In conversation: a poetics of empathy: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison.

Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison are pioneers in the creative development of art and ecology. It was Helen who read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a critical influence in their decision in the early 1970s to do no work that did not in some way benefit the ecosystem. This commitment became a compass throughout their lives as artists, shaping a practice unique in its focus and complexity. Helen was an English Major with a Masters in Psychology who had worked in education extensively and to a senior level before becoming a full-time artist and Professor at the University of California San Diego. Living in New York in the early 1960s she had also been the first New York Coordinator of the Women's Strike for Peace. Newton, in contrast, had been apprenticed to the sculptor Michael Lanz from a very young age, and trained in figuration. He graduated from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1952 and thereafter pursued a career as a sculptor. He took his MFA at Yale (1963-65) alongside Chuck Close and Richard Serra, and, Helen helped him learn Joseph Albers' color theory. He went on to be one of the founding members of the new Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego CA where they both later became Professors Emeriti

Working together on ecological thinking: relationality and difference.

This PhD by Public Output contributes to the wider understanding of 'ecological thinking' in the arts, through the portfolio of peer reviewed research publications of a producer of public art projects in the healthcare and environment settings. A timeline/visual map is included to draw attention to the interrelations between elements in the environmental domain and elements in the health and wellbeing domain. The researcher draws on both ecological understandings of relationality (Bateson, Biesta, Jacobs) and of difference (Morton) to frame the contribution made by the portfolio to ecological thinking in arts practice. The approach is based in practice-led research (Biggs, Coessens et al, Douglas, Nyrnes). Biggs provides an understanding of ensemble practices to inform the student's role as Producer and Researcher. Coessens et al. Douglas, and Nyrnes provide an articulation of the intrarelations between theory, material/context and the individual practitioner's voice. The works and reflective writings of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison are drawn on in various publications to exemplify ecological thinking in arts practice. Their conception of 'joining a conversation' complements the wider focus on shared agency that forms one of the aspects of 'common theme'. Specific papers and chapters address key aspects of ecological thinking including participation, collaboration and interdisciplinarity (which are framed as key to relationality in the arts), together with complexity and failure which are key to the framing of difference in the context of practice in the arts

Foregrounding ecosystems: thinking with the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison.

The approach we take to understanding, whether framed as 'measured, objective and in control' or 'entangled and adapting', is key to the health of the life web and ourselves. The problems associated with the measured, objective and in control version of this, have been identified by artists, philosophers and thinkers including Goethe, Steiner, Klee and Bateson over a long period and came to much wider recognition from the 1970s, with for example the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth. Artists create ways of imagining the world that inspire us to feel as well as think. Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, known as 'the Harrisons', do so through an ecological approach, as evidenced in their works, including The Serpentine Lattice on which this essay draws in particular. Grounded in literary movements such as ethnopoetics and pictorial devices including figure-ground reversal, the Harrisons present us with a fundamentally different way of knowing the world. But where the environmental humanities have tended to reject outright ways of knowing associated with positivism, let alone financialisation of ecosystems, we find quantitative and financial proposals in the works of the Harrisons shaped to provoke us to redirect human institutions to address the health of the life web first and foremost

Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth : Visions of future systems and how to get there

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent.Peer reviewe

Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent