>[!INFO]+ Meta >Author:: Kevin Murray >Date:: 2000 >Reference:: 'Caring for an old world' Mildura Arts Centre Helen Vivian (ed.) _Interceptions: Arts, Science & Land in Sunraysia_ (2000) >Tags:: #text #VisualArt After a meeting between artists, writers and partners in the Sunrise 21 project, Ben Gawne took artist Michael Doneman and I to the new premises of Lower Basin Freshwater Research Laboratory. I was very curious to see a ‘freshwater’ laboratory from the inside. Its contents ranged from the slime to the meticulous. There were vats of gunk resembling the soups that little children make out of whatever disgusting liquids they can find in the backyard. By contrast, there were delicate items like the tiny ear-stones—otoliths—extracted from carp. Often it was the building, rather than its contents, that caught my attention. The fittings seemed out of place. Fishing nets hung on hooks that read FOUL LINEN: STITCHED BAG ONLY. I asked Ben what this sign meant. ‘Well, actually, this used to be a nursing home before we moved in’. We chuckled over the incongruity. Thinking about it afterwards, however, I realised how appropriate it was that this research centre should be accommodated in Rachel Wilson House, home of the elderly. After all, our continent is the oldest on the planet. Over 250 million years have worn the land into an arid expanse, where two-thirds is either desert or semi-desert. Our river system—the continent’s circulation—is vestigial. The combined discharge from all Australian rivers including the principal river system, the Murray-Darling, is the equivalent of only about half that of China's Yangtze River. Major surgery has been necessary for this continent to support European settlement. Hydrological engineering schemes such as the Snowy River, the Perth-Kalgoorlie pipeline or the Ord River are like triple bypass heart operations that restore circulation to the arid regions. As a liquid element, water knows no boundaries. Today this applies as much to the political arena as to the physical world. Future conflict scenarios involve competition over our increasingly finite natural resources. There are signs of what might come. Take the case of Narva, a small town in Estonia. In the beginning of 1999, local government despaired at its Russian neighbour, Ivangorod, which was behind in its water bills. Like any dissatisfied creditor, Estonia decided to cut supply. In retaliation, Ivangorod emptied raw sewerage into the river passing by Narva. It is easy to imagine how a spat like this might grow into international conflict when it expands to the scale of major water sources such as the Euphrates or Danube rivers. While technology may develop ways of increasing power output or enhancing agriculture, the water available on this planet is strictly finite. The political role of water has already changed the shape of Victorian politics. The balance of power is currently held by three independents from rural Victoria. While they share the wave of rural protest, regional interests divide them. The member for East Gippsland was elected principally to restore the flow to the beleaguered Snowy River. Yet a large proportion of this flow goes to satisfy the needs of irrigators, who live in the electorate of fellow independent, the member for Mildura. Thrown together by fate, the independents must transcend their specific regional interests to support rural Victoria as a whole. The history of contact between Gippsland and the Riverina has not always been postive. In the mid 1960s, an East Gippsland fish farmer introduced carp into a dam in the Mildura district. During a flood, the carp escaped from the dam and found their way into the river system, where they flourish today. For more productive cooperation between the northwestern and eastern Victorian regions, we need a diagnosis of where our water system is deteriorating. The Lower Basin Freshwater Research Laboratory offers such a service. ## Exotic dangers Carp is one of its principle research interests.  The carp family Ostariophysan are the world’s most common fresh water fish. Carp’s cousins include goldfish, catfish, minnows, loaches, moonfish and piranha. Their proliferation results from a variety of factors. The Ostariophysan family possesses a hardy metabolism that can tolerate low oxygen levels. Moreover, a female can produce up to three million eggs per kilo body weight by the time they are three years old. Carp have a particular advantage in the Murray River because they are suited to irrigation schemes: they can tolerate changes in flow regime and adapt best to the still shallow waters behind weirs. Besides greater competition for food sources, carp cause damage to the river system by increased _turbidity_. Carp gather their food by rummaging in the mud on the base of the river. The sediment they dislodge in this process includes nutrients, whose dispersal encourages the growth of _blue-green algal blooms_.[1](#_edn1) ## Still waters The turbidity that encourages blue-green algae is compounded by the changed patterns of river _flow_ along the Murray. Before irrigation, the river system had accommodated itself to a seasonal variation—slow in summer and fast in early spring. During flood periods, the river would overflow its banks and meet up with nearby billabongs and lakes. This played a critical function in the broader Riverina ecology. Plants such as red gums had their seed dispersed in the floods. At the other extreme, many strata of life require dryness in order to reproduce. Zooplankton and fairy shrimp need dry soil in order to spawn their eggs. These two problems—carp and absence of floods—prompt opposing strategies of environmental action. The carp problem is due to a _loss of control_ of the river population and requires _increased policing_ of its population. By contrast, the flow problem is due to _over-control_ of river resources and demands _loosening restrictions_ and allowing nature to take its course. The laboratory calls this libertarian strategy ‘environmental flow’. The controlling function of environmentalism is more familiar to us. Calls for greater industry efficiency and protection of endangered species reflect the conservative quality of ecological care. However, the opposite ‘releasing’ process plays a critical role too. We find it in urban reclamation projects, which attempt to restore native grasses and creeks. For the laboratory, this libertarian method includes the introduction of ‘translucent dams’, which pass floodwaters on rather than regulate them. In the past, river systems were protected from floods by a timely release in anticipation of their arrival. The problem with this method is that it fails to convey the rich nutrients gathered by floodwaters off the land. Instead of feeding the system downstream, dams operate as sinks in which nutrients settle on the riverbed. ## Agents of change The laboratory persists in carefully monitoring the state of the river system and publishing its results in well-designed and informative brochures. Naturally, there are factors that operate against their recommendations. Immediate economic interests are tied to the maintenance—even expansion—of control over the Murray River. To allow people to see beyond these interests—to the broader environmental picture—requires not only information, but also a change of perspective. It is in facilitating this change that artists have a valuable role to play. At a presentation to Sunrise 21 project partners, Michael Doneman drew our attention to the similarities between artists and research scientists. They are both dependent on grants for their operation and share a marginal status in society. It is not only the economic framework that they might have in common, but also many of the values and modes of operation. Artists match the dual concerns of ecology in both protecting and releasing nature. Environmental art has a long tradition of honouring the preciousness of nature—_holding on_. The Mildura Sculpture Triennial hosted many artists like the late John Davis, whose Zen-like assemblages of twigs and rocks contributed to shrines for contemplating nature. More recently, the Herring Island Sculpture Park curated by Maudie Palmer provides a unique opportunity to see this art accommodated in the middle of the city. But there is the other side of art, the more Dionysian excess of materials and meanings that excites the senses and brings people together—_letting go_. The ‘other side’ of the Sculpture Triennial is an artist like Alex Denko, who let a living room become completely overgrown with clover. Both types of art are clearly important in maintaining balance in the modern psyche. The temporary nature of modern life—disposable consumer items and fluid networks—can lead to a loss of reality. Art galleries and museums provide one avenue for _slowing down and focusing_ our thoughts. At the same time, the routinised nature of modern life can lead to warped lifestyles. Left to its own devices, our way of living transforms people into atoms that pursue individual aims. In this regard, the arts festival provides an important opportunity for a population to _gather and mingle_. Take, for instance, the Adelaide Festival. In 1998, the director Robyn Archer rallied support from Adelaide’s population and organised mass weddings at Elder Park. On any day during the festival, it was possible to witness a wedding from any corner of the world—Thai, Chilean, Ukrainian and even Australian. In 2000, her plan is to follow up this with a mass christening, with the babies resulting from those marriages present to be blessed in whatever form is culturally appropriate. Just as flood provides an opportunity for the elements of a river system to exchange waters, so ideally an arts festival enables a community to come together and share its experience. The artists Michael Doneman and Motoyuki Niwa have much experience in stirring the communal pot. Their creative community building is evident online. _Elders_ (http://mwk.thehub.com.au/elders) and _Memories of the Future_ (http://www.cdes.qut.edu.au/memories/index.htm) bring together young and old generations of indigenous communities in activities of imagining the future in inventive ways. Their work in this project draws on the tradition of the _Wunderkammer_. 16th century collectors like the Dutch Bernadus Paludanus housed collections of the world’s wonders in theatrically arranged rooms. These rooms featured a cabinet containing a heterogenous display of wonders and monsters, ranging from delicate nautilus shells to grotesque deformities. Commenting in recent re-creations of historical _Wunderkammer_, Anthony Grafton writes, ‘The eye skids, rebounds, slides from the wonderful curves of a seashell to the graceful lines of a medal, itself artfully spilling out with others, from a lovely jewelbox.[2](#_edn2)’ The obsessive nature of a collection is realised by placing objects in boxes, in carefully arranged order. The _Wunderkammer_ frees up this order by combining different objects in interesting combinations that excite the imagination. Until recently, museums have followed the controlling path, presenting objects in systematic order that is carefully catalogued. It is only recently, as shown in developments such as Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, that the theatrical approach has returned. What the _Wunderkammer_ offers is a distinctively Baroque experience of sensory abundance. In placing the workaday objects of the laboratory in this theatrical setting, the artists are refreshing our sense of reality. It is intrinsic to having a culture that we can tolerate non-conformity, despite its inconvenience. As Heraclitis once observed, ‘The mixture that is not shaken soon stagnates.’ The French writer Diderot used an interesting phrase to describe a character whose irascibility was part of his creativity, ‘If one of them appears a company of people he is the _speck of yeast_ that leavens the whole and restores to each of us a portion of his natural individuality’.[3](#_edn3) An important function of culture is to aerate the social mixture, much as farmers must turn the soil before planting a new crop. We see the same phenomenon in ants, which of all nature’s forms seem the most regimented. Recent Hollywood animations that give ants human qualities (_Antz_ and a _Bug’s_ _Life_) may not be too off the mark. According to entomologic research, it is possible to find in any colony of ants a small proportion—around a fifth—who seem to be up to no good. They stray from main transport lines and disrupt the activity of others. With painstaking care, the French scientists glued numbers on the backs of the ants and carefully selected out those miscreants. To their surprise, they found that exactly the same proportion of ants would begin to misbehave again. Clearly there is some important function to the ant colony in behaviour that does not fit within immediate interests. Perhaps such ants are quite important for identifying new trails and alternative food sources in the area. Artists, in collaboration with environmental scientists, are fulfilling a similar function. Following the one track is sure to lead our own colony to disaster. We need a few of us to misbehave and so find alternative paths. This becomes increasingly important as our lives become more and more dependent on networks. Our society is becoming increasingly sealed off from the raw elements of nature. Power outages now occur just as much in summer as they do in winter because of the spread of air-conditioning. As we spend more of our day behind glass, and in front of the screen, we become more removed from the eco-system on which our lives depend. In the meantime, we have become increasingly expert in making the most of our dwindling resources. But as both science and art remind us, too much holding on will eventually destroy what we treasure. It would be a fitting sequel to the year of the aging person if we could let this aging continent out on an excursion and get some flow back in its veins. To do so, we need a scientist to navigate the river—and an artist to row the boat. ### Notes [1](#_ednref1) Australia is a continent where to be ‘exotic’ brings a curse. With Antipodean irony, the ‘bloom’ spoils our waters, just as the lovely purple flower of Patterson’s Curse kills off local grasses. Stimulated by phosphorous run-off and turbidity, these bacteria produce toxic waste that poisons the water for other wildlife. The Darling River has been the site of the largest recorded algal bloom in the world. [2](#_ednref2) Anthony Grafton ‘Believe It Or Not’ _New York Review of Books_ (1998) 65/17: 14-18 [3](#_ednref3) ‘They interest me once a year when I run into them because their characters contrast sharply with other people's and break the tedious uniformity that our social conventions and set politenesses have brought about. If one of them appears a company of people he is the speck of yeast that leavens the whole and restores to each of us a portion of his natural individuality. He stirs people up and gives them a shaking, makes them take sides, brings out the truth, shows who are really good and unmasks the villians. It is then the wise man listens and sorts people out.’ (Denis Diderot _Rameau's Nephew_ Harmondsworth: Penguin, trans. L. Tancock, 1986, orig. 1761, p. 35, my italics)