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MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to Reforestation

(12.2.2023) Reforestation today, in 2023, is something embedded in a global system of resource management. At least this is what we are told, as these days the global system of carbon offsets, or at least parts of it, is/are under suspicion of being counterproductive, by setting false incentives, and thus of being merely another variation of greenwashing. Is is morally justifiable to take a flight, under the condition that one does compensate the carbon output, by supporting local reforestation projects that may be under way (or not) far away, on another continent, while this does lead to not reducing flights or local carbon output? We are going to think about that, but first we look at the art history of resource management, to embark, in the second part of this visual essay, on another walk. Which will lead us, this time, to a plant nursery nearby. And from time to time we will also watch the sky, to spot some flights.

The well-known Avenue at Middelharnis by Meindert Hobbema (National Gallery of London) is a remarkable painting for many reasons. It does show rough woodland marginally, but mainly cultivation of nature, a plant nursery and various generations of trees, all of which probably come from that plant nursery. Brief: a man-made landscape, a man tending the saplings, a painting that has us contemplate resource management in 1689. Because this is the year this painting was made.

Only a few decades later Hans Carl von Carlowitz did publish a book which is famous today for being the main reference for the discourse of sustainability. This book may be a main reference point for the history of the notion (›nachhaltend‹ is the word von Carlowitz uses, as can be seen in the picture); but it is just another reference point for the history of the idea, an idea that is much older, an idea that had other names before, and perhaps will have other names in the future (perhaps ›optimal resource management‹). But these things have to be contemplated together: the visual discourse on things, the discourse of art visualizing sustainability, as the more technical discourse, a striving for economical as well as ecological sustainability, while it is sometimes forgotten today that economical sustainability was a goal of successful resource management too, and not only ecological sustainability, and perhaps the latter not even in the first place.

These days, as I am visiting a plant nursery nearby (also on a Sunday, as today), as well as the areas around it, I am realizing that the local resource management might function rather similarly as in the days of Meindert Hobbema (all pictures by DS). A plant nursery – the German language has the rather beautiful word of ›Baumschule‹ – can be seen as being part of the local economy. It is offering idyllic views, but it is something else to think of reforestation as being part of a global system of resource management. Do we have an iconography for that? I doubt it. It would require a Bruegel to summarize the various aspects of global resource management (and its local aspects and implications, perhaps also: its imaginations, its fancies – together). What happens these days is that the global system of carbon offsets is in question (rightly so, as the layman may think). But the imagery of these systems is a conglomerate of imaginary iconographies. In other words: an iconography of sustainability on a global scale is actually lacking. One does assume (or did assume) that these systems are functioning. Which would mean that the visual analogy of sustainabiliy would we a Western tourist taking a flight to a foreign country, a tourist whose conscience would be clean, given that this tourist would have compensated, offset, the carbon output for his vacational trip somehow. Imageries of Western tourism, exotism, as well as European history (the concept of indulgence/›Ablass‹) may come in mind. And on the other hand we have to imagine functioning reforestation projects, or projects that do stop or at least reduce deforestation somewhere else, according to the theory of carbon offsets. An iconography for these rather abstract systematic relations does not seem to exist. The technical language of economy finds its expressions in terms of diagrams, infographics and charts, while documentaries may show functioning or not functioning reforestation projects in terms of film; but a layman does not know, is not able to monitor, and perhaps not even to imagine, if such expression of sustainability – which a functioning system of global resource management would be – is actually working or not, or if, perhaps, it does work only perfectly in the mind of economists and resource managers, in theory that is, or even only in the mind of the public relation-department of firms, and not (yet) in the compliance departments.