-social art practices are ‘ecosophic cartographies’ for the

Ecological Turn
When we humans are lost we need directions or a map. Earlier

humans had religious and cultural traditions to guide them. […]
We need new guideposts to find our way amid large scale
changes such as climate change and loss of species.
Mary Evelyn Tucker (2016, Introduction) ‘Learning to navigate

amid loss,’ in: Kathleen Dean Moore’s Great Tide Rising.
Guattari (1992) in his last article ‘Re-Making Social Practices’ uses the
term ‘ecosophic cartographies’ to identify multi-constituent practices of
ethico-aesthetic ideas and activities that promote new understandings and
values for an ethico-aesthetic paradigm.
Crucially, Guattari believes ‘ethical and aesthetic values for a more life-
sustaining worldview do not arise from imperatives and moral codes’
(1992, p. 4). Rather he asks: ‘How do we create or expand upon such a
175

universe of values?’ (ibid.) He argues, in ways similar to today’s eco-
jurisprudence researchers and climate change campaigners seeking social
and intergenerational justice, ‘that “ecosophic cartographies” will be as
preoccupied by what human life on Earth will be thirty years from now,
as by what public transit will be three years from now.’ (ibid.)
These comments reveal the scope of Guattari’s ecosophy as a theory for a

deep sustainability98 with an ethic that presents radical, world-changing
political ramifications.99 These ideas are important, but what is
particularly relevant for this study is that Guattari’s notion of ‘ecosophic
cartographies’ serves to identify eco-social art practice as broadly sharing
Guattari’s concerns. As Elliott (2012) explains, Guattari’s ‘[e]cosophy is
more than an environmental philosophy; it is a blueprint, a map for a
relationship to the world.’ (p. 129). That Guattari also used the term
‘artistic cartographies’ (Guattari 1992, p. 130) reinforces the value of this
mapping metaphor in discussing the type of practices foregrounded here
in all their seemingly infinite diversity. This idea is further confirmed
when Elliott (2012), Demos (2013) and others observe that Guattari’s
theorising usefully addresses a diverse range of social projects, 100
including contemporary art practice.

98
Guattari’s responsibility for future generations agrees with Kagan (2008; 2011),
Weintraub (2012) and others’ views, that eco-social art practices, despite their
seemingly diverse activities, regularly aspire to common aims of responsible
sustainability.
99
It is noteworthy that Guattari presciently envisages today’s developing eco-
jurisprudence (although this has been a marginal activity in legal spheres since the early
1970s) as promoted by today’s law leaders, such as human rights and climate justice
campaigner Mary Robinson (see http://www.mrfcj.org), US ‘rights of nature’ lawyer
Thomas Linzey (Linzey and Campbell 2009); and ecocide lawyer and campaigner Polly
Higgins (2010, 2012), who in various ways call for urgent legal mechanisms to ensure
the welfare of future generations (human and nonhuman) via a legal ‘duty of care’ of
our environments. Also, The Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas
exhibition (Nottingham Contemporary, 2015).
100
These would include a radical rethinking of education, see Cartographies of
Becoming in Education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective (Masny [ed.] 2013) and art
education (Garoian, 2012). However, research of these concepts in education is beyond
the scope of this study.
176

Guattari’s ‘ecosophic cartographies’ usefully clarify how formations of
ethical-aesthetic endeavours map social change. In ‘Entering the Post-
Media Era’ (undated; written in the late 1970s-early 1980s) Guattari
describes the diverse social typology of what would become his
ecosophic cartographies, and outlines how new values and life-sustaining
ethics arise in the diversity of these individual or collective social
formations:
But where? How? Well, everywhere possible. […]
It can be individual, for those who tend to lead their lives as if it

were a work of art; dual in all possible ways,
[…] multiple, through group, network, institutional, and

collective practices; and finally, micropolitical by virtue of other
social practices, other forms of auto-valorisations and militant
actions, leading, through a systematic decentering of social
desire, to soft subversions and imperceptible revolutions that will
eventually change the face of the world, making it happier. Let’s
face it, it is long overdue. (Guattari, 2009, p. 306)
Guattari sees ecoliteracy and new social values for an ecological age as
arising from multiple and diverse new social formations. Thus, for this
thesis, I argue that eco-social art practices are ideally suited to map
territories of new eco-social interaction, and potentially activate values
that better correspond to today’s eco-social realities.
Ecosophical actions arise with increasing familiarity and understanding

of what supports and threatens the viability and the thriving of any given
eco-social context. Living long-term within Hollywood forest is an
important motivator and knowledge bank for developing a duty of care
via this small forest (Fig. 36) and forests elsewhere. My eco-social art
practice of adopting of a new-to-Ireland ecoforestry practice, examined
in this research, is explored to ensure that Hollywood forest remains a
thriving, permanent forest.
177

Fig. 36. Living inside Hollywood forest motivates my eco-social art practice and
deepens my ecoliteracy and agency for an alternative, permanent forestry management,
The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 38.
Eco-social art practices ‘de-territorialise’ unsustainable social norms
Elliott (2012), writes how Guattari uses the term ‘de-territorialisation’ to

discuss how new values arise from the production of new subjectivities
in the ‘territories’ governed by ecosophic activities (although he is aware
that capitalism advances similar operations) (p. 129). He adds, Guattari
believed that the situated, context-specific subjectivities, as fostered by
ecosophic practice, can powerfully challenge existing societal norms.
Such de-territorialised subjectivities (or ‘singularities’) arise following
the synergy of diverse individual-collective social formations and their
interactions, and if ethically guided, can compete with and conquer re-
territorialised (calcified) societal values. (ibid.) For example, seen as an
ecosophic cartography, The Hollywood Forest Story as an eco-social art
practice develops an exploration of ecoforestry to counter
(deterritorialise) existing flawed mass understandings of monocultural,
clear fell industrial forestry. It achieves this by ‘re-valorising’ the forest
management ‘territory’ anew by giving a broader social context to the
178

environmental, social and landscape values that industrial forestry largely
ignores.
4.2.4 Limitations of Guattari’s ecosophy to fully articulate eco-

social art practice
In this research, I propose that theorising eco-social art practice via

Guattari’s ecosophy reframes eco-social art practice as a transformative
experience rather than a thematic exercise. However, continuing personal
struggles to explain in simple terms how my eco-social art practice
developed, and now operates, alerted me to the fact that Guattari’s
ecosophy, while useful for detailing their valuable ecoliteracy and socio-
political potential, does not fully explain these practices.
What I needed, in addition to the valuable insights that Guattari’s

ecosophy offered, was a clear methodology for myself and others
in the art and ecology field to explain the day-to-day operations
of eco-social art practice. To restate, a primary motivation for this
research is to encourage many more creative practitioners to
understand how these valuable practices operate, as attending
effectively to environmental issues as these become increasingly
widespread and urgent.
In the 1980s, Guattari appreciated that participatory social enquiry

methodologies were arising to steer community-led social movements.
Interestingly, he commended the value of action research, the
methodology that I choose to articulate the operations of eco-social art
practice, as being ‘not undertaken by specialists but collectively framed
and elaborated by those who live the problem’ (Genosko, 2002, p. 22).
Unfortunately, however, he did not develop this further. Thus, in the
second part of this Chapter, Section 4.3, I explore the other half of the
eco-social art practice model I propose; an action research approach to
articulate an inclusive, clear methodology for eco-social art practice.
179

4.3 Utilising action research to enact and explain an

4.3.1 Why and how action research complements Guattari’s

ecosophy
Established methods and outlooks based on separation and

isolation of issues have proven insufficient when responding to
the complex and interconnected issues of climate change and
ecological crisis. Traditional working practices may even be
implicated in the undervaluation and degradation that has played
a part in the creation of these circumstances. Such methods, then,
must be augmented and expanded to address a wide range of
stakeholders, realities, timescales and contexts that demand
continual redefinition.
John Hartley (2012) We Assert Manifesto, p. 26101
[Action research] helps to move people away from linear

cause-and-effect thinking into a cyclical, ecological mode.
Peter Reason (1999) ‘Integrating Action and Reflection

through Cooperative enquiry’, p. 21
This section proposes that action research particularly complements

Guattari’s ecosophy as a means of articulating the diversity of eco-social
art practices, across common methodological stages and processes.
While Kagan (2011), Weintraub (2012) and others characterise the

transdisciplinary form and the ‘Art Genres’, ‘Art Strategies’, ‘Eco Issues’
and ‘Eco Approaches’ of eco-social art practice, I suggest that they
neglect the commonality of these practices’ processes and methods. In
the early stages of trying to articulate eco-social art practice, I found
Winkler’s Flower of Sustainability model, developed with philosopher
Oleg Koeford (Winkler and Koeford, 2008) (Fig. 37) useful to defend

101 Produced by the CIWEM art and environment network. CIWEM is the UK based
but internationally operating Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental
Management organisation. John Hartley was a former Art and Ecology strategy
consultant for Art Council England.
180

and summarise my transversal practice and research in public talks and
academia. The model visualises (and simplifies) what Winkler describes
as the necessary transdisciplinary form and operation of art for
sustainability. This simple diagram model indicates to artists and their
audiences102 that such endeavours act as expanded practices of art and
non-art elements, which ‘circle’ a central aim toward more life-sustaining
ideas and practices.
Fig. 37. The Flower of Sustainability model of Winkler and Koeford (2009) can
be used to map the experience, skills, and issues graphically for individuals or
groups involved in transdisciplinary projects.
However, I was to find an action research approach is significantly more

substantial than The Flower Model of Sustainability because it attends to
diverse dimensions and activities in depth. For example, applying an
action research mode increases the potential to understand the shared
method pathway of The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest
Story beyond what The Flower Model of Sustainability only outlines. As
Seeley (2011b) argues, an action research methodology comprehensively

102
Winkler has used this model with various social groups, see http://www.flower-of-
sustainability.eu/.
181

details and validates the ‘living bodies, senses, emotional responses,
imaginations and intuitions [… that] are routinely dismissed as reliable
sources of information and the practices which could cultivate these
knowings […]’ (p. 3). Thus I will, through case studies’ analyses
(Chapter 6) confirm that action research can usefully signpost the major
methodological stages of eco-social art practice and show how it can
effectively frame ‘the territory of action’ (Smith, 2015) to develop
Guattarian ecosophic cartographies.
Moreover, applying an action research mode also means such complex

practices can be more easily taught. An action research mode is useful in
identifying and ordering the experiences that eco-social-art practitioners
like the Harrisons and I routinely encounter and ‘translate’; namely, the
polyverse of lifeworlds, disciplines, different ways of knowing and the
differing ‘personas’ eco-social-art practitioners may inhabit, move
through, or contribute within.
An action research approach can also overcome the perhaps unconscious

habit of some creative practitioners in believing they must create all
aspects of their work, including methodologies. The urgent need to
respond to the reality of the current ‘hinge decade’ arguably overrides
creativity for its own sake and prioritises an agreed base methodological
approach. Furthermore, as the action research mode is a robust and tested
framework, it facilitates efficiencies in developing a practice
methodology and terminology. Following a recognisable framework of
action research contrasts with my difficulties of undertaking and
explaining an eight-year eco-social art practice where instinct more often
guided my actions, along with ideas collected piecemeal from others’
practices. While this may not appear a crucial concern, the lack of a
standard methodology significantly hinders peer-to-peer learning and
development of the art and ecology field.
182

The application of a widely recognised framework for my practice may
still seem prescriptive to some. However, action research correlates with
eco-social art practices where outcomes cannot be predicted, and also
Guattari’s realisation that ecosophic projects’ consequences are uncertain
(Chapter 6) social operations. In this way, action research counters
arguments that it would be overly prescriptive. Therefore, I invite readers
to consider that action research is not a method but an open framework
that welcomes all perspectives and activities. There is more than enough
room to be creative within action research.
However, it is likely that my former experience in working with research

groups in science has lessened my fear that I need to maintain an
individual methodology approach. In any case, I prefer to understand my
practice as action research for eco-social change. Making my practice
easily understood, with its method stages comparable with others’
practices brings significant clarity, and may stimulate similar practices in
the art and ecology field. Action research, combined with Guattari’s
ecosophy and a better understanding of required social skills and the
value of social media, is an advance in how these practices can be best
articulated and valued.
Action research’s suitability is further confirmed by its use already in art

education institutes,103 which view some social art practices as a form of
action research, while some in action research now view some social art
practices as action research.104 Percy-Smith and Carney (2011), see
strong parallels between action research and social art installation

103
For example, at Ireland’s National College of Art and Design (NCAD), see
‘Research Methods for Creative and Critical Practice.’ (NCAD, 2014)
http://46.22.133.24/files/download/RESEARCH_METHODS_FOR_CREATIVE_AND
_CRITICAL_PRACTICE16.pdf [Accessed 10 February, 2016] and Bristol’s Knowle
West Media Centre (KWMC) see
http://kwmc.org.uk/about/research/sociallyengagedpractice/ [Accessed 10 February,
2016]
104
Recent research in the field of action research analyses the significant social
engagement and empowerment of art-based action research, see The SAGE
Encyclopaedia of Action Research (2014), David Coghlan and Mary Brydon-Miller
(eds.) London: Sage. pp. 59-61, and publications by the late Chris Seeley
www.wildmargins.com.
183

practices that seek to regenerate environments:
[c]onversely public artists, through their engagement with the public

in public spaces, are becoming de facto action researchers as they
seek to engage people, either directly or indirectly, in relation to
their art installations within the context of public space. (p. 8)
Similarly, Percy-Smith and Carney would argue that an action research

approach is a more comprehensive means to understand social art
practices. Social art practitioner Suzanne Lacey astutely observes that
‘the artist is characterised as a creator and producer of an artefact, but is
increasingly seen as a cultural interlocutor facilitating connections
between art and the public domain.’ (ibid. p. 6)
The developments in art education demonstrate that educators and

practitioners increasingly view action research as an accessible resource
to critically articulate the methodologies of practices that routinely cross
aesthetic and socio-political domains. Action research is also ideal as it
‘strives to create a close link between knowledge and practice’ through a
‘learning by doing’ approach where the focus of the action is to improve
real-world situations and acknowledge explicitly all the participants
involved in the research (Reason et al. 2009, p. 9).
Importantly and like Guattari’s “three ecologies” – which collectively

attends to the subjective, social and environmental dimensions of life –
action research also deals with lifeworld realities ignored by rational
scientific enquiry; with ‘other ways of knowing which include the
experiential and intuitive, the aesthetic and presentational, the
intersubjective and relational’ (Reason et al. 2009, p. 10) [emphasis
added]. How action research attends to these non-scientific ways of
knowing is crucial when new neurological research confirms that social
behaviour is not altered by facts alone (Chapter 1). Furthermore,
substantial evidence from Indigenous Studies, as mentioned, also
confirms the value of cultural and traditional knowledge for bioregional
sustainability (Chapter 5.2.3).
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4.3.2 How the action research template provides a clear

methodology
Action research,105 defined as, an ‘extended epistemology’ by John

Heron (1992; 1999), comprehensively accounts for the recognisable
stages of a participatory social enquiry by identifying the repeating
cumulative cycles of action and reflexivity in such practices. As I will
argue from my analyses of the case studies in Chapter 6, eco-social art
practice, as a form of social enquiry, can be explicated through action
research.
The crucial benefit of action research, over and above its ubiquity, is that
as a methodological template (Reason et al. 2009, p. 9), it helps define
the five critical dimensions of participatory social enquiry (Fig. 38) as
those that:
• prioritise worthwhile purposes;

• undertake practical challenges;
• include many ways of knowing;
• acknowledge participation and democracy
all of which interact to acknowledge that life, and hence social enquiry, is
an emergent form.

105
Many forms of action research have developed over recent decades.
185

Fig. 38. The cycle of the five critical dimensions of participatory social enquiry that
action research identifies.
The diagram above (Fig. 38) demonstrates how the five dimensions of
participatory social enquiry may each affect and influence other
dimensions. In this way, Reason et al. (2009) suggest action research
helps explain why participatory social enquiry, like eco-social art
practice, is path-dependent’; ‘what happens at any point depends in part
on the choices made earlier.’I illustrate and outline the application the
action research’s circular methodological approach to The Hollywood
Forest Story in the ebook, Chapters 4-7; in Chapter 6 of this thesis, more
detailed analyses of action research’s efficacy to articulate the Harrisons’
Serpentine Lattice and my practice’s critical methodological stages are
discussed.
4.4 Introducing the case studies

In the next two Chapters, I select two eco-social art practice case studies,
the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1992-3) and my Hollywood Forest
Story, to critically analyse the usefulness and accessibility of the two
parts of the proposed ecosophy-action research framework.
186

Both case studies involve complex, multi-constituent activities
developing over long time periods. The Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice
attends to a vast, once-heavily forested coastal bioregion of the Pacific
Northwest of the United States, while my modest study explores a two-
and-half-acre 2.5-acre monoculture conifer plantation in South East
Ireland.
In the next two Chapters, I will discuss how the proposed framework
significantly increases understanding of what these practices share:
similar aims, a fostering of ecoliteracy for political agency, and a
common methodological approach. Furthermore, although primarily
concerned with rural forest-art projects, the analyses and discussion
offered is equally valid for understanding urban eco-social art practices.
I choose the Harrisons’ project The Serpentine Lattice (1992-3), not only
as their practice has long inspired mine (see The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook, p.25), but also because their practice is respected and is the best
documented in the five decades that the art and ecology field has been
developing. In my review of others’ practices (some I mention in Chapter
1), I encountered uneven, often sparse and variably articulated comments
about eco-art practice aims and methodologies. For example, some
practitioners articulate metaphors for how their practices operate, others
loosely describe their efforts as interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary,
expanded or collaborative projects, while others still convey a sense that
they intuitively work in diverse ways as a requirement of working
ecologically. Furthermore, naming this type of practice ‘ecological’ or
‘environmental art’ means the environmental concerns inadvertently
dominate the understanding of these practices’ worth.
In the critical analyses of the case studies that follow, I do not apply
Guattari’s ecosophy and action research to the entire work. Instead, I
refer to aspects of these practices to highlight the relevance and over-
arching clarity that the proposed framework offers. This discussion
187

allows me to argue for the utility of the proposed framework in
comprehensive detail.
To restate, as the proposed framework offers two distinct ways of

understanding eco-social art practice, through complementary theory and
methodological modes, for clarity, I discuss the proposed ecosophy-
action research framework in two parts.
In Chapter 5, I analyse and discuss the benefits of applying Guattari’s

ecosophy theory to the selected, representative-of-the field eco-social art
practice case studies, to increase understanding of their shared context
and aims, and why social power arises regularly in such practices.
Additionally, Guattari’s prescient thinking on post-media and machinic
animism comprehensively reveal the appropriateness of social media
activity to collate the transversal nature of eco-social art practice while
developing audiences for such practices.
In Chapter 6, I analyse and discuss the efficacy of action research to

describe the common methodological approach of the case studies.
188

Chapter 5

Case Studies Part 1: Analysing the validity of the
ecosophy mode of the proposed framework as applied to
The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
189

5.1 Introduction

In the following sections, I discuss different aspects of Guattari’s
ecosophy to articulate commonalities of the context, aims, ethos and
social mechanisms of The Hollywood Forest Story and the Serpentine
Lattice.
I will argue that Guattari’s ecosophy promotes understanding of the

potential of eco-social art practice to evolve ecological values to counter
the unsustainable hegemony of industrial capitalism, relevant for specific
communities’ wellbeing.
Guattari’s notion of ecosophy posits that ethics, aesthetics, social activity

and politics are inevitably entangled. Correspondingly he argues that
fostering social change for an equitable and thriving planet requires all
aspects to be advanced together. However, for clarity, in the following
sections, I address some of these points separately to build awareness of
the depth and value of Guattari’s ecosophical understandings.
Furthermore, to gain insight into how the framework operates as a whole

to significantly articulate eco-social art practice, I analyse a similar
thread in both case studies. Thus, in this Chapter and the next, I
highlight, through the proposed framework, how The Serpentine Lattice
and The Hollywood Forest Story practices develop newfound political
agency towards forests and their inhabitants.
190

5.2 Employing Guattari’s ecosophy to articulate the context,

aim ethos and social mechanisms of eco-social art practice
The ecological crisis can be traced to a more general crisis of the

social, political and existential. The problem involves a type of
revolution of mentalities whereby they cease investing in a
certain kind of development, based on a productivism
[industrialism] that has lost all human finality. Thus the issue
returns with insistence: how do we change mentalities, how do we
reinvent social practices that would give back to humanity— if it
ever had—a sense of responsibility, not only for its own survival,
but equally for the future of all life on the planet, for animal and
vegetable species, likewise for incorporeal species such as music,
the arts, cinema, the relation with time, love and compassion for
others, the feeling of fusion at the heart of the cosmos?
Félix Guattari (1992) Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm,

pp. 119-120. [Emphasis added]

As noted, Spaid (2002; 2012), Kagan (2011), Weintraub (2012), Neal
(ed.) (2015) and others, usefully describe the environmental issues and
schematise the art-led transdisciplinary activities of eco-social art
practice. They also note that story-telling, collaborative activism, and
social discourse are recognisable features of eco-social art practices. In
this section, I will argue that Guattari’s ecosophy comprehensively
contextualises such practices within the injustices of unsustainable
capitalistic economics and politics. Guattari’s later, if not fully developed
interest in non-capitalistic worldviews, such as animism, also signal that
he understood that other ways of knowing the world are vital to counter
the destructive hegemony of capitalism.
When applied to the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood

Forest Story, Guattari’s ecosophy identifies the essential ethical drivers,
and subsequent developing ecoliteracy and social power operating within
and radiating out of these practices. Guattari’s ecosophy articulates why
these social enquiry practices directly contest the sociopathy of industrial
culture, studied in the Harrisons and my practices through the lens of
191

unsustainable industrial forestry. I argue, an ecosophical understanding
of the context, the ethics and political ecology of industrial forestry is
useful to explain why these eco-social art practices develop alternative
ecological forestry practices and policies.
Today, industrial forestry is a globalised, corporate-style operation. In

Ireland, industrial forestry practices dominate state and private forests
and forestry education. Worldwide, industrial forestry’s history is part of
the violence of colonialism, where forests are viewed solely as a resource
from which to extract material gain (see Appendix A; Fig. 39 and 40) and
which ignored Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods, the biodiversity of
nonhuman species and the critical environmental functions that forests
support. Now, globalised neo-liberal economics and forest-harvesting
technology promote further deforestation, and easy to harvest
monoculture tree plantations across the Earth offer relatively quick
profits. Industrial forestry thus operates within the frame of mostly
unquestioned, globalised neo-liberal capitalism and a Western human
supremacist worldview, one that has a very long history of violence to
forests and their human and nonhuman inhabitants. 106

106
The history of deforestation and disregard of the nonhuman world is a feature of the
Western worldview that stretches to its first civilizations; well before Christian and
Greek societies. Derrick Jensen and George Draffan in Strangely Like War: The Global
Assault on Forests (2003) recount how in the first ever recorded story (surviving on
stone tablets) – one of the foundational myths of Western culture, depicts how Sumerian
King Gilgamesh plunders the ancient forests of Mesopotamia to increase the wealth and
security of his city, p.19. See also Jensen’s The Myth of Human Supremacy (2013).
192

Fig. 39. The dominant ‘sustainable forest’ landscape in Ireland, the US Pacific
Northwest, and many other countries: monoculture plantations that are clear-felled and
replanted. On many levels, environmental, social, cultural and economic, this is a
‘picture’ of the gross unsustainability of industrial culture (as in the long term, after 3–4
107
rotations, the cost of fertilising such degraded land will outweigh returns). The
Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 17.

107
Chris Maser (1989) of the US Bureau of Land Management explains: ‘I know of no
nation and no people that have maintained, on a sustainable basis, plantation managed
trees beyond three rotations. The famous Black Forest in Europe is a plantation; it and
other forests are dying at the end of the third rotation. The eastern pine plantations are
dying. It’s [at] the end of their third rotation’, cited in Jensen and Draffin (2003)
Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests, Green Books: Devon, p. 52.
193

Fig 40. Image for The Serpentine Lattice (Harrisons, 1992-3), depicting the U.S Pacific
Northwest forest region. This was once the largest boreal forest in the world but has
been severely damaged by deforestation and industrial forestry.
Thus the Harrisons and I bear witness, in our forest work, to the ecocidal
‘slow violence,’108 the societal sociopathy (Derber, 2013, 2015) of
government-sanctioned corporate industrial forestry, as towards regions
and their human and non-human inhabitants. The scale of destruction of
the US Northwest coastal temperate rainforest, previously the most
extensive such forest in the world, is inconceivably shocking; the
Harrisons in reviewing their Serpentine Lattice work, reveal it is a
severely damaged bioregion, with large areas more than 90% logged,
although in some Northern areas they retain 90% of their original canopy
(Harrisons, 2016). However, as planetary boundaries science indicates,

108
Phrase popularised by ecocritic Rob Nixon who wrote Slow Violence and the
Environmentalism of the Poor (2011) Harvard College.
194

and as Hansen and other scientists realise, radical changes as to how we
relate and sustain our lands for biodiversity, for soil stability, for carbon
storage, for the Earth’s atmosphere, for flood control, all suggest that
forestry practices will need to urgently attend to sustainable ecological
and social priorities (Chapter 1).
Consequently, Guattari’s ecosophy clarifies that while the Harrisons and

I, in our collaborations with interested parties, may have proposed
different restorative forestry ideas to our respective political
establishments (The White House; The Irish Green Party), we share a
common aim to present localised, relevant measures that resist the
ecocide of industrial capitalism. The need to attend to all “three
ecologies” simultaneously, identifies why our practices engage with all
the aspects of an alternative, integrative ecoforestry that attends to the
social, environmental and economic realities, rather than for economic
priorities alone. My work in Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry
(new to Ireland), is an integrated approach developed in Europe by
nations such as Slovenia and Germany. It effectively attends to all
aspects of forestry; forests’ environmental and socio-economic benefits.
195

5.2.1 Ethics as an integral driver and consequence of

Ever since his time at La Borde, his [Guattari’s] work represented

an attempt to make compassion a philosophical device.
Paul Elliott (2012) Guattari Reframed, p. 142.
Ethics are crucial to Guattari’s ecosophy, as is evident in his Three

Ecologies (1989) and further theorised in his Chaosmosis: An Ethico-
Aesthetic Paradigm (1995). Guattari describes ecosophy as an “ethico-
political articulation” (1989, p. 19), and the ethical basis of eco-social art
practice draws on this to foster new values and agency for practitioners,
their collaborators and audiences, and for the places they attend. As a
skilled psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Guattari understood the absolute
necessity of ethics to inform all practices involving individual-collective-
environmental intervention.109 He states that ecosophy invokes:
ethical paradigms principally in order to underline the

responsibility and necessary ‘engagement’ required not only of
psychiatrists but also all of those in the fields of education, health,
culture, sport, the arts, the media, and fashion, who are in a
position to intervene in individual and collective psychical
proceedings. (1989, p. 19)
This view correlates with others in the art and ecology field (and
environmental education fields) (Chapter 1) who observe or call for eco-
social art practices to exhibit specific ethical considerations. Boettger
echoes Guattari’s ethical arguments when she interprets Rancière’s
‘ethical turn of aesthetics and politics’. She argues that ‘social practice
and eco or environmentalist art, regarding their ameliorative approaches
and complementary absences of attention to sensory and aestheticised
object-making, are “ethical.”’ (p. 37) She discusses Rirkrit Tiravanija,

109
An insightful, un-narrated film La Moindre des choses (Every Little Thing) of how
Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic philosophy for healing is still embraced by patients and staff
at la Borde asylum was created by Nicolas Philibert (1996: 90 min.
https://youtu.be/CKJp9JLqTkY)
196

the group WochenKlausur, and Thomas Hirschhorn's eco-social art
practices display ‘a strong ethical commitment to improving the
situations and elements of our “dwellings,” however they are conceived’
(Boettger, 2013, p. 38), one which The Serpentine Lattice and The
Hollywood Forest Story share.
Cliodhna Shaffrey (2016), in a review of The Hollywood Forest Story,

recognises a developing ethic ‘grounded in place—in the transformation
of a monoculture forest (on the land in which [I live]) to a mixed
plantation that can thrive’ (p.5). She is reminded of ‘Heidegger and his
writings, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, ‘to build is already to dwell’
[…and how] he emphasises a remaining or staying in place, [are] the acts
of protection and care’. (ibid.)
Boettger (2013) notes that durational eco-art practices are different from
art practices that prioritise artistic autonomy, as they are primarily about
exploring and activating responses to local situations:
[b]efore signifying a norm or a way of being, the word “ethos”

signifies two things: ethos is the dwelling and the way of being,
the way of life corresponding to this dwelling. Ethics then, is the
kind of thinking which establishes the identity between an
environment, a way of being, and a principle of action. (Citing
Rancière, 2006, p. 2)(ibid.)
She adds that the application of ethics to environmental and social

art practices ‘has political implications and may even compensate for
inadequate governmental policies’ (ibid. p. 38). This is true in the
Harrisons and my practice where integrated and restorative forestry
practices imply an ethical responsibility for multiple objectives that is
missing in current national policy.
Guattari urges us to evolve a ‘sense of responsibility’ and in ‘Re-Making

Social Practices’ (1992), stresses the potential of ecosophy to foster new
societal and personal values against the pervasiveness of global
capitalism, and for developing or renewing an ‘ethics of responsibility.’
197

(ibid.) Sjoerd van Tuinen (2013) stresses that what is at stake in
Guattari’s ecosophy is a means to overcome ‘the constant disavowal of
our capacity to take responsibility. Not just for our own words and
actions but also of our modes of relating to our social and physical
environments.’ (p. 1). I take this to include engendering values of
responsibility that extend to the nonhuman as central to eco-social art
practice. Guattari’s insights are an important dimension for re-framing
these practices as developing ‘resistance’ toward greater responsibility,
rather than facilitating ‘resilience’—that is, passively accepting and
adapting to worsening eco-social circumstances (which I discuss further
in Section 5.3.7). Guattari’s stress on an ethic of responsibility also
correlates with deep ecology forest advocates Drengson and Taylor’s
arguments (2009, p. 22), that ‘learning to live responsibly with forest
communities’ [emphasis added] is urgent and essential. They argue, for
the world, a forestry practice of ‘wild foresting’ which is:
[…] any responsible use of forests that appreciates, is attuned to

and learns from their wild energies and wisdom. Wild foresting
activities are compatible with the evolutionary integrity and self-
organisation of natural forest ecosystems. Wild foresting as a
movement connects Indigenous knowledge systems with
contemporary ecological knowledge; it reconciles the needs of the
Earth with those of humans. It unites a great variety of practices
tailored by local people to the characteristics and values of unique
forest places around the world. It respects local adaptations
uniquely suited to each forest stand and place, but it does not
support large-scale forest removal.
Thus wild foresting is part of the broader movement for

ecological responsibility.
(Drengson and Taylor, 2009, p.1; emphasis in original)
Learning to live well with forests so all survive and thrive, I argue, is the
critical ‘new story’110 of forestry that The Serpentine Lattice and The

110
Indigenous environmental academic and author Robin Kimmerer (2013, Chapter 1.2)
citing Gary NabHan argues ‘we can’t meaningfully proceed with environmental
healing, with restoration, without ‘re-story-ation.’ In other words, our relationship with
land cannot heal until we hear its stories.’
198

Hollywood Forest Story cultivate. As I will discuss, such practices evolve
‘new stories’; but may also refer to ‘older stories’ too, as they often refer
to Indigenous knowledge that sustained regions and their inhabitants.
‘Old stories’ embolden eco-social art practitioners for alternative forestry
practices and policies.

5.2.2 Understanding why eco-social art practices promote

alternative, life-sustaining worldviews to counter global
industrial capitalism
Inevitably, developed eco-social art practice asks how we might ethically

consider the nonhuman, as a means for its protection. Expanding
consideration for the nonhuman realm requires revisiting our current land
and aquaculture practices; as the Harrisons and myself do. Guattari’s
argument that ecosophical practices which attend to marginalised
concerns, peoples and non-human ‘others’ rejected by industrial
capitalism —have potential to establish ‘an authentic hearing of the
other’111 (Guattari, 1992, p. 7), is taken up by eco-social art practices, so
that nature is not seen only as an Other to be represented through art
practices.
In this section, I will explore related analyses of Guattari’s interest in

animism. His views on animist practices inform his ideas of ecosophical
practices in how they create life-sustaining subjectivities. Guattari here
increases understanding why ecosophical practices can develop alternate

111
Guattari’s recognition of ‘the other’ anticipates today’s developments in Western
ethics to extend ethical (and legal) consideration to nonhuman ‘others’, described by
some philosophers as a ‘Copernican revolution in ethics’ (Kate Rawles, cited in Dean
Moore and Nelson’s Moral Ground [2011], chapter 3.7). Such developments are
increasingly evident in developing ‘Rights of Nature’, ‘Earth jurisprudence’ discourse
(the latter a term originally coined by Thomas Berry) as well as in contemporary art.
For example, in Cormac Cullinan’s Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, 2002; in
the 2011 UN Declaration for the Rights of Nature; in developing international
legislation for the crime of ecocide (Higgins, 2010, 2012); in Biemann and Tavares’
‘Forest Law’ exhibition (2014) and in ‘The Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the
Americas’ exhibition (Nottingham Contemporary, 2015), curated by T.J. Demos, Alex
Farquharson, with Irene Aristizábal.
199

whole-life embracing worldviews, to counter the life-diminishing
Western hegemony of industrial capitalism. Guattari’s theories of
machinic animism (discussed in the next section) also explain why
critical eco-social art practices that employ social media, like The
Hollywood Forest Story, are able to convey new intrinsic values to broad
audiences.
Guattari’s in-depth clinical understanding112 of how people with

psychotic disorders inhabit other worldviews, as do Indigenous animists,
helped him elaborate how cultural practices develop and maintain
complex eco-social knowledge, whether as guiding worldviews or
cosmologies. His remarks on animism are scattered (Genosko, 2012, p.
161). Nevertheless, his interest deepens his view that the ‘aesthetic
machine has the power to disclose new dimensions of finitude, alterity,
and incorporeality, as well as requiring responsibility […]’ (ibid.) This
interest is important because it reinforces his understanding that
capitalism’s disregard for the viability of the environment, rests on the
erroneous yet dominant human supremacism. Capitalism inhabits the
Western worldview that promotes a hierarchical separation between
human affairs and nature.
Angela Melitopoulos and Maurizio Lazzarato (2012), for the visual

research exhibition ‘Assemblages: Félix Guattari and Machinic
Animism’, argue that Guattari’s appreciation of animism is an attempt:
to escape from the subject/object and nature/culture oppositions,

which make (Western) man the measure and the center of the
Universe, in making out of subjectivity and culture specific
diversions (differences) between man and animals, plants, rocks,
but also machines and mechanics. (p. 45)
They suggest that his theory works to explain the value of cultural
practices in animist societies. (ibid. p. 46) Moreover, they remind us that

112
Particularly developed from his repeated travels to explore animism and new social
organisation in Brazil and Japan.
200

Guattari was not seeking to revive animist practices per se in capitalist
societies (ibid. p. 51), but instead saw how such practices, traditional or
contemporary, have the capacity to resist the dominant ecocidal
worldview. They conclude that ‘we have things to learn about these
[ancient] practices if we are to be capable of updating them for
contemporary capitalism.’ (ibid. p. 55)
The common aim implicit in both The Serpentine Lattice and The
Hollywood Forest Story, relates in part to the Indigenous eco-centric
philosophy of ‘living well’, or buen vivir found in Andean South
American countries.113 Buen vivir is highlighted in Demos, Farquharson
and Aristizbal’s Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas
exhibition (Nottingham Contemporary, 2015). The term developed from
sumac kawsay, which characterises the ‘fullness of communal life’ and
implies ‘health, education, shelter, food and healthy environment’ as
rights (Eduardo Gudynas cited in Demos, 2016, p.141). Buen vivir
underpins the paradigm changing and developing international ‘Rights of
Nature’ discourse and the presence of Earth jurisprudence in the region
(followed and discussed on my blog).
Demos (2016) warns against framing buen vivir nostalgically, seeing it

instead as a vital ‘decolonising project’ that can be networked in
solidarity with, and open to, local and regional particularities.
Accordingly, he suggests that Biemann (Chapter 1) and others’ eco-
social art practices successfully complement and further understanding of
this concern for human and non-human’s thriving. These practices
achieve this through a convergence of Indigenous philosophy, local
environmental knowledge and culture, and complex transnational socio-
political realities such as evolving ‘Rights of Nature’ Earth
jurisprudence. The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
enact parallel values, ideas and practices, and policies for responsibility,
for ‘living well’ with forests and others. The Harrisons sought local

113
Including Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and parts of Columbia.
201

Indigenous contributions for The Serpentine Lattice, and this is an aspect
in their predicted 2011-2061 Sagehen – A Proving Ground, developing in
Southern California (Harrisons, 2016; see the ‘Experimental Design’ of
this project).
5.2.3 Developing indigeneity to counter capitalism’s

destructive worldview
Indigenous animist perspectives toward the nonhuman profoundly

challenge the Western worldview of an inanimate nonhuman world of
‘natural resources’ existing to be exploited, as occurs in industrial
forestry and deforestation. 114 George Tinker (Dean Moore and Nelson,
2012, chapter 7.2) notes that some Indigenous cultures have a deeply
embedded sensitivity to relationships with all life forms and ‘interpret the
English word “person” much more broadly, to include other-than-human
persons’. Accordingly, I follow Demos (2016) and the Harrisons (2016)
in seeing the value of exploring Indigenous Australian, Aotearoa New
Zealand Māori115 and American Indigenous cultures that may contain
valuable insights that run counter to the capitalist worldview. In my case,
this has involved broadening my study of living alternative worldviews
that exist in my birth country of Aotearoa New Zealand (Fig. 41).

114
Early to anticipate this convergence between Indigenous and Western worldviews,
Thomas Berry argued in ‘The New Story’ (the title and thesis of his respected 1978
monograph), that an ecologically-sustaining paradigm necessitates a deep appreciation
of Indigenous land and water knowledge.
115
See Te Taiao Māori and the Natural World (TeAra.gov.nz, 2011), Auckland: David
Bateman Ltd.
202

Fig. 41. ‘Kaitiakitanga’ refers to Māori guardianship and protection in Aotearoa-New

Zealand and is based on managing the environment according to the Māori worldview.
It governs cultural practice for life-sustaining land and water management and is based
on the understanding that humans exist and thrive only when other species equally
thrive in the natural world. Image source: TeAra, 2010, p. 182.
Exploration of non-Irish Indigenous forestry knowledge116 is vital

because Ireland has no living Indigenous forest culture, having been
deforested over many centuries.117 Recent studies in ethnobotany and
related fields from different parts of the world support the value of such
study. These studies contest dominant Western perceptions that
Indigenous peoples did not actively and effectively manage their lands
and waters in perpetuity. Surveys of Indigenous forestry globally118 have

116
For example, U.S. writer Wendell Berry’s article ‘A Good Forest Economy’ (1995),
which referred to Native American forest-sustaining management was a key document
for my earlier local forest revisited 2006 project (see
https://hollywoodforest.com/portfolio/the-local-project-revisited), which was the basis
for my current practice.
117
Everett (2014) in The Woods of Ireland – A History, 700-1800, questions whether a
comprehensive forest culture in Ireland ever existed, although the Ogham script, the
tree-inspired Irish alphabet does underline a deep appreciation of tree species in early
Christian Ireland (around 6th Century).
118
For example: Ecoforestry (Drengson and Taylor, 1997), Wild Foresting: Practicing
Nature’s Wisdom (Drengson and Taylor, 2008), Tending the Wild: Native American
Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources (Anderson,
2006), Te Taiao Māori and the Natural World (TeAra Encyclopedia of Aotearoa-New
Zealand: TeAra.govt.nz, 2010) (Fig. 41), The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines
Made Australia (Gammage, 2012), and Braiding Sweet grass: Indigenous Wisdom,
Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Kimmerer, 2013).
203

been useful resources for The Hollywood Forest Story practice,
especially as my awareness grew that the new-to-Ireland Close-to-Nature
forestry resembles the in-depth experiential knowledge of some
Indigenous peoples who maintained forested and grassland areas for
millennia.
Fig. 42. Indigenous forest (land, river and ocean) knowledge can help us develop
indigeneity–relational and responsible thinking and actions toward the nonhuman
communities inhabiting specific locations. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 60.
Importantly, Canadian First Nation professor Jeanette Armstrong119,

speaks of acquiring ‘indigeneity’ as critical for all societies, not in terms
of ethnicity but through the relationships we foster with all the lifeforms
that support a particular place (Armstrong and Jensen, 2014) (Fig. 42).
Developing indigeneity to my place in the South East of Ireland thus
requires an in-depth awareness of reciprocal relations between the flora
and fauna that surrounds and supports Hollywood forest, and myself. So,
cultivating indigeneity expands ideas of ‘place-making’ that arise in
some contemporary art practices.

119
Chair in Okanagan Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophy at The University of
British Columbia, Canada. See also Armstrong’s 2011 TED talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLOfXsFlb18
204

In this context, analyses of Indigenous ideas of reciprocity (Kimmerer,
2014) may be useful to counter popular concepts of resilience borrowed
uncritically from environmental science. Criticism of resilience arises
when it supports neoliberal adaptations to the unfolding ecological
emergency, rather than fostering much needed political resistance and
urgent environmental restoration (Evans and Reid, 2014) (see section
5.3.7). Demos (2013, 2015, 2016) and Davis and Turpin (2015), advise
such arguments offer a vibrant intersection for contemporary art practice.
In this context, my experience and review of the Harrisons’ practice
confirm that Indigenous understandings are especially crucial for
inclusive and effective eco-social art practice.120 Furthermore, increasing
numbers of academic Indigenous studies texts, some for a general
readership, reflect a growing recognition that ‘the future will have an
ancient heart’,121 and accordingly, Indigenous studies will be necessary
for future eco-social art practices.
However, Demos (2015) asks whether Western visual culture, having all-
too-often looted, romanticised or otherwise exoticised others’ eco-
cultural practices, can ever approach the eco-aesthetic practices of
Indigenous communities with enough sensitivity (p. 14). In this context,
he supports eco-cultural practices that include ‘modes of engagement
between art and activism, visual culture and political organisation,
interdisciplinary research and aesthetic structures,’ (p.147) and notes the
under-explored potential of Guattari’s transversality to explain such
practices (Demos, 2013).
However, animism remains a problematic term, as it suggests than non-

human and inanimate entities have a spiritual dimension. Consequently,

120
Anderson’s coda of ‘Indigenous Wisdom in the Modern World’ in Tending the Wild
(2005, pp. 358-364) and Kimmerer’s ‘Returning the Gift’ (2014) offer useful
introductions to Indigenous eco-cultural knowledge for eco-social art practice, in how
cultural practices can foster responsible action to sustain non-human realms.
121
This is a quote from Italian/Jewish anti-fascist activist/artist/writer/doctor Carlo
Levi; “Il Futuro ha un Cuore Antico.”
205

Brunner et al. (2013) use ‘polyvocality’ and ‘poly-gestural expression’
realising, as Guattari does, that neo-animistic transversal practices do not
solidify into hegemony, as they express ‘neither a unifying line nor a
universalising theme.’ (p. 15). Biggs (2015) uses ‘polyverse’ to better
describe the differing lifeworlds such practices negotiate (p. 262).
Furthermore, as some of the most biodiverse regions in the world exist
where Indigenous people remain, I would argue that the Indigenous
cultural practices are among the real alternatives that should be urgently
explored. Analysing Indigenous peoples’ unique forms of artistic practice
and sociocracy,122 that guide how they manage their rivers, forests,
animals and crops sustainably for future generations (see Jensen and
Armstrong, 2013), sharply contrasts the Earth-costly, culturally-barren,
industrial monocrop forestry (and other industrial land and aquaculture)
practices. Furthermore, such cultural practices counter the misguided
view that windmills and solar panels (or nuclear technology) will avert
the unfolding eco-social emergency.
It is, however, hard to imagine the present generation adapting quickly

enough to consider worldviews beyond capitalism (as Frederic Jameson’s
suggests: ‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the
end of capitalism.’) 123 Nevertheless, as Dean Moore’s moral reasoning
explains, we must act for alternate sustainable futures, no matter if they
are successful or not (Chapter 1).

122
Sociocracy forms have been developing slowly in the West over several hundred
years. A visual artist who has been key in sharing such forms for contemporary
situations, business, education, is visual artist, educator Sharon Villines. An in-depth
resource can be found at http://www.sociocracy.info and in the book she co-authored
We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, published in 2005.
123
Jameson, Frederic (2003) ‘Future City’, New Left Review, see
http://newleftreview.org/II/21/fredric-jameson-future-city [Accessed 18 February 2016].
206

5.2.4 Guattari’s post media and machinic animism explains

the value of social media for eco-social art practice
The junction of television, telematics and informatics is taking place before our
eyes, and will be completed within the decade to come.[…] From that moment
on, we can hope for a transformation of mass-media power that will overcome
contemporary subjectivity, and for the beginning of a post-media era of
collective-individual reappropriation and an interactive use of machines of
information, communication, intelligence, art and culture. […]The growing
power of software engineering does not necessarily lead to the power of Big
Brother. In fact it is way more cracked than it seems. It can blow up like a
windshield under the impact of molecular alternative practices.
Félix Guattari (1990) ‘Toward a Post-Media Era’

In this section, I review Guattari’s interest in independent communicative
media as deepening understanding of social media as a critical tool to
collate, reflect, and express the new values and agency that arise from
eco-social art practice; particularly their ability to develop audiences
within and beyond the art world. I discuss how social media benefits The
Hollywood Forest Story and, notably, how it facilitated my successful
lobbying for Irish Green Party political forest policy (2012), and political
advocacy for the developing international law against the crime of
ecocide (2013).
Guattari was optimistic about the communicative potential of

decentralised media technologies in the early 1990s, which resemble
today’s Internet. He believed these independently authored ‘post-media’
(as opposed to the ‘mass media’ that turn audiences into passive
consumers) could contain ‘complexes of subjectivation: multiple
exchanges between individual-group-machine’ (Guattari, 1995, p. 7;
cited by Tinnell, 2011, pp. 50-1) to promote an ethico-aesthetic paradigm
to counter capitalism’s hegemony. Post-media, Guattari argues, could
‘help transform subjectivity124 for individuals and groups’ socio-political
agency’ (ibid. p. 49). Importantly, Guattari’s machinic animism

124
Interestingly, Guattari theorised ‘post-media’ potential from observing how
subjectivity develops in psychotherapy contexts. Tinnell (2011) discusses Guattari’s
observations of filming patients and doctors involved in psychodrama. (p. 49)
207

overcomes the view that machine and nature are a dichotomy. Instead
machinic animism characterises human-nonhuman assemblages as
embodying transversal play across different materialities (Colman, cited
in Genosko 2012, p. 162). Genosko argues that, in Guattari’s view,
aesthetic machinic processes have the power to disclose alterity but also
responsibility (ibid.) which, as discussed, an ethic of ecological-
responsibility supports exemplary eco-social art practice.
Barbara Glowczewski (who worked with Guattari) explains that his work
resonates with so many in the West today ‘because he defines
subjectivity by assemblages according to which humans are just as soon
with other humans as with collectivities, with concepts, with animals,
objects, as with machines […]’ (Melitopoulos and Lazzarato, 2012, p.
54). Melitopoulos and Lazzarato (2012) discuss how Guattari (and
Deleuze) developed an important understanding of animism for today’s
technological world that is neither anthropomorphic nor anthropocentric.
A ‘machinic animism’125 that includes ‘social machines, technical
machines, aesthetic machines, crystalline machines, etc.’ (p. 49),
assemblages of all varieties has the potential for enunciating a ‘proto-
subjectivity’ (p. 50) to express different worldviews.
More specifically, Tinnell (2011) argues that Guattari views the emergent
properties of decentralised ‘individual-group-machines’ as capable of
realising and disseminating autopoietic, that is, self-creating potential. He
explains:
125
Genosko (2009, chapter 3) emphasises that Guattari saw a need to ‘rename
environmental ecology as ‘machinic ecology’. Guattari saw how large parts of humanity
now exist ‘in vast techno-informatic infrastructures in the era of planetary
computerisation and the IT revolution.’ Genosko has expanded research on Guattari’s
machinic animism and other key concepts in The Reinvention of Social Practices-
Essays on Félix Guattari (2018).
208

[a]utopoiesis,126 often summarised by Guattari as a dance between
chaos and complexity, characterises the passage back and forth
between nascent subjectivity, mechanic collectivity, and post-media.
Near the end of Chaosmosis, Guattari evokes a condition omnipresent in

his worldview of self-organising, partial objects:
“Something is detached and starts to work for itself, just as it can

work for you if you can ‘agglomerate’ yourself to such a process.”
(Guattari, 1992, pp. 132-3) One can think of autopoietic creativity,
as the capacity to yield one’s self to chaos and, in doing so, undergo
the event so as to channel the advent of nascent subjectivity (ibid., p.
52).
Guattari realises that once initiated, stories and ideas arising from
subjective post-media networks have an emergent ‘life of their own’ to
distribute new values and views far and wide. Hence, Guattari describes
autopoiesis as the ‘nth127 term: the utmost capacity toward “the opening
onto multiplicity.”’128 (ibid. p. 55) Thus ‘autopoiesis [is] a new core value
at the heart of the humanities’ (ibid.), which I would argue, is fit for an
ecological age. Tinnell further argues that, given the global spread of
social media in the last decade, individual-group-machine129 ‘autopoiesis
is the nth [utmost] component of ecosophy overall!’ (ibid. p. 55) While
Brunner et al. (2013), argue that social media, used creatively by
activists, does not merely transmit information but:
implies the question of new spaces of liberty, of new alliances

between movements transforming the political and social context in
which we live and minoritarian becomings transforming our desire,
struggling against dominant conventionality. (p. 16)

126.
An ‘autopoietic object’ is a structure capable of reproducing and maintaining itself.
127 th
n - adj. as in ‘highest; utmost: delighted to the nth degree. Free online dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nth [Accessed 12 May 2014].
128
Tinnell also suggests that Guattari’s reading of autopoiesis for eco-social learning
and change is a key element missing from Naess’ deep ecology ecosophy.
129
Tinnell (2011) defines ‘emergent aggregates of subjectivity between the individual
and the collective’ as ‘electracy’; a term coined by digital and online game theorist
Gregory Ulmer (pp. 47-48). Tinnell writes that Ulmer claims ‘electracy is the principal
site of the emergence of group subjectivity - a mode of experience that interfaces
‘between individual and collective.’’ (ibid.)
209

Brabazon (2015) demonstrates that ‘digital storytelling’, of which
blogging is a form, is a ‘genre of activism, building personal stories into
a desire for social and political change.’ (ibid.) The Hollywood Forest
Story develops agency in just this way. Although The Serpentine Lattice
was a pre-digital endeavour, the Harrisons confirm that they view their
practice as essentially an important story-telling exercise (Chapter 3.3.2).
The insights offered by Guattari’s ‘machinic animism’, however, deepen

understanding of how today’s burgeoning social media technologies
facilitate and share the new subjectivities afforded by eco-social art
practices, as in mine, Ihlein (2014) and others’ practices, suggesting how
individuals, despite national diversity, geographical isolation and the
dislocation of postmodern capitalistic culture, can ‘tell their stories to the
world, and how those stories become part of a transnational narrative
about resistance to a common ecological crisis.’ (Klein, 2014, Chapter 9).
Guattari’s machinic animism explains the ways blogging operates for

durational social art practice, which is particularly elaborated in Lucas
Ihlein’s (2014) award-winning doctoral research ‘Blogging as Art, Art as
Research.’ Ihlein argues that a blog’s audience engagement potential,
rather than positioning him as an ‘intimidating voice of authority’,
reveals his ‘faltering online persona … as simply another local resident
(albeit one who happens to be attempting an unusual project)’ (p. 43).
Similarly, blogging my attempts and frustrations to learn Close-to-Nature
forestry is a means for both personal reflection and public engagement.
My blog also draws ‘an experiential line’ (Ihlein, 2014, p. 44) around the
apparent open-ended transversal activities of The Hollywood Forest Story
that relate within and across lifeworld and diverse disciplines; to which
Guattari’s ideas of the ‘refrain’ add considerable insight (I explore
Guattari’s refrain ideas in Section 5.3.5).
210

Guattari’s theory of machinic animism theories drew directly on leading
artists, architects and new media specialists’, including that of Min
Tanaka (Fig. 43), the Japanese animist Butoh130 dance master, who states
that the performance ‘is not me but an agency outside myself [...]
(Genosko and Hetrick (eds.), 2015, p. 50) Guattari expands on Tanaka’s
mention of this ‘other’ agency to further define his idea of multifaceted,
machinic assemblages:
[t]hat is exactly right. I am calling it an assemblage, which is

collective. The collective assemblage does not imply the
involvement of many peoples as it is an inhuman process. This
inhuman process is a cosmic entity or a biological-hormonal
history of abstract machines, and at the same time, can also be a
history of rhythm imposed by a pure type of repetition that cannot
be controlled by the logic of humanism. (ibid.)

Fig. 43. Min a La Borde131 (1986): A still from the video of the sensitive, animist-like
performance by Japanese master Butoh performer, Min Tanaka, with patients and staff
on the grounds of La Borde asylum, where Guattari researched and treated psychotic
patients. Guattari wrote of Tanaka in his ‘Butoh’ poem cited in Machinic Eros: Writings
on Japan –Felix Guattari, Genosko and Hetrick, 2015, p. 43., […] ‘I dance not in the
place but I dance the place, Min Tanaka, the body weather, the naked king of our
impossible memories of being.’

130
A contemporary, Japanese animist dance-like form.
131
A short film by Guattari’s daughter Joséphine Guattari and acclaimed alternative-
psychiatry filmmaker, François Pain (1986, 25’). See https://youtu.be/VgErye7jXbI
The film was included in Melitopoulos and Lazzarato’s ‘Assemblages: Félix Guattari
and Machinic Animism’ (2012) exhibition, which was part of the touring exhibition
Animism, curated by Anselm Franke.
211

This theory usefully clarifies my and others’ eco-social art practices as
assemblages of nonhuman social media components (a blog) and
nonhuman communities (a forest in my case), that can foster ecoliteracy
and an appetite for political agency for their audiences, through the use
of social media.
However, social media’s promise for independent activity has decreased

as it has become more commercialised (Chapter 3.3). Nevertheless,
Brunner et al.’s (2013) analyses of social media for the Occupy
movement aligns with Brabazon (2015), when they characterise how
digital storytelling can empower authentic marginal voices, including
migrants, students and artists. Moreover, Brabazon recognises how
digital storytelling’s ‘[…] imperative and focus is relevance, connection,
community and communication, rather than a separation of art and
interpretation, culture and commentary’ [and…] ‘that learning outcomes
can be demonstrated.’ (ibid.) From this research, I argue digital
storytelling enhances ecoliteracy and is ideally suited for capturing and
presenting transversal ecosophical practices that do not see a separation
between aesthetics, ethics and politics or machinic realities.
Brabazon also substantiates Guattari’s view of post-media’s potential to

challenge capitalism: ‘it operates against commodification and the
reification of mainstream media.’ (ibid.) Furthermore, she adds:
by rendering the personal more complex, the political outcomes are

more ambivalent and provocative. Knowledge is broadened. Truth is
tempered. Reclaiming “the ordinary” operates against dominant
views of progress, success and achievement. (ibid.)
As a consequence, I now put my social media and artistic skills ‘to work
auto-poetically’, though this strategy arose intuitively from my earlier
social media experience. I strategise my use of social media to maintain
the interest of blog followers and develop audiences for my transversal
practice. For instance, the use of analytic tools assists in measuring the
value of images posted on the blog. A one-minute film of insects swirling
212

in the light at dusk (see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, pp. 67, 76)
(Fig. 44), a film of young ash trees growing in the dark (ibid.. p. 88), and
particularly photos of my rescue dog Holly, suit the short attention span
of online audiences and makes ratings soar. While modest enough, the
growth of my audience, and increasing requests to speak about my work
to transform a small forest, appear to confirm what Lakoff (2010) and
others argue that, at a neurological, everyday level, we learn and are
ultimately inspired by stories, and particularly if stories are enacted and
visualised. Like Brabazon (2015), I see value in my digital storytelling as
revealing the practical ecoforestry knowledge that arises from my
transversal practice; knowledge that is essential to support my activism
for an alternative, sustainable forestry.
Fig. 44. Still video image. Burning Bright. Fitzgerald, 2008 that I have shared on The
Hollywood Forest Story blog.
Like Goto-Collins and Collins (2012), who observe an ‘alternate

aesthetic integrity’ as it develops in exemplary eco-social art practices
(which I discuss in Section 5.3.2), and Weintraub’s idea of interaudience
development (2014), I believe an empathic inter-subjectivity develops
when I blog: between my audience, Hollywood forest’s inhabitants and
larger eco-social concerns. This collective empathy develops when I
create longer, exploratory essays on my blog, such as ‘Eradicating
Ecocide to make Sustainability Legal’ (Fig. 45 below). Motivated by the
213

absence of legal measures to protect forests against clear-felling in both
Ireland and abroad, writing a blog essay on the topic and sharing it
widely through social media in 2013, enabled me to lobby effectively for
a successful political motion: that the Green Party of Ireland and
Northern Ireland support the developing international law against the
crime of ecocide.
Fig. 45. I transferred and extended the blog article to the online magazine site ISSUU in
2013, to improve the online reading experience and to help identify it amongst other
blog posts I create. The Hollywood Forest Story eBook Appendix p. 93.
I believe inter-audience empathy develops as blogs that encourage an

informal, first-person writing style, help followers empathise with the
concerns addressed and they easily allow the sharing of new ideas and
understanding to broad audiences. For example, in the above article, I
translate the ecocide law concept into everyday language and insert
engaging video elements and interactive petition links from other ecocide
law campaign websites. This pattern of blogging practice reflects how I
find blogging a powerful tool to communicate the developing political
agency of my eco-social art practice. My online ecocide advocacy
214

follows my earlier Green Party forest policy work that was relayed in
earlier blog posts, and also in a summary online article, ‘The Art and
Politics of Forests’ (The Hollywood Forest Story eBook Appendix 1, p.
92).
I would contrast the emergent use of blogging and social media with the
Harrisons’ preference to arrange fixed installations in galleries or
museums (even if staged outside), since showing artefacts from a long-
term eco-social art practice in an exhibition can often more resemble a
didactic county council public initiative rather than dynamic and
engaging eco-social art practice. Karen Stiles (1992) supports this view
when she criticises the Harrisons’ installations, arguing that they:
vitiate the vitality of their real-time, sociopolitical, ecological

subject matter and neutralises and confuses its content […], art
which deals with ecology and nature directly cannot afford to
hide in the cloistered setting of museum-gallery art contexts
(Stiles cited in Adcock, 1992, p. 41).
Such conventional art installation can constrain transversal eco-social art

practices. However, despite this, many contemporary eco-artists still
emulate contemporary art practice presentation uncritically in their work
(see Winkler, Read, Biemann in Chapter 1). An audience evaluation of
the Harrisons’ later Green House Britain (2007-2009) touring exhibition,
showed that, while some appreciated the climate change information,
others complained there was too much to read in the exhibition or that it
looked like a planning project (Heim, 2008, pp. 11-14). A static website
(http://greenhousebritain.greenmuseum.org/ ) was created to house an
overview of the installation but appears to have been developed only as a
repository of supplementary exhibition information and a resource for
teachers. Developing ongoing engagement for online audiences was not
examined. While the Green House Britain exhibition offered significant
and imaginative ways for presenting climate change issues, this suggests
that it would have engaged more, including younger and non-art
215

audiences, had it developed an ongoing, online presence from the start, in
addition to the toured installation exhibition (Fig. 46 below).
Fig. 46. Installation of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Harrison Studio
and Associates (Great Britain) Green House Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom
(2007-2009) exhibition here exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art and Natural
World.
Similarly, Simon Read, Ursula Biemann and many others have websites
(see simonread.info and geobodies.org) that connect their work to new
audiences. However, they too use websites and blog templates primarily
as static information sites to document past and upcoming exhibitions.
Rarely do such practitioners consider how such social network
technologies are influencing their work in any depth, although art critics
like Gablik (2004), Bourriaud (cited in Varnelis, 2008, p. 150) and
Kester (2011, introduction, section 2) do note that internet technologies
have an increasingly significant role in creative production. The task of
writing a blog is not onerous and can be motivating for both practitioners
and their audiences, to maintain interest and reflexivity in prolonged
practices.
As mentioned, the Harrisons have long realised that the story and
interpretive potential of their ‘conversational drift’ (the value of
216

collaborative conversations they direct) is the critical outcome for their
many projects. More recently it appears that the Harrisons began to apply
a social media strategy to their ongoing 50-year transversal work
Sagehen: A Proving Ground (begun 2010)132 together with some other
endeavours under the name The Force Majeure, though the website and
blog has not been updated since 2013 (reasons for this are not given).
While not a working example, The Force Majeure project website
includes a few blog posts to indicate how a transversal project may be
shared online as it progresses, but it is very formal and does not share the
everyday challenges and discoveries of eco-social art practice. For such a
long-term endeavour, online community building, digital-storytelling and
content management skills, arguably offer a critical means to capture and
engage an audience for an activity that may unfold over many years.
Also, ongoing, open-access dissemination may appeal to potential project
funders and other stakeholders.
As social media are likely to continue, despite recent controversy in US

and UK elections, I suggest developing opinion-collecting social media
platforms may have some potential for capturing and visualising
changing audience views that may follow situated eco-social art practice
activity. One such example is the Irish award-winning ‘CiviQ | Making
Opinions Count’ platform at the moment designed for Local Authority
public consultation (see http://www.civiq.eu/about/; Fig. 47), and
recently used to visualise public opinion of the recent deadlocked Irish
election toward a ‘power-sharing government’ (CiviQ, 2016).133

132
Sagehen: A Proving Ground is an ambitious transversal ‘work of art, a work of
science, a work of bio-regional planning, and a call for policy change’ involving ‘The
Harrison Studio, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the 9,000 acre University of
California Sagehen Creek Research Station’, for a committed 50-years, to explore an
integrated response to climate change in the region. See
http://www.centerforforcemajeure.org/projects/#4-works
133
See http://www.civiq.eu/2016/04/19/innovative-voting-experiment-on-national-
unity-government/
217

Fig. 47. CiviQ platform introductory video.
This platform invites broad public online participatory opinion which can
be gathered, visualised and hosted in perpetuity. Its power and possible
potential for eco-social art practice lie in the fact that it can, over years,
reveal a community’s changing views towards its bioregion, in real-time,
during a project’s development and alongside any proposed exhibition or
public meetings (personal communication with CiviQ co-founder Mark
O’Toole, 2014). There would seem to be potential to incorporate art
workings, video and photography on such a platform to engage with and
re-imagine a bioregion. In my work, it would be fascinating to track and
have a digital repository of changing local, perhaps even national opinion
toward new forestry management, as The Hollywood Forest Story
develops.
Nevertheless, it is important to respect the Harrisons’ counter-argument

that the museum is a valuable ‘safe place for a town meeting [… which]
can circumvent a lot of bureaucracy’ to realise their inclusive works’ new
ecological and political aims for a bioregion (Adcock, 1992, p. 41) is
important. Over many decades, the gallery site as a meeting hall has
provided the Harrisons with a ‘staging ground… a metaphor for a much
larger field of play.’ (Harrisons cited in Goto-Collins, 2012, p. 147)
218

In addition to hosting events in Hollywood forest, I envisage in time for
my work, to further influence local eco-social change, although, like the
Harrisons, I am aware that galleries and art institutions are ‘temples of
individualism and self-interest in the way they define and provide a
narrative for understanding our civilisation.’ (Mark Cooley, 2012, p. 202)
However, I also agree with Cooley’s idea that:
[e]cologically and agriculturally informed art practices should be

planted within the institution because they can challenge—to the
extent that their progressive structures can remain intact—some
bedrock ideals held by the high culture industry of the
economically and politically elite classes (the same folks who
have invested in the agri-business colossus). Institutional support
can no doubt generate new innovations that can contribute to on-
the-ground progress. (ibid.)
To recap. In this section, I have examined Guattari’s ideas of post-media,

to articulate how, and why, social media can operate as an autopoietic
assemblage to counter the hegemony of capitalism. These technologies, I
suggest, would significantly promote the engagement and reach of the
Harrisons’ and others’ similar practices in the art and ecology field.
Accordingly, such research and my success with engaging a broad
audience for The Hollywood Forest Story, confirms that gaining skills in
social media, such as blogging, is essential for developing audiences for
prolonged eco-social art practices.
In conclusion, Guattari’s view of independent communication

technologies increases understanding how eco-social art practices can
most effectively operate in the Internet age.
219

5.2.5 ‘A sense of place, a sense of planet’:

ecocosmopolitanism and trans-corporeality for developing an
expanded ethic toward ecological citizenship in The
Hollywood Forest Story
This thesis argues for the better articulation of eco-social art practices.
These under-acknowledged practices genuinely relate to and are relevant
to audiences and their localities’ wellbeing. While some reviewers of
eco-social art practices note the grassroots ethical focus on the ‘local’
(Neal, 2015) in these practices, in today’s complex world, any ‘local
sense of place’ is complicated by mobility, globalisation,
transnationalism and advances in communication technology.
Too quick an identification of eco-social art practices as place-based and

celebrating the local often ignores the disastrous broader socio-political
contexts involved. Guattari’s “three ecologies” acutely recognises that in
industrial capitalism eco-social realities are inevitably entangled.
Academic concerns of animism, within ecocriticism and new materialism
fields expand ideas of local and material human-nonhuman realities as
operating in a continuum of global politics, economics priorities and
worsening environmental conditions. Ursula Heise’s134 ecocritical
analyses of texts and artworks in her Sense of Place and Sense of Planet:
The Environmental Imagination of the Global (2008) is helpful here.
Using Zygmunt Bauman’s 1993 definition135 of an ‘ethic of proximity’
Heise troubles how we often unthinkingly prioritise the local over global
or planetary concerns in the cultural works we create:
the morality which we have inherited from pre-modern times—

the only morality we have—is a morality of proximity, and as
such is woefully inadequate in a society in which all important
action is action on distance […] Moral responsibility prompts us
to care that our children are fed, clad and shod; it cannot offer us
much practical advice, however, when faced with numbing

134
Ursula Heise is a Past President of the Association for the Study of Literature and the
Environment (ASLE), the organisation with branches across the world that is advancing
the ecocriticism field.
135
See Bauman (1993) Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.
220

images of a depleted, desiccated and overheated planet which our
children, and the children of our children will inherit and have to
inhabit in the direct or oblique result of our collective unconcern.
(Bauman cited in Heise, p. 33)
Heise offers an alternative thesis of the ‘eco-cosmopolitan’ to highlight

the ‘more-than-human world’ (p. 61) and to address how global
ecological knowledge, a ‘sense of planet’, affects, informs and
complicates our local ‘sense of place.’ Adding a ‘sense of planet’ to our
understanding beyond the local is crucial to realising the full potential of
eco-social art practice, and begins a shift in understanding that such
practices promote a necessary ‘world environmental citizenship’ (Patrick
Hayden cited in Heise, p. 59). Heise’s arguments, together with an
awareness of eco jurisprudence (discussed below), confirm that ‘thinking
globally, acting locally’ is an essential ethic for eco-social art practices in
an ecological age.
Heise’s ‘network’ trope, as discussed by Holmes (2008, pp. 159-160),

has particular potential (pp. 64-65) and parallels Guattari’s ideas of
machinic animistic assemblages. Both imagine network practices as
‘more immediately palpable and imaginable than ecological systems,
[and] become themselves allegorical-concrete instantiations of an organic
connectedness that eludes the grasp of the senses.’ (ibid..) These
arguments appear similar to Kester’s comprehensive review of
collaborative art practices in The One and the Many: Contemporary
Collaborative Art in a Global Context (2011). Kester builds on previous
analyses, including the Harrisons’ practice (Kester, 2004) and concludes:
[u]nless we can grasp the complex imbrication of the local and

the global, of individual consciousness and collective action,
which frames this experience, our understanding of political
change will remain impoverished and needlessly abstract. (2011,
chapter 3.5)
Employing an ‘ethic of eco-cosmopolitanism’ to Guattari’s ecosophy,

therefore, helps describe why macro ideas of capitalism, globalisation,
221

planetary ecological concerns, and increasing global connectivity,
routinely affect and mobilise eco-social art practices toward eco-social
micro-political agency. Guattari’s interconnected “three ecologies” are,
therefore, enlarged and updated by the concept of eco-cosmopolitanism.
However, an important outcome of The Hollywood Forest Story follows

from my developing awareness that there is no legal provision to protect
forests and other ecosystems indefinitely from industrial practices, in
Ireland or worldwide. I view that the eventual stripping of a land’s
productivity by successive monoculture tree-planting and clearfelling,
deforestation or poisons, as state-sanctioned ecocides. Stacey Alaimo’s
Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (2010) is
helpful to think about how ecocides as ‘toxic bodies’ infiltrate to effect
the political, social, chemical and cellular, and importantly, in what way
eco-social art practices may attend to them. Her ‘trans-corporeality’136
provides a more encompassing envisioning of eco-social material reality,
which like Guattari’s idea of transversality, makes it ‘impossible to think
of nature as a mere background’. She cites Val Plumwood to explain that
trans-corporeality recognises that ‘nature is always as close as one’s own
skin—perhaps even closer’ (p. 2). Thus, Alaimo realises that to extend
such thinking to the nonhuman:
allows us to forge ethical and political positions that can contend

with numerous late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century
realities in which ‘human’ and ‘environment’ can by no means be
considered separate. (ibid. p. 2)
Alaimo’s trans-corporeality, therefore, profoundly troubles existing

‘environmental ethics, social theories, [much general eco-art], popular
understandings of science and conceptions of the human self’ (ibid. p. 4);
in short, the largely unquestioned and erroneous idea that nature exists
apart from humanity. Trans-corporeality insists that “the environment” is

136
Alaimo (2010) argues: ‘[t]rans-corporeality, emerging in social theories, science,
science studies, literature, film, active websites, green consumerism, popular
epidemiology, and popular culture, counters and critiques the obdurate, though
postmodern, humanism that seeks transcendence or protection from the material world.’
(p. 4)
222

not located somewhere out there, but is always the very substance of
ourselves’; challenging the human supremacism that conveniently creates
‘a model of nature which fits seamlessly into the industrialist view of the
world’ (ibid. p. 8). However, Alaimo appreciates an enormous challenge
to what she is suggesting. She recognises that previously accepted social
constructions have led to important critiques of the ‘naturalised…
oppressive categories of race, class, gender, secularity, and ability
[…but] from an environmentalist perspective, such theories may bracket
or minimise the significance, substance and power of the material
world.’137 (ibid.) She adds that ‘there are no guarantees that emerging
models of materiality [like trans-corporeality] will cultivate
environmentalisms.’ (ibid. p. 9)
Nevertheless, Alaimo realises that developing a trans-corporeal ethic

offers a way, if complex, to move through the ‘material, economic, and
cultural systems that are so harmful to the living world and yet so
difficult to contest or transform.’ (ibid. p. 18) Nick Fox and Pam Alldred
(2014) similarly reflect that a materialist ontology shifts the focus ‘from
the ideas, actions and feelings of individualised subjects to the
impersonal flows’ […](p. 409), arguing (in the spirit of Guattari’s
transversality) that research assemblages:
should attend not to individual bodies, subjects, experiences or

sensations, but to assemblages of human and non-human, animate
and inanimate, material and abstract, and the affective flows
within these assemblages. Explore how affects draw the material
and the cultural, and the ‘micro’, ‘meso’ and ‘macro’ into
assembly together. (ibid. p. 406)
In practice, trans-corporeality is extremely useful to consider the socio-

political legacy of forest ecocides – how manmade destruction of forests
(whether by deforestation, industrial forestry or poisons) harms social
and personal spheres across geographical space and time. Conversely, it

137
Alaimo (2010) argues that most feminist theory has sought to situate woman in
‘nature, and suggests it would be productive to revise gendered dualisms –
nature/culture, body/mind, object/subject, resource/agency,’ and others that have been
used to ‘silence certain groups of human as well as nonhuman life.’ (p. 5)
223

clarifies my support for an ecoforestry that positively promotes thriving
forest communities.
Eco-cosmopolitanism and trans-corporeality help me to trace a physical

connection of Hollywood forest to the toxic influence of Agent Orange,
the chemical herbicide and defoliant used to destroy forests in the
Vietnam War. Over fifty years after the conflict, this forest ecocide
continues to inflict harm to Vietnam’s peoples and forests (Hoang, 2015).
Agent Orange fatally affected my father (serving in the area at that time)
and increased the risk of cancer to my siblings and me. These concepts
articulate why I saw the connection, and subsequently why, given the
memory of my late father and for all those still living with the ‘slow
violence’138 of ecocides, both in Vietnam and elsewhere, I felt I had to
stand up and argue for an international law against the crime of ecocide
(The Hollywood Forest Story eBook pp. 78-79, 86) (Fig. 48).

138
Rob Nixon in Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor (2011), argues that
the eco-social external costs of industrial practices are rendered largely invisible in the
mass media. This is because eco-social violence occurs over time frames longer than
those able to be processed by the short attention spans of mass media audiences. He
reflects that the priorities of the mass media are itself largely the engine for on-going
capitalistic values and growing rates of consumption, that rest, in turn, on continually
expanding, yet destructive industrial land and ocean practices. (p. 13)
224

Fig. 48. Ecocosmopolitanism and trans-corporeality expands my thinking of ecocides,

and how I can respond and act on these realities in my eco-social art practice. The
Alaimo (2010) analyses how, viewed through an ethic or idea of trans-

corporeality, multiple chemical sensitivity ‘forges productive alliances
among environmentalism, disability activism […]’ (p. 10), thus
connecting trans-corporeality with Guattari’s vision of ecosophy:
[m]atters of environmental concern and wonder are always

“here”, as well as “there,” simultaneously local and global,
personal and political, practical and philosophical. Although
trans-corporeality as the transit between body and environment is
exceedingly local, tracing a toxic substance from production to
consumption often reveals global networks of social injustice, lax
regulations, and environmental degradation. (Alaimo, 2010, p.
15)
The example above illustrates Alaimo’s conclusion (which echoes

Guattari in his “three ecologies”), that ‘toxic bodies insist that
environmentalism, human health, and social justice cannot be severed.’
(ibid. p. 22) In the Harrisons’ and my work, tracking the ‘slow violence’
of intergenerational ecocide in forests, respond to Alaimo’s question:
‘What are some of the routes through person and place? What ethical or
225

political positions emerge from the movement across human and more-
than-human flesh?’ (ibid. p. 12) Thus I argue that the idea of ‘toxic
bodies’ is a particularly vivid and useful example of trans-corporeality,
encouraging us ‘to imagine ourselves in constant interchange with the
environment […and to direct] attention to situated, evolving practices
that have far-reaching and often unforeseen consequences for multiple
peoples, species, and ecologies.’ (ibid. p. 22)
I began this doctoral study with a short video essay entitled Once I
Counted Birds (Fitzgerald, 2009, 1:00; see video The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook, p. 38). My narration speculates that rising oceans are
connected to and perhaps offset to some extent by myself and others
growing local forests elsewhere. Ideas of ecosophy, expanded by eco-
cosmopolitanism and trans-corporeality help me navigate that my
thinking, my practices, my proposed actions and policies, speak to both
local and global concerns.
The marginalisation of, and limited education regarding eco-social art

practices, the insufficient uptake of alternative permaculture, organic
farming, sustainable aquaculture, let alone continuous cover forestry or
forest restoration – strongly suggests that dominant, profit-driven
monoculture industrial land practices in this ‘hinge’ decade are unlikely
to alter significantly. What is required is for Westernised societies to
urgently and radically rethink their relation to the nonhuman world, a
complex, developing topic made more so given that the human
population continues to increase exponentially, and consuming ever more
resources from a finite Earth.
To recap, in this Chapter I am presenting evidence that Guattari’s

ecosophy concepts with recent ecocritical and new materialist research
provide a significant theoretical ‘grammar’ to re-frame and articulate the
key social processes and political potential of eco-social art practice.
226

In the next section, I will discuss transversality as a fundamental concept
of ecosophical engagement. I will determine how seemingly complex
multi-constituent eco-social art practices, such as The Serpentine Lattice
and The Hollywood Forest Story, through transversal activities produce
new subjectivities – new intrinsic values that fuel actions, political or
otherwise, to look at forestry afresh. I also reference Guattari’s (and
Deleuze’s) ideas of the ‘refrain’ and ‘habit.’
227

5.3 Guattari’s transversality theory and refrain concepts:

understanding how eco-social art practice operates to
engender ecoliteracy and agency for social transformation

Fig. 49. Discussions on ecoforestry inevitably lead to other new ways of relating to the
world. Here Irish Findhorn representative Elinor Mountain speaks of sustainability as
advanced by the global eco-village network that arose from Findhorn fifty years ago.
Hollywood forest - Green Sod Ireland walk and talk, 21 April 2014.
We cannot conceive of solutions to the poisoning of the

atmosphere and to global warming due to the greenhouse effect,
or to the problem of population control, without a mutation of
mentality, without promoting a new art of living in society.
[…] The only acceptable finality of human activity is the

production of a subjectivity that is auto-enriching its relation to
the world in a continuous fashion.
Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm,

1995, pp. 20-21. [emphasis added]
Guattari’s critical concepts of ‘transversality’ and the ‘refrain’ (a ‘virtual

fence’ which I will discuss later in this Chapter) increase understanding
of how eco-social art practices operate transversally within a chosen
context, to create new subjectivities. In other words, transversality
articulates how multi-constituent, place-and planet-sensitive practices
228

develop relevant ecoliteracies for their practitioners, collaborators and
audiences, that in turn, inspire new values, and hence agency, for social
change.
5.3.1 Tranversality accounts for progressive multi-constituent

social practices that comprise diverse disciplinary knowledge
and lifeworld experience

Guattari realises a risk of significant incomprehension (1992, p. 132)

exists for practitioners who create assemblages of communicative
activities that journey across and within other disciplines and lifeworlds.
Similarly, Biggs (2014a,b,c) recently details difficulties occurring in the
doctoral evaluation of multi-constituent art research practice that cross
disciplinary boundaries and lifeworld experience (including mine).
Likewise, Kester139 (2016) reviewing related social art practice notes the
struggle practitioners (and curators) have in writing about their multi-
constituent, long-term endeavours. As I will argue, Guattari long
recognised the value of multi-constituent social practices, and developed
the concept of transversality over decades, from considerable therapeutic
insight and political awareness, to fully articulate their processes and
value.
Guattari’s transversality is highlighted in recent analyses of multi-

constituent contemporary art practice (Biggs, 2015, 2014a,b, c;
O’Sullivan, 2014, 2010, 2008, 2007, 2006; Demos, 2013; Brunner et al.
2013; Elliott, 2012; Garoian, 2012, among others). As such, succinct,

139
Kester (2016) states that some practitioners refer too quickly to unsuitable theories,
and are perhaps overly influenced by art Ph.D. research theorisation activities, which he
sees as foreclosing valuable ‘descriptive’ knowledge arising from their practice.
However, while I see it is important for practitioners to describe how they work,
ignoring appropriate theory may lessen critical analysis and awareness of broader
contextual socio-political contingencies. Both descriptive and theoretical analytical
review are important to clarify eco-social art practice.
229

clear definitions of transversality for eco-social art practices are recent.
Brunner et al. (2013) analyse transversality’s central role to ask how
ecologies of creative practice ‘evolve, mutate and activate their potential
for relation’ to differing contexts (p. 11). They argue ‘each praxis moves
in resonances with its milieu, pragmatically figuring out what is
happening and what belongs to the process.’ (ibid.) Concerning
Genosko’s Guattarian scholarship, Biggs (2014a) clarifies ‘transverse’
and ‘transversality’ for contemporary art practitioners when he
characterises transversality:
as a radical creative collective practice that aims to cut across or

rupture existing models of organisation and institution, and that
give rise to ‘subject groups capable of internally generating and
directing their own projects’ (Genosko, 2008, p. 77), and as
simultaneously maintaining both a certain closeness between
groups and the larger organisations of which they form part and
an avoidance of any ‘slide into bureaucratic sclerosis’ (ibid. p.
68). [It is ] ‘an adjustable, real coefficient, decentered, and non-
hierarchical,’ (ibid. p. 74) with a particular emphasis of
generating a sense of in-between-ness […] (Biggs, 2014a, p. 60)
Importantly, as mentioned, Bigg’s (2015) detailed articulation of

‘lifeworld’ experience deepens understanding of how transversal creative
practitioners routinely weave their valuable real-world experience with
inter- and transdisciplinary professional activity in their work. Moreover,
O’Sullivan (2006) writes of expanded, transversal art practice (rather
than specifically about eco-social art practice) and his research further
confirms why Guattari’s life-encompassing transversality is distinct from
interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary concepts of collective knowledge
creation. Genosko (2002) adds insight that Guattari recognised
interdisciplinary thinking as a necessary point of departure toward new
domains of knowledge of individual and collective life (ibid. p. 25), but
that Guattari was cynical about transdisciplinary endeavours. Guattari
dismissed ‘transdisciplinary’ projects, seeing the concept as another
‘buzzword’ in the eyes of potential funders; in his own words arguing ‘it
[transdisciplinarity] changes nothing because nothing really changes at
230

the level of process.’ (Genosko, 2009, chapter 2). Here Guattari was
speaking with authority as one, who over many decades of applied
therapeutic research and engaged political activity, deeply understood
and theorised how social change advance amongst individuals and
groups.
Similarly, Holmes (2008) in the context of contemporary art practice,

also argues ‘interdisciplinarity and indiscipline have become the two
most common excuses for the neutralisation of significant enquiry.’ (p.
156) According to Holmes, in contrast, transversal, extradisciplinary
ambition in contemporary art practice is a ‘complex movement, which
never neglects the existence of the different disciplines, but never lets
itself be trapped by them either […]’ (p. 157).
Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work does, of course, have value

as Guattari also recognised, but I argue it can only ever operate with
limited engagement with emergent eco-social concerns when compared
with eco-social art practices. Therefore, I agree in part with Kagan, who
examines Nicolescu’s transdisciplinarity theory to argue that
transdisciplinary endeavours can evoke a ‘radical emergence, with a
fundamental restructuring of reality’ for ecological understanding’
(Kagan, 2011, p. 201). However, I further argue that, as complex eco-
social lifeworlds become more problematic, a deepening understanding
of transversality—rather than transdisciplinarity—must be the priority in
art and ecology education and the action research of eco-social art
practice.
Answering “But is it Art?” No, transversal practice is more…
When Holmes (2008) highlights the socio-political significance of what

is at stake with transversal, extradisciplinary aesthetic practices today140,

140
Holmes (2008) contextualises transversality by considering that it progresses the
third stage of institutional critique developing in contemporary art discourse and
practices since the early 1970s. With reference to Guattari, Holmes defines embryonic
231

in comparison to normative ideas of art practices that remain corralled
inside the art world:
[t]hese [transversal] projects can no longer be unambiguously

defined as art. They are based instead on a circulation between
disciplines, often involving the real critical reserve of marginal or
counter-cultural positions—social movements, political
associations, squats, autonomous universities—which can’t be
reduced to an all-embracing institution. (p. 159)
The old debate that regularly derides eco and other social art practices,
“But is it art?” is resolved. Indeed, transversal practices are more than
conventional art practice, as underlined in Guattari’s ecosophy. In other
words, transversal practices comprise artistic activity, but such creative
impulses are primarily employed to translate experiential, and new
knowledge of places and people toward new ecological values – new
subjectivities, as Guattari calls them (I discuss the critical role of art as a
methodological stage of transversal practices through action research in
the next Chapter).
Holmes (2008) further describes how the social operations of transversal

practices differ from normative art practices (and accordingly, as I will
explain, transversal practices require considerable social skill as well as
artistic competency). Holmes explains how transversal practices embrace
extra-disciplinarity as a performative aesthetic practice, promoting new
subjectivities. As mentioned, Biggs’ (2014a,b,c) articulation of
‘lifeworlds’ being traversed as well as other disciplines by practitioners is
a significant advance.
Holmes (2008) also argues that transversal practices of the last decade
are highly cognisant of networks, technology (as evident in The
Hollywood Forest Story compared to the pre-Internet Serpentine Lattice)
and politics. Specifically, Holmes’ view deepens appreciation of
Guattari’s prescient machinic animism and that transversal:

transversal practices as being developed by early practitioners of institutional analysis,
naming practices as developed by Robert Smithson, Hans Haacke (p. 157).
232

projects tend to be collective, even if they also tend to flee the
difficulties that collectivity involves, by operating as networks.
Their inventors, who came of age in the universe of cognitive
capitalism, are drawn toward complex social functions which
they seize upon in all their technical detail, and in full awareness
that the second nature of the world is now shaped by technology
and organisational form. (pp. 159-160)
Holmes’ observations thus support Tinnell (2011), Ihlein (2014) and my

experience and arguments, that today’s transversal practitioners are
incredibly effective at reaching and developing audiences, particularly if
they foster social network-building skills with new communicative
technologies, such as blogging and other social media.
To restate, in rethinking eco-social art practice, Guattari foregrounds

transversal ecosophic endeavours as necessarily involving artistic
practices to express new values (Guattari, 1995) for the necessary
ecological turn. Genoskso (2012) summarises the specific connections
Guattari was making:
[i]n short, Guattari closely linked art and ecology in the

production of subjectivity in a way that would assist in extracting
potential for existential change and assisting in the development
of new processes that are more complex, sustaining and enriching
[…] He underlines that the most promising selection of
components will result in authentic altercations […] that make
themselves available for new collective assemblages of
enunciation. (pp. 156-157)
Crucially, Guattari’s transversality and machinic animism increase

understanding of the form, motives and potential social power of eco-
social art practice. Furthermore, in contrast to viewing art practice as an
independent object-making or objectifying endeavour, Guattari’s
ecosophy characterises transversal art practices as opening outward in a
continuous fashion, from the subjectivity of the individual artist toward
233

others, including the nonhuman. Simon O’Sullivan141 (2007) sees
Guattarian subjectivity as based on ‘decentered relationships’ and argues
that ‘thinking ecologically we might see subjectivity in terms of a
multiplicity: a complex aggregate of heterogeneous elements’ (p. 4).
Similarly, Genosko (2009, chapter 2) describes how Guattari’s concept
of transversality faces out to welcome complexity and diversity as it fully
acknowledges ‘social demands, problems, and material realities into the
analytic encounter.’ Brunner et al. (2013) also argue the essence of ‘eco’-
art is its capability to open out (p. 11). However, the opening-in-all-
directions nature of transversal practices may suggest that anything and
everything could be argued as transversal; later in this Chapter, I employ
Guattari’s ideas of ‘the refrain’ to explain how transversal practices
operate for specific ‘communities of concern’ involving peoples, places
and the planet.
The implication of identifying this ‘open’ form leads Genosko (2009,

chapter 2) to argue that transversal activities ‘constitute spaces of
potentiality and creativity grounded in situational and contingent
encounters.’ (ibid.) Such encounters, Genosko advises, must be
‘continuously confronted and permanently reappraised’ (ibid., chapter 3).
This reconfiguration of value production as social, emergent and
contingent, supports Guattari’s primary thesis of exploring sustaining
‘new ways of being together’ (ibid., chapter 2). Guattari’s identification
of evolving new values (valorisation) as a key feature of ecosophic
practices, and hence eco-social art practice, resonates with Dean Moore’s
call for cultural, moral reasoning (see Chapter 1) and relates to Hroch’s
(2014) characterisation of sustainability as an emergent process.

141
O’Sullivan is the author of the book On the Production of Subjectivity (Palgrave,
2014), which surveys theories of subjectivity production from Guattari (and Deleuze)
but also Spinoza, Bergson, Lacan, and Foucault. More recently in analysing his and his
collaborator’s expanded art practices, Burrows and O’Sullivan (2014) distance their
thinking from Guattari’s theories, arguing that contemporary art practice does not
necessarily involve ecological or therapeutic responsibilities (p. 254).
234

Eco-social art practices thus embrace a ‘whole-life’ endeavour. Treating
one’s life as a work of art expresses Guattari’s view (in the epigraph
above) of how transversal activity is necessary to develop a ‘new art of
living in society’. Moreover, a new art of living in society, with the
planet in mind as Guattari’s ecosophy insists, clearly calls forth practice
of ‘living well’ with all beings, including all those that inhabit forests.
235

5.3.2 The transversality of The Hollywood Forest Story and

The Serpentine Lattice evolve intrinsic values and ‘Worlds-yet
to-come’
Fig. 50. Interactive page that reveals the transversal terrain, the select disciplinary skills
and lifeworld experiences that I traverse for my eco-social art practice. Source: The
Ultimately it is a call to participate in the autoproduction of our

own subjectivities, that in itself implies an autorelationship to
ourselves (the folding-in). This will mean drawing our own
diagrams of the infinite/finite relation and mapping out our own
terrain of their operation.
Simon O’Sullivan (2010) ‘Guattari’s Aesthetic Paradigm: From the Folding

of the Finite/Infinite Relation to Schizoanalytic Metamodelisation’, p. 268.

If one examines Guattari’s transversality, it becomes a theoretical tool
ideally matched to approach life’s unfolding individual-collective-
material complexity—what Guattari called the ‘chaosmose’ (a Joycean
term adopted by Guattari142). Guattari welcomed the emergence of chaos

142
Joyce proposed the ‘chamose’ was composed chaos. Deleuze and Guattari used the
term to think about art: ‘Art is not chaos but a composition of chaos that yields the
vision or sensation’ […] in Zepke (2005) Art as an Abstract Machine: Ontology and
Aesthetics in Deleuze and Guattari. Routledge: New York and London, p. 155.
236

theory in the 1980s, as evident in the title of his last book Chaosmosis:
An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (1992), in part, because it offered concrete
evidence that dysfunctional social (and material) structures cannot endure
indefinitely and that new forms continually arise to supersede older
structures. In his important summary and final article, Guattari argues
transversality is essential in ‘re-making social practices’ more
responsible for attending life’s emergent complexity (Guattari, 1992). In
this, Genosko (2002) confirms that Guattari’s ecosophy increases
understandings of our ever-changing world not as a reductive theory as
might be offered by science (or misread as a concept of only ‘three
ecologies’) but that it works to define ‘its complexification, its processual
enrichments, […] in short [its] ontological heterogeneity.’143 (p. 24)
Accordingly, and from my experience and research, I argue, Guattari’s

transversality offers a comprehensive means to ‘diagram’ my and others’
terrains of operation; the ‘assemblage’ of different skills, lifeworld
experiences and actions that comprise the ecosophic cartography of my
and others’ eco-social art practices (Fig. 50).
To illustrate the development of The Hollywood Forest Story modus

operandi, early in my career I observed others’ eco-social art practices
involved personal experience and concerns, knowledge from different
disciplines, and that practitioners sometimes collaborated with others in
non-art domains. My particular transversal terrain, because I am looking
at shortcomings of industrial forestry, to a large extent, mirrors some of
the Harrison’s activities for The Serpentine Lattice and Bienman and
Tavares’ more recent activities for their Forest Law (Chapter 1).
When I began my current eco-social art practice in May 2008, I was

conscious in addition to my art skills, that I had valuable non-art skills
from a variety of disciplines (from science, from local politics) and

143
Guattari realised that real world consequences of ecosophy could either be negative
or positive, which he illustrates by reviewing the decline of post-revolution Iran
compared to a united, socially progressive Germany (Guattari, 1992, p2).
237

access to a forest, similar to the Harrisons and other eco-social art
practitioners way of working (some I refer to in Chapter 1). Following
Biggs (2014a,b,c), I now see my working experience in, and knowledge
of, different disciplinary spheres as constituting valuable ‘lifeworld’
experiences for an effective transversal eco-social art practice: a
background in biological research (1986-1994), considerable sustainable
forestry knowledge (1996-present), some awareness of Indigenous land
management, Green Party and political policy development knowledge
(2004-present), film-making and social media experience (from early
2000s).
Guattari’s ecosophy, therefore, helps defend eco-social art practice non-

art activities to others, which is essential as trends in contemporary art
still mostly overlook the relevance of eco-social concerns, non-art
practices and associated networking and mutuality-building skills.144 In
my work, for example, ecosophy encourages me to value my developing
ecoforestry skills, my political activity and political connections, and my
social skills, including social media skills.
Therefore, an awareness of transversality as operating across and

between lifeworld and diverse disciplines confirms my way of working
and helps me recognise the similar depths of life-world experience and
other ways of knowing that colour the Harrisons and other exemplary
eco-social art practices.
In defining my transversal terrain, my knowledge of newer, more

ecologically-orientated forestry, in particular, filled the requisite
awareness of the current ‘habit’ and shortcomings of industrial
(capitalistic) forestry. For, as O’Sullivan (2008) argues, ‘any break in
habit, any ‘new’ way of being in the world, must at some level involve a
first moment of this awareness’ […] (pp. 99-100), and that ‘a genuinely

144
However, some art critics, like Christine Borland, recognise that galleries, museums
and even the UK Turner Prize, are moving to effectively present social art practices
(Borland, 2015). These practices seem novel but include artists who have significant
mutuality-building skills.
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new kind of subject (or non-subject?) must involve some sense, some
awareness, of this ground, this Outside.’ (p. 100) Also, Petra Hroch
(2014) argues that an awareness of habits is central to re-thinking
sustainability:
[w]e are indeed creatures of habit, which is to say, constructions

of habit, and indeed inhabited by our habitat just as we inhabit
our habitat. The question of our becoming-other is dependent
upon this recognition of our selves as porous, open, in becoming
subjects and thus necessarily interested in our environment as an
integral part of our own self-interest (indeed, when the ‘self’ is
configured in this open way, the false opposition of ‘selflessness’
and ‘selfishness’ becomes troubled; instead, the aim becomes, as
Bateson suggested, the sustainability of the ‘self’ plus its
‘environment’. (pp. 65-66)145
Hroch’s ideas correlate with Guattari’s, who views the broad aim of
transversal eco-social art practice as emergent social processes that mesh
with environments. However, as mentioned earlier, one may find it
difficult to distinguish the seemingly open-ended form of transversal
activity as a cohesive, repeatable practice ( I discuss Guattari’s idea of
the ‘refrain’ as a response to this dilemma in the next section).
Furthermore, Guattari’s identification of how transversal activity evolves

new values (valorisation) as a critical feature of ecosophic endeavours,
and hence eco-social art practice, is essential.
To a degree, Guattari’s idea of transversality anticipates Naomi Klein’s

observations in regarding increasing diverse, grassroots climate
campaigns (‘blockadia’) that creatively resist the main engine of
capitalism; the fossil fuel industries and their related eco-social injustices
(2014, chapter 8). While Klein does not directly speak of contemporary
social art practice developments, like Guattari she notes the creativity
and ethical elements in new social formations are responding effectively

145
Hroch adds that habits are ‘socially enforced [and therefore] “legal” types of
addiction. They are cumulated toxins that by sheer uncreative repetition engender forms
of behaviour that can be socially accepted as “normal” or even “natural”’ […] Hroch,
2014, p. 67.
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to eco-social justice concerns to resist the status quo. She describes, for
example, UK ‘protest picnics’ campaigns that refer to Shakespeare’s
view of unspoilt rivers, and others who blocked an entrance to a
proposed fracking site with a giant wind turbine blade (ibid., chapter 9).
For Klein, the creativity of grassroots campaigns are now presenting a
radical change in social organisation beyond environmental politics
taking ‘place in closed-door policy and lobbying meetings into
something alive and unpredictable and very much in the streets (and
mountains, and farmers’ fields, and forests).’ (ibid.) Klein echoes
Guattari when she recognises that these creative, social phenomena
arising to defend a communities’ places, are broader than
environmentalism; instead they are insisting on new values that provide
communities with real control over those resources that are most
critical to collective survival—the health of the water, air, and
soil. In the process, these place-based stands are stopping real
climate crimes in progress. (ibid.)
From the literature, there is some recognition of eco-social art practices

as value-creating operations for their practitioners and their audiences.
However, I will argue, Guattari’s transversality thinking provides greater

comprehension of their social mechanism.
For example, Neal reviews over sixty ‘transition art’ practices that I
would broadly see as eco-social art practices (my practice is briefly
discussed on p. 122), and makes a distinction in the type of values that
arise from such practices but it is not a comprehensive theory for these
practices. Neal, does however, usefully define that such practices ‘foster
“intrinsic” cultural values that transcend self-interest’ in contrast to
dominant ‘extrinsic’ capitalist consumer values of industrial society (p.
8) that promote, as mentioned, an unsustainable possessive
individualism. Neal argues that ‘extrinsic values perpetuate an
acquisitive and consumerist worldview, [while] intrinsic values tend
toward lower carbon consumption; a stewardship of the commons and
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resources fairly shared.’ (pp. 9-10) Rawles (2012) expands on this idea
by considering that if we recognise intrinsic as well as extrinsic values
this develops the understanding that we are members of a vast and
ecological community. (p. 90 of 470) This view correlates with
Guattari’s lifelong emphasis, that transversality’s critical move is in the
creation of new subjectivities for its practitoners, new ways of knowing
the world that, if ethicially guided, result in wellbeing for ourselves and
others (including the nonhuman world). Guattari’s theory of
transversality also enhances Goto-Collins and Collins’ (2012) theoretical
framework to identify the ‘value-exchange’ that some eco-social art
practices, such as Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks (begun in 1982) and the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1992-3), evoke as a symbolic, relational
form developing an ‘alternate aesthetic integrity’ that increases ‘empathic
inter-relationship’ toward the nonhuman (ibid., p. 5).
In this way, Guattarian transversality thinking helps us understand why

eco-social art practices are progressive. Simon O’Sullivan discusses how
‘in the best cases such artists turn away from the present, offering up new
assemblages, new combinations, to those that surround us on an everyday
basis’ (2006, p. 320) and explains, accordingly, that such practice
involves the future, not the present.
[This] field of art might then be understood as a kind of future

field, the field of the abstract machine itself: ‘The diagrammatic
or abstract machine does not function to represent, even
something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a
new type of reality.’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 142) (ibid. p.
319)
In other words, O’Sullivan considers that transversal art practices are

inevitably involved in ‘drawing out the contours for worlds yet-to-come.’
(Deleuze and Guattari 1988, ibid. p. 319). He goes on: ‘[transversal]
experimentation: it leads us beyond the known, beyond the face, toward
new territories and strange new polyvocalities.’ (ibid. p. 320) Thus,
O’Sullivan (2006) labels transversal contemporary art practices as
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‘probe-heads’ for the future.
These analyses, I argue, further support the view that earlier dismissal
and misinterpretation of Guattari ecosophy (Chapter 1) were
unwarranted.
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5.3.3 Keeping it all together; playing the The Hollywood

Forest Story and The Serpentine Lattice refrains
Fig. 51. An example of me ‘playing’ The Hollywood Forest Story ‘refrain’; artistically
highlighting young ash and oak trees that may naturally regenerate if Close-to-Nature
continuous cover, rather than clear fell forestry management is followed. (Hollywood
forest, 2014)
Refrains can be quite precarious. They may implode psychically

in deathly repetition. But Guattari’s myriad artistic examples
possess a positive, open precarity, the capacity to sustain ‘praxis
openings-out’ from an existential territory that do not remain
trapped by exploitative coordinates or wrapped up in postpolitical
alienation. Not only are these openings enunciated, but they find a
consistency that makes them habitable by politically, ethically
and aesthetically engaged projects; […] Being carried beyond
familiar territories into alterities of all sorts permits the
emergence of new valorizations, new social practices, new
subjectivities. For Guattari, art begins with the expressive features
of a territory that becomes for its inhabitants flight paths beyond
its borders.
Genosko (2009, chapter 3) Félix Guattari: A Critical Introduction.
As previously noted, Holmes (2008) has remarked that transversal

projects no longer resemble art and, similarly, eco-social art practices are
characterised by diverse art and non-art activities amidst emergent eco-
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social realities. Therefore, we might ask how are practices of such
diversity recognised and progressed, what provides the ‘scaffolding and
guy ropes so they do not just twist in the wind.’ (Genosko, 2009, chapter
3).
Here Guattari’s (and Deleuze’s146) concept of the refrain is of critical

importance. Like a repeating musical refrain, we can use this concept to
demarcate and order the space-time boundary of ecosophic practices and
their evolving subjectivities. Simply put, Guattari saw subjectivity
production as made up of refrains: ‘[i]ndeed, we are, in this sense, all
musical beings.’ (Guattari cited in O’Sullivan, 2007, p. 6)
Elliott (2012) usefully describes Guattari’s refrain as a ‘virtual fence’ and

clarifies its three components as 1) a calm place or territory within chaos;
2) the environment the activity evokes or involves (which can be spatial
in a physical sense or psychological); and 3) ‘the line(s) of flight’ emitted
from the project.
Elliott (2012) further explains the emotive, experiential propulsion of a

refrain ‘as spatial and extended manifestations of affect and desire, acting
as a reflection of a pre-personal, proto-subjective instinct.’ (p. 91) The
work of the refrain, he adds, ‘is of singularisation, creating subjectivity
out of memory and personal experience.’ (p. 95) Moreover, as discussed
earlier, translating experiential encounters of particular forests, as in the
Harrisons’, Bienman and Tavares’, and my practice, through artistic
activity via poetry, photography, installation, video, map-making,
confirms the critical function of art in transversal practices to signal new
terrains of value to audiences.
Conversely, Guattari’s ‘line of flight’ idea recognises that territory or

home can only be recognised when compared with a route out.’ (ibid. pp.
89-90) (‘lines of flight’ can be thought of the new outcomes of eco-social

146
Guattari and Deleuze developed the ‘refrain’ concept in their work A Thousand
Plateaus (1980). Sometimes ‘refrain’ is translated as ritornello.
244

art practice, discussed in the next section). Critically, Elliott describes
how a ‘refrain sets up a rhythm that allows assemblages to co-exist and
to communicate with each other, providing both a centre and a line of
flight.’ (p. 90) O’Sullivan (2007) concurs; ‘it is the encounter, with other
things as well as with other beings, which accompanies and in some
senses produces this chemical “knowledge” of subjectivity.’ (ibid. p. 7)
Refrains as repeating phrases, O’Sullivan realises, work to break

normative habits (ibid.) as explored in the Harrisons’ and my work to
critique industrial forestry. There is, for instance, social power in how the
Harrisons’ overall serpentine visualisation in The Serpentine Lattice acts
like a refrain. Its green snake-like serpentine image of watersheds, rivers
and forests crossing State borders, repeated in spoken voice, in
photographs and maps, through metaphor and other cultural artefacts,
highlights the then little-understood idea that this one sizeable bioregion
supports a host of peoples and species (Fig. 52). This idea is supported
when Green (2001) writes ‘The Harrisons developed and repeated this
[snake-like] image through the rest of their installation, using the iconic
form as a mnemonic device that would refer viewers to plans for the
forests’ regeneration’, p. 114.
Fig. 52. The Serpentine Lattice – the maps visually echo the refrain, that this area is an
interconnected bioregion that stretches from Washington to Alaska [detail].
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The Hollywood Forest Story and The Serpentine Lattice refrains are
recognisable in the continual referral to one particular forest region: the
material and living entities that lie, move into or emerge within the
physical boundary of the forests we study; the selected disciplines and
lifeworlds we journey through; and from the ‘lines of flight’, such as the
artistic and political workings that evolve from our collective practices,
that resist the norms and habits of unsustainable clearfell, monoculture
forestry.
Ultimately, the ‘lines of flight’ from The Hollywood Forest Story and
The Serpentine Lattice refrains, asks with others and with different
activities, media and dialogue, ‘how we can better relate to forests across
the world?’. As Guattari understood, repeated refrains allow a new
micropolitics for social change to arise; Elliott defines Guattari’s ‘line of
flight’ as ‘inherently revolutionary and it is the first stage of molecular
revolution.’ (ibid. p. 146) Spaid argues in Green Acres: Artists Farming
Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots (2012), citing Adam Krause’s
Art and Politics (2011), that creative work that resists the art market
‘initiates a value system that gives rise to the polis’. (p. 34)
In this sense, The Hollywood Forest Story and The Serpentine Lattice
refrains are a forest of political potential. They invite, foster and
communicate evolving subjectivities, from and with particular forest
bioregions, for themselves, their collarborators and audiences. Ultimately
these repeated refrains become new stories that potentially assists other
forests and their inhabitants’ thriving elsewhere. When O’Sullivan
(2007) offers Guattari’s useful image of ‘a chemistry—indeed a
laboratory’ (p. 6) to think about how different elements in a refrain
combine and fizz to create new complexities, and narrative-building
subjectivities, this adds to my arguments earlier in Chapter 3.3.2 of how
slow story-telling grows ecoliteracy, new values, audiences and political
agency.
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Importantly, in the broader context of eco-social art practices’ common
aim to counter the ecocide of industrialism, Hroch (2014) assesses the
refrain concept as being particularly useful for defining practices’
relationship to ideas of sustainability (p.64). Referencing Deleuze and
Guattari’s work, she highlights how sustainability is always about
complexity, uncertainty […], intensity, becoming-other, and transversal
relations.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983; Hroch, p. 70)
Importantly, Hroch (2013) cites Braidotti’s (2006)147 Deleuze and

Guattari research in proposing that subjectivity for sustainability is
necessarily nomadic (p. 68-69). Hroch (2013) deduces that for this
context the ‘nomadic entity is not the nomad of neoliberalism, always in
search of newness, so that it can cumulate and accumulate’ (p. 68) and,
crucially, it ‘does not flow through life colonising, owning, and moving
on.’ (p. 69) Rather, and this is an important characteristic of some
developed eco-social art practices, ‘life flows through this nomad
(assemblage) in a way that confounds any notion of acquisition,
individualism or identity, ownership, property, profit, and yet also it is
not in the business of abandonment.’ (ibid.) Hroch (2013) explains that
Braidotti (2006, p. 215) views undertaking such practices ‘does not mean
that one is not productive or useful to society, but simply that one refuses
to accumulate,’ and instead gives ‘oneself away in a “web” of becomings
and complex interactions.’ (p. 69) Thus, one may understand that eco-
social art practices have critical potential to counter capitalistic
unsustainability and community-denying possessive individualism.
Hroch (2014) argues that for sustainability to develop, what must be

sustained are not sustainable development goals (which appear the
primary extent of 2015 UN deliberations) but ‘the ability to create and
keep up generative connections—connections that arise out of

147
Bradotti has analysed Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadology theory in Transpositions:
On Nomadic Ethics (2006) Cambridge: Polity Press.
247

differential relations and [which] maintain the intensity to continue to
generate difference.’ (p. 75) Relevant to the Harrisons and my practice of
looking at the limitations of industrial forestry, Hroch reviews industrial
land practices and contrasts them with Vandana Shiva’s ideas ‘that
farming practices should be in the business of cultivating potential as
much as, if not more than, agricultural products.’ (p. 88) Hroch further
reflects, ironically, that this is a ‘kind of nomadism that cultivates
intensities and connectivities […] by being “nomadic in place.”’ (a
Deleuze and Guattari phrase) (ibid. p. 77)
Fig. 53. The Hollywood Forest Story and The Serpentine Lattice act as repeating
refrains, as ‘slow art’ residencies (see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 39) to
break the ‘habits’ of ecocidal, industrial forestry. As ‘voyages in place’, their continuing
activity leads to new outcomes of affects and effects, which keep asking, with others
and with different media, of how we can better relate to forests across the world.
Following this view, Hroch invites us in our sustainability learning and

action, and in our transversal journeying, to ‘voyage in place.’ (ibid.) To
voyage in place correlates with how my eco-social art practice is
unfolding indefinitely and slowly at Hollywood forest since 2008 (Fig.
53) within the virtual fence of the Hollywood Forest Story refrain.
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5.3.4 Outcomes of eco-social art practice: new ‘lines of flight’

from The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
Along with the concept of the refrain, I now often use the
Guattarian term ‘line of flight’ to explain what happens when eco-social
art practice evolves different art and non-art outcomes.
From The Serpentine Lattice, the most apparent outcomes include:

collaborative poetic texts, new mappings of the Pacific Northwest
bioregion and its watersheds, photography for an audiovisual slide-show
installation, and a significant forest restoration policy proposal for the US
White House; from The Hollywood Forest Story, there are new forest
science contributions, experiential video essays of Hollywood forest’s
transformation, ecocritical writings and articles, forest policy
development for the Irish Green Party, and eco-jurisprudence advocacy,
all documented on a developing, accessible repository of the practice, my
Hollywood Forest Story blog. But less tangible and harder to quantify, is
the most crucial outcome of eco-social art practice; fostering the social
power in a community’s conversations to care about the local and global
eco-social concerns affecting their place. As previously discussed, the
Harrisons call this community-changing feature ‘conversational drift’.
As eco-social art practices invite diverse collaborations to attend the

complex and specific nature of a place, and negotiate ethical, local and
global concerns over considerable timeframes, the outcomes of such
emergent practices cannot be predicted (and thus, supporting the
development of such practices requires different modes of funding than
the traditional support for contemporary art practice). However, this
discussion is beyond the scope of this thesis.
Guattari’s ‘lines of flight’ idea is therefore a useful means to consider the

multiple outcomes from eco-social art practice that may inspire change in
practitioners, collaborators and audiences’ toward themselves and their
environments. To my mind, the term suggests the outcomes of tranversal
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practices fly out independently, unpredicatbly, and in many directions.
Elliott (2012) offers an example of such diverse outcomes when each
viewing spectator of Duchamp’s work will develop a personal refrain, ‘a
different temporal rhythm, which singularises and individuates its
viewers.’148 (p. 95) Significant ‘lines of flight’ develop independently
from The Hollywood Forest Story.
New ‘lines of flight’ evolve (and continue to evolve) from The

Hollywood Forest Story refrain that comprises the aesthetic, ethical and
political activities which I select and develop. For example, these
different domains form the basis for my becoming involved in
developing the Irish Green Party forest policy to promote permanent
rather than clear fell forestry (2010-2012, see The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook pp. 59, 85), and the motion supporting an international law
against the crime of ecocide that I successfully presented to the Green
Party of Ireland and Northern Ireland Convention (2013). My work could
similarly compare to artists farming, gardening, and increasingly getting
involved in local communities across the US, as helping to visualise and
restore a sense of community in response to how society has been
‘undermined by the post-political era’ (Spaid, 2012, p. 34). In other
words, eco-social art practices have potential to activate grassroots
community learning and democratic practices.
Other ‘lines of flight’ develop when some in my community copy some

of my practices, such as neighbours and blog followers, who have been
inspired to engage in ecoforestry (Fig. 54), to which they add their
subjective desires and conditions.

148
Elliott (2012) writes that Deleuze and Guattari saw the concept of the refrain as also
describing ‘the workings of the cosmos itself, which is itself merely a series of
resonances, from the pulsing of a star to the substances and bodies.’ p. 91.
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Fig. 54. One of the participants of my first workshop in 2008, neighbour Nicola Brown,
afterwards planted 8 acres of permanent forestry (a friend, Alan Price is pictured at the
site in Winter 2014). Nicola’s subsequent use of leaves in her online eco-printing textile
tutorials for textile artists from across the world is an unexpected ‘line of flight’ from
The Hollywood Forest Story.
For example, an unexpected ‘line of flight’ from The Hollywood Forest

Story developed when one of the participants of my first workshop in
2008, neighbour Nicola Brown, afterwards planted 8 acres of permanent
forestry. Nicola, a textile artist, now uses leaves from her growing native
trees to print innovative eco-printed, up-cycled, fine art textiles.
Subsequently, as a popular visiting international and online educator,
Nicola’s and her students’ use of social media (employing Guattari’s
machinic animism) are rapidly progressing further ‘lines of flight’ of eco-
printing and up-cycling of textiles across the world. This line of flight is
important when one realises the fashion industry is a cause but also a
potential leader for sustainable materials and practices.
Overall, I conclude, that open transversal practices, if expertly executed,

emit many different outcomes that can inspire community eco-social
behavioural change. But, one cannot presume from the outset, as Guattari
understood, what form or direction the outcomes from the practice will
evolve. As discussed, awareness of the eco-ethic driver of eco-social art
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practice is critical to ensure that results are ecologically beneficial for all,
as is the realisation the eco-social art practices are fundamentally
micropolitical practices.
5.3.5 Guattari’s ecosophy articulates the political ecology of


A new ecosophy, at once applied and theoretical, ethicopolitical
and aesthetic, would have to move away from old forms of
political, religious and associative commitment… Rather than
being a discipline of refolding on interiority, or a simple renewal
of earlier forms of militancy, it will be a multifaceted movement,
deploying agencies and dispositives that will simultaneously
analyse and produce subjectivity […] A subjectivity of
resingulisation that can meet head-on the encounter with the
finitude of desire, pain and death. However, rumour would have it
that none of this is self-evident!
Felix Guattari, Three Ecologies, 1989, p.44
As mentioned, I previously struggled to understand why the eco-social

art practices that I most admire, regularly evolve, amongst other
outcomes, a political agency for their practitioners and audiences. Demos
(2016) recognises that some transversal contemporary art practices are
well situated to explore intersectional politics (intersecting systems of
power that harm the most vulnerable in society), as well as other ways of
knowing to advance a ‘transitional political ecology’. (ibid. p.148) I
argue that this transitional political ecology develops and is evident in the
case studies presented.
However, until employing Guattari’s transversality, I couldn’t easily

explain why the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice, an endeavour indicative
of much of their collaborative work over many decades, somehow
evolved comprehensive new forest restoration policy proposals for the
US Whitehouse (1993). I was similarly surprised and found hard to
explain my own eco-social art practice, centred around the care of a very
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modest woodland compared to the vastness of the Harrisons’ bioregional
forest study, twice fostered political agency. First, for my advocacy for
alternative sustainable forestry, which was adopted by the Green Party of
Ireland and Northern Ireland in 2010-12 as a critical new national forest
policy priority, and then for my advocacy in 2013, for the Green Party of
Ireland and Northern Ireland to support the developing international law
against the crime of ecocide.
I was to find that Elliott’s (2012) research that frames eco-social art
practices through Guattari’s ecosophy is beneficial to elaborate the
political potential of such practices.
Politics is integral to, and a consequence of ecosophy endeavours
In almost every case, it is a political engagement that gives them

the desire to pursue their exacting investigations beyond the
limits of an artistic or academic discipline. But their analytic
processes are at the same time expressive, and for them, every
complex machine is awash in affect and subjectivity.
Brian Holmes (2008) ‘Extradisciplinary Investigations -

Towards a New Critique of Institutions’. In: Ursula Biemann Mission Reports:
Artistic Practice in the Field: Video Works 1998-2008. pp. 159-160.
Guattari’s ecosophy theory increases understanding as to why this

communion between ethics, aesthetics, and politics occurs regularly in
eco-social art practices, such as in the Harrisons’ practice, and my work.
It shows that we are in the business of creating a new agency for
ourselves, and our communities (through experiential, subjective
practices and online activity), that includes the welfare of nonhuman
members. From a deep immersion in socialist politics most of his life to
being very active and then frustrated with factions of emergent Green
political groups in France during the late 1980s, Guattari nevertheless
saw that advancing eco-social change toward a sustaining ecological
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worldview must also involve a radical transformation of politics. Indeed,
for Guattari, ‘re-making social practices’ would be an ethico-aesthetic
process and accordingly necessitate a ‘refoundation of political praxis.’
(Guattari, 1995, p. 120)
Moreover, when considering the value of eco-social art practices,

Guattari insists that an ecosophical society must promote different, even
dissensual politics (1992, p. 7). Correspondingly, he recognises that
individual-social systems, like ecological systems, are dynamic and
therefore, striving for balanced, harmonious ideals are illusionary and
futile. This latter observation echoes arguments proposed by Heise
(2008), Morton (2007, 2010, 2011), Boetzkes (2010), Fitzgerald (2014)
and others (Chapter 1), who have signalled that idyllic, romantic images
of nature that do not also reference global concerns are an unhelpful
fallacy in cultural practices wishing to attend effectively to today’s eco-
social challenges.
As mentioned, Guattari’s ecosophy deepens understanding of how eco-

social art practice can advance a micropolitics or ‘molecular revolution’.
Elliott (2012) explains that ‘[…] by the 1980s, Guattari had concluded
that the capitalist system was so pervasive, so powerful, that it had
literally engrained itself into the psychologies of those that it served and
that served it.’ (p. 104) Of relevance to understanding the political
agency of the Harrisons’ and my own and others’ eco-social art
practices, Elliott (2012) describes that Guattari observed micro-political
‘molecular revolutions’ (‘soft subversions’)149 could potentially arise
from ecologically-engaged art practices and that this helps to explain the
political actions that arise from Mel Chin (pp. 130-4), the Harrisons’ (pp.
135-6) and others’ practices.
Guattari develops ideas of why political agency arises from ethico-

aesthetic social activity, from his extensive political experience and

149
‘Molecular revolutions’ and ‘soft subversions’ are terms used by Guattari, 2009, p.
306.
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psychoanalytical knowledge. As such, he understood that capitalism, as a
pervasive globalised psychosis, cannot be overthrown by Marxist ideas
of mass societal revolution. Elliott (2012) argues instead of mass
revolution, Guattari advocates a ‘million minor (molecular) revolutions’
from new social ethico-aesthetic formations as more likely to resist
capitalism’s pervasive dominance (p. 105). Elliott concludes that Guattari
believed that ‘molecular revolutions’ evolving from new ecosophical
assemblages of social practices are the only means possible, and are
available to anyone at any time, to undermine the patriarchal, globalised
capitalist system (ibid..) Thus, ecosophy helps identify that eco-social art
practices that arise from a concern for place and the planet and their
human and nonhuman inhabitants, as developed by the Harrisons, myself
and others, have the social power to evolve valuable political agency
specifically relevant to specific communities and their bioregions.
O’Sullivan (2010b) reminds us that ‘political art does not always look
political and art that looks political (speaks its message as it were) does
not always operate politically. In fact, art is not politics in the typical—or
molar and signifying sense.’ (p. 194) To explain this paradox, Deleuze
and Guattari’s previous work is useful because they stress that
molecularity and molarity are not opposite states but that they
are multiplicities of multiplicities forming a single assemblage,

operating in the same assemblage: packs in masses and masses in
packs.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 3; cited in Elliott, 2012, p.
28)
Elliott argues that this thinking allowed Guattari to see grand narratives
of molarity as co-existing and in flux with molecular activity and,
moreover, it explains why Guattari criticises ‘postmodern artists and
thinkers who ignore the political and social aspects of their work.’ (ibid..
pp. 27-28) Also, I argue these ideas clarify how transversal-art-activists
Isabelle Fremeaux and John Jordan, of ‘The Laboratory of
Insurrectionary Imagination’, speak to global eco-socio-political
challenges such as climate change. In a recent interview they discuss how
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their open participatory practice appears political and resembles political
activism but that it is somehow different:
[w]hat we don’t do is ‘political art’. We’re quite critical of the

notion of political art, which for us is art which is about political
issues. […] What we are very clear about is that actually what we
like to do, and what we think is vitally important, is to bring
artists and activists together not to show the world but to
transform it directly. Not to make images of politics, but to make
politics artistic. (Hopkins, 2015)
Evaluting Elliott’s (2012) thesis, and Biggs’ research (2014a,b), confirms

that Guattari’s thinking continues to be relevant and, for students of
visual culture, it can especially help define how ‘artists and ordinary
people are becoming engaged in what can only be thought of as
molecular revolutions, small everyday rebellions that might just change
the world (or their small part of it).’ (Elliott, 2012, p. 4) Similarly, Ruth
Little (2016) in Elemental: An Arts and Ecology Reader (2016), quotes
writer Terry Tempest Williams to consider that engaged practices of
place, progress ‘an open space of democracy’ (p. 20).
‘Communities of concern’: understanding the developing political

agency and social power of The Hollywood Forest Story and The
Serpentine Lattice
In order to fully succeed, this decommodified art will need a

similarly decommodified social context. By creating and
demonstrating new modes of being and interacting, artistic
change can work in advance of political change. But ultimately,
artistic change and political change need to work in tandem, or
else the decommodified and revolutionised art will be left without
a proper context to function.
Sue Spaid, 2012, Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields,

Greenhouse and Abandoned Lots, p. 34
As I imagine similarly occurred during the developing Serpentine

Lattice, as my aesthetic appreciation of Hollywood forest grew (see my
experimental Hollywood forest films, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook
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pp. 16, 23, 32, 66-70, 76, 88), so my sense of ethical responsibility–a
duty of care for Hollywood forest, developed (see The Hollywood Forest
Story eBook pp. 38, 76-79). As Carlson and Lintott (2008) explain,
‘aesthetic appreciation tends to heighten our moral engagement rather
than suppress it, regardless of how disinterested we may try to be.’ (p.
16). For example, my film-making experiments made me appreciate the
intrinsic right of my Hollywood forest ‘neighbours’ (the inhabitants of
Hollywood forest) to thrive (Fig. 55). These artistic practices allow me to
visualise and record reminders of the interdependencies we share with all
beings and it necessitated that I adopt an expanded ecological ethic.
Fig. 55. neighbours (Fitzgerald, 2013, 0:35s) A short video sketch revealing how my
views of the forest develop to see nonhuman others as kin. Hollywood Forest Story
eBook, p. 76.
As my artistic attunement and ecocosmopolitanism develop, my political

activism grows directly out of my concerns for Hollywood forest and, by
extension, for forests and their communities elsewhere. Firstly, I know
that unsustainable clear fell practices are not illegal in Ireland (although
they are in leading sustainably-forested, eastern European countries like
Slovenia; see Merivale [2012]), and this thwarts any safeguards one
might wish for Hollywood forest or other forests being maintained
permanently; and secondly, as discussed, I respond to the memory of my
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father who was fatally affected by the US military use of Agent Orange
in the Vietnam war. As new ideas of ecological citizenship and
ecojusrisprudence are now developing internationally, in laws for the
Rights of Nature, I now understand through Guattari’s insights, why my
Hollywood Forest Story propelled me to bring public and political
attention to developing laws against the crime of ecocide in 2013
(Fitzgerald, blog post ‘Eradicating ecocide in Ireland to make
sustainability legal’).
Thus, Guattari’s ecosophy speaks to how eco-social art practices evolve

social agency. Spaid (2012), like Biggs (2014b), when reviewing the
engagement of art and farming practices in land use change, makes
connections to Arendt’s ideas of social power. She observes that these
practices bring people together to share, speak of new ideas and practices
and believes ‘the Arendtian notion of power to resist authority figures
has not been more in vogue since anti-Vietnam protests four decades
ago.’ (ibid. p. 34) Cynthia Hammon and Shauna Janssen advance a useful
phrase for identifying how social art practices can develop a situated
political agency for participants. Reflecting on the politics of neglected
urban places in their transversal practice, they observe the emergence of
‘communities of concern’ around a connecting issue (Hammon and
Janssen, 2016).
Importantly, Guattari’s ecosophy has dramatically shifted and expanded

my thinking beyond considering myself involved primarily in an
environmental restoration project, or that my work is somehow a
measure-in-miniature to adapt to climate change and biodiversity loss.
Previously, I thought that I was dealing with the creation of resiliencies
for Hollywood forest, myself and others. But with Guattari’s ecosophy I
now see my practice as an example of ‘molecular revolution’ or a ‘soft
subversion’, a corresponding term Guattari sometimes used. As such,
although The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
develop beneficial outcomes that resemble ecological adaptation or
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resilience objectives, they are, in their differing scales, attempts to softly
subvert the political culture of industrial forestry.
Crucially, ecosophy effectively details how and why I utilise different

artistic workings and seemingly unrelated new forest practices as an
emergent ‘community of concern’. It also explains why I persevere,
despite the endless frustrations of glacial Green politics, to create an
alternate, live ‘re-story-ation’ (as Kimmerer (2014) would say), that
resists the status quo of widely practised, yet inherently unsustainable
monoculture, clear fell forest practices. As Kimmerer and others argue,
alternate life-sustaining, transversal stories and practices must lie at the
heart of and alongside any evolving resistance to neo-liberal capitalism
and modernism’s individual possessiveness.
Viewing eco-social art practices via ecosophy as a way of resisting

unsustainable industrial practices is of critical importance. Recently,
political theorists Brad Evans and Julian Reid in Resilient Life: The Art of
Living Dangerously (2014) politicised the term ‘resilience’ by exploring
its unquestioned and recent widespread use in contemporary
environmental political discourse—the term is also widely used by
environmental NGOs and included in their literature, and also prevalent
in psychotherapy spheres. Evans and Reid advance the view that the
concept of ‘resilience’ (borrowed, they feel inappropriately, from
environmental science) is directly linked with neo-liberal capitalist
agendas that determine that we ‘adapt’ to climate change, rather than
abandon or mitigate against gravely unsustainable practices: ‘[o]ur hunch
is that strategies of resilience thwart a genuine love for the biosphere […]
(Chapter 7.6).
Evans and Reid argue that resilience offers a ‘lethal conditioning’ of

acceptance (ibid. chapter 1.1), rather than activism that is urgently
needed to address the unfolding environmental and related social
catastrophe. They explain that this idea of ‘resilience then teaches us to
live in a terrifying yet normal state of affairs that suspends us in petrified
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awe.’ (ibid. chapter 1.3). Glenn Albrecht (2016) describes how some may
view the Anthropocene as the new normal, but he characterises it as the
‘new abnormal’ because it is endangering humanity and thousands,
possibly millions of other species (p. 12). He also argues that concepts
such as ‘democracy’, ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable development’, and
‘resilience’ are ‘corrupted by forces determined to incorporate and
embed them into the Anthropocene where they become normalised,
business as usual.’ (ibid. p.13)
Confirming Guattari’s ecosophy, Evans and Reid’s advice to recover

from ‘resilience’, distracting us from resisting neo-liberal capitalism, is
to look to the creative, poetic potential in aesthetic practices to subvert
the priorities dictated by the market:
[o]ur task, the political task of our times, remains learning to live
finally, to thrive beyond the catastrophe of our times, such that
we may announce the death of liberalism and welcome with
confidence a more poetic subjectivity. (2014, chapter 7.7)
Evans and Reid briefly describe what such aesthetic-political resistance

might look like: it will be an ‘art for living poetically [that] needs to be
crafted as a lifetime work. It must not be reduced to some Warholian
commodifiable chancery that lasts 15 minutes.’ (ibid.) The lifetime work
Evans and Reid describe, also corresponds to arguments in the previous
section that eco-social art practices are a necessarily ‘slow art’ whole-life
activity.
Substantially expanding ideas of what an aesthetic-political resistance

might entail, Albrecht (2016) offers the concept of the Symbiocene,
based on the scientific concept of symbiosis where organisms live
together for mutual benefit, to explore how politics could function
beyond the Anthropocene (p. 14). Using information from recent
breakthrough mycology science that shows forests are socially-caring
symbiotic ‘wood-wide-webs’ of nutrient exchange between fungi, old,
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and young trees in forests,150 Albrecht suggests that new practices could
similarly develop a forest-like ethic—a ‘symbiomimicry’:
[i]n the Symbiocene, human action, culture, and enterprise will be

exemplified by those cumulative types of relationships and
attributes nurtured by humans that enhance mutual
interdependence and mutual benefit for all living beings (which is
desirable), all species (essential), and the health of all ecosystems
(mandatory). […] Symbiomimicry in human enterprise will both
generate and distribute resources so that, in nurturing all humans,
we nurture the life support system on which we all depend. (ibid..
pp. 14-15)
Like Guattari, and some Indigenous researchers (Armstrong and Jensen,

2014; Kimmerer, 2014) understand, Albrecht argues that employing
symbiomimicry as a concept will lead to a new political system, to
governing the ‘reciprocal relationships of the Earth at all scales, from
local to global’[—]‘a sumbiocracy’ (taken from the Greek words for
‘living together’) of mutualism (p. 15). Albrecht encapsulates that:
sumbiocracy is, following Abraham Lincoln, ‘government of the Earth,
by the people of the Earth, for the Earth, so the Earth will not perish.’
(ibid..).
Albrecht’s theorising is not merely conceptual for me. When I practice

‘Close-to-Nature’ forestry that exhibits an eco-mimicry of wild
flourishing forests (see The Hollywood Forest Story ebook, p. 57), and
when I stand up for the rights of Hollywood forest to persevere in the
long-term (ibid.., p. 86) for mutual benefit (for Hollywood species’
intrinsic rights to exist while I benefit from firewood thinnings, birdsong,
beauty and oxygen), I argue that my work offers a real-world example

150
See video of this new fungal science by Canadian professor of forest mycology,
Suzanne Simard, on my blog ‘Mother trees – the earths’s networks for resilience’
https://hollywoodforest.com/2013/03/10/mother-trees-the-earthss-networks-for-
resilience/. Simard’s significant breakthrough science of how forests thrive through
fungal networks was first published in Nature (1997) 388 (6642), 579 and has been
rigorously confirmed.
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(and potential meme through my use of social media) of how humanity in
the Symbiocene era could act. Albrecht concludes by saying that entering
the Symbiocene ultimately depends on a public that has an informed, in-
depth knowledge of place (ibid..), to which I argue Guattari’s transversal
theory, machinic animism and new ideas of ecocosmopolitanism and
trans-corporeality can significantly contribute.
Importantly, the ecosophy theory part of the eco-social art practice

framework I propose also helps me overcome fears when I started The
Hollywood Forest Story that I would be unable to achieve some
comparable outcomes to those of eco-artists like the Harrisons and Mel
Chin. I was daunted that the Harrisons’ various long-term projects
involved considerable interdisciplinary teams and unquantifiable
personal confidence. I now know valuable and value-affirming outcomes
can be developed on a much smaller scale151 although I am conscious
that I have advantages in having acquired experience in science and
politics which has enabled me to progress my transversal practice more
independently than others (as well as the privilege of living with a
forest).
To conclude, recent research of Guattari’s ecosophy articulates why eco-

social art practices, such as those of the Harrisons, Mel Chin, myself and
others, often become deeply engaged in ethics, activism and regularly,
micropolitics and policy development. Accordingly, these diverse
activities and issues are the substrate for eco-social art practice’s
significant social power for a future that prioritises ‘living well’ for all
beings.
Thus, I propose, Guattari’s ecosophy, confirmed and expanded by others’

research, be used to comprehensively articulate similar aims and
operations in others’ transversal practices. I maintain that deepening

151
Researcher Chris Fremantle noted similar political findings in my work to the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1992) (in the proposal of new ecologically-derived
policy), see http://ecoartscotland.net/2013/05/13/continuous-cover-forest-policy/; for
specific outcomes, See The Hollywood Forest Story eBook chapter 8.
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understanding of such practices via ecosophy contributes essential
knowledge to the art and ecology field. In other words, ecosophy theory
advances the recognition and value of the socially innovative operations
that eco-social-art practitioners routinely develop.
However, while appreciating Guattari’s ecosophy significantly articulates

the terrain and potential of transversal eco-social art practices, I became
aware, as discussed previously, that Guattari’s ecosophy only articulates
the conceptual motivations and potential of eco-social art practice.
Guattari’s ecosophy, for all its prescient theoretical and political detail,
and its useful new terms and concepts, does not set out the practical
detail of how one develops and maintains transversal practices in
contexts other than therapeutic situations.
As mentioned, action research, as I will analyse in the next Chapter, is an

ideal methodological approach to clarify the main stages in developing
and maintaining collaborative, dialogical social enquiries that respond to
emergent, living places.
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5.4 Summary
Guattari’s ecosophy builds understanding of why innovative aesthetic

individual-collective practices can negotiate environmental and social
injustices to provide new agency for their participants, collaborators and
audiences. Guattari’s concept of transversality identifies why eco-social
art practices often reveal a radical, political criticality. I maintain that
Guattari’s ecosophy also identifies the target and context for such
practice is neo-liberal capitalism, which is not explicit in many eco-social
art practices.
The implication of Guattari’s insight of Indigenous animism adds

significant understanding as to why eco-social art practices have the
potential to create new values for alternate, life-sustaining worldviews
that resist the violence and ecocide of global industrial capitalism.
I propose that Guattari’s notion of ‘machinic animism’ is crucial to

deepen understanding of how inanimate communicative ‘machinic
ecologies’ like social media, may be used during transversal practices to
emit new responsible ecological values and practices specific to, and
relevant for, a bioregion and its human and nonhuman communities
wellbeing.
I argue Guattari’s concept of transversality theorises the typical form and

operations of eco-social art practice. To support these arguments, I
analyse the transversality operating in The Hollywood Forest Story and
The Serpentine Lattice. I acknowledge differing experiences, knowledge
and contact with experts from other fields is necessary to recognise the
failings of industrial forestry, and that this was a significant step in these
practices from which to imagine alternative forestry thinking and actions.
I argue that transversality is a necessary departure from ideas of

interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. I identify how Biggs’
articulation of ‘lifeworld’ experience is critical to understand how
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transversality is more than transdisciplinarity, as it encompasses the
valuable ‘real world’ experiences of its practitioners.
Guattari and others realise transversal practices, with their engagement

with emergent life processes, are precarious, unpredictable endeavours.
Accordingly, I analyse research that argues Guattari’s ideas of the
‘refrain’ and ‘lines of flight’ effectively conceptualise the virtual territory
maintained and lines of action emitted from The Hollywood Forest Story
and The Serpentine Lattice. I give an example of a key ‘lines of flight’
from The Hollywood Forest Story in how this practice evolved my
political agency to advocate for new Irish forest policy and recognition of
developing international laws against the crime of ecocide and similary,
how a neighbour developed a new ‘line of flight’ from my practice. I
conclude from Hroch (2014) that new practices for deep sustainability
will be necessarily nomadic-in-place, to counter neoliberal capitalism
activity, that in contrast, works to colonise, own, extract and move on.
I determine Heise’s (2008) ecocosmopolitanism ethic extends Guattari’s

transversality to increase understanding that effective transversal eco-
social art practice must operate with both a ‘sense of place and a sense of
planet’ as revealed in The Hollywood Forest Story and The Serpentine
Lattice. I analyse Alaimo’s (2010) idea of ‘trans-corporeality’ as a
critical means to deepen understanding of my material connection from
Hollywood forest to the continuing eco-social violence ensuing from the
Vietnam War. In particular, Alaimo’s idea of ‘toxic bodies’ is useful to
explain further why I was impelled to advocate for the developing
international ecocide law and to understand why transversal practices
have potential to operate like Heise (2008) proposes, with a ‘sense of
place and a sense of planet.’ Such research is significant to alert
practitioners of the dangers of developing work that only responds to
local concerns.
Guattari argues politics arising from transversal practices are part of a

continuum of political evolution. Guattari usefully defines molecular
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(micropolitical) and molar (state politics) to characterise how molecular
activity in transversal practices may inter-relate and affect molarity, and
vice versa. Such understanding, I argue, contributes knowledge to the art
and ecology field to clarify why aesthetic and political activity regularly
operate in my and others’ transversal practices, and why they foster
political agency for their practitioners, collaborators and audiences.
Importantly, Guattari’s ecosophy clarifies that I am not primarily

involved in environmental restoration or resilience building for
Hollywood forest but rather, political agency for others and myself. With
insights from Albrecht (2016), I argue my work, although modest in
scale, is a real-world example (and with social media), a meme that
contributes to a new politics for the Symbiocene, where an expanded
ethic for all life is pursued, rather than the endgame of the Anthropocene.
This analysis is useful as it indicates a developing epistemological and
political framework for transversal practices beyond the art and ecology
field.
Ultimately, Guattari’s ecosophy with recent research as applied to The

Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story helps me defend and
articulate why our ‘territories’ of diverse art and non-activities advances
valuable new ideas, practices and agency for eco-social change that is
relevant to the forest regions we study, but which equally resonates with
important global environmental concerns. These comprehensive findings,
I propose, are useful and relevant for articulating others’ similar eco-
social art practices and for the development of the art and ecology field.
In the next Chapter, I explore the other half of the eco-social art practice
framework I propose; an action research approach to articulate an
inclusive, comprehensive methodology for eco-social art practice.

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Chapter 6.
Case Studies Part 2:
Analysing the validity of the action research mode

of the proposed framework, as applied to
The Hollywood Forest Story and The Serpentine Lattice
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6.1 Introduction: Using action research to identify

methodological commonalities and the method pathway of

I often use the term ‘action research’ to describe my practice but
what does it actually mean?
My definition: I use it to describe all the things I do—a continual

line of investigation with a series of manifestations, experiments and
distractions along the way. The research is activated because it is not
an objective account of an alien subject but connected to and leading
to effecting some kind of change (at least that is the intention). It is
not research for the sake of research (could we replace the word
research for art here?), it leads on to something else, another action,
meeting or encounter. There is a knock on effect, not always one
planned or expected. It can take you off in another direction. Action
research does not happen in isolation, it is inextricable from practice.
Charlotte Sophie Hope (2008), ‘What is the relationship between cultural

democracy and the commissioning of art to effect social change?’152

The arguments in the previous Chapter confirm that Guattari’s ecosophy
can provide a comprehensive means to orient those interested in the
intersection between art and ecology, to the context and the considerable
social power of eco-social art practice. The methodological research in
this Chapter complements Guattari’s ecosophy and articulates the
practical steps in forming and maintaining an effective eco-social art
practice. The material in this Chapter extends the introduction of action
research as applied to my practice; see The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook, Chapters 4-7. (Fig. 56)

152
See
http://welcomebb.sophiehope.org.uk/Sophie_ActionResearch/Methodologies.html
[Accessed 15 January 2015].
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Fig. 56. I outline how I apply action research to explore the methodological stages of
my practice in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, Chapters 4-7.
In this Chapter, I will determine in detail, that action research, as a well-

proven methodology for social enquiry in other fields, is an accessible,
clear methodology to understand the cycle of critical actions within
compelling eco-social art practices that enact Guattari’s ecosophy, such
as The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story.
Moreover, to counter concerns that action research is overly prescriptive,

I will argue from my analyses of the case studies, and from my
experience, that utilising an action research approach in eco-social art
practice does not deny the messiness of everyday life or prescribe against
the serendipity, the imaginative skills, and leaps involved in creative
processes. Instead, it significantly highlights the critical stages of
transversal, multi-constituent practices for the unprecedented eco-social
challenges humanity now faces.
I will also demonstrate that action research identifies the essential

interpersonal social competencies and mutuality skills for effective eco-
social art practice. Transdisciplinary workings and transversals of other
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lifeworld knowledge and experience, often rely on collaboration and
participation with others and require notably different skills from those
commonly associated with the career development of an artist. As
discussed earlier, the need for social dexterity is one of the reasons I
emphasise and add ‘social’ to my new term of eco-social art practice. In
the art and ecology field, these social skills are not explicitly
acknowledged, and thus, are not directly developed.
However, it is important to note limitations to action research as a

methodological approach. Because it attempts to place an order on
diverse and ever-changing social and environmental processes,
experienced action research practitioners stress the necessity to formulate
quality in the questions asked, and the choices made at every research
stage of the social enquiry. For example, ‘quality comes from asking,
with others, what is important in this situation? How well are we doing?
How can we show others how well we have done?’ (Reason, 2006, p.
198) To effectively evaluate participatory social enquiry, a subjective
endeavour, action research scholar Reason determines that the ‘best we
can do is offer our choices to our own scrutiny, to the mutual scrutiny of
our co-researchers, to the wider community of inquirers, and to the
interested public at large. Quality rests not so much on getting it right but
on stimulating open discussion.’ (ibid. p. 199)
Overall, action research for eco-social art practice graphically charts how
different ways of knowing and participatory activity develop ecoliteracy,
and subsequently agency for practitioners, their collaborators and
audiences, in a repeating cycle of activities. Action research thus
provides a useful visual map of how eco-social art practices regularly
follow a similar pattern to embolden new thinking and actions for
enacting an ecological paradigm. Applied retrospectively to the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice (1993), and to The Hollywood Forest
Story, an action research framework clarifies these practices’ main
methodological stages and constituents, in what might otherwise be seen
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as unwieldy, multidisciplinary endeavours. In the following Sections, I
discuss all stages of the action research cycle of The Serpentine Lattice
and The Hollywood Forest Story.
6.2 Action research’s ‘worthwhile purposes’ clarifies how

eco-social art practice is initiated

Proposing an action research mode for eco-social art practice identifies
methodological commonalities and charts a useful pathway—a circle of
action, in which to reflect on or undertake diverse activities. The action
research diagram below identifies the key and repeating methodological
stages of participatory social enquiry.
Fig. 57. The cycle of the five critical dimensions of participatory social enquiry that
action research identifies.
Given that The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story are
eco-social enquiries, I argue that ‘worthwhile purpose’, ‘practical
challenges’ and ‘many ways of knowing’, ‘participation and democracy’
and the ‘emergent form’ of action research, are useful to describe the
methodology of these and other eco-social art practices.
From experience, I find characterising The Serpentine Lattice’s key aim

of exploring different forestry management other than destructive
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monocrop, clearfell forestry, at its ‘worthwhile purpose’, is useful to
assess how eco-social art practices are often initiated by the research of
the ‘status quo’. Similarly, in The Hollywood Forest Story, I outline the
‘worthwhile purposes’ in Chapter 1 of the eBook (Fig. 58), and discuss
the history and current state of unsustainable forestry in Ireland, why
such forestry is involved in the global environmental emergency and,
why moral reasoning impels me to act for an alternative forestry, for
Earthy wellbeing.
Fig. 58. Action research helps identify the ‘worthwhile purposes’ driving my
Hollywood Forest Story practice.
Action research’s ‘worthwhile purposes’ qualifies the question-based

nature of eco-social art practice to explore beyond the status quo.
Furthering Reason’s emphasis above on the quality of questions driving
effective action research, Haley outlines an alternative Question-Based
Learning (QBL) approach to consider the Harrisons’ and his art and
ecology students’ practices. Along with observations from sociologist
Hals Dieleman (2008), Haley develops an important understanding that
core questions drive these practices (Haley, 2010, pp. 24-29). Haley
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notes that when a QBL-form is adopted ‘by artists and other people’, it
can appreciably ‘open up situations for exploration in non-linear ways [...
to] promote wider and deeper [ecological] learning.’ (2010, p. 25) He
writes:
[t]his is potentially an ecological approach to learning; an ‘eco-

pedagogy,’ or ‘Eco-Literacy’ that is generated by the context,
relationships and complex systems, not analytical, reductionist
methods of understanding the world [...] Knowledge may be
created from the relationship of many parts and the parts may be
shared by multiple disciplines; thus knowledge itself can be
considered plastic, dynamic and ecological. (ibid.)
To outline how such practices may be directed as QBL and engage with
glocal (global-local) concerns, Haley refers to how the Harrisons’
consistently ‘map a field of play’ by utilising three key questions
‘how big is here?’
‘how long is now?’ and
‘who is here now?’ (ibid. p. 28)
as they initiate and develop their eco-social art practice encounters for
specific places and their human-nonhuman communities. I argue that
action research underlines why the Harrisons’ specific questions can
work to guide other eco-social art practitioners beginning such practices.
For example, if we employ Guattari’s ecosophy to understand the socio-
political context that eco-social art practices attend, these seemingly
simple questions profoundly trouble and expand current thinking and
thus orient practitioners and their collaborators to rethink what consists a
place, and to include all those that contribute to its thriving, that
reductive scientific and economic studies often ignore. As Haley
identifies, such questioning confirms eco-social art practices evolve
considerable ecoliteracy.
Reason and Haley’s work on how clear, often repeated questions direct
the ‘worthwhile purpose’ and initial formation of an eco-social art
practice encounter, touches upon why I struggled to articulate my
practice to myself and others as something other than a forest restoration
project. Haley (2010) describes how the common misconceptions about
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ecological art continue when they are emphasised only for their
environmental problem-solving characteristics (p. 24). He shows that
Problem-Based Learning (PBL), the current pedagogy in use in many
disciplines, including art and design, inhibits ecological understanding
(ibid.). Haley argues this is because PBL consistently leads to narrow,
linear focus that ‘deals with neither context or relationships’ that an
ecological paradigm necessitates (ibid.). Thus, Haley explains, PBL
presents the world as ‘a problematic that needs to be solved.’ (ibid.)
Action research’s attention to establishing ‘worthwhile purpose’,

therefore, underlines the necessary preparatory work needed to clarify
how to begin an effective ecosophical eco-social art practice. It should be
stressed, however, that these questions that form the ‘worthwhile
purpose’ should often be revisited in eco-social art practice.

6.3 Action research identifies the ‘practical challenges’ of
eco-social art practice as a critical method stage
Action research characterises the transversal activities in eco-social art

practice, and highlights that eco-social art practice readily engages with
‘practical challenges’, after establishing their ‘worthwhile purpose’. An
emphasis on realising ‘practical challenges’ correlates with how the
Harrisons and I both intuitively pursued practical experiences of
alternative forestry practices as a necessary developmental stage of our
eco-social art practices.
To acquire hands-on-knowledge of the ‘practical challenges’ in exploring

alternative forestry, the Harrisons for The Serpentine Lattice explored
how one might go about restoring one forest area of Deadwood Creek.
Proposed restoration of this area involved the following practical
challenges: identifying sites for replanting, developing local ecology
research studies of the forest, watershed, creeks and wildlife and a review
of current restoration plans (Blandy et al. 1998, p. 240). Similarly, for
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The Hollywood Forest Story, I give an overview of the practical aspects
of Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry in Chapter 3.2 of this thesis.
I also outline, in photos and short texts in The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook Chapter 5 (Fig. 59), the central forest management practices,
particularly periodic tree-marking and selective thinning, that I have
employed with forestry professionals, to transform our conifer plantation
into Hollywood forest.
Fig 59. Practical challenges: forester Sean Hoskins undertaking the practical and
necessary work of thinning Hollywood forest. Trees need to be removed as monoculture
forestry involves the initial planting of numerous trees to help form straight, regular
timber. In both industrial and continuous cover forestry (natural regeneration brings
forth many saplings), as the plantations or forests mature, some trees are removed to
lessen the competitive stress for resources between trees. Less overcrowded trees are
less likely to fall victim to pests and disease, therefore, thinning improves the
environmental resilience of plantations and forests.
Developing ‘real world’ practical knowing of forest restoration and new

continuous cover forestry management imparts legitimacy and authority
to the Harrisons’ and my practices, but the intention is not to become
sustainable foresters. Rather, identifying the ‘practical challenges’ of new
forestry relates to Guattari’s idea of identifying ‘the refrain’, the territory
275

of our transversal practices; our knowledge of the practical challenges in
adopting alternative forestry informs our repeating questions of how we
might transform one particular forest, as a breathing, living metaphor for
changing forestry management here and elsewhere.
As I discuss below, action research reveals why employing diverse ‘ways

of knowing’ around current and new forestry practices, gives a
comprehensive story of why, and how, eco-social art practitioners can
move with considerable authority, toward advocating new ecological
forestry.

6.4 Action research identifies ‘many ways of knowing’, as the

crucial next method stage in eco-social art practice
After identifying the ‘worthwhile purpose’ and ‘practical challenges’ of

eco-social art practice methodology, action research can next clarify the
‘many ways of knowing’—experiential, artistic, propositional
(theoretical) and practical—that are routinely mobilised in eco-social art
practice to engage practitioners, collaborators and audiences in reflecting
on how things are, and how things could be different for any given
environment.
In The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, Chapter 6, I outline the ‘many

ways of knowing’ I have employed to develop my, and my audiences’,
ecoliteracy regarding continuous cover forestry. Employing diverse
‘ways of knowing’ counters outworn preconceptions of how we relate
and act toward our environments, primarily through a limited scientific
worldview, that ultimately does little to enable social change (Seeley and
Reason, 2008, p.11; Lakoff, 2010).
Action research for eco-social art practice methodology in its emphasis

on exploring ‘many ways of knowing’ advises that we don’t rush straight
276

from new information to develop new practices and policies. Similarly,
critics of eco-art also note that some artists rush too quickly to practical
measures (Boetzkes, 2013), without first developing a broad perspective
of the socio-political context, to which Guattari’s ecosophy excels, or,
under-appreciate the value of diverse non-scientific knowings to deepen
their responses. Here, an action research methodology helps organise the
consecutive steps that develop an eco-social art practice.
Furthermore, acknowledging ‘many ways of knowing’ as valid (Fig. 60)

helps identify what new actions and practices are appropriate for the
complexity I encounter in Hollywood forest. I touch on all these ‘many
ways of knowing’ in The Hollywood Forest Story ebook Chapter 6.
Fig. 60. Action research helps identify the variety of valuable knowings that may be
ecountered in transversal practices.
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6.4.1 Action research identifies the primacy of ‘experiential

knowing’ for eco-social art practices
As I mention in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 63, I number the

‘many ways of knowing’ of action research Fig. 60 above to more easily
show the primacy of ‘experiential knowing’, and how each knowing
enriches the next. However, in my own and others’ action research
practices, various knowings often enrich other knowings simultaneously.
Nevertheless, it is important not to overlook ‘experiential knowing’ of-

this-particular-Hollywood-forest, as a primary (and an often revisited)
stage of The Hollywood Forest Story. Action research thus helps identify
how Guattari’s refrain operates when the Harrisons’ and my practice
continuously refer to an ecology of experience that relates to one forest,
but which can be extrapolated to similar forests elsewhere. In The
Hollywood Forest Story ebook Chapter 6, I discuss experiential knowing
as often overlooked, yet nevertheless vital to help frame alternative
forestry approaches. I explain:
experiential knowing is subjective. Experiential knowing is not

descriptive but of the senses. Experiential knowing aspires to be
pre-cultural: pre-language, pre-artistic, pre-scientific and pre-
political.
Experiential knowing, physically experiencing the forest,

particularly the active looking and listening that my camera and
sound recording equipment magnify, is a vital part of my work
(realising, however, that both human eyes and recording
equipment only convey a select range of phenomena).
Experiential knowings confront the abstract, the language and the

intellectual projects and representations we make of the Earth and
its human and nonhuman inhabitants. Encountering the
complexity that comprises Hollywood forest and other forests,
therefore, challenges normative cultural perceptions (how I and
others routinely ‘represent’ forests) and pre-conceptions (how our
thinking of nature may be limiting responsible relations to
nonhuman communities. (The Hollywood Forest Story eBook p.
64-65)
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I conclude, that in ignoring ‘experiential knowing’ there is a danger that
we lose access, literally, to the specific insights that individual forest
bioregions provide. Action research, therefore, can account for the
relational ‘experiential knowing’ that I gather from being in the forest,
being with the forest and how I intuit that my life, and that of all others,
depends upon thriving ecosystems. Grounded observations, I argue, will
enhance that the new creativity arising from respectful thinking and
actions toward the more-than-human will evolve appropriately in
effective eco-social art practices.
However, experiential knowing can be thought to be inaccessible and

difficult to share. Yet, action researchers Reason and Seeley (2008),
assert that we can create a ‘dialogue’ with ‘experiential knowing’
through artistic practices, which I discuss below.
6.4.2 Action research identifies how ‘artful knowing’

translates valuable ‘experiential knowings’ for eco-social art
practitioners, their collaborators and audiences

Transversal practices may not necessarily be art-led endeavours.
Organiser(s) of a transversal ecosophical endeavour, utilising an action
research framework, would understand the role and place of ‘artful
knowing’ and could employ art practitioners, or use their art skills, to fill
one crucial aspect of eco-social art practice.
‘Artful (presentational) knowing’ can be any artistic visual, sculptural,

literal, aural, movement practice that allows us to reflect on our
experience of life - our lifeworlds. Overlooked by many in a
sustainability context, art practices ‘translate’ the valuable experiences
we have of relating with care to a place. Indeed, Seeley and Reason
(2008) believe art has a fundamental if yet under-acknowledged role for
sustainability learning, which I will discuss further in this section.
279

Furthermore, Anderson (2005) 153 and Armstrong (Armstrong and
Jensen, 2014), are finding Indigenous traditional cultural works of the
natural world, not only had social bonding value, but held essential eco-
relational knowing that ensured their environments, and hence, their
peoples' survival.
The importance of understanding experiential and artful activity as

crucial method stages in action research, and thus eco-social art practice,
is further expanded in the developing field of environmental aesthetics,
when Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (2008) emphasise that aesthetic
engagement involves not just artful translation but recognition of the
embodied experiences on which they rest:
[a]esthetic appreciation of nature, at the level of forests and landscapes,

requires embodied participation, immersion and struggle. We initially
may think of forests as scenery to be looked upon. That is a mistake. A
forest is entered, not viewed. It is doubtful that one can experience a
forest from a roadside pullover, any more than on television […] You do
not really engage a forest until you are within it […] In the forest itself,
there is no scenery. (Fisher cited by Carlson & Lintott, 2008, p. 13)
As discussed earlier, and in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook p.66, I

attempt to artfully translate experiences of Hollywood forest through
creating short video essays, and by taking photographs of how
Hollywood forest is changing (including images of the activities,
foresters and visitors that contribute to transforming Hollywood forest),
for my blog. The videos, in particular, offer engaging short snapshots of
life in Hollywood forest and translate the experiences of continuous
cover forestry management for my followers.
Using video and photographs frequently on my blog has helped me

engage people, within and beyond forestry circles, for a little known but

153
M. Kat Anderson’s ‘Coda: Indigenous Wisdom in the Modern World’ (pp. 358-364)
concluding her book Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the
Management of California’s Natural Resources’, is an important summary of how
Indigenous cultural practices sustained their environments and their communities.
280

essential forestry development, continuous cover forestry, that has broad
implications for improving Ireland’s natural heritage, but which also
speaks to how modern society can move away from industrial forestry,
globally.
My development of video essays to more effectively translate

experiential in-the-forest knowledge has benefitted from my examination
of ecocriticism, an emergent field of enquiry that has recently explored
the limitations of nature documentary, and explored the potential of
experimental nature cinema (see The Hollywood Forest Story eBook pp.
68-70).
The Harrisons similarly employ ‘artful knowing’ to translate their own

and others’ experiential forest encounters, for themselves, their
collaborators and to audiences of The Serpentine Lattice. ‘Artful
knowing’ develops when the Harrisons direct the creation of visual
inventories of the forest: through numerous forest scientists’
photographs, drawings, and paintings (ibid.), and then later when they
compose maps and an audio dialogue for a slide-show that combines the
comments of diverse participants, who live across the forest region (Fig.
61).
In eco-social art practice, ‘artful knowing’ is persuasive because it is

subjective, undeniably emotive and hence, engages audiences’ hearts as
well as their minds, and thus parallels Lakoff, Dean Moore and others’
views who argue that art has a key role in evolving societal sustainability
(Chapter 1). The social power of ‘artful knowing’ is further revealed in
Goto-Collins’ (2012) research, in which she describes her and Tim
Collins’ first encounter with the Harrisons’ work in 1993, which was The
Serpentine Lattice:
When we entered the gallery, it was slightly dark and filled with the
sounds of multiple slide projectors automatically circulating slide
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carousels, each holding hundreds of pictures of the redwood forest, its
current condition and the practice of clear-cutting (Figure 5). The gallery
space was also filled by an enormous west coast map that occupied one
side of the gallery wall (Figure 6). While we were reading the tragic
prologue and narrative, we noticed a young woman, perhaps a college
student. She came in and sat down on a bench in the middle of the
gallery. Then, all of a sudden, she started weeping then sobbing and
crying quite loudly. The woman’s emotional reaction seemed to be an
appropriate response to the installation. We decided to give her privacy.
We walked away a bit stunned and speechless. On the way back we
drove through the forests – the actual areas of The Serpentine Lattice.
Clear-cut was not obvious from the highway, but repeated glimpses
beyond the ridgeline provided a sense that the fragmentation of the forest
was happening everywhere. We talked about the Northern Spotted Owl
identified as an endangered species in the late 80s. The potential loss of
this creature opened up questions about the impact of forest industry
management and practice for public discussion. (Goto-Collins, 2012,
p.63)
Fig. 61. Figures 5 and 6 of The Serpentine Lattice referred to in Goto Collins’ research
(Goto Collins, 2012, p. 63)
Thus, an action research framework identifies how ‘artful knowing’ is

much more than documentation and illustration for eco-social art
282

practices. Barry Percy-Smith and Clare Carney (2011) in analysing an
urban redesign project, argue that artistic practices in action research
‘encourage people to see things differently, encourage questioning and
the imagination of possible futures and offer opportunities for
participation as active citizens through self-expression.’ (p. 4) Quoting
Broussine (2008), they determine that an action research methodology is
engagingly expansive as it can convey the: ‘rational or analytical but can
also uncover subconscious emotions, and the political, processual and
social texture of lifeworlds. Visual media facilitate ‘knowing’ holistically
and viscerally without losing the richness and complexity of the
experience.’ (ibid. p. 7)
Other recent analyses of action research for sustainability, already

promoted in non-art organisational education contexts (Seeley and
Reason 2008; Seeley 2011a,b; 2012; Seeley and Thornhill, 2014),
confirm further that artistic processes are an essential activity, if still
under-acknowledged means to engage broad audiences in new life-
sustaining ideas and practices. Seeley (2011b) therefore advocates that
artists engaged with ecological concerns explore action research because:
[t]hat which we call ‘art’ is one way we can break away from the
destructive norms of the Industrial Growth Society, and that which
we call ‘action research’ is the research attitude needed for a more
sustainable future. Together they make a kind of guide for living
with curiosity, respect, meaning and gratitude. (p. 97)
More recently, Seeley (2014) similarly observes that action research

goals direct art activity to translate or evoke deep sustainability
understandings, rather than produce attractive ‘green nature’ images,
such as those that are ubiquitously employed by corporate advertising
agencies. (p. 4) Thus, she argues that the aim of art in action research, of
which eco-social art practice is an example, negates claims that art in this
context is used to green-wash unsustainable corporate activities. (ibid.)
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Indeed, the Harrisons intuit that The Serpentine Lattice was a
metaphorical, artistic petition and envisioning practice for an ecological
worldview when they reflect:
[t]he artwork does not illustrate the ideas but helps us to understand
the opportunities and constraints that occur at this scope and scale:
watershed lattice/ecological scale and international forms/local
community. The map drawing also visualises the metaphor that
embraces both watershed experience and understanding. (Harrisons
cited in Goto-Collins, 2012, p. 72)
As discussed (Chapter 3), Goto-Collins (2012) further explain how the

Harrisons now see a critical part of their endeavours as creating artistic
generative metaphors to ‘flip’ normative ideas of how ecosystems were
presently perceived (ibid., p. 73). She argues from this understanding that
the Harrisons utilise artistic knowing in their practice when they create
engaging ‘eco-poetics, a new vision and metaphorical understanding of
sustainable ecological culture and landscape’ (ibid.).
However, Seeley (2011b) reminds us that action research, which

juxtaposes ‘artful knowing’ with other knowledge-creating activities, is
demanding of its audiences (p. 93). Even so, Seeley cites Romano, who
develops multi-genre education in literature (ibid.), to draw comparisons
that artful translation of lifeworld experiences in action research, can
powerfully weave the diverse constituents of a multi-genre project
together so that they convincingly ‘hang together’ (ibid.) and thus more
readily appeal to audiences.
This observation allows us to reflect further on the artfulness of the

practices examined here. For example, Green (2001), reviewing the
Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice, writes of the extreme demands that such
composite works made on the viewer’s patience and time (which I
mentioned previously in Chapter 5.2.4). However, he considers that their
production compensates this as an almost cinematic spectacle—the
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Harrisons arranging the exhibition space with an audio-visual slideshow
and other cultural artefacts, such as maps and other models, as a liminal
installation experience (p. 116). Also, I reflect that a common tool likely
to be used by contemporary artists to document these complex practices
in-situ is visual journaling. Seeley also stresses the importance of visual
journaling in action research ‘as a kind of self-provocation and sense-
making for the action researcher.’ (ibid. p. 90, emphasis in original)
As discussed, my blog practice ‘journals’ my method and narrates my

practice (with recurring images, films), and serves as an independent
means to disseminate my findings online and in the forest via the eBook
(see Chapter 2.7.1), while accommodating a public, reflective interactive
dimension.
Importantly, and echoing Lakoff (2010), Dean Moore (2014) and others
(Chapter 1), Seeley (2008) is ambitious for artists to play a critical role in
how action research is valued. She argues that artful practice, in action
research, is a crucial means for artistic practices to be recognised and
valued beyond the art world in the emergent sustainability sector. Citing
Heron (1992), she argues:
[i]f we agree that presentational [artful] symbolism is indeed a mode

of knowing, then we can no longer conveniently distance ourselves
from its use by delegating it to the artistic community. We need to
bring it right back into the mainstream knowledge quest. (p. 4)
Seeley, however, recognises that art remains a low priority in current

educational agendas and sustainability circles. This situation is indeed
replicated in Ireland, as efforts continue to overcome the poor
understanding of the value of art practice, and visual arts in particular, for
285

advancing education and broader society. 154 Seeley recounts that in
conventional Western education and research:
experience and expression pull towards each other and yet the link is
severed again and again as art subjects get dropped at school and
people tell themselves they can’t draw, paint, sing, act. Propositional
(theoretical) knowing then emerges as the most valuable
“commodity”. (p. 17)
Artful practices for sustainability contexts are likely to be ignored in the

foreseeable future in favour of theoretical-scientific knowledge.
However, Seeley (2008b) signals that ‘artful knowing’ is nevertheless an
essential value-making response to living in a changing, complex world
and she goes further to consider that; ‘[…] I am most deeply interested in
these practices forming parts of an overall art of living.’ (p. 15) As
previously discussed, Hroch (2013, 2014), Demos (2016) and Seeley
(2008b), in their different contexts, understand that transversal
practitioners regularly convey in their practices, a means of ‘living well’
for themselves and others. Through my practice, and with the lens of
action research, I similarly understand that the Harrisons and myself, are
ultimately sharing practices of ‘living well’ with forests, as part of
contributing to a necessary and urgent ecological paradigm.
Overall, I consider that action research adds clarity to why and how the
Harrisons and my ‘artful knowing’ operate. Action research signals the
important if under-acknowledged value of art activities to translate
crucial experiential knowing of our environments for increased
sustainability understanding. Accordingly, I argue an action research
approach matters, because it comprehensively dispels the mystification
and confusion that surrounds eco-social art practice methods that
comprise art activities.

154
This is despite general recognition that a cultural ‘Celtic Revival’, in theatre, writing,
visual arts, music and Gaelic sports, contributed significantly to the identity and the
formation of an independent Irish republic in the early 20th century.
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6.4.3 Action research identifies that a ‘propositional knowing’

stage fosters ecosophical thinking
The ‘propositional (theoretical) knowing’ stage of action research

usefully identifies why much of the Harrisons’ work, including The
Serpentine Lattice, and my work, in which extractive industrial practices
have caused ecological disruption, result in ‘new proposal[s] to large
eco-social systems at risk’ (Harrisons, 2007, p. 1). Goto Collins (2012)
describes the three main policies that arose from the Harrisons’
Serpentine Lattice:
1) to develop commercial restoration to complement the

preservation of old growth forests;
2) to develop policy to extend the continuity of forests by linking

watersheds for biodiversity, and
3) to propose, as an eco-security system, the Gross National

Ecosystem as alternative to the US Gross National Products
(GNP) index (p. 71).
The Harrisons submitted the eco-security system policy idea to the US

White House in the early 1990s, decades before ideas of managing whole
bioregions were commonly understood. Thus, action research would
seem to account for Fox and Alldred’s (2014) new materialist discussions
of how human-nonhuman research assemblages ‘turn an event into
‘knowledge’ or policy.’ (ibid. p. 411)
In my practice for The Hollywood Forest Story, new ‘propositional

knowings’ develop from exploring theory from various disciplines in my
blog essay writing: for example, my artistic practice benefits from
ecocriticism and ecofeminism; ecocritical theory helps me to identify the
danger of cultural representations that assert an erroneous division
between human and nonhumans and which ignore an inherent human
supremacism, and ecofeminism, drawing on third-wave feminism
naming of gender violence, accounts for the need to similarly name
similar ecocidal violence to ecosystems as a first step to overcome it;
287

deep ecology and environmental philosophy advance my ecoforestry,
forest policy and environmental, ethical knowings; the emergent field of
eco jurisprudence has made me aware of new laws developing against
ecocide; deep green theory helps me to understand the violence of
industrial capitalism and the destructiveness of the Western worldview;
and systems thinking helps me understand the limitations of linear
thinking for eco-social endeavours.
Thus, action research serves to highlight a critical methodological stage

of eco-social art practice, in that it must seek new thinking among other
activities. As Guattari and others advocate, the necessity of developing a
new ‘mental ecology’ to identify both the fundamental causes of the
environmental crisis and new ways to foster actions to overcome them, is
vital. Propositional knowing in this context helps break through
normalised yet erroneous ideas of our natural environments that have
accrued over many centuries, and which have been a key factor in
propelling Western industrial society’s planetary emergencies.
However, some in the art and ecology field or contemporary art criticism
might query the ‘propositional’ directions taken by some practitioners,
such as those of the Harrisons and indeed my own. But, if the general
aim of eco-social art practice is to advance life-sustaining knowings, as
Gablik (2009), Kagan (2011), Weintraub (2012), Boettger (2013, 2016)
and Demos (2016) assert (and as advanced via a reading of Guattari’s
ecosophy in the previous Chapter), the recognition of how new policy
activities consistently develop from transversal activity is crucial. An
action research approach thus explains what Fox and Alldred (2014)
observe in new materialist human-nonhuman research projects for social
change, that resemble eco-social art practice; that they are ‘reflexive,
recursive and rhyzomic, drawing research audiences into the research
assemblage to contribute their own affects and capacities to its affective
economy and micro politics.’ (p. 410)
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6.4.4. Action research’s ‘participation and democracy’ reveals

the inclusive nature and social skill required for effective
Good quality action research is concerned with human (and more-

than-human) ‘flourishing’ (Reason & Bradbury, 2008, p. 4),
incorporating many ways to knowing.
Chris Seeley (2011b), ‘Unchartered Territory: Imagining a

Stronger Relationship Between Art and Action Research’, p. 84.
A ‘participation and democracy’ stage is a critical juncture in action

research. Action research, I argue, reveals that The Serpentine Lattice
and The Hollywood Forest Story, as is common to other eco-social art
practices (Chapter 1), co-evolve an inclusive ‘participation and
democracy’ between themselves, their collaborators and, at times, their
audiences. Therefore, the action research mode of the eco-social art
practice framework usefully alerts practitioners to the value of giving
agency (or ‘voice’) to contributors involved in their practices or
situations. It provides insight into how we foster this plurality as a
methodological priority: notably, in the way we welcome dialogue with
non-art collaborators and audience participants.
In The Serpentine Lattice, the Harrisons’ skilfully wove responses from

fifty participants, including ecologists, forestry experts and
environmental organisations (Goto-Collins, 2012, p. 144), to create two
stunning poetic narratives that question the sociopathy of industrial
clearfell forestry. They incorporated many others’ perspectives to
‘examine the information, conversations and different points of view
about the forest and its ecosystems’ (ibid. p. 63) comprehensively.
For The Hollywood Forest Story, I similarly maintain a dialogue with

leading continuous cover forestry professionals in Ireland and Europe,
through my volunteering on the committee of Pro Silva Ireland, since
289

2009 (and I have earlier broadleaf forest knowledge from Crann, a forest
NGO, whom I worked for when I first arrived in Ireland, in 1995). I also
actively maintain links to Irish Green Party policy developers. I reach out
to forest ecologist and forest researchers and sometimes invite them to
visit Hollywood forest, although I notice that requests to visit ‘the little
wood that could’ are increasing without my seeking them. Developing
this way of working with others, as an action research methodology
stresses, enables me to ‘learn, and develop genuinely innovative
communities of practice.’ (Reason, et. al., 2009)
Action research is therefore useful because, in contrast to much of

scientific inquiry, it seeks to acknowledge the different participants in
research democratically. I further argue that the action research mode of
my proposed framework is a necessary means to identify where agency
and power lie in traditional research, and hence the reason why
transversal projects, as Guattari observed, abandon disciplinary
hierarchies. Action research also accounts for why experiential, aesthetic,
theoretical and practical and local knowings are valued with scientific
knowledge, and so relate to the complexity of emergent eco-social
realities more adequately (Reason and Canney, 2015). The Harrisons and
I, for example, skilfully draw together perspectives from diverse non-
scientific and scientific stakeholders for The Serpentine Lattice and The
Hollywood Forest Story, to reimagine forest sustainability for
themselves, their collaborators and their audiences.
Correspondingly, I have found action research a useful framework to

reflect on the limitations of interdisciplinary endeavours and the uneven
power dynamics155 involved when working between art and non-art

155
My experience with interdisciplinary art-science projects (2001-5) is they impart
valuable understandings of science and art, but they are not comparable to transversal
endeavours that utilise the arts, humanities, sciences and other ways of knowing to
effect eco-social change. I argue artists in interdisciplinary work are often less powerful
in how such projects develop, compared to their scientific collaborators. For example,
during an Irish Arts Council Residency in Trinity College Dublin’s Zoology
Department (2005) it was difficult to first recognise, and then circumnavigate unequal
290

domains. Unequal dynamics arising when creative practitioners are not
seen as equal partners in the development of transversal or
transdisciplinary research is indicative of the generally accepted
‘illustrative’ role that the arts are relegated to when compared to
scientific study. 156 As discussed earlier (Chapter 1.4.4), I argue
interdisciplinary work more often results in limited critiques of other
domains’ ideologies (and their representations of such). It rarely offers a
meaningful exchange, let alone action or new policy toward attending
urgent eco-social concerns. Artists working in science domains, thus
require an astute awareness that their workings may inadvertently
normalise or promote controversial practices (such as GM foods).
Co-producing knowledge with nonhuman agents
Also, through my living in Hollywood forest, my permanent residency-

in-a-forest actively fosters sensitivity to, and awareness of, the
interdependence between many diverse nonhuman communities that both
form, and depend on the forest, including myself.
Attention to more-than-human intrinsic values corresponds with Seeley

(2011), who argues that action research is not only about greater equity
in recognising different ways of knowing, but it is also a system to raise
awareness of ‘what gets noticed and valued—what gets on the agenda
and what gets taken seriously, by whom.’ (p. 2) As ‘Rights of Nature’
and ecocide law were increasingly discussed in international circles in
2015 ahead of the UN Climate Summit in Paris (Wijdekop, 2015), an
action research mode that accounts for more-than-human participation
would appear valuable to characterise practices that are responding to

power dynamics. Here I refer to the significant resources at science’s disposal compared
to those available for my short-term, modestly funded three-month art residency.
156
However, I do note the significant programmes undertaken by the UK Wellcome
Trust that have advanced valuable art-biomedical science partnership projects since
2006. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Public-engagement/Funding-schemes/arts-
awards/ [accessed 10 Nov 2014].
291

this significant cultural shift.
The emphasis in more-than-human participatory action research to

consider all agents, human and nonhuman, that comprises a functioning
and thriving bioregion, is critical for a life-sustaining paradigm. That
said, how does one represent the voice of the nonhuman in the context of
a social enquiry? The precedent provided by the Whanganui River
Agreement (2012) in Aotearoa-New Zealand’s landmark legal ruling
might be of use. This ruling conferred legal personality of this river and
its riverbeds as organised by Maori iwi (tribes) and residents, to
recognise the rights of the Whanganui River and its riverbed. 157 One
might also look to eco-philosopher and workshop developer Joanna
Macy’s ‘Council of All Beings’ workshop ideas to explore how we can
creatively and respectfully ‘speak on behalf of another life-form.’ 158
(Seed, et. al., 2007)
The Harrisons consistently use poetry to suggest non-human

perspectives–in comparison; few eco-social art practices designate a
voice for the nonhuman (Chapter 1). I would suggest that a general fear
of being accused of anthropomorphism lies behind many practitioners’
reluctances to give ‘voice’ to the nonhuman. Plumwood (2009) speaks of
how anthropomorphism is tricky, and she asserts that accusations of
anthropomorphism police the reductive materialism promoted by
scientific perspectives; in this way, she argues that charges of
anthropomorphism are often used ‘to bully people out of thinking
differently’ toward the nonhuman (ibid..). Plumwood, therefore, urges
readers to reconsider anthropomorphism as having the potential to confer
agency and creativity on the nonhuman and relates that Indigenous tribes
with developed anthropomorphic cultural beliefs and stories often have

157
The Whanganui River Agreement - Tūtohu Whakatupua, 30 August 2012
https://www.govt.nz/treaty-settlement-documents/whanganui-iwi/. Also see my blog
http:// hollywoodforest.com/2012/09/13/the-whanganui-river-is-the-guide-and-leader/.
158
See http://www.joannamacy.net/resources/deepecology/111-joanna-macy-council-of-
all-beings-july2002.html [Accessed 18 Oct, 2015].
292

thriving habitats (ibid..). Also, Heise’s aligned concept of the eco-
cosmopolitan (2008) and Alaimo’s (2010) ethic of trans-corporeality may
seem anthropocentric, yet ‘ultimately the ostensible center is extended
through multiple networks.’ (p.16)
Similarly, in The Future of Ecocriticism, Schultz (2011) also gives a

detailed review of why, despite objections from many disciplines,
including ecocriticism, anthropomorphism should be re-examined
positively in an ecological context (pp. 100-101). I have become
sensitive to these debates in my filmmaking practice. Although a modest
step, I largely stopped narrating my later (post-2011) video works with
my human voice and let the sounds of the forest inhabitants speak instead
(see the Introductory video of nonhuman ‘voices’ from Hollywood forest
‘speaking’ of its transformation that opens The Hollywood Forest Story
eBook). I do this to acknowledge the agency of Hollywood as the co-
creator of its transformation, and this research (see The Hollywood
Forest Story eBook, p.10).
Interestingly, as multiple challenges to human supremacism are being

advanced in environmental ethics, deep ecology, deep green thinking,
systems theory, ecofeminism, animal and vegetal studies and eco-
jurisprudence, this is prompting researchers and myself to consider how
participative social enquiry might be co-designed and co-produced with,
and for, nonhuman others. Recognising nonhuman ‘partnership’ is the
premise of the UK AHRC ‘More-than-Human Participatory Research
project’, begun and led by Bastian et al. 2013.159 Leading action
researchers are also beginning to consider more-than-human perspectives

159
See the More-than-Human Participatory Research blog
http://www.morethanhumanresearch.com/; I presented my work at the 2014 More-than-
Human Participatory Research seminar at the International Geography Conference in
London, August 26-29, 2014. Also, M. Bastian, O. Jones, E. Roe, & M. Buser (eds.),
Ecologies of Participation: Coproducing Knowledge in More-Than-Human Worlds
(2016) London: Routledge and Fox and Alldred’s (2014) new materialist methodology
research correlates with these advances.
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(Reason and Canning, 2015).
In other words, the new appreciation of action research for an ecological

context is used to account for why transversal eco-social art assemblages
de-privilege human agency. Following Fox and Alldred’s (2014)
research of such assemblages, one could argue the Harrisons, mine and
the other multi-constituent practices (Chapter 1) are examples of how we
may operate effectively within a new materialist ontology. Moreover,
action research is a means that recognises materialities and subjectivities,
to overcome the errors of binary and hierarchical thinking160, the inherent
shortcomings in how we presently view the living world. Overall, action
research is a clear means to simplify understanding of the mechanisms of
these new materialist practices.
Action research, therefore, defines the manner in which eco-social art

practices are particularly contributing in pioneering ways for a new
ecological paradigm with human and nonhuman others.
Using action research to identify social and mutuality skills

necessary for eco-social art practice
In this section, I will discuss how action research conveys to transversal

practitioners and their educators, that developing social competencies
fosters respectful collaborative working relationships, with others from
non-art domains. Furthermore, I analyse social, relational skills for eco-
social art practice with new understandings of mutuality.
It is essential to appreciate that the social skills required in eco-social art

practice are markedly different from more regular forms of art training
delivered in higher-level education. Conversely, if these social skills are

160
See Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin (2012) New Materialism: Interviews &
Cartographies. University of Michigan Library: Open Humanities Press.
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not fostered, notwithstanding the need to also develop art skills and
ecoliteracy, this may explain the slow adoption of eco-social art practices
in contemporary art education and practice. As discussed, the observation
that effective eco-social art practitioners require developed social skills,
informs why I prefer to call ecological art practice, ‘eco-social art
practice’.
Framing an eco-social art practice via an action research mode identifies

the social components in a pathway of essential activities. Accordingly, I
would suggest that the application of action research is invaluable in
identifying the social skills required in initiating and sustaining eco-
social art practices in the long term. Reason et al. (2009) describe the
relational, intra-personal, facilitation and even story-telling skills needed
by researchers to sustain activities with people from different disciplines
and work spheres (ibid.. pp. 11-12), which correlates with the Harrisons
and my own view that eco-social art practices are essentially story-telling
exercises for sustainable futures (Chapter 3.3.2).
Eco-social art practices, because they invite collaboration and

participation, represent a radical shift from individual to expanded
authorship. They thus challenge the modernist concept of the individual,
gifted artist and equally their way of characteristically working alone
(and similar to social practice, eco-social art practice challenges the
traditional supports for individual artists, but this is beyond the scope of
this study). Tim Collins observing artists trained in modernism rather
than relationality prioritise their ‘unique difference’, and this is
reinforced by ‘the notion of copyright that validates modernist
authorship.’ (Collins, 2004) Rosi Lister161 (2003) notes concerns of new
eco-social art practices that routinely involve collaborators, in that ‘not
every artist would wish to work […] without authorship, and [be]
immersed in a highly unpredictable setting.’ She warns of public
environmental art processes ‘when artists cannot cope with the mitigation

161
Former UK environmental arts lecturer and public art consultant.
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of private authorship and acclaim’ and, if eco-literacy levels remain poor,
it would be expected that such views would remain commonplace (ibid.).
As I embody and welcome contrasting ways of knowing the world for

The Hollywood Forest Story, as I strive to integrate and develop them
still further, maintaining and sometimes seeking new contacts in forestry,
political, philosophical and legal networks, I argue that I progress skills
of mutuality162 rather than disciplinary prowess. I believe my skills of
mutuality developed in my previous background from working in teams
for science research rather than at Art College, wherein fine art there was
an emphasis on individual creativity.
I argue accordingly that developed skills of mutuality are evident when

the Harrisons remark in an interview about how they found meeting new
collaborators in 2008:
Helen Harrison: “We got along very well.”

Newton Harrison: “We really liked them. You cannot work [in this way]
unless you really like folk.” (Goto Collins, 2012, p. 145)
Interestingly, from their decades of experience, the Harrisons find their

projects lose momentum if they are not personally involved, which
appears to signal that the Harrisons’ developed skills of mutuality are
critical:
Newton Harrison: “Yes. If you want to know a real problem with our
work, or the problem with our work, is, if you can accept that there is a
reasonably powerful visual statement in that gallery and that the texts are
lucid—but, if you add us, the whole work gets better, or stronger, or
more understandable; and if you subtract us, the whole work gets less
accessible. We do not seem to be able to get around it. We had forty

162
To understand mutuality see TED speaker and author Kare Anderson’s book
Mutuality Matters: How You Can Create More Opportunity, Adventure & Friendship
With Others (2014). Kindle Edition with Audio/Video: Substantium.
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years trying to get around this damn thing.” (Goto Collins, 2012, p. 154)
I argue that it is a skill of mutuality that supports the social enquiry that
is transversality. It is a skill, for instance, which the Harrisons may not
realise they cultivate when they interweave diverse subjectivities and
lifeworld experience from the numerous participants they welcome to
their projects. Yet we must also, in the context and ubiquity of social
media, qualify this mutuality further. Brunner et al. (2013) demonstrate
that art-activists using social media in the Occupy Movement composed
what Guattari called a ‘virtual ecology’. Social operations in such
movements are ‘not just inter-human relations but an entire unfolding of
multiple ecological layers and their mutual entanglement […] giving
shape to singular productions of subjectivity’ (p. 15). Brunner et al.
(2013) conclude from their experience of social media and human
operations, that Guattari is right about there being three interconnected
ecologies: ‘ecology cannot but be mental and social, since it involves the
reinvention of new ways of being with the world and new forms of
sociability.’ (p. 16, emphasis in original)
As a necessary social skill for transversal eco-social art practice,

mutuality within virtual, social and material ecologies, describes my
cultivation of lifeworld exchanges between art and non-art domains.
Instead of a transdisciplinary approach as Kagan (2011), Weintraub,
(2012) and others have proposed (Chapter 3), mutuality supersedes my
initial thinking of how my and others' practices progress. Indeed,
although not often discussed, mutuality is critical for life–it is a
significant process within thriving forests, for example, in the developing
understandings of the vital nutrient exchange between fungi and trees.163
To be armed with Guattari’s transversality concept and activated with

163
See mycologist Paul Statmet’s Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save
the World (2005) Berkeley: Ten Speed Press and forest mycologist Suzanne Simard’s
extensive peer-reviewed forest mycology research
http://profiles.forestry.ubc.ca/person/suzanne-simard/.
297

mutuality skills that an action research social enquiry methodology
emphasises, adds significant understanding of how and why diverse
knowledge and the lifeworld experiences accumulated in The Serpentine
Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story, gives rise, in creative
symbiosis, to new values and agency for ourselves and others. From
transversal exchanges, an action research methodology clarifies how we
subjectively translate and mobilise ‘many ways of knowing’ through the
refrains of our eco-social art practices, to our audiences. An action
research approach articulates Genosko’s (2009) observations that
Guattari’s transversal subjectivity is ‘relational, subsuming both
autonomous affects of the pre-personal and pre-verbal world, and
multitudinous social constructions.’
In the case studies selected, highly developed skills of mutuality and

organisation, in addition to the aesthetic, scientific and political skills that
such practices may involve, are evident. Overall, action research
foregrounds ‘participation and democracy’ and ‘communicative spaces’
to foster new dialogues that are an essential aspect of social change.
6.4.5 Action research emphasises the critical dialogical

outcomes of eco-social art practice
Action research’s essential value is how it identifies that a critical

outcome of participatory social enquiry is that fosters an emergent,
inclusive ‘communicative space’ for new learning. The ‘communicative
space’ correlates with the Harrisons’ conclusions that the ‘conversational
drift’, the change in an audience’s conversation about an eco-social
concern, is the most valuable outcome of their decades’ eco-social art
practice work (Harrisons, 2016). Thus, action research complements
Guattari’s ecosophy that new dialogue enhanced with social media is
where the social power of these practices resides.
298

The Harrisons were prescient in their level of critical awareness of how
‘conversational drift’ (Adcock, 1992), their public dialogues to foster
changes in audiences perspectives held during the exhibition of their
work arose.164 They are aware that such activity, if supported by other
method stages of art and non-art activities (that action research clarifies),
has enormous potential to encourage participants and viewers of their
Serpentine Lattice and other works, to reframe and visualise previously
unthought-of restorative eco-social actions. Boettger (2016) sees such
practitioners’ value as becoming ‘avant guardians [who] employ new
strategies to change the conversation’ (p. 672) toward more life-
sustaining directions. Percy-Smith and Carney (2011) rethink the
communicative space that results from artful action research as ‘“a
creative action space”—an alternative experience that can activate a
creative process in the onlooker as they start to imagine different
possibilities for their environments.’ (p. 20)
In The Hollywood Forest Story eBook Chapter 8, I discuss the different

outcomes of the work: the values of ‘staying put, and listening in’, its
contribution to newly published forest research in Ireland, and how my
practice developed my filmmaking to create engaging online experiences
of Hollywood forest. But undoubtedly, the most critical outcomes of The
Hollywood Forest Story are my attempts at ‘changing the social’; the
dialogues I entered into with others, foresters, forest policymakers and
legal professionals, in learning about alternative forestry management
and new law that is developing to prevent the crime of ecocide (The
Hollywood Forest Story, Chapter 8, pp. 85-87). (Fig. 62)

164
Irit Rogoff (2008) cites in a discussion forum at Documenta X (1997) ‘that the
notion of “conversation” [is] the most significant shift within the art world over the
past decade.’ http://www.e-flux.com/journal/turning/. [Accessed 12 November 2014].
299

Fig 62. Outcomes. The Hollywood Forest Storyebook, p. 80-81.
However, perhaps criticism of my and the Harrisons work in this respect,

is that capturing these dialogues are not foregrounded in our practices, to
which an adopting an action research metholdology might address.
Furthermore, in my experience, these dialogues are intermittent and
develop through a process of trust between myself, and my non-art
collaborators. In my practice today, I don’t announce or seek formal
collaborations as I once did in previous art-science collaborations. More
often, I direct conversations with foresters, ecologists, legal
professionals, and politicians, to ideas and questions that concern me, as
and when I have the opportunity to discuss them. Developing trusted
working relationships with professional foresters, law lecturers and
Green Party politicians has evolved over many years when I contribute to
both Pro Silva Ireland, (and before that, Crann) and the Green Party of
Ireland and Northern Ireland, as an active member of these organisations.
Echoing Guattari’s ecosophy, I now rarely bracket my art practice apart
from enviro-socio-political concerns. Also notable, will be to continue
cultivating conversations in Hollywood forest itself, and when the
opportunity arises, in other suitable arenas that invite progressive eco-
social public discourse. However, as discussed, a critical ongoing and
always open conversation from The Hollywood Forest Story is enabled
through my blogging practice.
Biggs (2014a) also describes that communities of arts practitioners

advocating transversal actions ‘avoid compartmentalised self-
300

identification, and […] identify themselves as undertaking work in
complex and hybrid contexts that cross the usual distinctions between the
personal and the public, the professional and the lay.’ (p. 85) Biggs
comments that this results in practitioners ‘being willing to accept and
work with the inadequacy of their means and to learn from this, with, and
for others.’ (ibid. p. 84) After eight-years, I feel this inadequacy less
often with my dealings with professionals with others spheres;
strengthening confidence in pursuing such interactions develops as The
Hollywood Forest Story and this research advances.
Moreover, from James Leach’s (2011) critique of arts research and

education, Biggs (2014b) also observes that ‘possessive individualism’
[which is a feature of modernist art practice education that I discuss
previously] limits one to the ‘dominant secular belief in our culture, one
that requires us to take as given that individuality, creativity and
originality as something exclusive to, and wholly owned by, a unique and
monolithic self’ (p. 932 of 942). Possessive individualism's endgame is
that it ignores humanity's ecological dependency, and as mentioned, it
overshadows growing numbers of innovative doctoral art practice
researchers who are negotiating complex transversal endeavours (p. 561),
including myself (Biggs, 2014c, p. 163).
Relevant to re-thinking eco-social art practice, Arendt’s thinking stresses

that meaningful action for change becomes ‘relevant only through the
spoken word’ of individuals (ibid. p. 179) Arendt explains ‘no other
human performance requires speech to the same extent as action’ (ibid.)
and argues that:
[w]ithout the disclosure of the agent in the act, action loses its specific
character and becomes one form of achievement among others. It is then
no less a means to an end than making a means to produce an object […]
Action without a name, a "who" attached to it is meaningless […] [sic.]
(ibid. p. 180)
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Furthermore, Arendt writing in the late 1950s explains that ‘action and
speech need the surrounding presence of others, no less than fabrication
needs the surrounding presence of nature for its material, and of a world
in which to place the finished product.’ (ibid. p. 188) As discussed above,
an eco-social art practice’s key value is its potential to generate valuable
‘conversational drift’ and communicative spaces for transformative eco-
social learning.
Writing before the advance of the Internet, Arendt identified theatre as

the exemplary form to embody the politics of action (ibid. p. 181; 188)
but informed by Guattari’s later works, I explore the value of new social
media technologies to share ‘knowledge artefacts’165 of new actions to a
web of audiences.166 As discussed, social media provides a powerful
place in which to share new actions, and Ihlein (2014) argues blogging
has particular potential as an art practice research method to develop an
‘ethic of engagement’ to communities and environments undergoing eco-
social transformation (p. 40).
In summary, I propose that applying the five dimensions of action

research both identifies and orders the main method stages involved in
the multifaceted Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story.
Action research, I argue, contrasts with the limited availability of
practitioners’ observations of their methodologies, which often appear

165
Term from O’Donnell’s (2006) research on the value of blogging as a new form of
communicative pedagogy. He argues blogging enables simultaneous personal and
societal learning.
166
Dr. Emma Nicoletti, personal communication (March 2014), views my practice, and
its online digital dimension as embodying some of the concerns in Guattari’s last article
‘Remaking Social Practices’ (Guattari, 1992). She writes: ‘Speaking to Guattari’s hopes
for technology as a catalyst for subjective change: Guattari expresses hope that the
adoption of non-centralised broadcast technologies (a current example being the internet
whose development was only in its infancy when Guattari was writing) will see ‘[t]he
current equation (media=passivity) […] disappear’ as it will ‘introduce new possibilities
for interaction between the medium and its user, and between users and themselves.’
(ibid. p. 263) Guattari qualifies what appears to engage technological determinism by
noting that ‘we cannot expect a miracle from these technologies: it will all depend,
ultimately, on the capacity of groups of people to take hold of them, and apply them to
appropriate ends.’ (ibid. p. 263)
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confusingly idiosyncratic, context-specific or under-analysed by either
practitioners or critics of their work. To this end, an action research mode
is particularly helpful for educational and peer-to-peer learning as it
encourages a common methodological language for different method
activities, and this, in turn, allows one to consider practices that can be
attended to, or further developed, in an ordered pathway of activity.
Action research is, therefore, helpful for identifying and developing best
practice and correspondingly, when I read others’ eco-social art practices
through an action research mode, it pinpoints method stages that I may
not have developed sufficiently, or at all, within my practice. For
example, the Harrisons practice of hosting public fora supported my
ideas of hosting talks with local communities, to which I extended the
idea of hosting talks within Hollywood forest itself in 2014, 2015.
The action research mode of the eco-social art practice framework,

therefore, becomes a critical tool to refine further my practice into the
future. It can accommodate the wide variety of activities, concerns, and
the discursive narrative form of prolonged eco-social art practice.
However, Pat Thomson (2015) notes reservations exist that action

research occupies the lowest position of contemporary methodologies for
the humanities. For example, she reports that some discount action
research because it does not produce the required ‘impactful’ outcomes
of scale for social change, which is often a priority in seeking research
funding. (ibid.) Thomson generalises that action research is valuable, but
asserts that it is limited to merely identifying ‘cycles of reflection and
action’. From her perspective, this reduces action research projects’
transferability to other contexts. (ibid.)
I agree in part with Thomson’s view, as I see eco-social art practice as

action research will perhaps only ever act and inform pockets of creative
resistance. Affecting change in communities, however, does not always
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require magnitudes of scale as Guattari proposes in his concept of
molecular revolutions (Chapter 5.3). For example, it is possible for
videos on social media, advanced by a diverse cultural expression, to
affect global conversations when they go ‘viral,’ as is reflected in
worldwide awareness of bee decline and marine plastic pollution.
In contrast to Thomson, I would propose that recognising the degree to

which action research offers criticality in its cycles of action and
reflection is vital for re-thinking outworn conventions and clarifying
critical stages of transversal projects in methodological detail. Moreover,
while every eco-social-practice is unique, I suggest the action research
approach is transferable and applicable: framing how we might better
relate to forests, oceans, rivers, peatlands, farming land, pollution and
how we might best involve communities’ knowledge and reflection.
Furthermore, applying action research for ecological challenges is

relatively recent. Reason and Canney’s important analysis of ‘Action
Research and Ecological Practice’ in the SAGE Handbook of Action
Research (2015) on threatened elephant conservation in Mali,167 confirms
action research’s value for community-wide understanding and more life-
sustaining proposals amid seemingly insurmountable eco-social
challenges.
Thus, the ecological turn is requiring an integrated methodology. While

not widely appreciated as yet for this context, action research as
discussed in the research above, and from application to the Harrisons’
and my practice, appears an appropriate and valuable approach.

167
See http://www.wild.org/blog/ and TEDx talk https://youtu.be/GjYt5uQPu8o.
Wild.org actively include artful practices in their action research wildlife and
community programes.
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6.5 Summary
In this chapter, I argue that action research as a well-proven methodology

with established terminology for social enquiry, significantly increases
my ability to articulate the critical method stages for The Serpentine
Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story with clarity and order.
I reflect that some may view an action research framework for creative
endeavours as prescriptive. From applying action research to my
practice, I argue that it does not inhibit spontaneity and serendipity. I
suggest my former science research experience where I worked alongside
others in teams has lessened my fear that I need to create and guard an
individual methodology. Instead, I prefer the clarity and understanding
that action research as a well-respected methodology offers for my
practice. At present, the case studies I examine deserve far greater
understanding and larger audiences to which I argue action research
would contribute.
Action research methodology identifies five critical repeating stages. I

argue action research is useful as one can employ it to determine these
stages, in a circle-of-action, within an ecosophical eco-social art practice;
from establishing their ‘worthwhile purposes’, and by identifying their
practical engagement challenges and how ecoliteracy and agency evolves
from ‘many ways of knowing’, democratic ‘participation’ and fostering
‘communication spaces’.
Like action researcher Reason’s advice that action research’s

‘worthwhile purpose’ depends on the quality of the queries pursued, I
discuss that Haley deepens understanding of how clear querying
statements similarly govern the the success of the Harrisons’ and my
practice. Despite The Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story
attending to differing complex and emergent situations, action research
305

identifies their aims and other critical stages, such as why they attend
‘practical challenges’ and embrace ‘many ways of knowing’.
Seeley and Reason’s postulation of ‘artful knowing’ as critical for

successful action research for sustainability, helps articulates the role of
art practice in eco-social art practice, especially for newcomers to the art
and ecology field. Seeley reveals that artful practices weave different
knowings in action research to engage audiences in what could be
otherwise viewed as difficult-to-present practices.
Action research is a significant contribution to the art and ecology field

when Seeley and others observe that transversal practices often relate to
the art of living in more life-sustaining ways. I argue that action research
offers a methodology for understanding sustainability as ‘living well’ for
all beings and thus correlates with Guattari’s and others’ interest in how
transversal practices can evolve life-sustaining cosmologies.
Seeley also argues for ‘visual journaling’ as an important ‘sense-making’

method practice in action research and I propose that my blogging
practice fulfils this role for my action research practice, with the
advantage that others can follow my actions and reflections as it
advances ‘in-situ’ in the forest. I argue these analyses are essential for the
art and ecology field when I observe that blogging is not developed in
more recent eco-social art practices I refer to in Chapter 1. At present,
gallery exhibition or catalogue publication designed to value discrete,
finished art objects negates critical ongoing stories of sustainability that
arise from transversal practices; in contrast, using social media can
develop audiences near and far, throughout the life of these prolonged
endeavours.
I also argue that action research, like Guattari’s ecosophy, attends to

lifeworld realities side-lined by scientific enquiry. Action research
identifies where power and agency reside in enquiries and works to value
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‘many ways of knowing’ as equal to scientific knowledge, as is evident
in the case studies selected. Action research, which values lifeworld
knowledge, also helps differentiate eco-social art practice apart from
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practices thus correlating with
Guattari’s transversality.
Application of the action research mode of the proposed framework for

an exemplary case study such as The Serpentine Lattice and my practice
offers substantial evidence that the eco-social art practice framework is
transferable to other contexts. Furthermore, action research is useful for
emphasising skills of mutuality as a prerequisite to initiating and
maintaining an eco-social art practice. I suggest for the art and ecology
field that interpersonal social dexterity is a vital if under-recognised skill
for developing and maintaining effective transversal practices.
Action research, in its ability to identify critical method stages in social

enquiry, allows for the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods
stages in transversal projects to be appraised. For example, action
research identifies why ‘propositional knowing’ as new policy developed
in the Harrisons’ and my practices, and correspondingly how it may be
developed further in Read’s, Winkler’s and O’Mahony’s practices
(Chapter 1). Thus, I argue action research is a critical tool for refining
aspects of my practice method for future endeavours.
Furthermore, action research clarifies why practices such as that of the
Harrisons’ and my own appear to operate within a new material ontology
that is, how they operate to contribute to an ecological paradigm.
I also explore some criticism of action research. Thomson (2015)

suggests that action research occupies the lower position of
methodologies in the humanities due to its inability to advance outcomes
of scale for social change and that it only offers reflexivity in cycles of
action and reflection. I disagree, as, like Guattari, I see value in practices
of resistance, in molecular revolutions, even if they do not include scales
307

of magnitude; for example, my modest practice has fostered my
advocacy for new national forest policy developments. In my view, the
reflexivity of action research is a strength for eco-social art practices as
demonstrated in its application for seemingly intractable eco-social
challenges in Mali (Reason and Canney, 2015).
Essential for the development of the art and ecology field, more-than-
human participatory action research recognises the importance of the
agency of others, and more recently, the more-than-human (Bastian, et
al., 2013). I conclude that the Harrisons presciently gave voice to the
nonhuman in their Serpentine Lattice through poetic dialogue. I suggest
that a fear of anthropomorphism may lie behind other eco-art
practitioners’ reluctance to give voice to the nonhuman. However, I
argue from Plumwood (2009) and others’ research that accusations of
anthropomorphism police the scientific worldview and serve to deny
nonhuman agency, while obscuring the fact that Indigenous
anthropomorphic cultural practices often reinforce more life-sustaining
practices.
Overall, action research is a comprehensive, well-documented

methodology for identifying diverse activities in a pathway of essential
activities and thus counters wasting time to develop a method intuitively.
I reflect from my practice experience that the lack of a standard
methodology slowed my practice development. I argue for the art and
ecology field, that a lack of standard methodology and terminology limits
education and peer-to-peer learning and thus, it hinders the development
of the field.
In conclusion, action research, as an overarching, non-prescriptive

method framework significantly articulates the understanding of critical
method points in transversal practices that aim to envisage life-sustaining
values and practices. Ultimately, action research provides a
methodological pathway, critically established terms, and concepts,
308

which I argue, may encourage more practitioners to undertake
ecosophical transversal endeavours.
This Chapter presents the final analyses of Part 2 of this thesis. In the
next and final Chapter 7, I summarise the conclusions of this thesis as it
mirrors the development of my eco-social art practice and my research. I
discuss findings to support my proposition that the eco-social art practice
framework, as a guiding theory and methodology, significantly increases
understanding for eco-social art practice. I indicate possible future
research and discuss avenues to disseminate understanding of this
framework to develop the art and ecology field.
309

Chapter 7:
CONCLUSION

310

7. Conclusion

Fig. 63. Draft of poster for Ireland’s commemorative Farming and Country Life 1916-
2016 event (Fitzgerald, 2016).
Today, the cultural and economic priorities of industrial society are globalising
ecocides, causing incalculable and unjust eco-social harm.
A primary response and responsibility is that we need to urgently re-think

industrial land, forest and aquaculture practices that are inherently
unsustainable. We need to integrate ‘many ways of knowing’ and recognise that
valuable life-sustaining understandings evolve from new formations of social
practice.
My eco-social art practice and research demonstrate that transversal efforts

impart valuable ecoliteracy and agency for practitioners, their collaborators and
their audiences. Furthermore, transversal practices that use engaging audio-
visual social media enable place and planetary learning, for audiences near and
far. As a “real world” example, the ongoing Hollywood Forest Story develops
‘lines of flight’ that have led to new national forest policy, begun a public
discourse about ecocide and inspired others to live well with their forests.
Ultimately, using the Guattari ecosophy and action research framework

articulates why and how my ongoing eco-social art practice develops to
advance ecoliteracy and agency for living well with forests, and why
Hollywood forest has become the ‘little wood that could’.
Cathy Fitzgerald, 2018, The Hollywood Forest Story eBook, p. 87.
311

We are living in a time of unprecedented eco-social challenge and
injustice. “‘Everyday ecocide[s]’ 168 sustains industrial economies while
causing mass species endangerment and extinction not seen since the
Earth’s last mass extinction event (Kolbert, 2014). The enormity of this
human-caused ecocide is profound. As evolutionary philosopher Brian
Swimme, a collaborator in Thomas Berry’s ‘New Story’ video remarks,
‘[t]he struggle of embracing our moment—is the struggle that we live in
the most destructive moment in 65 million years!’ (The New Story, 2006)
However, as I have argued, art has a critical if yet under-acknowledged

societal role to inspire communities to live differently. On the margins of
the contemporary art field, some pioneering practitioners have developed
innovative eco-social art practices. In diverse ways, they are responding
to the decades of accumulated facts that confirm that industrialism, based
on anthropocentric, neo-liberal globalised capitalism, is inherently
unsustainable, immoral and ecocidal. Cultural responses must be
developed further and urgently, particularly when the World Bank and
other organisations forecast that in just over a decade ‘beyond 2030, the
world’s ability to adapt to unabated climate change will be limited […]’
(Rowling, 2015).
Given that the world’s financially poor have done little to cause this
problem, but will be the most grossly affected, and that ever-increasing
industrialism is grossly diminishing the viability of the planet for future
generations, the moral imperative to act is clear. How do we develop
adequate and meaningful practices in this ‘hinge decade’169 as Dean
Moore describes it? Therefore, it matters that we equip ourselves with

168
Term offered by eco-design research fellow Dr. Joanna Boehnert to education and
heritage consultant Bridget McKenzie’s Facebook page, 14 April 2016. McKenzie
posted an invitation to ‘followers’ if a term could be found to equal the success of the
recent ‘everyday sexism’ campaign. While McKenzie seemed initially hesitant in using
the term everyday ecocide, I found it matched my idea that it is important to ‘name’ the
violence as a first step toward developing countering actions to prevent it. This follows
my discussion in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook p. 77. McKenzie has since set up
an ‘Everyday Ecocide’ Facebook group to which others and I contribute and share.
169
Dean Moore (2016), like some scientists, sees this current time as a ‘pivotal decade
when we either found our way forward or did not.’ (Part II, section 2)
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clear understandings, to progress alternatives. Characterising theories and
methods of innovative social practices, that foreground thriving
ecological communities through symbiomimicry (Albrecht, 2016, p. 14),
as the basis to move society in life-sustaining directions, is critical.
Dean Moore (2016) cites philosopher Charles Taylor to argue that

‘articulacy’170 is vital to progress moral understanding in this time of
planetary emergency:
[a]rticulacy […] has a moral point, not just in correcting what

may be wrong views but also in making the force of an ideal that
people are already living by more palpable, more vivid for them;
and by making it more vivid, empowering them to live up to it in
a fuller and more integral fashion. (Taylor, cited in Dean Moore,
2016, preface)
I argue that this equally applies to the aims and outcomes developed
through the conversation between the practice and theory of this thesis.
The framework I propose seeks to empower art practitioners to engage
critically and effectively with the complexity that is advanced by an
ecological worldview. My central research question asks how and why a
guiding theory and methodology may significantly improve the
articulation of long-term eco-social art practices.
At the beginning of this study I predicted that the benefit of articulating

the eco-social art practice framework would:
1) assist understanding for eco-art peers involved in extended

transversal projects, thus further developing the art and ecology
field;
2) assist in improving art education overall to take account of the

material and interdependent Earth realities on which we all
depend;

170
Articulacy is the skill of expressing one’s work or ideas clearly and effectively, for
maximum comprehension and transferability. Taylor, Charles (1991), The Ethics of
Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 22.
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3) specifically, highlight the aims, method stages, and potential of
an eco-social art practice framework which, in turn, helps argue
the validity and potential of eco-social art practices.
These benefits, I argue, have been realised in this research, which I

summarise below. However, in my early research essay ‘The Shivering
Sands: Notes on Defining an Artistic Practice Ph.D’ (Fitzgerald, 2011b),
I explored tensions in how some view the findings of creative enquiry. I
underlined Andrew R. Brown and Andrew Sorenson’s claim, in
‘Integrating Creative Practice and Research in the Digital Media Arts’
(2009), that art practice as a form of general research is more likely to
uncover knowledge that was previously unknown to the individual but
known to the field, while academic research aims at uncovering and
creating knowledge that was previously unknown to the field (p. 154).
However, at the other end of my creative enquiry, I find that I now

disagree with this claim. To a large extent, the dialogue between creative
practice and theory in this study strengthened the research. Furthermore,
I argue that my research gathered not only valuable information but also
contributes new knowledge not previously known to the art and ecology
field and also for other knowledge domains, in my case, toward forest
science and forest policy development. The findings confirm my intuition
stated at the beginning of this enquiry, that transversal research and
practice advance both art-led (new art practice knowledge) and art-based
(new knowledge for non-art domains) outcomes. However, I
acknowledge that my previous experience, and mutuality skills
developed from working in non-art domains, is a significant factor in my
ability to progress an effective transversal practice and advance both art-
based and art-led knowledge.
Indeed, the form of the creative enquiry was a necessary strength of this
research study. My enquiry conveys why audio-visual, interactive digital
storytelling social media are appropriate for this research and practice. A
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creative enquiry that employs blogging as a primary research method and
art practice accommodates the new subjectivities and values that arise
from transversal ethico-aesthetic practice. Furthermore, the hyperlinked,
open-access form of the research (and practice) speaks to the necessary
multi-modality of knowledge appropriate for contemporary networked
audiences. Social media notably facilitated my work in bringing to life
Guattari’s ecosophy and the action research approach that I came to
evaluate.
This creative enquiry proved ideal as a means to analyse the empathetic,

experiential, practical, and scientific activity and increased agency
outcomes developed in the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice and in my
Hollywood Forest Story. Importantly, the outcomes emphasise that newer
academic methods, like creative enquiry, have significant value in
bringing the ‘two cultures’ of art and science (Chapter 1) more closely
together to integrate knowledge to more accurately reflect the complex
eco-social realities experienced. Creative enquiry also echoes recent art
and ecology practices and critiques (Demos, 2016) that seek to bring
Western and Indigenous knowledge forms together for new
understandings of ‘living well’ with our forests and all beings.
Based on what I found lacking in my practice development and noticing

how some art practitioners struggle to deal adequately with the
complexity of differing environmental emergencies, I came to understand
the critical nature of eco-social art practice in how it develops ecoliteracy
for its practitioners, collaborators and audiences relevant to their contexts
and environments.
Part of developing an adequate ecoliteracy for my practice is as a result

of deepening my understanding of planetary boundaries science to
review the systemic and complex nature of differing but connected
environmental emergencies. Magdoff and Bellamy Foster (2011, pp. 12-
25) argue that planetary boundaries science is useful as an educational
tool to understand the systemic nature of the ecological emergency for
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environmentalists. I argue similarly that this science is critical to promote
an enhanced understanding for art practitioners new to environmental
concerns, and also to contextualise others’ more advanced practices.
Recent analyses of eco-philosophy also evolve ecoliteracy for my

practice and this research. These analyses reveal that extended eco-social
art practices have the potential to develop171 crucial, situated and
practical moral reasoning, even though the enormity of planetary eco-
social emergencies would appear to prevent any action, artistic or
otherwise, from achieving a substantial countering effect.
Becoming aware that ecoliteracy is an essential feature of eco-social art

practice led me to characterise drivers for long-term eco-social art
practice: to detail the ethical, ecological, social, action, art and practice
activities that routinely motivate and progress such practices.
Characterising these drivers expands insights I gained from the Literature
Review (Chapter 1) that these practices are often unhelpfully and
restrictively organised by themes or environmental concerns.
However, the significant part of this enquiry deepens appreciation of

Guattari’s ecosophy as significant and valuable as a guiding theory for
articulating the context, aims and social power of eco-social art practice.
My findings reveal a markedly different conclusion to some in the art and
ecology field (analysed in the Literature Review), who appear to have
either misunderstood or under-appreciated Guattari’s ecosophy as an
accumulation of decades-long theorising and real-world application (in
therapy) of transversality and other ideas. My work contributes to, and
complements Holmes (2008), Elliott (2012), O’Mahony (2012; 2014),
Demos (2013), Brunner et al. (2013), Biggs (2014a,b, c), O’Sullivan

171
‘Refugia’ is a population biology term that refers to how pockets of biodiversity can
develop within areas of ecological collapse, which can later spread when conditions
become more favourable. See Dean Moore (2014b) explain her use of the term in a
video presentation on ‘Ethics and the Climate Crisis’. Whidbey Institute.
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(2006, 2007, 2008, 2010a,b) and Hroch (2013, 2014) Guattarian research
that relates to creative practice.
From analyses of Guattari’s texts and applying his ecosophy to The

Serpentine Lattice and The Hollywood Forest Story, I confirm the
validity of Guattari’s ‘three ecologies’ ecosophy as one-half of the
proposed framework to fully articulate the context, aims and political
agency potential of eco-social art practice.
Through analysis of two case studies, the Harrisons’ Serpentine Lattice

and my Hollywood Forest Story, I conclude that a Guattari ecosophy
mode in the proposed framework is of value to the art and ecology field
because it articulates eco-social art practice in many critical ways that
hitherto have not been widely understood:
1. The ecosophy mode of the framework explains that if social

practices are to be adequate to meet today’s environmental
challenges, ‘the three ecologies’ of environmental, social and
subjective understanding need to be advanced together, to counter
life-diminishing ideologies. Accordingly, and to emphasise this
point, I offer a new term to more adequately describe long-term
‘ecological art’ activities as ‘eco-social art practice’.
2. The ecosophy mode of the framework identifies that the

overarching aim of eco-social art practices is to create intrinsic
values to resist the life-diminishing values of globalised capitalism.
Guattari argues that ethico-aesthetic assemblages, of which eco-
social art practice resemble, are essential because they create
dissensual and contextual subjectivities that do not give in to failed
politics or erroneous ideological hegemony like extractive
Capitalism. Ecosophy is also useful because it details what
motivates such practices and why they routinely advance artistic,
ethical outcomes and political agency. Here, The Serpentine Lattice
and my transversal practice findings provide real-world evidence of
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Guattari’s ecosophic cartographies concept. This concept explains
why our practices, although operating in different contexts and
scales, operate literally as live maps to advance different ideas and
practices to, in Guattari’s words, ‘softly subvert’ the authority of
industrial forestry practice.
3. Guattari’s transversality clarifies eco-social art practice as

comprising activity within and across disciplines and lifeworlds for
ecoliteracy and increased social agency. Transversality thus helps
identify how eco-social art practices depart from modernist
contemporary art practice concerns where artistic autonomy is
prioritised. Kester, Biggs and others increasingly view adhering to
artistic autonomy in a gravely challenged world as significantly
perpetuating the unhelpful possessive individualism that is at odds
with a life-sustaining ecological perspective. These findings, I
argue, therefore defend transversal practices from those who
maintain that art’s autonomy from socio-political spheres must be
upheld.
4. Biggs’ (2015) articulation of ‘lifeworld’ experience deepens

understanding of how transversal creative practitioners routinely
weave their valuable real-world experience with inter- and
transdisciplinary professional activity in their work. These analyses
counter Kagan (2011), Weintraub (2012) and others reviewed in art
and ecology literature that advocate that transdisciplinary theory or
systems thinking are the best means to articulate long-term eco-
social art practices.
5. Ideas from ecocriticism advance transversality understanding to

acknowledge globalisation, planetary decline and associated eco-
social injustices. I argue, drawing upon reflections regarding the
ecocide that affected Vietnam’s forests and people, and my family,
that ecocosmopolitanism and trans-corporeality are crucial to
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understanding how eco-social-art practice may simultaneously
engage with and translate local and planetary concerns for their
audiences.
6. O’Sullivan’s (2006, 2007, 2008, 2010a, b) research on Guattarian

subjectivity and the refrain explains why and how transversal
practices circling an eco-social concern are ‘probe heads’ for life-
sustaining futures. Hroch’s (2013, 2014) research conveys how
these concepts are perhaps our best means to convey more nuanced
understandings of sustainability. In this way, life-sustaining
knowing from transversal practices is not like a ‘one-size fits all’
sustainability directive but are a mixture of contingent and ever-
evolving understandings that are enriched by democratic
participation, different ways of knowing and developing eco-
humanities and ecojurisprudence knowledge.
7. The contemporary ecosophy analyses by Tinnell (2011),

Melitopoulos and Lazzarato (2012), Brunner et al. (2013), Langlois
(2014), and Elliott (2012) articulate further the value of Guattari’s
‘machinic ecologies’, ‘machinic animism’ and his ‘refrain’ and
‘lines of flight’ concepts to explain how social media may facilitate
transversal practices’ narratives and share their open-access
ecosophic values to today’s increasingly networked audiences.
8. Guattari’s later interest in animism adds understanding of non-

Western, sometimes more ecological worldviews recently explored
in academia and contemporary art practice for their insights into
sustainable living.
Including the work of Elliott (2012), Brunner et al. (2013), and Biggs
(2015, 2014a, b, c) confirms Guattari’s ecosophy as a critical means to
theorise eco-social art practice. However, while Guattari advanced real-
world application of his theories primarily for the understanding and
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compassionate treatment of psychotic patients, his work does not provide
a working methodology of how one initiates and maintains an ecosophic
practice.
As discussed, I was fortunate to have the late Dr. Chris Seeley see a
presentation of my transversal work and recognise that action research
would significantly clarify my and others’ similar methodology.
Reviewing her and Reason’s academic work (Seeley and Reason 2008;
Seeley 2011a, b; 2012; Seeley and Thornhill, 2014) confirms the value of
artistic practices in action research as a critical stage to progress new
insights and practices of sustainability. Thus, utilising the action research
framework for my practice and analysing the Harrisons’ Serpentine
Lattice through action research, I conclude that action research is an
appropriate complement to Guattari’s ecosophy as the other half of the
eco-social art practice model.
As a contribution to the art and ecology field, I argue, the action research
mode of the framework comprehensively identifies how the ‘worthwhile
purpose’, ‘practical challenges’, ‘many ways of knowing’, and
‘participation and democracy’ activities are universal in transversal eco-
social art practice. Action research gives insight into how one can
develop and maintain an eco-social art practice as a clear cycle-of-action
and-reflection to progress valuable ‘communicative’ outcomes. Key
reasons for advocating action research as an appropriate methodological
approach to complement Guattari's ecosophy and to articulate the critical
method stages of eco-social art practice transversal practices are:
1. Action research, like Guattari’s ecosophy, attends to lifeworld

experience and knowledge usually sidelined by scientific enquiry,
as well as accommodating learning from diverse disciplines and
audiences. Furthermore, recent research confirms action research’s
value in articulating, with clarity, the methodology of social
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practice enquiries that involve complex eco-social challenges and
more-than-human priorities.
2. Without being prescriptive, action research identifies art and other

practice activities in a pathway of essential activities and thus
avoids wasting time in intuitively developing a method.
3. Using the action research cycle and accompanying terminology, as

widely accepted in other knowledge domains, allows for a
comparison between the strengths and weaknesses of differing
transversal projects.
4. Furthermore, action research usefully highlights the narrative,

mutuality and communicative skills that are critical for effective
eco-social art practice.
As a consequence, the action research mode of the proposed framework

was found to be an ideal means of characterising the methodological
activities of my and the Harrisons’ transversal eco-social art practices.
While it may be argued that this study overall is too modest in scale to
draw definitive conclusions about the validity of the framework, applying
it in full to articulate the Harrisons’ and my practice’s aims and findings,
support my arguments that the Guattari ecosophy-action research
framework significantly increases understanding of transversal eco-social
art practices.
Analysing the framework has been and continues to be valuable for my

practice development. For this research, it rewarded me with immediate
insights that I could readily test and evaluate in my work and observe in
others’ practices. However, I admit that progressing a practice while
theorising transversal activity and evaluating action research was
challenging and not dissimilar to the problems (and biases) one might
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find in psychoanalysing oneself. Here, undertaking the Literature Review
and analyses of case studies proved an important means to overcome
narrow reflexivity that may have resulted in findings less transferable to
the broader art and ecology field.
To develop a transversal practice and research at the same time, and

especially when diverse activities may require attention unexpectedly,
required me to rein in my response to explore, blog, create videos and
interact with others. However, confining my practice somewhat allowed
me to deepen my analyses of the different stages of transversal practice.
One criticism that I understand implicitly about transversal practices is

that too many diverse activities will result in less substantial findings; I
find it vital to keep returning to the refrain of my ‘worthwhile purpose’
for the work: ‘Will this activity increase Hollywood forest’s and other
forests’ thriving?’ Moreover, a transversal practitioner’s skills lie in
integrating diverse knowledge and lifeworld experience through
developed social dexterity; this with an emphasis more on knowing
where to look or whom to ask for detailed knowledge, rather than
attempting to acquire knowledge oneself from many fields.
In the creative practices of those who examine environmental

emergencies, the cognitive dissonance of moving through and between
the priorities of contemporary art and science are often pronounced and
always unsettling. I affirm Biggs’ (2015) observations that working
transversally beyond the possessive individualism of modernism results
in fluid, destabilised identities and may provoke criticisms of
inconsistency (p. 262). While it is not easy to move through differing
disciplines and lifeworlds and to be often questioned whether one’s work
is art, I nevertheless argue that transversality is a significant means of
recognising life’s unfixed complexity and emergence—and it reinforces
understanding that plurality, not single-discipline monoculturalism, will
foster values fit for an ecological paradigm.
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Therefore, if we can look beyond the distracting debates as to whether or
not transversal practice is art and its practitioners are artists, I predict that
the eco-social art practice framework will empower other practitioners
(and their educators) to clarify their practices’ aims and general method
for greater understanding and recognition. I argue that the benefit of the
proposed model is twofold; eco-social art practitioners with standard
terms, ideas, and methodological approaches may more effectively
communicate and compare their practices thereby enhancing both
traditional and peer-to-peer learning; and awareness is increased in the
contemporary art field that these innovative practices are at the forefront
of localised cultural responses to the planetary emergency.
Through my practice experience and theory research, I resist counter-

arguments that eco-social practices are too diverse to characterise. I base
my claims on the increased clarity that the framework affords for
articulating the social power and critical universal activities of the
exemplary Serpentine Lattice eco-social art practice and my ongoing
Hollywood Forest Story.
This thesis’ research findings could be of interest to others beyond the art
and ecology field. If this research is developed further, I would suggest
that the eco-social art model could potentially contribute to a re-thinking
of contemporary social art practice. Kester’s (2004, pp. 63-66) and
Elliott’s (2012, pp. 126-137) limited research of the Harrisons’ and
others’ work points in this direction but it appears that much more could
be explored. From my review of Guattari’s research and environmental
science, it now appears ill-conceived to direct social art practice without
also exploring environmental realities. While not the focus of this study,
it appears more research is needed to support Kester and Elliott’s initial
reviews that a significant criticism of social art practice may arise when
practitioners and critics suspend environmental concerns.
The reasons why two separate fields, ‘social art practice’ and ‘ecological
art practice’, have developed in the first place is no doubt due to a lack of
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ecoliteracy in art education, with the result that human-centered concerns
dominate most contemporary art practitioners’ and art critics’ minds.
Significant challenges to advancing ecoliteracy continue to manifest
themselves. A coalescing of art and ecology could be possible if art
research further established the utility of action research for social art
practice methodology, and if ecoliteracy and ecocriticism were
recognised as essential components of visual culture education (they are
essential across all education now). Moving industrial society to an
essential ecological paradigm will continue to take time.
However, despite the grave scientific conclusions of the IPCC (2013) and
Hansen et al. (2015), that immense planetary devastation is unfolding, I
am not confident that ecoliteracy and ecocriticism will be a priority for
contemporary art education in Ireland in the near future. With its larger
population, England has only a few programmes in higher education, for
example, the Art and Ecology programme at Schumacher College,
Devon. It appears that awareness of art and ecology practices in England
is instead being advanced through other initiatives: Arts Council England
and Julie’s Bicycle172 have both developed considerable discourse,
strategy, policy and online sustainability resources for practitioners and
art institutions in different disciplines. Arts Council England also
supports art and climate change organisations like Cape Farewell173
(begun 2001) and Tipping Point: Energising the Creative Response to
Climate Change174 (begun 2009). These organisations contribute
visibility to the art and ecology field through commissioning projects,
public seminar events and project articles (and as discussed the former
RSA ‘Art and Ecology’ program was a leader in this area) and the

172
See Arts Council England ‘Resilience, sustainability and Philanthropy’
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/how-we-make-impact/resilience-and-sustainability and
Julie’s Bicycle http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/resilience-and-sustainability/julies-
bicycle.
173
See Cape Farewell: The Cultural Response to Climate Change
http://www.capefarewell.com/.
174
See Tipping Point: Energising the Creative Response to Climate Change
http://www.tippingpoint.org.uk/.
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Transition Towns movement has advanced community transition art
practice awareness with its latest publication (Neal, 2015).
However, it is noteworthy that England and Scotland's art and

sustainability programmes attend primarily to climate change rather than
recognising that climate change is only one symptom (albeit, a critical
one) of the ecological emergency; more profoundly troubling and much
less understood in the arts and general society, is that the Western
worldview that underpins industrialism, extractive capitalism and
consumerism, is inherently incompatible with a just and thriving planet.
While there are many worthy projects supported by these organisations,
an eco-humanity criticality is lacking in no small degree. This situation
includes the need for an in-depth guiding theory and methodology to
inform art practitioners more deeply of the context they are working in
and the potential social power these practices can foster; greater
awareness of the suitability and value of transversal practices that help
envision engaging alternatives for practitioners and their communities is
urgently needed.
As a result, art practitioners currently in either Ireland or England, are

more likely to learn about eco-art practice in an ad hoc fashion through
such avenues. The internet is less appreciated as a means of developing
this field than it deserves to be, and it is notable that access to social
media greatly facilitated my research and eco-social art practice in a rural
location over long periods (Fitzgerald, 2011, p. 20). Using my social
media online community-building skills from a past work environment
allowed me to connect with leading peers, art critics and their work to
enable a collaborative, connected learning of sorts when literature and
education in this field are particularly limited (ibid.).
The limitations of the art and ecology education sector also dictate how I
will disseminate my research. I expect I will primarily employ my online
social networks to inform peers and their networks alongside open access
papers I publish. My aim in developing a digital cultural artefact enables
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me to capture the audiovisual interactivity of my blog practice and the
evidence of my research, but I also see it as a means to share findings
quickly and at low cost to the art and ecology networks to which I
already contribute. An incentive to this strategy was the realisation that
NCAD has no digital repository for post-graduate research (theses at the
moment have to be examined physically in the NCAD library in Dublin).
Thus, creating a digital book (and its print-on-demand versions) and
sharing my thesis on the academic, social network academia.edu will be
crucial to initially disseminating my research.
Although the art and ecology practice education sector is small, Massive,
Open, Online Course (MOOC) platforms offer potential, particularly as
eco-cultural responses are so urgently needed. It is encouraging that
MOOC platforms also appear to be moving towards a collaborative
means of social learning that speaks to Guattari’s transversality and
machinic animism. This new education format has challenges, yet there
is increasing appreciation that it has the potential to highlight essential art
concerns to the digital generation. The numbers of art and ecology
researchers like Kagan, contributing art and sustainability content to the
Goethe-Institut and Leuphana University of Lüneburg (2016) art
management MOOC175 is likely to increase. Similarly, I would anticipate
that my framework, practice, and the contacts made through my research,
could contribute relevant and engaging content for such platforms.
This area is of interest as I have observed that many who work in the art
and ecology field embrace online communication platforms (Fitzgerald,
2011, p. 20), possibly encouraged by the open, hyper-linked forms,
which so evoke ecological processes. It is also arguably instinctual, as
eco-social art practitioners seek to cross lifeworlds and disciplines to
work with others, accepting that acting alone or creating works that
175
See certificate accredited ‘MOOC Managing the Arts: Cultural Organizations in
Transition’ April-July 2016 (https://www.goethe-managing-the-arts.org/?wt_sc=mooc).
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emphasise a possessive individualism is counter-productive to the scale,
complexity and urgency of responses required. Rifkin, Dean Moore and
others highlight this point in different ways. Rifkin (2014) describes
MOOCs as contributing to developing global Collaborative Commons,
which he believes could replace late-stage capitalism with a more
sustainable, just society. Dean Moore, when asked what any one person
can do, replies emphatically, ‘Stop being one person.’ (2016, part IV,
section 4; emphasis in original).
Overall, it is notable for the context of this research that Guattari’s last
article, urging ‘Remaking Social Practices’ (1992) as an ecosophy for the
planet and its inhabitants, has gained enormous currency now that
environmental emergencies are accelerating. New research on Guattari’s
transversality and machinic animism, combined with action research,
forms the basis of the proposed eco-social art practice framework and
identifies social media potential to inform and engage audiences. The
guiding framework, I argue, clarifies the context, aims and common
practices, and provides terminology for characterising and evaluating
differing eco-social art practice activity. Hence, the framework could
empower art practitioners’ learning so that they can confidently
undertake transversal practice, with others from non-art domains. As I
have discussed, The Hollywood Forest Story articulates an example of
symbiomimicry that is enabled by Close-to-Nature forestry practice. In
this way, the framework explains why and how my aesthetic-ethical-
political transversality enacts the mutualism and sumbiocracy of the
Symbiocene, rather than the endgame of the Anthropocene (Albrecht,
2016).
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Fig. 64. Blog post screengrab: this post discusses my 2016 summary video of The
Hollywood Forest Story to date, on display for the 9 Stones Artists’ The Possibilities of
Place exhibition ay VISUAL: The Centre for Contemporary Art in Carlow, 2 July - 16
October 2016.
Standing in a small forest in rural Ireland, ten years after this small
conifer plantation transformation began, I listen to the increasing
diversity and intensity of the dawn chorus that results from ‘Close-to-
Nature’ forestry. Reversing Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ (Fig. 64) is a
slow art— a delicate dance with others, that is ultimately concerned with
human-nonhuman communities thriving. I reflect that the eco-social art
practice framework clearly articulates this ambition in The Hollywood
Forest Story: revealing its ongoing aim, method, activities and social
power, to re-think forestry practices in Ireland and elsewhere.

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APPENDICES

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Appendix A: A History of Forests in Ireland - A Brief Overview

This section gives a brief socio-political history of Ireland’s forests and
explores why in the latter decades of the 20th century, Ireland fully
adopted a foreign industrial clear felling forestry system. I review why
the industrial clear felling system was developed in Europe and why this
system has begun to be abandoned in some European countries.

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A.1 ‘Wolfland’ - Ireland in the 17th Century: A Land of Forests,

Wood Kerne and Wolves

Fig. 65. John Derricke. ‘Rorie Oge, a wild kerne and a defeated rebel, in the forest with
wolves for company.’ 1581. Woodcut from The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of
Woodkarne.176

It is widely accepted that by 1700 Ireland’s once widespread forest
cover had been reduced to a negligible area.
Donal Magner, 2011, p.3
Decline in Ireland’s forest cover has occurred during many periods

during Ireland’s habitation as humanity turned toward agriculture; for
example, notable forest loss occurred with the Vikings in the 8th century.
In 1600, Irish forest cover appears to have been relatively low at 12%

176
‘The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne is a 1581 book by John
Derricke, an English follower of Sir Henry Sidney, Elizabeth I’s Lord Deputy of Ireland
from 1565 to 1571 and 1575 to 1581. It contains a unique visual representation of 16th
century Ireland in sequential images. The book is a strong defence of Sidney’s
deputyship and his victories over the Irish. It begins with a long poem, […] describing
the conflicts between Sidney’s forces and the Irish "woodkarne", landless guerrilla
fighters who emerged from their mountain and forest retreats to plunder English
settlements.’ Source: http://irishcomics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Image_of_Irelande
[Accessed 14 April 2016].
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(Hickey, 2011). Nevertheless, while forest levels may have been
relatively low at 12% in 1600, Hickey writes that even in ‘the late
seventeenth century, Ireland was known as ‘Wolfland’ (ibid. p.75) and
that while there were ‘no vast areas of untouched woodlands in the
seventeenth century, […] what (forests) existed, particularly in valleys,
were often considerable in size.’ (ibid. p.91)
Hickey (2011) explains that this situation quickly changed and that by
1711 Ireland had become ‘a treeless wilderness and a net importer of
timber.’ (p.105). The Elizabethans and Jacobeans177 ‘deplored Ireland’s
forests as harbouring wolves and wood kerne (Irish rebels). In a later
period, Tories (early conservative adherents and traditionalists supporting
the monarchy in the English civil war)’, also saw to Irish forests being
profitably exploited when timber was in short supply in England and
Wales (ibid.).178 Hickey describes the loss in Irish wildlife at this time:
[t]he substantially forested Ireland in 1600 had by 1711 become a

treeless wilderness and a net importer of timber. Deforestation was a
major factor in the demise of not just the wolf but also different
species of eagles and other birds, the Irish wildcat and other
creatures. (ibid..)
In the 18 century there is general consensus that Ireland’s forest cover

th
diminished significantly further due to the dramatic increase in

population when the Irish population rose from 3.0 to 8.2 million during
the period 1741 to 1841 (Byrnes and Collins, no. 2 p. 5; Hickey, 2011, p.
106; Magner, 2011, p. 3). Land was prioritised for food and ‘interest in
forestry ceased during the horror of the Great Famine’ and there were
huge consequences for forests with ‘successive Land Acts that

177
There is some debate whether English led deforestation was the main cause of
Ireland’s more recent forest decline. Forest historian Oliver Rackham has argued that
many ironworks next to major Irish woodlands do not appear to have been substantially
affected during the 17th and 18th centuries. See Byrnes and Little, 2006, p. 5.
178
Legislation for the eradication of Irish wolves dates back to 1584. This coincided
with Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland 1641-1652 with a decree against wolves, wood
kearne and priests. The last wolf is reported to have been shot for bounty, near Mt.
Leinster, County Carlow, not far from Hollywood forest.
333

transformed ownership from 10,000 landlords to 400,000 tenants’
(Magner, 2011, pp. 3-4). As Donal Magner (forestry editor for the Irish
Farmers Journal) writes, ‘this rapid transfer of land had significant
repercussions for Ireland’s forests as many ‘landlords felled what
remnants of forests they had left before the change in land ownership.’
(ibid. p.4) Furthermore, tenant farmers, only two generations removed
from the Great Famine were ‘most inclined to tend land for food
production’ rather than forests, and developed an ‘ingrained suspicion
and antipathy’ toward forests, associating ‘tree growing with luxury
living and landlordism.’ (ibid. p.4) In my own experience working with
Irish forest NGOs these last twenty years, these views against forestry,
while perhaps not common, still linger in many rural areas today.
By the late 19th century, the last 150 tree nurseries supporting Irish forests
went out of business, along with skills in coppicing and Indigenous wood
processing: ‘With it went the custom of using home-grown timber and
the lore connected with it’ (ibid. pp.4-5). While there were some sporadic
attempts to improve forests in Ireland in the late 19th century, such as
with the Dublin Society (now known as the Royal Dublin Society [RDS])
which still presides over today’s annual Irish forestry awards; and in the
introduction of laws and planting regimes to protect woodlands.
In the early 20 century, records from 1903 reveal that only remnants of
th
Irish forest cover remained, close to just 1%, and these were further
weakened by a major storm at that time (Magner, 2011, p. 1). From 2013
figures, there is a similar level to forest cover in Ireland as in the 17th
Century. This level of cover is well below the current European average
of 30%.
334

A.2 Forestry in Ireland since 1950

A quiet revolution is taking place in Irish Forestry. Forest cover has
doubled within two generations.
Donal Magner (2011) Stopping by Woods:

A Guide to the Forests and Woodlands of Ireland, p. xiii.
Ireland with its political and social turmoil of the early 20th century was
not to significantly develop its modern forest sector until the 1950s, when
large planting programmes of 10,000 hectares (ha) per annum, were
encouraged by the then Minister for External Affairs, Sean MacBride.
Mass afforestation was seen as a means to alleviate mass unemployment
in disadvantaged rural areas during the 1950s and beyond (Magner, 2011,
pp.6-7). Ireland has since achieved rather remarkable forest cover by
exploiting fast growing exotic (North American) tree species, principally
Sitka spruce and lodge-pole pine, and to a lesser extent with Norway
spruce, Douglas fir and larch (Merrivale, 2012) using an industrial
clearfell tree plantation forestry model.
EU Forest Grant schemes since the 1980s and changes in the European
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) over time also encouraged Irish
farmers to diversify to forestry (Magner, 2011, p.7). But as mentioned
previously, it has taken time for prejudices against forestry to diminish
and for forest management knowledge to develop from such a low point.
Forestry in Ireland is still perceived as peripheral to the rural sector, even
though forestry is an important employer in rural Ireland. As forest
research reveals, there is significant and underdeveloped potential in the
fuel sector due to Ireland’s fast tree-growing climate, and limited
recognition of forests’ critical ecological, amenity and heritage values.
The Irish Forestry Act of 1988 saw the development of the State forest
company, Coillte, that operates with a commercial mandate over state
335

forests; today it manages approximately 56% of Ireland’s forests with the
balance in private ownership, mainly farmers (Magner, 2011, p.7).
Significantly ‘during the period 1989-2009, a considerable area of 226,
000 ha was planted, mainly by farmers.’ (Magner, 2011, p.7) Ireland has
also renewed interest in Native Woodland Management (this overseen by
the Irish Forest Service), which aims to develop remnants of historic
semi-native woodlands.179
Public interest in Ireland’s forests has grown substantially with close to

20 million visits to its forests annually, with the Irish public enjoying
access to Ireland’s State forests with its open forest policy (p. xiii). That
the Irish public identifies with its new forests even though many of them
are coniferous monoculture plantations was witnessed in the widespread
public opposition during 2012-13 to selling the harvesting rights of
Ireland’s State forests to satisfy IMF/ECB debt repayments (see
Hollywood ebook, p.85).
Coillte as an organisation has been controversial due to its lack of

economic returns to the State and divestment of State land for alternative
energy schemes. This is mainly due to past inexperience in planting land
not suitable for forestry and only relatively recent understanding of
critical value of Ireland’s peat lands (plantations from the 1950s onwards
were planted on unsuitable and ecologically important peat-lands).
Coillte’s main forestry management method is a clearfell, plantation
model utilising mostly exotic conifers and it has achieved recognition for
its current sustainability objectives. This is because internationally,
clearfell plantations, if they are replanted, thinned and managed well, are
technically regarded as sustainable forests.

179
Generally these are not managed by foresters but by botanists and ecologists (see
Purser, 2006, p. 1).
336

Overall, Ireland has an underdeveloped forest culture; the long-term
ecological, economic180 and cultural limitation of Ireland’s present forest
management is yet to be broadly acknowledged, or addressed.
A.3 Ireland’s adoption of industrial forestry - trees planted

and organised like a chessboard

Ireland missed the intensity of industrial revolution of the 19th century,
yet concerning forestry, in the latter part of the twentieth century, it
adopted wholesale foreign industrial monoculture, clear-fell planation
methods that utilise non-native trees. The clearfell, tree plantation
method using exotic conifer species adopted in Ireland had been
perfected and had become popular in central Europe around 1800, ‘where
forests around urban areas began to show signs of resource exhaustion
and conflicts arose over their use’ (Kuchli, 2013). These industrial
clearfell tree plantation methods continue to be common across Europe
today and have spread widely across the New World in the 20th century.
With Ireland’s forests long gone, little wood culture remaining (Irish
forest lore and knowledge were never as developed as in the European
mainland), and facing the desperate economic climate of the 1950s, the
Irish government moved to realise the relatively rapid profits (and
employment) that industrial monoculture tree plantation methods
provided. The non-native conifers growth performed beyond expectation
as Ireland with its temperate climate has some of the best tree growing
conditions in Europe. Plantations of conifers typically gave returns in 40-
60 years, relatively faster than many other countries (although, such fast
growing conditions for softwoods produce softer, less valuable timbers).
Industrial clearfell forestry methods developed in Europe in the 19th

century, chiefly in Germany and Switzerland, and were developed with

180
See Merivale (2012).
337

one focus in mind, to sustainably harvest timber as an energy source and
raw material. Therefore to efficiently organise harvests:
tree populations were organised like a chessboard. Each year a

square would be clear felled and afterwards reforested, often with a
single tree species. The goal of German forestry and thus Swiss
forestry in that period was to produce as much wood as possible in
the short term. Spruce (Picea abies) and pine (Pinus silvestris) were
the chosen species in this model (Kuchli, 2013, p.13)
Early forestry was not ecological; the forests’ role as the most complex
and important ecosystems on earth was not known (systems of
interdependent biological activity were not really formulated until the
idea of an ecosystem arose), nor was it understood how they significantly
influence water quality, control water across floodplains, or how they
were important reservoirs of wildlife, not just for game, or that they
improved land fertility, land stability or contributed significantly to the
atmosphere. Over time, central European foresters noted however, that
these monoculture plantations brought considerable risks, particularly as
such plantations ‘were exposed pitilessly to infestations of insects and
disease’ (ibid. p.14). So far in Ireland, limited disease has affected its tree
plantations; primarily as Ireland is separated from mainland Europe and
because Irish forests are relatively young. However, diseases are
increasingly of concern as with the recent imported ash die-back disease
and diseases affecting larch and oak trees, which are exacerbated by
stresses resulting from climate change.
Therefore for chiefly economic reasons, the industrial clearfell method

was enthusiastically adopted in Ireland (as it was in many countries
aspiring to economic wealth) without much question. Today, to a large
extent, even though Ireland’s biocapacity has significantly reduced (see
Global Footprint Network data in The Hollywood Forest Story eBook,
p.17, slide 2), the economic priority and objectives, amplified further by
refined industrialised planting, extraction and milling technologies, still
characterise the forestry sector in Ireland.
338

As foresters and deep ecology philosophers Drengson and Taylor explain

in their books Ecoforestry: The Art and Science of Sustainable Forest
Use (1997), Wild Foresting: Practising Nature’s Wisdom (2009) and in
journal articles in the deep ecology journal The Trumpeter, the
overarching arguments of quick profits resulting from the industrial
forestry model persuaded many countries (often countries that had been
colonised by European countries who exploited their timber resources) to
view their ‘native forests as old, diseased and inefficient’ (Drengson and
Taylor, 2009, p.281). However, on the periphery, considerations of the
ecological, cultural and heritage aspects of Irish forests have been
acknowledged and are becoming more pressing. There is growing
awareness of increasing disease and pest risks that monocultures
encourage and that are being advanced with the onset of climate changes.
One instance that did change the focus in Irish forestry occurred during
the mid-1980s when there were widespread public appeals to re-establish
the planting of native broadleaf species, chiefly led at the time by the
NGO CRANN, and Australian born CRANN founder Jan Alexander
(later president of Pro Silva Ireland). Jan and members of CRANN
championed the ‘re-leafing of Ireland’ (I gained Irish forest knowledge
from working with Jan Alexander from the mid-nineties onwards, see
Hollywood eBook pp. 20, 28-29). This campaign appealed to the Irish
public as there was growing unease at the rapid coverage of Irish land
with dark blocks of non-native conifers managed solely for commercial
reasons and increasing negative reaction to these new forests being clear
felled. There was a growing understanding that these plantations had low
ecological, amenity and community values. Following successful
campaigns that lead to changes in afforestation policy, 40% of new
plantations in Ireland comprise native species (Magner, 2013, p.7). This
is a significant achievement, but broadleaves have been generally planted
in lines and managed in much the same way as conifers. This is because
the Irish forest industry continues to revolve around the industrial
339

clearfell plantation model, with Irish timber mills designed chiefly to
handle certain diameter logs, after 40-60 year growth cycles.
Conclusion
The above review outlines the socio-political context for the loss of
Ireland’s original forests and why Ireland in recent decades embraced
industrial monoculture, clearfell forestry practices. However, with more
understanding that industrial clearfell forestry methods limit ecological
functions that permanent forests provide (water regulation, carbon
sequestration, biodiversity), there is growing awareness and scientific
research of the limitations and costs to both society and the nonhuman
world in pursuing industrial forest practices.
Although Ireland in recent decades has moved to support the planting of

more diverse species, including native trees, the clearfell framework
remains central. The result is that conifer and broadleaf plantations,
whilst providing economic returns, largely fail to address biodiversity,
flooding, carbon and natural heritage concerns. The new-to-Ireland Close
to Nature continuous cover forestry approach studied in my practice is
integrated forestry to manage forests in perpetuity. With reference to its
application in Europe in leading forested countries, it appears to have
significant potential to deliver an ecology of economic, environmental
and social values for Ireland.
340

Appendix B:
Guattari’s ecosophy among other environmental philosophies
Re-thinking nature in line with present ecological understanding is a

complex task that has many precedents in philosophy. Scholars such as
Greenhalgh-Spencer (2014) argue that Guattari’s ecosophy has affinity
with the work of ‘Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger and Henri
Lefebvre, who also examine the connections between culture, practice
and materialities.’ (p. 164) While many environmental philosophical
ideas exist, I briefly discuss deep ecology, social ecology and deep green
theory, to situate and differentiate why Guattari’s ecosophy is
particularly relevant and suitable for increasing theoretical understanding
of eco-social art practice.
Better-known than Guattari’s ecosophy is the ecosophy of deep ecology

popularised by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess during the early
1970s. Two main principles are proposed in deep ecology: biocentric
egalitarianism which ‘holds that biota [animal and plant life] have equal
intrinsic value’ and metaphysical holism in which ‘one can apprehend the
ontological interconnectedness through enlightenment or “self-
realisation” [sometimes referred to as ‘self-actualization’].’ (Keller,
2008, p. 207) Deep ecology draws from diverse spheres and spiritual
traditions to prioritise the importance of developing ecological
consciousness and originally it eschewed ethics and morals with Naess
(1995) having ‘said “I’m not much interested in ethics or morals. I’m
interested in how we experience the world.”’ (ibid.) This put deep
ecology at odds with the developing animal rights movement. Where a
deep ecology perspective seems valuable is in considering the intrinsic
value of thriving ecosystems: Keller sites deep ecologist John Seed’s
actions that he is obliged to look after a rainforest because its well-being
and the needs of John Seed are intertwined (ibid.), and this commonsense
approach would appear to agree with the expanded duty of care toward
341

nonhuman river and forest systems evident in developing eco-
jurisprudence ‘rights of nature’ in South American countries and
Aotearoa New Zealand. This perspective echoes many nature-centric
Indigenous cosmologies and is similar, in part, to why I have contributed
to forest policy and advocated for an ecocide law: living with Hollywood
forest, it is not difficult to acknowledge its thriving supports my thriving
in material and psychological ways. However, deep ecology is less than
practical when the intrinsic value of one species is matched to another
and appears at a loss when some species’ populations overshoot to negate
the viability of an ecosystem (ibid. p. 208). Others have realised that an
undistinguished holism for all life appears legally unworkable when it
leaves no means, for example, to apprehend wilderness areas to be
protected (Keller, p. 210) although constitutional advances for ‘rights of
nature’, as mentioned above, contest this. Furthermore and importantly,
while deep ecology’s focus is identifying with nature’s intrinsic value,
Guattari seeks to underline the fact that our destructive relations to the
nonhuman and each other are intertwined within and promoted by social
and cognitive processes. Importantly, Guattari recognised that emergent
new values and life-affirming practices arise in ethico-aesthetic social
practices, including creative practices, to counter mental and social
stagnation.
To be clear, Tinnell (2011b) explains that Naess’ and Guattari’s

respective ecosophies present ‘two divergent, even conflicting paths for
identity experience and subjectivity.’ He further explains that:
Naess is interested in ecology as a sort of deeper, more

philosophical consideration of environmental problems; “the
environment” that his ecosophy T [his personal philosophy
toward a deep ecology] addresses is generally synonymous with
nature. Guattari, on the other hand, abstracts ecology from
environmentalism, generalizing it into a robust theoretical
framework capable of addressing questions including but not
limited to environmental ecologies, for most of his book The
Three Ecologies elaborates on “social ecology” and “mental
ecology.” (Tinnell, 2011b)
342

Tinnell stresses that Guattari sought to distance ecosophy from both
environmental politics and environmental philosophy (2011b). Tinnell
highlights the following statement by Guattari, that ‘[e]cology must stop
being associated with the image of a small nature-loving minority’ […],
and argues that Guattari was making an indirect critique of Naess’ deep
ecology ecosophy (developed two decades earlier) of ‘self-actualization’
[increased empathy] with nature.’ (ibid. p. 22) Similarly, while there is
not the capacity in this study to detail developments in ecofeminism,
Guattari’s ecosophy also expands beyond ecofeminism’s sympathy for
deep ecology and its critiques of patriarchial dualism because Guattari’s
theorising seeks to go beyond cultural dualities.
Deep ecology is nevertheless important because it questions the

fundamental assumption of human supremacism in Western thought and
seeks to re-establish a renewed spiritual connection to the Earth.
However, its absence of theorising that environmental degradation is
connected to social injustice, and powerful cultural, political and
economic ideologies and institutions, is limiting. At present, Guattari’s
ecosophy continues to be overshadowed by deep ecology advocates; for
example, Smith and Gough (2015) argue that the task of resolving the
ecological crisis and instilling eco-philosophical thinking for students is
best put by Naess’ ‘self-actualisation’ rather than Guattari’s ecosophy.
(p. 40) It is also interesting to note, that while deep ecology has been
undoubtedly important to advance ecological appreciation, which I
appreciate for aspects of my forestry practice development, it no longer
features in the respected textbook Environmental Philosophy (2005)
(Keller, 2008, p. 210). However, perhaps one should see Naess’ and
Guattari’s ecosophies more as a continuum of ecological philosophy
development. One should not ignore that many who may eventually
embrace Guattari’s theory, or activism as advanced by deep green
theorists and others, often begin to reconsider their relations to the non-
human world from a deep ecology perspective. It is also interesting how
343

Guattari, Demos and others circle back to explore the creative non-
duality of animism (Chapter 5.2.4) that is appreciated in deep ecology.
The social ecology developed by Murray Bookchin also criticised deep

ecology. Although some have described Bookchin’s theory as
ecoanarchism he nevertheless argued that deep ecologists completely
‘evaded the social roots of the ecological crisis’ (Bookchin, 1987, p. 5).
More recently, deep green theorists and activists continue a social
ecology emphasis when they dismiss environmentalists as not addressing
the root causes of the ecological emergency and instead offer a detailed
critique of social ‘systems of power, including industries and
institutions.’ (Leonard, 2011, pp. 106-107) Deep green theory
perspectives would appear to resonate with Guattari’s ecosophy with its
emphasis on ‘re-making social practices’ (1992) to counter ‘the politics
as usual’ of neo-liberal capitalism (which I discuss in chapter 7.3).
However, for this study where I am emphasising that eco-social-art
practice is important for developing subjectivity for more life-sustaining
values, Eckersley(1998) notes that Bookchin’s idea of how subjectivity is
formed is less than complete (p. 74). Attention to subjectivity production
is also not developed in deep green theory, for example, it is absent from
Leonard’s (2011) review of deep green theory, and Keith (2011)
describes how deep green activists (like transition artists mentioned in
Chapter 5), intuit rather than detail why and how cultural practices are an
important part of indirect action to resist the hegemony of capitalism (p.
190).
Ecosophy for Today’s Ecological Turn
Because of Guattari’s apparently extensive understanding and practical

experience of the many aspects needed to effect eco-social change, his
ecosophy theory and concepts attract attention across many disciplines.
Jane Bennett, for example, explores concepts from Guattari’s ‘three
ecologies’ from a new materialism perspective in Vibrant Matter: A
344

Political Ecology of Things (Bennett, 2010), to examine reasons behind
the global environmental emergency which, in her eyes is a direct
consequence of failing to acknowledge nonhuman agency.
In new materialism, researchers such as Bennett are interested in

Guattari’s ecosophy because it deepens understanding of the roots of the
environmental emergency; namely the calcification (stagnation) of
ideologies, and the dysfunctional social, economic and political ideas that
do not serve an ecological worldview. Recent analyses from Bennett and
others affirm that Guattari’s notion of transversality is critical to
understand how eco-social transformation can occur. In line with new
materialist181 research, Rick Dolphijn argues in Postcolonial Literatures
and Deleuze: Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures (2012) that ‘in order to
comprehend the interactions between ecosystems, the mechanosphere
and the social and individual Universes of reference, we must learn to
think transversally […] that we have to rethink nature, reconceptualize
the earth […]’ (p. 202; emphasis in original). However, specific analyses
that apply Guattari’s ecosophy to contemporary art practice are most
relevant to this thesis.

181
‘New materialism’ is a ‘cultural theory inspired by the thoughts of Deleuze and
opposes the transcendental and humanist (dualist) understandings of Nature’ (der Tuin,
and Dolphijn, 2010, p. 153). Manuel DeLanda and Rosi Braidotti independently of each
other began using the term that ‘does not privilege the side of culture’ in the second half
of the 1990s.
345

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Thesis · November 2018

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The Ecological Turn: Living Well with Forests

Submitted for the Visual Culture PhD by Practice.

School of Visual Culture, The National College of Art and Design,

Word Count: 69 914

Dated: October 2018

Title of Practice Presentation (eBook):

The proposed framework builds on my ongoing Hollywood Forest Story

This thesis is framed by critical reflection on and is an extension of new

I apply Félix Guattari’s theoretical concept of ecosophy, which

Keywords: art and ecology, eco-social art practice, Guattari,

PART ONE - INTRODUCTIONS 21

1. Origins of the enquiry 22

1.1 Reading the thesis 23

1.2 Introduction to the enquiry 25

1.3 Motivations for research arising from my practice 31

1.4 Reviewing the development and current characterisation of 34

1.4.1 Current field of eco-social art practice 35

1.5 Outline of the thesis that proposes a new guiding ecosophy- 58

2. Research Design, Methodology and Methods 61

2.2.1 The physical research audit trail 65

2.3 Aims and objectives of the enquiry – toward developing an eco- 77

2.4 What is ecoliteracy? Developing ecoliteracy for this enquiry 80

2.4.1 Understanding and simplifying the science: Planetary 82

2.5 Six core drivers: eco – ethical – social – artful – action – 93

2.6 Actions of the enquiry 97

2.7 Presentation of the research for this enquiry 99

3. Critical components of The Hollywood Forest Story eco-social 108

3.1 Introduction 109

3.2 Practising Close-to-Nature continuous cover forestry: A new- 110

3.2.1 Practical detail of transforming Hollywood forest 114

3.3 Articulating an outward-facing, eco-social art practice method 123

3.4 Summary 156

PART TWO: DEEPENING UNDERSTANDING OF 159

Introduction to Part 2 160

4. A guiding theory-method framework to articulate eco-social 161

4.1 Introduction 162

4.2 Utilising Guattari’s ecosophy – understanding the context, 163

4.2.1 Why Guattari’s ecosophy? 4163

4.3 Utilising action research to enact and explain an ecosophical 180

4.3.1 Why and how action research complements Guattari’s 180

4.4 Introducing the case studies 186

5.2.2 Understanding why eco-social art practices promote 199

5.2.3 Developing indigeneity to counter capitalism’s 202

5.3.1 Tranversality accounts for progressive multi-constituent

5.3.2 The transversality of The Serpentine Lattice and The 236

5.3.3 Keeping it all together; playing The Serpentine Lattice 243

5.3.4 Outcomes of eco-social art practice: new ‘lines of flight’ 249

5.4 Summary 264

6.1 Introduction: Using action research to identify 268

6.2 Action research’s ‘worthwhile purposes’ clarifies how 271

6.3 Action research identifies the ‘practical challenges’ of 274

6.4 Action research identifies ‘many ways of knowing’, as the 276

6.4.1 Action research identifies the primacy of ‘experiential 278

6.4.2 Action research identifies how ‘artful knowing’ 279

6.4.3 Action research identifies that a ‘propositional 287