Marton Wood, our latest Slow Art project, incorporates a group of unique and inspiring artists. We asked them to tell us a bit more about how they work, think and collaborate. How does the climate crisis or environmental responsibility affect their artistic practice?

Dr David Haley is an ecological artist, researcher and eco-pedagogue with specific interest in generating dialogues for ‘capable futures’ that question the nexus of Nature-Climate-Cultural Emergencies.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your practice?

I see art as a way of life, rather than a career option. I’ve been very fortunate in that my practice has led me to do many things and has taken me to many places, to engage with many people.

I started drawing seriously at the age of four; studied painting and printmaking at art school in 1970; I learned new product design in an advertising agency in 1974; ran a European touring /community arts clown company in 1975; by 1977 I was a play leader and freelance graphic designer; from 1978 I became a commercial conference producer and socially engaged artist; I joined Welfare State International as CompanyManager in 1990; then in 1995 I studied Art As Environment at ManchesterMetropolitan University; from 2003 I led the Art As Environment course, became a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Ecology In Practice research group, with projects across Europe, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and USA; from 2016 to today I am a freelance ecological artist/researcher.

Since 1992, when I found out about climate change and the threats toNature, I set about learning how to make art with ecology. Without being tied to an art form, I let each project and the research processes guide my approach.These may include, drawing, sculptural installation, walking, performing, poetry, writing, researching, pedagogy and storying. I’m generally more interested in processes and outcomes than outputs.

Could you say a bit about how you develop new work and your starting point? Are there any artists who have been a particular influence?

Generally, I start every artwork or research project by asking questions. As a creative process, each question generates more questions that open up different possibilities and perspectives to become a dialogue[i],rather than seeking answers and solutions that tend to close a problem down.I’m a great fan of Socratic dialogue that helps people to learn for themselves, and through this process collaborations often emerge. In the belief thatfutures cannot be determined, I try to remain creatively vigilant, resisting many, but not all forms of pre-emptive or prescriptive evaluation.

In my early career, I was heavily influenced by Henry Matisse and MarkRothko, combining drawing from life with large colour field paintings. I then became excited by theatre and the politics of community-based work in the UK,Europe and India. The celebratory arts of Welfare State International literally changed my life. However, the epiphany of climate change made me want to develop an ‘ecological arts’ practice and by good fortune I was invited to work with the pioneers of the genre, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. They continue to inspire my work.

David Hockney’s film A Day On The Grand Canal With The Emperor Of China[ii]and Robert Pirsig’s book, Lila: an inquiry into morals[iii]have also been a major influences.

Recently, I allowed my love of film and music to enter my work, particularly Miles Davis, Tony Alen, Philip Glass, the flutes of Rajasthan and experimental musicians like William Basinski, Brighde Chaimbeul and Sylvia& I; and in film, Andrie Tarkovsky and the Cohen Brothers.

[i] Bohm, David., Factor, Donald. and Garrett, P. (1991)Dialogue, A Proposal  

http://www.david-bohm.net/dialogue/dialogue_proposal.html (Accessed 23 February 2018)

[ii] Hockney, David (1998) dir. Phillip Haas. Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China. Milestone Films https://milestonefilms.com/products/day-on-the-grand-canal-with-the-emperor-of-chinga

[iii] Robert Maynard Pirsig.(1993)  “Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals”. London: Black Swan.

We’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on collaborating with specialists from other disciplines and how you approach this. Who would you like to collaborate with in the future? What are the key challenges In  developing collaborations?

In my opinion and from my experience, at every level, most of our society’s education systems continue to be stuck in disciplinary silos governed by power, politics, money and ignorance. Efforts to work in interdisciplinary ways in most institutions are largely passing fads. However, I do believe in the penitential for Transdisciplinary knowing to emerge between, across and beyond all disciplines[i].And this may offer creative approaches to thinking differently – thinking differently is probably the arts’ most profound contribution to society. I, therefore, seek any opportunities to work with people from other disciplines, particularly the environmental sciences and educational disciplines. Such collaborations usually start with a question or two, as this may grab their attention and we can build a relationship from there. I have been very fortunate to meet some generous, open-minded scientists[ii]and educationists, with whom I have developed long-term, meaningful research projects and art.

Recently, working with the amazing operatic contralto Jess Dandy on EQUINOX:a day with an ocean’s edge[iii](2023) gave me new ways of incorporating sound into understanding the rhythms of a coastal salt marsh and my current collaboration with filmmaker, LaurenceCampbell has led me to a deep co-learning partnership project, How the LandLies (2025), focused on the geomorphology of the Furness Peninsular.

In the future, I would like to collaborate with planning authorities, as they are to a greater or lesser degree responsible for land use in the UK; and people from other cultures, as they have other ways of understanding land. However, the key challenge is that for many disciplines, the arts and the thinking of other cultures are not taken seriously, or if they are they are considered dangerous. Why? Because the arts and other cultures may enable people to think differently and this challenges the status quo.

[i] Nicolescu, Basarab (2008)Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice. Hampton Press Inc. New Jersey.

[ii] Firbank, Les;Harrison Mayer, Helen; Harrison, Newton; Haley, David and Griffith, Bruce(2009), ‘A Story of Becoming: Landscape creation through an art/sciencedynamic’, in M. Winter and M. Loby (eds), What Is Land for? The Food, Fuel andClimate Change Debate, London: Earthscan, pp. 233–46.

[iii]Haley, D. (2023) EQUINOX: aday with an ocean’s edge. Micro commission for Signal Film & Media, inTIDAL exhibition. https://vimeo.com/886815617/6cd2ec49c1?share=copy

https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/23451511.new-tidal-exhibition-barrow-explores-furness-coast/

What do you see as the role/value of artists in addressing climate and biodiversity issues? How has this affected your approach or processes?

My primary concern is the ‘Nature-Climate-Culture Emergency’[i];the nexus of complex wicked problems that beset our planet, ourselves and our futures. As human beings, artists like all other humans are responsible for and need to engage with this challenge. Since the Rio Summit of 1992 and climate change became known to the general public, I realised that ‘culture’ is a key issue and have dedicated my practice to questions of ‘ecological resilience’[ii],adaptation and ‘capable futures’[iii].As a creative way of connecting with this situation, I continue to learn how to make art with ecology.

[i] Machado de Oliveira, Vanessa 2021 Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for SocialActivism. North Atlantic Books, Berkley, California

[ii] Gunderson, Lance H. and  Holling,C. S. Eds. (2002) “Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and NaturalSystems”. Washington, Island Press.

[iii]Haley, D. (2008) The Limits of Sustainability: The Art of Ecology. Chapter in Eds. KAGAN, S. and KIRCHBERG, V.   Sustainability: a new frontier for the artsand cultures. VAS-Verlag, Frankfurt, Germany.

Are there any other new approaches, ways of thinking or ways of working that have affected your practice?

I’ve long been interested in Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese form of understanding and working with Nature. Recently, I have found more ways in which it has emerged through my practice to continually expand my limited knowledge.  I’ve recently been working with the idea of ‘storying’ (the making and telling of stories)[i],visually, performatively and in texts as an art form and research process. This is based on my understanding that the key currency of all cultures is storying and that culture is the process of intergenerational learning for adaptation and survival. This ‘culture’ is both a human and other than human phenomenon. The work of Vanessa Andreotti (aka de Oliveira) and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures[ii]group have supported this initial idea. It is, also worth noting that the power of dominant cultures, misinformation and disinformation may corrupt culture.

In the meantime, I have been trying to read Edouard Glissant’s book, Poetics of Relation[iii]on and off for several years, finding it captivating in its thinking and, for me, impossibly French in its style of writing. The key concept for me, however, has been the fact that people of other cultures think differently and that through ‘creole’ cultural transformations, forms of transdisciplinary ways of knowing are possible. These may be useful beyond the Anthropcene. This storying exploration of culture(s) and ecology led to my idea of ‘RelationalMetabolism’, for which I gained an Arts Council England, Developing YourCreative Practice. As I continue to learn what this may mean, I now try toapply this to all my practice in arts and research.

[i]Haley, D. (2024) From “whiteman’s science” to a ‘Brave Space’:the art of decolonising landscape from environmental science. ALLERT 4DM Special issue ofLandscape Research Journal. https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/XVIGDT7IXTV8IJVJ9M3G/full?target=10.1080/01426397.2024.2413004

[ii] https://decolonialfutures.net/

[iii] Glissant, Edouard (2010) Poetics ofRelation. The University of Michigan Press. Michigan, USA

Find David

Website: davidhaley.uk

Image Credit: Yvonne Haley

Thank you, David, for sharing. Look out for more Questions with an Artist coming soon.