Thinking with the Harrisons. (2023)
Book
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. [2024]. Thinking with the Harrisons. Leuven: Leuven University Press. (Forthcoming)

This book asks a fundamental question around the place of the arts in the global environmental crises. In arguing that the arts have an important role, we are also suggesting that the arts need to be rethought, reimagined and reconfigured through new... Read More about Thinking with the Harrisons..

Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? [Article] (2023)
Journal Article
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. 2023. Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? Field: a journal of socially-engaged art criticism [online], 23. Available from: https://field-journal.com/issue-23/thinking-with-the-harrisons-what-does-now-demand

"The reversal of entropy requires considerable energy and imagination and is accompanied by risk." This statement from the designer, planner and ecologist Frederick Steiner evokes the core challenge of the current environmental crisis: the energy tha... Read More about Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? [Article].

In conversation: a poetics of empathy: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. (2022)
Journal Article
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. 2022. In conversation: a poetics of empathy: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. Women eco artists dialog magazine [online], 13: the art of empathy. Available from: https://directory.weadartists.org/in-conversation-a-poetics-of-empathy

Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison are pioneers in the creative development of art and ecology. It was Helen who read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a critical influence in their decision in the early 1970s to do no work that did not in some wa... Read More about In conversation: a poetics of empathy: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison..

Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? [Presentation] (2022)
Presentation / Conference
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. 2022. Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? Presented at Listening to the web of life, 17-18 March 2022, San Diego, USA. Hosted on OpenAIR [online]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.48526/rgu-wt-1629026

How can we learn to think ecologically when our technological, social, aesthetic and political systems are built on the primacy of human rationality? Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison's (b. 1932) practice as artists borrows from th... Read More about Thinking with the Harrisons: what does now demand? [Presentation].

Foregrounding ecosystems: thinking with the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. (2021)
Book Chapter
FREMANTLE, C. and DOUGLAS, A. 2021. Foregrounding ecosystems: thinking with the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. In Villanueva-Romero, D., Kerslake, L. and Flys-Junquera, C. (eds.) Imaginative ecologies: inspiring change through the humanities. Nature, culture and literature, 17. Netherlands: Brill [online], chapter 5, pages 81-106. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004501270_007

The approach we take to understanding, whether framed as 'measured, objective and in control' or 'entangled and adapting', is key to the health of the life web and ourselves. The problems associated with the measured, objective and in control version... Read More about Foregrounding ecosystems: thinking with the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison..

Calendar variations. (2021)
Book Chapter
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. 2022. Calendar variations. In Geffen, A., Rosenthal, A., Fremantle, C. and Rhamani, A. (eds.) Ecoart in action: activities, case studies and provocations for classroom and community. New York: New Village Press [online], section 2, case study 4. Available from: https://nyupress.org/9781613321461/ecoart-in-action/

The Work of Allan Kaprow (1927-2006). Allan Kaprow was interested in blurring the boundaries between art and life on the premise that “Life is more artlike than art”. He drew artists and participants into noticing and exploring life's spontaneous mo... Read More about Calendar variations..

In the time of art with policy: the practice of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison alongside global environmental policy since the 1970s. (2020)
Book Chapter
FREMANTLE, C., DOUGLAS, A. and PRITCHARD, D. 2020. In the time of art with policy: the practice of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison alongside global environmental policy since the 1970s. In Cartiere, C. and Tan, L. (eds.). The Routledge companion to art in the public realm. Abingdon: Routledge [online], chapter 27, pages 300-314. Available from: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429450471-27

From around 1970, the artists Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (b. 1932), known as ‘the Harrisons,’ started to focus on ecology and ecological systems, influenced by amongst other things, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring which had be... Read More about In the time of art with policy: the practice of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison alongside global environmental policy since the 1970s..

The Harrisons' practice in the context of global environmental policy and politics from the 1960s to 2019: a timeline. (2020)
Book Chapter
FREMANTLE, C., DOUGLAS, A. and PRITCHARD, D. 2020. The Harrisons' practice in the context of global environmental policy and politics from the 1960s to 2019: a timeline. In Cartiere, C. and Tan, L. (eds.). The Routledge companion to art in the public realm. Abingdon: Routledge, chapter 28, pages 314-332. Available from: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429450471-28

This chapter complements a previous chapter, 'In the time of art with policy' from the same book. The three authors, Fremantle, Douglas and Pritchard, offer different disciplinary perspectives to this analysis of global environmental policy and the... Read More about The Harrisons' practice in the context of global environmental policy and politics from the 1960s to 2019: a timeline..

What poetry does best: the Harrisons' poetics of being and acting in the world. (2016)
Book Chapter
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. 2016. What poetry does best: the Harrisons' poetics of being and acting in the world. In Harrison, H.M. and Harrison, N. (eds.) The time of the force majeure: after 45 years counterforce is on the horizon. Grantham: Prestel.

Simply paying attention guarantees the transformation from a nature supposedly asleep to the work that displays nature's strange vitality. Art is what attention makes with nature. This observation by Michel De Certeau, noted French philosopher of the... Read More about What poetry does best: the Harrisons' poetics of being and acting in the world..

Inconsistency and contradiction: lessons in improvisation in the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. (2016)
Book Chapter
DOUGLAS, A. and FREMANTLE, C. 2016. Inconsistency and contradiction: lessons in improvisation in the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. In Brady, J. (ed.) Elemental: an arts and ecology reader. Manchester: Gaia Project Press, [online]. Available from: https://www.cornerhousepublications.org/publications/elemental-an-arts-and-ecology-reader-gaia-project/

The essay draws out the learning from the authors' analysis of the practice of Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (b.1932), collectively known as 'the Harrisons'. Inconsistency and contradiction are conventionally eliminated in rese... Read More about Inconsistency and contradiction: lessons in improvisation in the work of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison..