Hello and happy Earth Day! Today: public art in Norway; a sad and beautiful Georgian documentary; Argentinian eco-fiction; the paper industry; and a Flemish painter.

Article: Oil Spill Flag by Oliver Ressler
In 2020, Oliver Ressler, an Austrian artist, produced a Norwegian flag covered in oil for the city of Tromsø in North Norway. The fallout was significant; the flag was stolen not once, but twice. In an interview, Ressler discusses art in public space and why the Tromsø discussion, centering on national symbols instead of extractivism, missed the point. Ressler’s body of work, which frequently discusses artists’ involvement in social movements, is worth perusing.

Film: Taming the Garden, directed by Salomé Jashi (2021)
A huge tree, at least 100 years old, slowly rolls across the screen. It is being wheeled away on a lorry, uprooted and about to be transported to a property owned by the former prime minister of Georgia. Later: a tree on a ship that seems hardly to be moving. On shore, a person in a fluorescent vest builds several small fires. Salomé Jashi’s contemplative documentary observes the workers, the erstwhile tree owners and tree neighbours, the landscape and the various human interactions with it; occasionally listening in, always offering striking vistas and frames. What is actually happening here unfolds slowly. The tree collector who will cut down other trees to get to the trees he wants never appears. What is left behind: a village of people crying and embracing each other as they see a tree carted off to its new home.

Book: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, tr. Megan McDowell
In Schweblin’s absorbing debut, a dying woman in a hospital and her interlocutor, a child that she may or may not be imagining, recount the events of the preceding days as they try to work out what led to her rapid physical decline. Only a psychological mystery on the surface, the control and destruction of nature looms large in this tight novella. Schweblin is an author who likes to look at corrosive processes undermining contemporary life – I also enjoyed her latest novel, Little Eyes, which focuses on surveillance, technology and social media. But Fever Dream has been on my mind recently as I’ve been thinking about novels about farming, or nature, where nature is not a mystical presence satisfying a human need. Any recommendations, throw them my way please!

Learning: The environmental effects of paper (Wikipedia)
The least we can do is to understand and seek to affect the systems in which we move. For me, some of those systems are about the use of paper and printing, which surely must be one of the more misunderstood products that we use heavily. The Wikipedia article on its environmental effects is a good starting point. Tl:dr: paper production is a polluting, water- and energy-intensive industry; recycling is not enough. 

Other: Pieter Claesz (1569/97-1660)
I was struck by a still life by Pieter Claesz on a recent trip to Graz in Southern Austria (which I also recommend). More of his paintings, which always seem to feature shimmering, beautiful glass, are available e.g. on the Rijksmuseum website.