Art Beyond the Work and the Lessons of “Ecologies of Tomorrow”: Long Pan’s South American Field Notes
Art Newspaper (Chinese edition) 2023-10-13
When we focus our gaze on artistic centers, we inevitably overlook figures beyond the aperture. As the joke goes—“all the artists in the world are in Berlin and New York”—Chinese artists also tend to cluster in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Those cities may host the densest exhibitions and markets, but that does not mean art only happens there. The world is multidimensional, as is art; voices outside the mainstream matter too.
In the Chinese context, the situation now differs from thirty years ago. Then, artists from across the country gathered in Beijing, forming self-organized communities that supported one another and coalesced into a force. Today, artist communities are less concentrated. Partly this is pressure driving art communities out of city centers; partly it reflects artists’ choice to seek creative fields outside the metropolis—taking up residence elsewhere to work in Xinjiang, Yunnan, Guizhou, the Northeast… Staying in the studio no longer satisfies my urge to explore the world. The world changes so fast I cannot remain immersed in an “artistic mirage” and ignore what is happening outside. Even as an ordinary citizen, I am eager to know what is happening in the world and what shapes my life.
In 2022 I received the Mentorship Award “Cultural & Artistic Responses to Environmental Change” offered by the Prince Claus Fund in partnership with the Goethe-Institut. This year-long 2023 program was mainly organized through online meetings and included two in-person Lab Weeks. It recruited twelve artists from different countries and four mentors. This was my first successful application for an international exchange; I have no study-abroad background, rarely travel, and my English is halting. Yet because I have long followed environmental issues in China, I could contribute Chinese perspectives and stories to the group. I applied because I felt the need to hear more voices and see different cases. In recent years I mostly made work driven by intuition, taste, and emotion, but it remained fairly shallow; I couldn’t dig deeply into my existing work. I also had many doubts about art itself and was curious how artists from other countries work.
The Prince Claus Fund supports artists and cultural practitioners in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe—especially where cultural expression faces pressure. That explains why our twelve artists came from India, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda, Bolivia, South Africa, Mexico, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil and Palestine; the mentors were from Colombia and Turkey. The artists work in diverse media, but we share a strong concern for reality and an active response to environmental issues.
Into the field
Peruvian artist Renzo Alva Hurtado works deeply with communities in northern Amazonia, focusing on populations severely affected by oil and mining pollution; his practice includes engagement with indigenous movements and documentary filmmaking to reveal the forest’s condition. Indian artist Paribartana Mohanty recently investigated environmental disasters near Odisha’s Bay of Bengal. One mentor, Brigitte Baptiste (Bogotá), president of Universidad EAN and former director of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, has long contributed to social-ecological thinking and helped shape post-conflict environmental policy in Colombia. These practitioners have spent years committed to environmental issues and vigorously attempt to make problems visible and addressed.
We should note how the keywords “environment,” “ecology,” and “sustainability” have become fashionable; mention of them often attracts attention. Consider: ten years ago, how many artists focused on environmental issues? What was the situation for those tracking ecological problems? If the ecological crisis were not already urgent, how many would be willing to speak on it? Having seen many cases where concepts are divorced from works and encountered jargon-heavy texts, I grew fatigued. Wading too long in conceptual mire produces a vast sense of emptiness, as if one loses the capacity to perceive reality. So, where lies the problem? What unfolds in the world’s hustle and bustle? Four years ago I left my studio with these questions. After leaving Hangzhou, I went to a fishing village in Quanzhou, an electronics town in Guangdong, remote mountains in Yunnan, and then to Colombian rainforests—traveling ever farther.
People asked why I go into the field—why be physically present when texts exist? Texts are not enough. Documents and reports may be years old and filtered through many hands; reality changes. Embodied experience provides irreplaceable stimuli: details and surprises encountered along the way reveal stories outside mainstream narratives. The same goes for experiments—I am not a biologist, yet I need to experience processes like “fungal degradation” or “plant metallurgy” myself. I see possibilities in the process that outsourcing to a lab would not yield. When ChatGPT can better retrieve existing information than we can, do we still need to recount? With AI able to generate dazzling images (and realities), what is art’s irreplaceability?
Art beyond the work
Producing objects seems obligatory for artists. Residencies often expect a final work or exhibition. But this program did not prioritize what kind of object an artist produces—or even whether one produces anything. The organizers did not regard making an artifact for a museum as paramount; what mattered more was the friction and exchange generated around themes within the group.
The first phase centered on “what constitutes community.” We switched constantly between small group and collective discussions and invited artist groups such as Struggles for Sovereignty and Nadir Bouhmouch & Soumeya Ait Ahmed to share community practice experiences. We examined imagined communities, macro and micro communities, and nonhuman communities. Some artists’ practices move like spiders across networks, building many forms of relations; deeply embedded work in a single community is admirable but extremely difficult. Working with communities often leaves artists feeling like “story-stealing bandits,” instilling guilt about whether their projects help or harm. I wonder: is art mere consumption? What hubris assumes artists can “solve” these issues? Facing cases where well-intended projects for community women caused more trouble, I think doing respectful background research is far more important than moral posturing. In contexts where work is not product-driven, valuing process and activity also troubles me. Organizing communities creatively, mobilizing collective action, or making community collaboration the end—how do artists differ from activists or NGOs? What is art’s place?
Perhaps emphasis differs. From my limited experience, I have collaborated with communities to some extent—eg, engaging villagers in the fishing village for The Crossroads of Wonderland—but that was a small portion. My primary focus remains on expressing universal emotions through my works. I also believe communities need not be exclusively human; nonhuman communities matter. Observing nonhuman life patterns and building human–nonhuman communal ties is another way of community work and may open a larger scope.
Although I have many doubts and disagreements, the mentors did not impose authority but shared perspectives and encouraged me to pursue my questions. Brief meetings cannot delve deeply, but the artists’ critical thinking was impressive. Our differing focal points and knowledge structures made the collective content richly varied.
Connections and barriers
The first Lab Week took us to Colombia. In-person meetings differ greatly from Zoom: personality, style and humor become vivid, and I could finally use body language. Outside scheduled events, conversations were intense, accelerating mutual understanding. I discovered links and differences among artists: Brazilian artist Maya Quilolo contends with Chinese mining companies’ damage to her hometown river; she draws others in with laughter but is a serious thinker who pinpoints issues amidst chaotic discussion. South African artist Tamzyn Botha seeks to avoid heavy conversation, using humor to respond to trauma and promote playful spaces for ideas; that approach was a great inspiration to my more solemn temperament.
The problems artists face are not isolated; they are systemic rather than merely national or interpersonal tales of exploitation. Viewing international political, economic, and military competition reveals connections among issues. But reality is complex: even discourse inequality fragments the world. From what angle do we weave truth? Different circumstances yield entirely different conclusions.
Barriers constrain our world—not only information silos and disinformation but also international relations that limit personal reach. In our South American trip, three artists—including myself—almost did not make it to Colombia due to visa problems. I can construct a “South America” through information, but if I cannot go, it does not exist in my lived knowledge. Adverse conditions make the cost of exploring the world higher and shape different imaginaries.
Local art
The Lab Week focused on meeting local artists and institutions. Before the trip I was impressed by Colombia’s National Museum. Unlike the stiff tone of many national museums in China, it integrates ancient civilizations with critical reflections on colonial history and presents modern and contemporary works that critique the deterioration of human–nature relations. This openness and compositional breadth surprised me and piqued my curiosity about the local artistic ecology.
Our first visit was to the University of Colombia’s San Agustín cloister, formerly a Bogotá barracks and prison. On display was photojournalist Jesús Abad Colorado’s anthology “The Witness,” documenting armed conflict and displaced victims from 1992 to 2018—speaking for the defeated and revealing war’s truth. The exhibition entrance featured a monumental “communicate tree” made of layered newspapers that can be leafed through; one side shows published narratives shaped by victors, the other holds the unpublished, unremembered lives of the displaced. The work’s power conveyed the country’s tragic shadows without explanatory text. Curator María Belén Sáez de Ibarra selected 500 images from thousands, intentionally avoiding explicit depictions of army violence and historical contextualization to focus on human condition, invoking dignity and reconciliation. Leaving, I noticed the guarded soldiers’ youthful smiles—contrasting sharply with the sorrowful soldier gazes in the photographs.
On our final day we visited Arquitectura Expandida, who presented “La Comunidad De La Pala / Pala Shovel Community,” a project aggregating Bogotá’s social movements and collectives to practice spatial self-management and nature-rooted solutions. Their work negotiates space at the urban margins under specific geographic, social, economic and governance contexts. The communities they organize occupy plains’ outskirts and highland water sources. Although land is privately owned in Colombia, tenure is ambiguous: absentee owners purchase large tracts, leave them unmanaged, or resell them, displacing those who need housing. People occupy such lands, build dwellings, and assert their right to live there. Arquitectura Expandida develops community-managed infrastructures—gathering and resting spaces—and organizes zoned maintenance of communal strongholds. Their strategy explores alternative community organization forms, civic participation in public policy, and self-management of public space.
We traveled from watersource communities to the highly urbanized industrial district of Bosa Porvenir, where we observed increasingly polluted waterways. Hip-hop groups Golpe De Barrio and Distreestyle introduced us to people and environments affected by urbanization and how they legitimize youth occupation of public space through art and self-management. One example: organizing bicycle hip-hop events along the riverbank to invite youth into polluted riparian zones—“no matter how you explain it, visiting the land and sensing it yourself makes the reality clear.” Another project extended the watersource community’s self-governance by securing a free public gathering space in front of a mall—preventing commercial capture—and constructing it using traditional bamboo techniques linked to the community’s autonomous practices.
That day we followed the river from source to industrial terminus, witnessing its transformation under urban “baptism” and the community stories around it. These artists are focused and invested in their work—terms like “work,” “project,” or “exhibition” cannot fully capture what they do. They confront concrete, real problems rather than esoteric pseudo-questions of art discourse; the more I learned, the more I felt their strength.
South American flora
Bogotá’s rivers originate in the páramo uplands—ecosystems whose vegetation captures large amounts of water from the air and functions as critical natural reservoirs. Although páramos occupy only 2% of Colombia’s territory, they supply water for 70% of the population. South America’s natural ecology feels otherworldly. Páramo (a premodern Spanish term meaning “wilderness, treeless land”) refers to alpine tundra ecosystems in the Andes, a new tropical montane biota with many endemic species. Leticia province is key for Amazon biodiversity research at the Peru–Brazil border; it is tropical rainforest with distinct rainy and dry seasons—when I arrived it was late in the rainy season.
Entering this land, I encountered unfamiliar lifeforms—forms, sizes and temporalities that challenged my botanical understanding. The páramo felt like a single organism or a vast lichen: different lifeforms entwined and overlaid, indistinguishable, and walking in the highlands felt like entering a microscopic world, rendering humans extremely small. This drastic scale contrast produced a sense of strangeness—an estrangement from the temporal and spatial scales of biotic communities that opened a path into the forest world.
Without taxonomic training, I gave these strange plants provisional nicknames to aid memory: Naked Tree (periodically shedding bark), Bleeding Tree (exuding red sap when injured), Penis Tree (reproductive-form morphology), Communicate Tree (struck to signal people in the forest), Strangler Tree (killing hosts by girdling), Antennal Tree (branches like tentacles), Paper Tree (bark fibers used for paper), Painting Tree (fruits or leaves used as dyes), Shampoo Tree (used as mosquito-repellent shampoo). These anthropomorphic or descriptive names preserved the novelty of first encounters and recorded vivid plant states. Compared with rigid taxonomic names, renaming can renew discovery and help build intimacy between humans and plants.
Another surprising question: can plants “walk”? Amazonian lore describes Socratea exorrhiza as a “walking” palm with stilt roots enabling survival in swampy ground. As soil erodes, it grows new roots towards firmer ground; when new roots settle, the trunk bends toward them and old roots rot, allegedly allowing slow relocation over years to better light and soil. Though evidence is lacking, the tale sparks imagination. At Bogotá’s MAMU museum, The Moon of the Amazon placed pulleys under a Walking Palm sculpture to move it onstage with actors, making it a storyteller.
But from romantic tales to reality: as Vrsansky laments, “Socratea exorrhiza does not walk fast enough to escape the threat of chainsaws and machetes sanctioned by law.” Both Amazon and páramo face land clearing and mining. Human and tree time scales differ; plant agency is trivialized under rapid development. Even if plants’ “walking” is disregarded, they persist in movement—domesticated plants follow humans in passive migration.
Indigenous knowledge is not only vital for survival in the rainforest but also a bridge linking people and forest. Many rainforest schools funded from outside mostly teach Spanish. Should inhabitants be “civilized”? What knowledge do they need? Or should indigenous knowledge be strengthened? Perhaps this is why artist Ursula Biemann established a school in the Amazon to teach indigenous knowledge systematically. Introducing the forest mind exhibition, she said: “Knowledge emerges from encounters with the earth and its organisms. I observe natural wisdom through shamanic and scientific lenses to put these knowledge systems into dialogue.” Our guide’s father was the village shaman—the last shaman who mediated community–forest communication and was considered a window into natural wisdom. As that window closes and human–environment conflict intensifies, is it time to relearn indigenous knowledge?
Ecologies of tomorrow
The second phase theme was “Ecologies of Tomorrow.” The group posed the question: “Is ecological knowledge useful to you?” After the páramo and Amazon plant observations, I can answer: yes. I need ecological and indigenous knowledge; without them, I could not know the stories behind so many unfamiliar plants or open a deeper imagination. But ecological knowledge is not dogma—I am not an ecologist or a local inhabitant. What I can and want to do is tell different stories from a shared foundation. Though I read scientific reports and draw inspiration from researchers drab articles that, to me, are romantic—I must translate another side of the story into an artistic language. We can “rename plants” or “reinvent plants” to construct new relations, or learn from fungi the “wisdom of colonization”—if humankind depends on colonial modes to develop itself. These fanciful attempts are forms of “Ecologies of Tomorrow” within an artistic context.
The project was not yet half complete; doubts and discussions continued. This piece records observations of art and natural ecology from the South American trip.
Written by Long Pan