A Tale of Two Polar Bears: Dominic Harris Contra Heide Hatry

 

Dominic Harris: Polar Bear from the series Arctic Souls (2023)

Code, electronics, LCD screen, sensors, aluminium 

65 (W) x 106 (H) x 12 (D) cm  

Heide Hatry photographed by J. C. Rice on the Great Lawn in 

 Central Park (NYC) making Snow Bears in the winter of 2020-21

 

 

I. 

 

Take two polar bears created by two very different artists: the first constructed in code by the London based British artist Dominic Harris; and the second made with snow by the New York based German artist Heide Hatry ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In a tryptich entitled Arctic Souls (2023), Harris seeks to remind viewers of the beauty (and vulnerability) of three of the Arctic's most iconic inhabitants; the polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the Arctic hare. Whether the portraits also capture each creature's essence is debatable (I would obviously say not). 

 

As Harris reveals on his website, despite looking strangely real and lifelike thanks to the level of intricate detail - not to mention the fact the animals respond to the movements of an approaching viewer - they are in fact high-fidelity digital constructions presented on an interactive screen. 

 

In other words, his work is the manifestation of the purest techno-idealism and ultimately tells us more about him than it does about the fascinating animal species he has chosen to depict, including the iconic carnivore shown here.  

 

 

III. 

 

Harris is an artist who uses the very latest technology to share with us his vision of the natural world, transforming the latter (and the creatures that inhabit it) into an imagined reality that the viewer can not only observe, but interact with and immerse themselves within. 

 

The effect is magical. But as much as there is beauty and playfulness in the computer-generated, artificially intelligent world Harris creates, there is also something disturbing; something a bit uncanny valley-ish. 

 

Harris is undoubtedly aware of this and maybe he wishes to exploit our unease in order to challenge perceptions of what constitutes reality and make us question what we want our relationship with the world to be. To what extent, for example, do we wish our daily experience to be mediated via technology? Do we want to see butterflies in the back garden, or on a giant screen? 

 

Maybe the answer is we want both: but what if we can't have both? 

 

What if in so seamlessly encoding the natural world and transforming everything into digital information we exterminate reality? This is what Baudrillard refers to as the perfect crime; i.e., the unconditional realisation of the world via the actualisation of all data [1]. 

 

 

IV.

 

Consider in contrast the Snow Bears made by Heide Hatry ... [2]

 

Whilst Harris and his team are operating in the warmth of his Notting Hill studio - designing, engineering, coding, and fabricating his diabolicaly clever artworks and installations - Ms Hatry has been scrambling around on hands and knees and freezing her tits off for the last couple of winters in snowy Central Park, making snow sculptures of polar bears.

 

Despite both Harris and Hatry issuing a similar call to preserve the natural environment that polar bears live in, I find her work more poignant and many native New Yorkers were also touched and grateful for her heroic efforts.  

 

I remember once Malcolm McLaren telling me that a man on a mountain top tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound that all the electronic music in the world. Similarly, we might say that someone daubing paint by hand on a cave wall produces a much truer representation of the world than all the digital photographs shared on Instagram; or a woman making Schneebären that will quickly melt to nothing (just like the Arctic sea ice) moves us more than someone using code and colours to create a virtual reality.           

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso Books, 1996).

      In brief, Baudrillard argues that reality has been made to disappear and singular being exterminated via technological and social processes bent on replacing real things and real lives with a series of images and empty signs. For Baudrillard, this consitutes the most important event of modern history; one carried out before our very eyes and in which we have all - including artists - have been complicit, although, ironically, it is artists who also leave clues or traces of criminal imperfection behind them.

 

[2] Some readers might recall that I have written previously about Heide Hatry and her snow bears; see the post dated 16 February, 2021: click here.

 

 

For more information on Dominic Harris and his work visit: dominicharris.com - or click here if you wish to go straight to the page on Arctic Souls (2023). Harris is represented by the Halcyon Gallery (London): click here. 

 

For more information on Heide Hatry and her work visit: heidehatry.com 

 

 

On Solastalgia in Man and Animal

No more homes in the wood

The trees have all been cut down [1]

 

 

Solastalgia is a neologism that seems to be everywhere these days. It describes a form of anxiety triggered by negatively perceived environmental change; particularly the loss of things belonging to the natural world which provided us with stability and a sense of continuity.

 

Things, for example, like the huge old oak tree at the end of the road, loved since childhood, but which has now been cut down by the council; or the hedgehogs that used to snuffle around long vanished gardens.

 

The word was coined by the environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2005 [2], when he was attempting to conceptualise the feeling experienced of no longer being at home in the world even when one is still at home, due to rapid change on both a local and a global scale.

 

Although Albrecht was primarily concerned with human health and identity, he has also published in the area of animal studies, including the ethics of relocating endangered species whose natural habitat is threatened, so I'm sure he would agree that solastalgia is experienced too by polar bears watching the Arctic sea ice shrink all around them, or great apes witnessing their forest homes disappear. 

 

Indeed, I should imagine their sense of loss and confusion and powerlessness over the massive environmental change going on all around them is even more intense than ours, although their suffering certainly adds to our own; is their anything more heartbreaking than the above image of an orangutan fighting a mechanical digger in a desperate attempt to defend its jungle home?    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This distressing scene of an orangutan defending its forest home in Borneo from being demolished by loggers was reportedly filmed in 2013 by International Animal Rescue.* Posted on their Facebook page in 2018, it caused a huge public outcry. However, the orangutan population remains critically endangered, having halved in the past 60 years, thanks to hunting, poaching, logging, mining, road building, and the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations; 55% of what remained of their natural habitat has already been destroyed this century.

      For those who can bear to watch the film on YouTube, click here.  

      The lines beneath the photo are paraphrased from a song by the Eagles - 'No More Walks in the Wood', which can be found on their seventh and final studio album, Long Road Out of Eden (Lost Highway Records, 2005): click here.

 

[2] Glenn Albrecht, 'Solastalgia: a new concept in human health and identity', Philosophy, Activism, Nature no. 3, (2005), pp. 44-59. A free pdf can be downloaded on academia.edu: click here.

 

 

* IAR is an animal protection and conservation charity which returns rehabilitated animals to the wild whilst also providing permanent sanctuary for those that cannot fend for themselves. Its work includes freeing and caring for captive bears in India and Armenia, rescuing and rehabilitating orangutans and other primates in Indonesia, and treating injured and orphaned howler monkeys in Costa Rica. For more information or to lend support, please visit their website by clicking here. 

At the Polar Bear Hotel

 Photo: Xinhua / Rex / Shutterstock

 

 

I wouldn't go so far as Morrissey, who once described the Chinese as a subspecies of human being due to their absolutely horrific record on animal welfare, but, really, do the owners, staff, and guests of the new Harbin Polar Land Hotel feel no shame?

 

It's bad enough how the Chinese treat their own native bears - with the exception of the panda, which is regarded as a national treasure and thus afforded some degree of protection - but do they really need to import members of a threatened species all the way from the Arctic, just to make a sad spectacle of them for the amusement of tourists? 

 

The hotel, in the frozen north-east province of Heilongjiang, resembles a giant igloo and is built in a reverse panopticon manner around a brightly lit central enclosure, complete with fake rocks and icicles and a white painted floor, housing a pair of live polar bears. Guests can thus gawp out of their windows and watch or photograph the animals 24/7. 

 

To be fair, even some Chinese commentators are raising voices of concern. But the fact is that businesses are allowed to exploit animals in any manner they may wish without having to worry about infringing any laws. 

 

I suppose the best that can be said is that at least these snow-white bears are not being milked of their bile like their Asiatic cousins and that, push comes to shove, an air-conditioned enclosure is better than being kept in a cage that is not large enough even to stand up in or turn around. 

 

What's more, if those who bang on about melting sea ice are correct, then polar bears may be heading for extinction by the end of this century. So perhaps those individuals that find sanctuary of sorts - and a life in showbiz - at a theme park hotel might one day be regarded as the fortunate ones ... 

 

 

Heide Hatry's Icons in Ice and an Inconvenient Truth About Polar Bears

Dylan: the All-Singing Snow Bear with Guitar

Heide Hatry (2021) 

For more bears go to Instagram

 

 

There's no doubting the genius of Heide Hatry's Schneebären currently residing in New York's Central Park (near the Upper West Side entrance off 86th Street - hurry before the temperatures rise and they are gone forever). 

   

And, of course, I share her concern with environmental issues and animals threatened with extinction due to habitat destruction, etc. 

 

Having said that, I don't really buy into the idea of a climate emergency or worry about carbon footprints. 

 

And it might also be pointed out that the polar bear population is significantly larger than it was fifty years ago - thanks to a ban on hunting - even if melting Arctic sea ice might very well prove problematic to their welfare (and survival) at some point in the future; scientists project polar bear numbers will have fallen 30% by 2050. 

 

Presently, however, there are an estimated 25,000 of these magnificent creatures walking around and hunting seal pups - mostly in Canada - divided into nineteen distinct sub-populations; some of which are declining, some of which are stable, and two of which are actually increasing in size. 

 

So it's not all bad news; they're certainly not all starving to death and, again, let's remember that in 1971 there were only about 5,000 polar bears left in the wild.  

 

But keep up the good work Heide - and stay warm! Your snow sculptures bring much joy into what is a deeply depressing world right now and like many others I'm deeply touched by them.