A MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

One of my favourite exhibition spaces for new media art is the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg (Germany). It’s hell to get there from Berlin. Hell as in 3 different trains and although they are the usual super comfortable kind you expect from the German railway services, it’s still a total of 7 hours spent in stations and wagons for a return trip. But once you’re back from Oldenburg, there isn’t any doubt left: the quality of the show was worth the transport tedium.

The current exhibition, Ecomedia - Ecological Strategies in Today’s Art, presents projects founded on progressive ecological models and conceive utopian horizons in the process. It peruses fundamental considerations concerning ecosystems, sustainability, renewable energy sources, as well as visions of the future. In addition, it examines the role of art and new media over and above science, technology, and ecoactivism. I liked the theme, the way the curators explored it but most of all i found that the works on show were of particularly good quality, individually and as a whole.

The work that moved me the most is Christina Hemauer’s and Roman Keller’s video and installation work, A Moral Equivalent of War: A Curiosity, a Museum Piece and an Example of a Road not Taken (2006-7). Reading news headlines yesterday, i realized how meaningful the work is. The title of the work, inspired by a television speech to the Nation delivered by Jimmy Carter in 1977, documents the artists’ quest for the solar panels that President Carter had mounted on the roof of the West Wing of the White House in 1979 during a moment of awareness of the dangers of the US’ dependence on foreign oil. In 1977 Carter convinced the Democratic Congress to create the US Department of Energy. Promoting the department’s recommendation to conserve energy, Carter wore sweaters, had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House, had a wood stove in his living quarters, and requested that Christmas decorations remain dark in 1979 and 1980. Carter called for 20 percent of American energy to come from solar power by the year 2000, he even had very generous tax reductions implemented for people who installed solar panels at home. But the Reagan administration in the 1980s put a stop to that, the panels and all their symbolic power were torn down and the energy budget was curtailed by 90%. 25 years later people are slowly starting to understand how foolish Reagan’s gesture was.

In 1991, «America’s Environmental College», Unity College in Maine, tracked the panels, found them in a warehouse just outside DC, bought them for peanuts and installed them on the roof of their dining room. Hemauer and Keller strapped one of the panels to the roof of their car and drove from Maine to the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta, filming a documentary along the way, interviewing people who had been involved in the solar panel experiment, and reopening a dialogue about present energy policy.

Just like A Moral Equivalent of War, The Acorn Pig Cinema, MILKproject and F.R.U.I.T. are projects which slap you in the face with all their relevance. […]

Régine Debatty, we make money not art