Artificial beach in Miyazaki, Japan, the world's largest artificial beach.”If Nature is not made by or for human beings, then it remains foreign, forever remote and hostile”(B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, p. 31)
Yes yes Nature was not created by human beings indeed.
We started out thinking that the world was flat, that we were the centre of the universe and that the universe was created by someone we called God.
Luckily scientists proved us wrong.
The fact that nature was not created by us, seemed to make us think that it was made for us instead. Because of the nature of humans, we have for a long time exploited the resources of the earth.
However, during the past 10-20 years a trend in western society has evolved that we should all go organic and a certain romance around the concept of nature has arisen.
We bring the outdoor indoors in interiors, advertising things labelled as ”natural” and sustainable thinking has seems to be equivalent with good morals.
A romanticised relation to nature can also be seen in the art and design world e.g. Artists like Olafur Eliasson and Mariele Neudecker works with a recreation of nature or nature phenomenon.
Mariele Neudecker, Heaven, The Sky, 2008Artificial recreations of nature made of mixed media incl. water, resin, salt, mercury lamps.
Mariele Neudecker, I Dont Know How I Resisted, 1998mixed media incl. water, acrylic medium, salt, fibreglass.
Olafur Eliasson, New York Waterfall, 2004Latour, B.(1991)"We Have Never Been Modern", La Découverte
www.olafureliasson.net
www.marieleneudecker.co.uk
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