Through the Southwest Climate Studio Art course with WRFI I had so many meaningful experiences out in the field, all of which expanded my understanding of climate change through the lenses of water, fire, agriculture, art, and Indigenous groups. One meaningful experience that helped guide my project and particularly piqued my interest was in the beginning of the second week of the course. We had been learning about irrigation systems called acequias and water rights, and got the opportunity to dive deeper into water ecology with our guest Robyn. Robyn is a water-scientist and artist working with Anabranch Solutions as the lead monitoring technician doing stream monitoring, wetland assessments, remote sensing, fish research, and beaver habitat restoration. She led us through an exercise where we discussed how various elements–abiotic and biotic–interact with each other in a river environment. We each got to select an element to represent through a small art piece of our choice.
I had chosen the element of water, and through this exercise I got to think about how water interacts with other elements, giving life and moving them along. I also got to think about how humans interact with water, specifically river ecosystems. Robyn brought up something I hadn’t thought about before, how humans tend to “clean up” rivers or control them to fit Western needs or standards of beauty, often removing driftwood and changing flow patterns. A healthy river takes on many forms and has many systems at work; for example, a beaver works to build dams to slow down the flow of water and a flood seeps into the surrounding ecosystems and germinates seeds, but human intervention and climate change put stress on these systems, disrupting their balance and flow. It should not be controlled or simplified or surrounded by concrete; its changing forms and movement is what makes it successful.
We see this desire for control in so many other aspects of the environment too: Western humans demonize flooding, fires, and other systems of nature that threaten their desire for growth and perfection in nature. However, through this course I have really taken away that we as humans have to shift towards working more closely with nature and its systems and refrain from the need to take full control over it. In a world where climate change continues to put these ecosystems at risk, it is important now more than ever to make these changes.
Through my final art installation project I explored this idea further through creating a visual contrast between nature controlled and nature left to move its own way. On a smaller scale I wanted to provide this GIF as another visual representation of nature taken control by humans. This short story portrayed by a series of six images looks at an environment slowly consumed by human impact–the cutting of trees, the loss of water, and the overall disregard for the place is represented through the loss of color in each image and the addition of garbage into the once healthy ecosystem. I want my art from this course to be able to expand on these struggles for ecosystems and start a conversation about caring for the Earth and working with it instead of against it. I want people to know and accept that their actions do matter and that nature is not something to be taken advantage of or controlled, but something to appreciate, work with, and preserve. I have learned so much from New Mexico and its diverse ecosystems and people and I cannot wait to share my experience and knowledge with others as we continue to discuss how to handle climate change and other environment and land issues.