MARA ADAMITZ SCRUPE

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Suspicious Science
A collaborative garden installation for Europos Parkas
Vilnius, Lithuania
April - May, 2001

Click here to view article about Europos Parkas
featured in Sculpture Magazine, December 2000

While in residence at Europos Parkas during Spring 2001, the artist collaborated with its staff, volunteers, other visiting artists, and local communities to implement a solar-powered garden/site installation entitled Suspicious Science. Prior to arrival in Vilnius, Europos Parkas staff conducted outreach into local communities whose members were invited and encouraged to participate in assisting with the installation of grotesquely large resin/illuminated vegetables and squash, and to collaborate with in the design and installation of renewable energy systems which accompanied these sculptural elements and are sited on the grounds of the Europos Parkas Open-Air Museum.

    

In-Progress: clay model of large summer squash
and acorn squash just before mold-making begins


Fabricating rubber mold for large resin gourd,
Europos Parkas installation Suspicious Science

Europos Parkas staff also facilitated public speaking engagements for the artist where she discussed sculptural and environmental work, new technologies, and the critical importance of artists working for environmental change.

Suspicious Science addresses two key and interrelated environmental issues: 1) the bioengineering of food plants for human consumption and 2) the burning of fossil fuels. The single greatest threat to the environment (the ozone, biodiversity) is the burning of fossil fuels. Many communities suffer the effects of ozone depletion and related fossil fuel pollution, but must also consume foods which have been grown in contaminated soil and other unhealthy environmental conditions. The artist's work as a public environmental artist addresses the valuation of wild nature and landscape (through education), and encourages curbing the general consumption of non-renewable natural resources,  and educating people regarding renewable energy.

Renewable energy technologies have improved greatly in recent years, but without real financial support for research and public education, they cannot improve as quickly as is necessary to counteract the overwhelming ill effects of the burning of fossil fuels.  Because the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and particularly the former Soviet countries, are currently dealing with (in some cases) profoundly degraded natural systems, it is critically important that people in these countries are presented with the idea that there is hope, perhaps in the form of renewable energy sources as well as other newly developed alternatives, for (at the minimum) stabilizing the natural systems which they depend upon for food, water, and air.

My commitment to using renewable energy technologies in my work represents an effort to underscore the necessity for artists to be environmentally responsible. At the same time, Suspicious Science's cast resin mutant vegetables are an open admission that artwork which
is placed in the public realm requires employing permanent
materials that may not always be environmentally friendly.

Lithuania is an ideal place to site a new work showcasing renewable solar technology while also alluding to the frightening consequences of nuclear- dependent energy production. Like many former Soviet block countries, Lithuania is wrestling with a legacy of dangerously out-dated nuclear power plants. Because the country has neither the means to purchase fossil fuels nor the resources to produce them, these plants are needed to provide 100% of its energy, but its citizenry, having watched the Chernobyl devastation from a frighteningly close perspective, are very aware of the dangers associated with   nuclear technologies, particularly from those generating facilities which lack the most up-to-date
safety and containment equipment.



The gorgeous but mutant vegetables in the Suspicious Science garden are an engaging but scary evocation of the possible outcome of nuclear pollution. The installation's solar-powered illumination softens this effect while suggesting energy alternatives that could will have long-lasting positive consequences for Lithuania's people and natural resources.