Complex Systems
Q & A
Conversations between Aviva Rahmani and Felicity Stone, Art Thinker:
1) In your transdisciplinary practice of art, you have not only included ideas from law, music, and performance, but also physics, which led you to develop your trigger point theory. What are some other fields you would like to explore with the application of trigger point theory? Do you have ideas for other projects?
A Native American colleague recently commented that I am a translator for the complexity of indigenous thinking. In many indigenous communities, the boundaries between knowledge space and knowledge systems are porous. The separation of labor has worked well to make capitalism very successful for a limited class of beneficiaries. It has provided a range of modern appliances and conveniences. But arguably for much of the Earth and its impoverished, it has not been so successful.
2) How do you balance the complexity of some of your more theoretical ideas with the need for accessibility?
I am basically just an artist. So, I take everything in and spit out something that sometimes makes sense. It isn’t a conscious act of deciding what might make a particular impact, although I am often sure I want to impact something that deeply troubles me. My curiosity is pretty omnivorous, and I let my intuition guide my interests. For example, when models for ecological restoration came up against the scale of global warming and sea level rise seemed to obviate work on conserving and restoring wetland systems, I began to cast around for where I might park my hysterical feelings of urgency about environmental threats. But instead of pursuing a solution, the policy opportunity in the litigation for The Blued Trees Symphony came to me when activists asked me to build on Peter von Tiesenhausen’s example of copyrighting his Alberta, CA., ranch to protect it. All I did was connect the dots.
3) In your book 50 Years of Work, you mention the importance of ‘Play’ in the application of Trigger Point Theory. Could you explain what this involves?
Play is central to how creativity and original thinking functions. The theories of play emerged in the work of educator Maria Montessori and the philosopher John Dewey. In recent years, that has been subsumed by number-crunchers, accountants who can only think in quantifiable terms. It is no surprise that numbers alone, even the most careful algorithms, solve very few of the human and extended natural world problems that exist on an unprecedented scale today.
4) Part of the process of applying Trigger Point Theory is “Layering of Information.” Do the types of information being layered need to change according to each project or is it fairly standard?
Yes, I think so. Some agents stay the same, such as nodes of human willingness. Others are more narrow, such as the effect of sea water warming on some invertebrate marine animals such as corals that can’t easily migrate north.
5) Could you apply Trigger Point Theory to other fields beyond ecological art? Would you be prepared to act as a consultant to projects in other fields where there is a need to achieve a transformational state that Trigger Point Theory can achieve?
Trigger Point Theory basically assembles and correlates a number of time-tested ideas, particularly from physics. The physics of change applies to everything equally. What is more important is the willingness to engage in that change.
6) What led you to become interested in complex systems and complex adaptive systems?
My path as an ecological artist is rooted in what I observed about my father’s relationship to habitat as a land developer. I set myself the task of undoing his impact on the environment. But from my earliest years I absorbed how he looked at the world as a puzzle of systems that fit together like jigsaw pieces: biogeography, building design, city planning, etc. I didn’t understand this as a prelude to understanding complexity and complex adaptive systems until very late in my life, as I completed my dissertation and began working myself backwards into my own thinking.
7) Do you believe that ultimately modern science and technology is the answer to many of humanity’s current problems—such as loss of nature, deforestation, desertification, ecocide—or do you believe that ultimately the answer for humanity is a return to a more simple way of life, a reverting to pre-industrial revolution?
I think science and technology have important roles to play, but data alone can’t change minds and hearts. Also, art brings unique insight to problems. When science is separated from art it is culturally toothless and impotent. Ecological art, alone without science, can be superfluous and insubstantial.
The brilliant scientists I’ve worked with have all been wonderful people. But they have also been very cautious about working art into their budgets. That puts a leash on artists. It makes for a power imbalance. Science in this country is very beholden to conservative, often corporate forces and funders. Art can be a threateningly unpredictable wildcard to people who want to maintain a status quo.
I am reminded of when I was invited to work with scientists at the Wells National Research Reserve and casually referred to my Ghost Nets project as the “restoration of the ultimate cunt.” They were not amused by how my language was intended to score the symbolism of degrading fecund wetland systems. So, the “safe” institutional attitude to art is to keep us at arm’s length. Most artists who work with scientists are so eager for the opportunity that we settle for crumbs of support. Worst-case scenario, but ideal for some scientists, are captive artists: let us out to illustrate the ideas of well-funded, illustrious scientists and co-opt our insights. In Primate Visions (1990), Donna Haraway detailed how deeply internalized gendered behaviors are in the laboratory. These are frustrating problems because the inequities actually inhibit social progress on the most urgent problems of our times.
Academic research is a very patriarchal system and more so the hard sciences. It is therefore no surprise that most of the scientists, and even science writers, are men. Many of the artists are women. It’s short-sighted and self-centered when scientists keep artists at arm’s length because the business of art is to be boldly clairvoyant and fearlessly provocative. We ask questions the world desperately needs to face and answer honestly. The questions scientists ask on their own are by necessity, very careful and never definitively answered. It’s like trying to run a household by making sure the wife stays corralled as slave labor and then wondering why it’s not a happy home. Scientists need artists to ask the questions they don’t dare ask themselves and take the risks that can fire a public imagination about answers.
The answers aren’t in reverting to Luddite solutions but rather becoming responsible for our choices, particularly when concentrated power, for example under the control of corporations, abuses trust and privatizes common good for personal gain. On the other hand, things are changing. Investment firms like BlackRock are aggressively divesting from fossil fuels and investing in renewables. That drives political decisions. Science and art urgently need to work closely and openly with each other on equal terms for human civilization to survive the Anthropocene.
8) What are your views on the growth of the human population? Can Trigger Point Theory suggest at what point the sheer size of the global human population itself will cause major societal and environmental breakdown.
Overpopulation in any other species would be recognized as a plague, as in, a voracious plague of locusts. The human plague isn’t just about numbers, it’s also about the concentration of resources in an oligarchic uber-class, who are extracting, defiling and squandering at mind-blowing rates with impunity. We know most of the reasons for over-population. We also know the remedies. But governmental responses are often hamstrung right now by lobbying from agents of authoritarian values and conservative f religious voting bloc.
“A Native American colleague recently commented that I am a translator for the complexity of Indigenous thinking.”
— Aviva Rahmani
“I think science separated from art is toothless and impotent. Ecological art without science is superfluous.”
— Aviva Rahmani
“It is no surprise that numbers alone, even the most careful algorithms, solve very few of the human and extended natural world problems that exist on an unprecedented scale today.”
— Aviva Rahmani
“The human plague isn’t just about numbers, it’s also about the concentration of resources in an oligarchic uber-class…”
— Aviva Rahmani