On Newton Harrison

I met Newton (Fig. 1) in 2017, when I interviewed to work in his studio. A small local ad for a part-time studio assistant mentioned the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure in the small print. My first exploration of the work of the Harrisons blew my mind, while resonating deeply in the way that only clear truth does. Newton responded to my application, inviting me to an interview at which he intended to “see if it were true” that I was as unsuitable as he suspected. I confirmed his hunch that I leaned too far into the world of social justice, distracted by human needs—such a waste of the little time we had left. I challenged his declaration that I wasn’t the right fit; the arguing pleased him, and I got the job.As a memorial to Helen in 2018, Newton set up a roundtable bringing together brilliant minds from various disciplines as the “inspired generalists” proposed at the end of the book [1]. We begin imagining a coming together of inspired generalists . . . self-tasked with generating the conceptual building blocks for a civilization whose activity is to go about putting to work an inexhaustible supply of available energy beginning with the sun, the waves, the winds, the overproduction of biota . . . human creativity itself in order to continue . . . and beginning the design of an exchange-based civilization that harvested only excess [2].Newton sent personalized invitations to five thinkers [3], crafting his foundational question specifically within the context of each individual’s life work.Can the life web itself, by virtue of its ongoing production and overproduction of redundancy, be encouraged to overproduce in such a way that the harvest is beneficial to the human community and the process of harvesting is beneficial to the overarching ecological community?This is preemptive planning, working backwards from a probable future, and is the type of research that we consider to be a requirement for future survival . . . there may well be disturbing unintended consequences, as so often happens when you work with a complex system of which you can only understand a part.The invitation sparked email responses spanning the productivity of aquaculture systems and the semi-aquatic nature of the Ohlone peoples, overabundant nutrients and flattened food webs, carbon capture and the water cycle, sculptural elements of ecology creating habitat diversity, the effect on the memory of snowdrops’ galantamine, photosynthetic biomass and global oxygen, the global commons and carbon fraud. Newton emphasized the systems approach, steering discussion back to advantaging the life web “in the largest sense we can think.” The necessary paradigm shift to remove the false distinction between natural and human was discussed, along with proposals for using waste water to capture excess CO2, as well as evapo-transpiration for cooling of cities. A differentiation between the effect of (human) management practices and the creation of distinct anthropogenic communities was considered essential, as well as a reminder of traditional uses of fire.When the group met in person, two main themes arose: the systems approach, and language—how it can limit expression, our thinking, our ideas of the possible. Years of dichotomous Cartesian thinking, separating mind and consciousness, have led to increasingly nonproductive ideas---which Newton termed “a monoculture of mind.” Ancient ideas are now finding their way back into science, forming a synthesis of whole-systems thinking, pattern recognition, understanding cognition as the breath of life, with the rational mind as only one aspect, and the participation of the whole organism in cognition.The roundtable deserves longer writing, but I mention it here as an example of Newton’s methods. He was a master of networking and collaboration, of identifying thinking, patterns, and skills that would mesh with others. At the same time, he was (in his own words) relentless. He remained on topic, the only topic of importance: the Life Web. All living systems—whether ecological or economic, our minds, organisms, or organizations—follow patterns and use disturbance for stimulation, growth, change, and a return to productivity. Newton considered himself such a disturbance, approaching every problem with “an open mind and a bad attitude,” advice he loved to pass on to students.Working in a systems approach, shifting paradigms, the Harrisons effectively used metaphor and concrete poetry. Their work, and that of many other eco-artists, involves a complex interplay between image and text, often in collage form. Newton redirected the roundtable discussion through a call for action, echoing the language used in many earlier works with Helen: The world endangereda call to actionWhat type of languageif not scientificeconomicbureaucraticthe special languages of the disciplinesWhy the forbidden language of courseLove Empathy Intimacy Sharing CaringNewton talked fondly of his Jewish upbringing, of studying Blavatsky’s theosophy in Europe in the 1950s; he and Helen included the Buddhist eightfold path in works from the Sacramento Meditations [4] onwards, as well as in their teaching. He would meditate, in short, sharp bursts, saying, “I need to sit quietly for a moment.” After a minute or so, he would open his eyes, speak with clarity in a lower, slower voice, returning to his attunement to the web of life, and his focus on balancing exchange. He considered it would be “greedy” to meditate for any longer.In 2018, at a presentation at the Royal College of Art in Edinburgh, the students didn’t seem to understand the work. Newton stopped his slideshow, sat down at the table, and told them to look within. He told them there was a reason they were artists; they had something to say, to do. Others would not always like it, nor understand. They must get to know their own psyches, learn to listen to themselves and stay grounded no matter what. The energy in the room changed instantly. Shining eyes. Each student being given license to be themselves, think with themselves, in a way that had not happened in their lives before. That seldom happens for many of us.The prescience of the earlier work of the Harrisons is clear. They worked in scale, their question for any new place being “How Big Is Here?” This inquiry might lead them to work on a watershed rather than a village, an ocean rather than a coastal town. A zooming in or out, to discover the boundary dictated by the ecosystem(s) in place.Despite the continued destruction of the natural world, and watching some of their worst predictions come true, Newton’s drive to continue working, thinking, and finding collaborators never lessened. On discovering Ernst Götsch’s work in syntropic farming, he noted the technique of extreme pruning, laying the cut biomass directly on the soil and exclaimed in delight, “He behaves like a giraffe!”These are the lessons. The ability to remain focused, to hold one’s own thoughts and work as important, while believing others are doing the same. To see everything as an aspect of the web of life: opportunism, collaboration, disturbance, exchange. To be humble enough to see our humanity as one part of that network, no more or less important than any other part, yet to take accountability and responsibility for our role in the destruction of the life web in direct proportion to our involvement in it. To recognize that the moment remains urgent [5]

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