The desert begins behind the hill

Resumo

Is drawing ecological? Can a drawing be understood as a call or blueprint for climate-friendly behavior? In this text, artist Andrea Iten and her collaborator Max Spielmann engage in a dialogue about the medium of drawing. Iten’s technique combines body, paper, charcoal and space, which she and Spielmann connect to artistic discourses as well as a formulation of their position. They claim that drawing arises from an interconnectivity/interrelationship that is a prerequisite for ecological action. Andrea Iten studied painting with themes that suggested motion in the 1980s. It was a time of political upheaval and change, both socially and personally, which led to her video art and experimental film work. At the onset of postmodernism, feminist perspectives began to shape the canon. In addition, the possibility of cutting the power, deleting the image, or flickering on the screen was seen as positive side-effects: “erasing the image” freed her from hundreds of years of the classical painting tradition. These themes were then expanded to include installations, performance interactive text, media, and photographs. Yet drawing as a daily artistic activity remained. While an emphasis on physical, spatial, and performative artistic interventions remains to this day, the trace left by such interactions with the audience can also be applied to drawing. More specifically, this essay deals with the question of how the medium of drawing can play a mediating role in an ecological understanding of the world. In this dialogue, we show how our own awareness of the politics of ecology and drawing has developed in Andrea Iten’s work over the decades, particularly regarding the challenge of global heating.