My essay 'Permaculture in the Practice'
was written for and initially published
on the Yeomans Project blog
from the art gesture series of 2012
one page from a Readers Digest novel
pamphlet bound with horse hair taken from found birds nest
cupped in the nest-finder's hands
Permaculture in the Practice - Rhonda Ayliffe
Can permaculture be used as the philosophical foundation of an arts practice?
This was a question I posed in my Higher Degree research project ‘codex
infinitum – the infinite book’ that ostensibly investigated the future of books
and knowledge in a digital world but incorporated permaculture ethics and
principles to guide my studio operations. Permaculture has been used in organic
horticulture, small and larger scale agriculture, in relocalisation movements
such as Transition Towns, and by individuals seeking more sustainable and
ecologically responsible lifestyles. What could permaculture offer to an
individual art practice and what changes would the adoption of permaculture’s
ethics and principles cause to art making became key questions I wanted to
address within my research. My essay Permaculture
in the practice is an informal account in part drawing on my MFA exegesis.
I was born, raised and remain
in a small community on the far south coast of NSW. Generations of my family
have occupied this same small territory, a tight 10km radius around the tiny
township of Cobargo; traditional country of the Yuin people. For the past 25
years I’ve lived on my family’s 360 acre beef property at Sams Creek. I married
the neighboring dairy farmer and his 800 acres, and inadvertently have found
myself a custodian of a significant swathe of farmland nestled at the outer
foothills of Gulaga, the mother mountain. The combined farms are bordered to
the west by the Kooraban National Park, with its small and highly vulnerable yet
genetically significant koala population, and they encompasses Sams Creek, a
small waterway that eventually empties to the east into Wallaga Lake, Batemans
Marine Park. The farms feature varied productive pasturelands, remnant
temperate rainforest, woodland and indigenous grass species, vital bird and
marsupial habitats and wildlife corridors. The combined farming properties are of
cultural, historical, economic and environmental importance.
This is my place in the world.
Connection to place informs every aspect of my creative practice. It was through
this sensed connection to place that, two decades ago, I initially became
interested in bioregionalism, place-based education, restoration landcare, and
permaculture. In 2010, as I commenced my studio-based Master of Fine Arts and
completed my Permaculture Design Certificate, I began to speculate about the
possibilities of utilising permaculture as the philosophical or ethical basis
of an arts practice. This speculation and investigation became an integral
aspect of my recently completed higher degree research project: codex infinitum – the infinite book.
Permaculture (initially a contraction of the words
‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’ but now more readily understood as ‘permanent-culture’) is a form of systems-thinking design that was developed in
the 1970s by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Initially applied principally to forms of organic farming
and gardening, in recent years permaculture has been explored as a potential
philosophical and practical model for business and economics, TransitionsTowns, the
reorganisation of politics and society, and a means for moving to a moresustainable lifestyle. Permaculture grounds
decisions on three primary ethics: ‘Permaculture – Principles and
Pathways Beyond Sustainability and referred to in my research project are:
1. Observe and interactd
2. Catch and store energy
3. Obtain a yield
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
5. Use and value renewable
resources and services
6. Produce no waste
7. Design from patterns to details
8. Integrate rather than segregate
9. Use small and slow solutions
10. Use and value diversity
11. Use edges and value the marginal
12. Creatively use and respond to change
The ethics and principles are used together, along with
concepts such as guilds, zones and layers to create an integrated, (w)holistic, ecologically
sustainable system that is the cornerstone of permaculture design.
Permaculture, in its
traditional, utilitarian form, has been used as a basis for ecological artworks
including Nils Norman’s Edible Park, Fritz Haeg’s various Edible Estates, and Artist as Family’s FoodForest, created as part
of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2010 exhibition: Balance – Art for a New World. Numerous eco-artists, eco-arts
groups/organisations and socially engaged art workers have created work that
either consciously or casually relates to the permaculture model. Within my practice and research project I was
interested in exploring permaculture not just as the basis of garden or ecological
artwork but as a studio methodology and the philosophical foundation of an integrated,
holistic, bioregional and permaculturally inclined combination of art, work and
life.
Embarking on a life/practice change of this magnitude, the
big question of course was ‘where do I start?’ I began with the completion of a
Permaculture Design Certificate that empowered me to undertake both a range of
practical projects around our 2 acre home/studio garden (this included
retrofitting of solar panels, grey water system, reinvigoration of my extensive
food gardens and orchard and the construction of an integrated studio/poultry
house) and conduct an audit of all studio activities (including inputs,
outputs, procedures and business activities).
Some of my earliest and simplest permaculture initiatives in the studio included
a move to eschew toxic materials (in both art making and studio maintenance)
and the composting/ recycling of studio ‘waste’. I have maintained an
inter-disciplined or hybrid arts practice and my arts background is in the traditional
crafts related to book arts – not the usual areas associated with an eco-art or
socially-engaged practice. This presented unique challenges, but by building on
simple, practical actions I gained the confidence to consider larger issues
inherent in my arts practice that encouraged me to reflect critically on what I wanted as an artist.
A project from 2011 signalled possibilities for an
integrated holistic permacultural approach. In 2011 I became involved in the
Kooraban koala survey and the Australian National
University’s Eden Project Field Study
program. These two independent
activities intertwined when I joined ANU field study participants on a koala survey plot near Dignams Creek and was invited
to exhibit work in their group show FarEnough: Aesthetic responses to the Far South Coast NSW. My corollary work, Kooraban
Koalas, consisted of photographic documentation of a temporary artwork that acknowledged and commemorated the koala survey site
close to my Sams Creek home. The work was
displayed in the Bega Valley Regional Gallery along with a copy of ‘Koala
Survey of the Kooraban and Gulaga National Parks’.
Kooraban
Koalas
represented more than just the exhibited photograph –it consisted of collective
physical labour, empirical research, oral history, published and informal texts,
along with site-specific art
making. The multifaceted trans-disciplined work also exemplified a way of
adopting and interpreting permaculture’s core ethics and principles within my
arts practice.
I was buoyed by the potentials of an inter- or
trans-disciplined approach experienced with Kooraban
koalas and how it signalled a manner in which permaculture could guide
choices within my arts practice. For my MFA project I created honestum circuli – the virtuous circle - a small garden constructed from 217
discarded encyclopedias and based on a quintessential permaculture feature: the
herb spiral. Honestum circuli exists
both as a semi-permanent structure in my studio garden and an accompanying artist’s book containing documentation
of the garden’s construction, plant lists, plans and incidental notes.
Two other works from my MFA project
signaled an alternative, indirect way of incorporating permaculture in my
practice. Both codex inperfecto – the
unfinished book, my long coptic bound ‘book’ structure, and carpe diem, an artist’s book resulting
from my ‘art gesture’ series, epitomized how taking a permacultural perspective
could influence my art making. The materials utilised in codex inperfecto (40+ volumes of unwanted encyclopaedias) represent
a conscious move to ensure that my material choice and purchase proactively
assists the environment while simultaneously helping to fund charity work. The
books used in my work have been sourced from charity shops and book fairs (such
as Lifeline, Rotary, Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul) where they usually
remained unsold and then required expensive disposal. My purchases ensured that
the unsold undesirables were not sent to landfill while the purchase price
actively assisted in funding each charity’s projects.
My ongoing ‘art gesture’ series is a range of ephemeral
artworks based on the interaction of books and site. These interactions were
informed by and created in response to the prevailing local conditions
(seasonal change, weather, community and/or natural events) and actively
embraced the smart phone and web as both the creative means and destination for
the work. It was my observation that creating and distributing work online apparently
circumvented some of the less sustainable aspects of the art business world.
The combination of smart phone technology/photography and blogging may
initially appear incongruous with a permacultural approach – so I usually
clarify this by relating the provenance of my equipment and discuss appropriate
technology choices as an active aspect of the work’s story. When provided with
the opportunity I like to explain that I generally use second hand and
discarded equipment – my computer(s) were rescued just before they were due to
be binned at the local school and my smart phone is a clunky old model that’s
still operating.
These recent works essentially
chronicle the evolution of my methodology as I gradually embraced permaculture
in my practice. In summary, utilising permaculture as the ethical/philosophical
basis of my practice in practical terms has resulted in a move toward:
- using recycled, reclaimed
waste product as my primary studio materials and in auxiliary arts business
activities
- using local, homegrown or
gathered ‘green’ art materials and associated methods wherever possible and appropriate.
- working ephemerally and
recording ephemeral ‘art’ actions in a digital format for sharing digitally
and/or online.
-
avoiding air flight
-
slow working, small working, humble working, performative working,
collaborative and collective working.
I would note that my research
project did not progress without difficulties and frustrations. Permaculture
operates primarily outside both academia and the art world and the atypical
combination of books/knowledge as the subject of my studio work and
permaculture as methodology created unusual tension. I addressed part of this
problem by looking at connections between pragmatic philosophy and permaculture
in my MFA exegesis. Both permaculture and the pragmatic texts of John Dewey
emphasised holistic and experiential learning/knowledge, intimate immersion in
the environment and knowledge-building through practical application. Similarly,
both Dewey and Holmgren reject notions of duality or dichotomy between nature
and culture, mind and body, form and content as well as the idea of nature (and
experience) as closed and static. The combination of pragmatism and
permaculture offered a robust and logical foundation in which to explore the
ideas about the site and construction of knowledge, the purpose and potential
of art, research methodology and the holistic integration of art and life: the
central motifs of my research project. As I noted in my MFA exegesis:
permaculture provided both a way and a why
for my arts practice.
With my MFA project now
complete I am contemplating a more enthusiastic and comprehensive embrace of
all things permacultural. Future trans-disciplined projects on the farm, in the
garden and the studio include waterways restoration work and wildlife corridor
construction in conjunction with Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority and the Biodiversity Fund, the establishment of Black Wattle Place Based Education hub sited on the farm, and contributing to the foundation of PIP– Australian Permaculture Magazine. I have commenced construction of stage 2 of the studio dye
garden with the spring planting of calendula, woad, Japanese and Australian
indigo and I’ve started researching/ experimenting with natural protein based
(milk and egg) paint bases from our farm produce.
The adoption and application
of permaculture’s ethics and principles within my practice is, and necessarily
will remain, an ongoing activity and the creation of a perfected exemplar has
not been my prime objective. Instead I am keen to promote the notion that it is
possible to achieve positive change by incorporating permaculture within any
arts practice and the best way to do this is to start small, build upon
success, accept imperfections and adopt the maxim: ‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ Permaculture in my practice
means acknowledging that all the myriad aspects of my life and work are
interconnected - so tending the garden, preserving the abundance, assisting a
sick animal, remediating farmland, counting koala scat, working beside local
school children, making ephemeral art, blogging or binding a book are ALL
aspects of my intertwined, inter-disciplined, bioregional, permacultural arts
practice.
“It is not the project but the living process that will be the measure
of our actions.”
- David Holmgren.
Rhonda Ayliffe
Sams Creek, Cobargo NSW
