Politics
The Issues:
The following page looks at the
issues and causes for concern and what is being done about them. The focus
here will be global and its relationship locally to England and the context
we have been working in.
An objective for the project was to realise the different layers context,
including our and the contexts politics. We found it important to document
the reasons why we chose the context and its political cultural background.
This locates us as artists in relation to the time and place we are in.
We get a better understanding of who we are in our arts parctice and life.
The issues are important to us and that of the community. Lets begin with
some questions.
What is the political and social bases for the need of sustainable practice
in the country side?
What are some of the cultural attitudes and motivations for Low Impact
Living on collectively owned and shared land?
'Think Global Act Local"
Why is this slogan being banded about so much now a days?
Why is land an issue for debate?
Why are people finding that they are dedicating their lives to the protection
of land, environment and social land rights?
Resources and information can be found at these sites for grounding to
the information on this page.
www.thelandisours.org/ The
Land is Ours Campaign
www.agp.org
Peoples Global Action
www.schnews.org.uk
schNEWS Independent Media
www.corporatewatch.org
Corporate Watch- Investigators of Corporate 'Affairs'
www.indymedia.org
Global Independent Media (Anyone can contribute)
www.reclaimthestreets.net
Reclaim the Streets (About people reclaiming space)
www.peopleandplanet.org.uk
(UK Student Network)
Gaian Democracy
"The 30 million species on Earth, with all their diverse communities,
make up a system where each can make its voice heard- but only to the
extent that one does not shout down the others. This contrasts with humankind's
attitude to its fellow species, a highly undemocratic response...
Yet whatever the changes humanity has wrought to date , they are pale
portent of what is to come in the life spans of most readers of this...-
unless we start to recognize our responsibilities as managers of the planetary
ecosystem. By the time today's children are adults, they may be witnessing
a disruptive phenomenon unprecedented since the beginnings of the biosphere
more than 4 billion years ago."
Myers Norman, 'Future Worlds, Challenge and Opportunity in an Age of Change',
Gaia Books, London, 1990 pg.28
Land Development
Land use and the sensitivity to culture is a very high debate politically
in the world. The degenerative effect corporations are having on cultural
practices and land use is directly linked to the causes of war in all
its forms; People in Exile; poverty; crime; debt; unhealthy social security,
terrorism and environmental destruction all in the name of unnatural Globalisation.
What is seriously worrying is that business's profit from the problems
they have caused in the first place. True capitalism does not see society
it only sees profit.
The beginnings of globalisation were violently repressive. The speed and
infrastructure of the ruling establishments rose their head violently
in the want for oil, the want for timber and land for mono- culture, cash
crops, destroying rain forests, and the patenting of life, the list is
endless all for profit and progress, progress of profit.
The mass lobbying by business on governments result in profit orientation
before environment and social welfare. The Earth is being held to ransom
by profit driven corporations banded together under names of The World
Bank, International Monetary Fund (Funds governments and countries in
high debt in return for land and resources, taken unsustainably), the
World Trade Organisation who are vigilantly pushing neo- liberalism and
so called 'Free' Trade, to undermine trade barriers that are there to
protect social and environmental welfare. The mandates of these business
organisations are based on laws they have implemented called the General
Agreement in Trade and Services (GATS) and the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFFTA) these laws are made un -democratically behind heavily
guarded doors.
What is the peoples reaction to this?
Movements of the People
The uprising of the people against neo-liberalism.
Introducing the Zapitistas and Peoples
Global Action who began the struggle with the World Trade Organisation
and the International Monetary Fund
."It wasn't in the acrid mist of Seattle's tear gas that this
global movement was born, but in the humid mist of the Chiapas jungle,
in Southern Mexico on New Years Day 1994. This was the day the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, a day when two thousand
indigenous peoples from several groups came out from the mountains and
forests. Masked, armed and calling themselves Zapatistas, their battle
cry was "Ya Basta" - "Enough is Enough". An extraordinary
popular uprising, which was to help change the landscape of global resistance,
had begun. Using a jungle battered laptop computer and intermediaries
to get the discs to an internet connected computer, the Zapatistas were
able to bypass the media censorship of the Mexican state and communicate
directly. People everywhere soon heard of the uprising."
Peoples Global Action
Chaipas New Years Day 1994
The beginnings of a huge movement was about storm, much of what Sub Commandant
Marcos, Zapatista, says offers compares to the hallmarks of social movements
of the world:
" We do not want others, more or less of the right, center or
left, to decide for us. We want to participate directly in the decisions
which concern us, to control those who govern us, without regard to their
political affiliation, and oblige them to "rule by obeying".
We do not struggle to take power, we struggle for democracy, liberty,
and justice. Our political proposal is the most radical in Mexico (perhaps
in the world, but it is still too soon to say). It is so radical that
all the traditional political spectrum (right, center left and those of
one or the other extreme) criticize us and walk away from our delirium.
It is not our arms which make us radical; it is the new political practice
which we propose and in which we are immersed with thousands of men and
women in Mexico and the world: the construction of a political practice
which does not seek the taking of power but the organization of society.
Intellectuals and political leadership, of all sizes, of the ultra-right,
of the right, the center, of the left and the ultra-left, national and
international criticize our proposal. We are so radical that we do not
fit in the parameters of "modern political science". We are
not bragging … we are pointing out the facts. Is there anything
more radical than to propose to change the world? You know this because
you share this dream with us, and because, though the truth be repeated,
we dream it together"
Peoples Global Action (with no membership) is a global network of people
who are collectively organising themselves to regain land rights, oppose
neo- liberalism, state oppression and actively opposes environmental and
social destruction. The networks organise themselves in contrast to the
Globalisation of Free Trade corporations. They can only be strong if they
support each others diversity of actions if they work together and realise
that the struggles are from the same root causes. Some of which have already
been noted here.
What are the cultural attitudes and motivations for Low Impact
Living on collectively owned and shared land? What is the reason for people
living collectively in benders, dropping out of the mainstream and why
are they doing this?
People have identified the destruction of local land and eco systems,
identified a social need to live sustainably and live in sharing way rather
than contributing to capitalist destruction.
Living life sustainably and ecologically sensitively sets a precedent
for ecology to be a principle for social change. This is something that
is interesting to us and has a common link within our arts practice at
Steward Community Woodland.
"Ecology has influenced many movements today and that is perhaps
why their model of organisation and co-ordination resembles an ecological
model, why it works like an ecosystem. Highly interconnected, it thrives
on diversity, works best when embedded in its own locality and context
and develops most creatively at the edges, the overlap points, the in-between
spaces. Those spaces are where different cultures meet, such as the coming
together of the American Earth First! and Logging Unions or London tube
workers and Reclaim the Streets.
The societies that they dream of creating will also be like ecosystems,
diversified, balanced and harmonious."
Peoples Gloabl Action
Lets depart from the Amazon, Mexico, America, Seattle and look closer
to home England,Devon Moretonhampstead and Totnes.
The Land is Ours Campaign
This campaign began in 1994
in England, it has articulated the issues by reviewing the history of
the land. The problem is so deep and huge that we cant see it. The problem
is unsustainable land ownership by the decision makers, identified in
Marcos' speech.
The underlying politics of the Land is Ours campaign is the doctrine and
response to hierarchical structures that have created the problem of bad
land use. The Statement of principle is:
"The Land is Ours campaigns peacefully for access to land, its
resources and decision making processes affecting them, for everyone-
irrespective of race, age, or gender"
"In Britain, land passed into the hands of the tiny minority
of owners and decision-makers centuries ago.
The enclosures and clearances were the culmination of a thousand years
of land alienation, but they were as traumatic as those confronting the
peasants of north-eastern Brazil today. In England , tens of thousands
were forced into vagrancy and destitution. In Scotland , people were packed
into ships at the point of gun and transported across the ocean to the
Americas in conditions that resembled those of slave ships. Others crowded
into the cities. It is in no coincidence that London was the world's first
city with more than a million inhabitants, while Glasgow remains both
one of the poorest and most violent cities in Western Europe"
George Monbiot,Ed. George McKay 'DiY Culture, Party and Protest in Nineties
Britain' 1998, Verso, London, pg.174
The Land is Ours Campaign(TLIOC) began in 1994 but its roots began in
1649.
In 1649 St.Georges Hill
There came a band they called the Diggers
Came to sow the peoples will
They defied the landlords
They defied the Lords
They came to claim a common treasury for all
We come in peace they said
To dig and sow
We come to take the land back
For everyone to roam
To make a common treasury for all.
This song was sung by Billy Bragg in celebration of the uprising of the
people against the enclosure act that denied the right of the people to
roam the land freely and to grow their own vegetables, keep their own
animals and hunt for their food on the land. The land was denied access
to the people with the Enclosures Act brought in through parliment to
keep rural spaces free of people and kept by the minority of landlords.
Land still exists with the same laws today.
Affordable Living
Today the wealthy are buying up homes in communities to use as second
homes, meaning house prices rise and the locals can not afford to live
in the place they grew up, people have to move into plaster wall accommodation
stacked on top of each other, built on green space and local history and
again alienating communities.
The non-place is on the rise. History is being wiped clean in the name
of development, profit and consumerism. The local example to me is at
the Leech Wells, Totnes. A developer has managed to slip in massive development
with the planning. This planning was given permission very quickly without
time for public scrutiny. It was also omitted from recent councils public
event of planning consultation.
(Info from Totnes Times, Wednesday
10th December)
" If the black mail and extortion doesn't work, however, the
developers have yet another weapon in their armoury. The planners call
it 'off site planning gain'. You and I would recognise it as bribery.
Developers can offer as much money as they like...You don't like my high-rise
multiplex hypermarket ziggurat? Here's a million quid. What do you think
of it now?"
Monbiot, George, The Land is Ours Campaign in Ed. George McKay 'DiY Culture,
Party and Protest in Nineties Britain' 1998, Verso, London, pg.174
Steward Woodland Community
In response to the relationship between global and local issues; members
of the Steward Community Woodland collectively bought land to live an
environmentally sustainable life.
The powers that be are making decisions about whether the Community have
permission to live in the woods. The community have appealed twice to
the negative decision made by the planning authority and have won twice.
They have been given 5 years permission to live their life sustainably!
We hoped our project would be among those who celebrate the land and life
of Steward Community Woodland. We are very grateful to those who made
it possible to have the opportunity to work with such a truley inspiring
and rich existing project of sustainable living and to the wider community
for all their support.
Buy Nothing Day
On the first day of our event it was 'Buy Nothing Day', held on a Saturday,
as a recognition of the day the nation goes shopping to express consumer
identity. The day is a symbolic event for looking at the way our consumer
spending affects the world.
What can we do about it? We can look at the way we spend our time in our
lives. We can look at how our lives are supporting the corporations in
their domination of environment and society. We can make relationships
with the world we live in to enrich our sense of ourselves within it.
Since the industrial revolution, our need for happiness has been invested
in by industries by encouraging us to find it in the shopping centre of
our lives, by buying our identity and conforming to the influences of
consumer identity.
A key objective for our project was to encourage an audience to look at
the environment they live and identify their place in it. Rather than
identifying ourselves with what we buy we can identify with the very things
that are free for all. Somewhere, we forgot about it and we forgot how
to do it. The tasks we devised were a step towards regaining a sense of
dialogue with place incurring a way of empowering ourselves to understand
our identify in relation to the world.
Artist Barbara Krugar has made critiques of consumer identity and
while making a parody of the Philosophy of Cartisian
duality: I think therefore I am'
Courtesy of Mary Booth Gallery
in Gablik, Suzi, ReEnchantment of Art London: Thames and Hudson (1992)
