Artifical Natural

Evergreen City

Until very recently, I lived and worked in the London Bridge area. During work I would always take my lunch to eat between the new buildings near City Hall. It was hard to find comfortable, private, peace and quiet anywhere else in an area so purposely conceived, as it will not afford comfort where it did not plan for you to rest. For example the area is less than sparsely fitted with benches.

There are half a dozen or less infant trees planted between two building faces that cause an alleyway down onto the river front. They cry from the brickwork as if infiltrating weakened pores in an otherwise tightly woven fabric. Captured, restrained and ultimately 'unnatural'. This display is one of attempt, rather than execution in 'incorporated' design. Also among these infants is another tree. Much larger and dominate over its siblings; David Batchelor's Evergreen installation is nothing more than two shrub shaped green light boxes interlocked atop a stainless steel trunk. Its an abstract but an accessible form. Its singular colour and unmistakable top heavy construction offers the growth associated with plants. There is perhaps no more widely recognised referent system than nature.


I like Evergreen, or 'The Tree' as it is otherwise known (it had become a community focal point). It may have just been a somewhere among anywhere to sit and eat but I was consciously drawn into its form. I assigned a positive association to its collective shapes and colour.

As the real trees stagger aside, Evergreen appears a symbol of perfection. A reduced minimalism of all that is essential in replicating form. The plastics and metals it is built from connote a new evolution and at night it fluoresces a brilliant green as if to defy the natural daily cycle of life. It is captivating in its simplicity and reminds me of Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project at the Tate Modern, where a huge sun crescent, mirrored into a perfect circle in the ceiling was hung in the main hall. People would lie below engrossed in it's glow whilst waving at their reflection. I remember walking down the entrance ramp convinced by its light and warmth. I would assign the same emotions to this installation as I would to the real center of our solar system.

If my emotions react to these signs rather than truths, I am apparently satisfied by the substitute and furthermore, there may appear to be advantages in recreating nature. Although the tree would never flower, seed or grow, the sun would also never set. However, despite my best efforts to imagine these technologies positively, I can't help but picture a neuromantic scene of depression; the post-climate reconstruction of a once sustainable ecosystem.

I fear our grasp of reality has already shifted somewhat. We conceive Disneyland to be fake but at what point does urbanity cross beyond the realms of real? Would we even notice? Baudrillard claims such imaginary worlds conceal the changes in reality, or rather conceal the fact that “the real is no longer real”.[1]

From traffic to television, an ambience of distraction surrounds the city. They say it never sleeps, thus we are already astride the rhythms of the natural world. I would suggest those concerned by our 'new' efforts to manipulate the weather, by means such as cloud seeding (as mentioned by Katy), be consoled in this is not a new thing, so do not worry. We started dictating the weather long before we started to mimic it.



[1]Baudrillard, J. quoted in Birch, T. (1990) The Incarceration of Wilderness, p18.

See also: McLaughlin, A. (1993) Regarding Nature. New York University Press.