Award 2021
Welcome to the Social Art Award 2021 – Online Gallery!
We are grateful for the many inspiring contributions from artists around the world. The selected works reflect a broad spectrum of contemporary social art practices and explore new relationships between humans, nature, and technology. They address themes such as ecological regeneration, climate justice, sustainable futures, social resilience, and more-than-human perspectives.
Below you will find the submissions from the Social Art Award 2021 – New Greening edition that passed the initial jury round. The Online Gallery offers public visibility to these works and encourages dialogue around their ideas and approaches; it does not replace the final jury decision.
Thank you to all artists for sharing your visionary and committed work. We invite you to explore the gallery and engage with the perspectives shaping New Greening.
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Tree Lines - screengrab from (experiemental) project...
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Title:
Tree Lines - screengrab from (experiemental) project...
Tree Lines - screengrab from (experiemental) project...
Author:
Walter Lewis
Walter Lewis
Description:
I am a photographer and wanderer in the landscape (www.spiritoftheland.co.uk). My work is aimed at catalysing greater societal connection with earth on which we depend. I am currently creating an anthology of soundscaped visual poems which reflect on, and engage with, phenomenological encounter with trees. My aim is to reveal the rich experience that is available through such encounter, feeling their ancient wisdom and engaging with the ecological balance of their woods and forests. The poems are in the form of short audio-visual sequences and are being created out of visits to individual forested sites. Collectively the poems will form a metaphoric forest mounted on a website (see link above for mock up site) through which viewers can wander at will, not only sharing my experience but finding their own emotive and embodied encounters. Soundscapes for the poems are being largely created in collaboration with contemporary composers who are responding to my images. My ambition is to stimulate viewers to a greater emotional alignment with nature so as to underpin a more impactful, sustainable, and embodied response to the ecological challenges that we currently face. I anticipate that the content of the website will be transferable to physical onsite exhibitions so as to maximise outreach. Caught in the treadmill of endless economic growth. Entranced by material wealth, I feel the servant rather than master of the system. Impotent against misrepresentations of truth and the disdain of our politicians. Unable to grasp crises which are of global proportions. But...... body and soul are restorable. I can have hope. The ‘greening’ of society is not an intellectual exercise – we all know there is problem, we just don’t respond. As such it is an emotional engagement that Is missing, something embodied and from the heart. Art rather than science is what will deliver that engagement, art which evokes emotional engagement and so changes society from within. My photographic practice is a search for a revitalising and embodied understanding of the interconnectedness which is innate to our world – of the interdependence of self, others, and all that is around us. It is a search for insight and inspiration to a bodily disposition which is responsive to meaning, purpose and value. The work though is not a neat set of answers. Mine is an invitation to enquiry - the sharing of a search. My aim is to create spaces for individual, contemplative thought. Art that is committed, as I believe mine is, is not dogmatic, but rather is that which ‘awakens and activates a free choice to generate authentic intellectual exploration’. (Rachel Lee, Boston College, www.academia.edu). ‘Instead of standing firmly with your feet and holding tight with both hands in order to feel secure in your place, here you have to dart across the liquid, shimming surface like a long legged fly, swim with its currents like a fast moving fish’ - Stephen Batchelor, author and secular Buddhist https://vimeo.com/showcase/8253935?quality=1080p
I am a photographer and wanderer in the landscape (www.spiritoftheland.co.uk). My work is aimed at catalysing greater societal connection with earth on which we depend. I am currently creating an anthology of soundscaped visual poems which reflect on, and engage with, phenomenological encounter with trees. My aim is to reveal the rich experience that is available through such encounter, feeling their ancient wisdom and engaging with the ecological balance of their woods and forests. The poems are in the form of short audio-visual sequences and are being created out of visits to individual forested sites. Collectively the poems will form a metaphoric forest mounted on a website (see link above for mock up site) through which viewers can wander at will, not only sharing my experience but finding their own emotive and embodied encounters. Soundscapes for the poems are being largely created in collaboration with contemporary composers who are responding to my images. My ambition is to stimulate viewers to a greater emotional alignment with nature so as to underpin a more impactful, sustainable, and embodied response to the ecological challenges that we currently face. I anticipate that the content of the website will be transferable to physical onsite exhibitions so as to maximise outreach. Caught in the treadmill of endless economic growth. Entranced by material wealth, I feel the servant rather than master of the system. Impotent against misrepresentations of truth and the disdain of our politicians. Unable to grasp crises which are of global proportions. But...... body and soul are restorable. I can have hope. The ‘greening’ of society is not an intellectual exercise – we all know there is problem, we just don’t respond. As such it is an emotional engagement that Is missing, something embodied and from the heart. Art rather than science is what will deliver that engagement, art which evokes emotional engagement and so changes society from within. My photographic practice is a search for a revitalising and embodied understanding of the interconnectedness which is innate to our world – of the interdependence of self, others, and all that is around us. It is a search for insight and inspiration to a bodily disposition which is responsive to meaning, purpose and value. The work though is not a neat set of answers. Mine is an invitation to enquiry - the sharing of a search. My aim is to create spaces for individual, contemplative thought. Art that is committed, as I believe mine is, is not dogmatic, but rather is that which ‘awakens and activates a free choice to generate authentic intellectual exploration’. (Rachel Lee, Boston College, www.academia.edu). ‘Instead of standing firmly with your feet and holding tight with both hands in order to feel secure in your place, here you have to dart across the liquid, shimming surface like a long legged fly, swim with its currents like a fast moving fish’ - Stephen Batchelor, author and secular Buddhist https://vimeo.com/showcase/8253935?quality=1080p
Description:
I am a photographer and wanderer in the landscape (www.spiritoftheland.co.uk). My work is aimed at catalysing greater societal connection with earth on which we depend. I am currently creating an anthology of soundscaped visual poems which reflect on, and engage with, phenomenological encounter with trees. My aim is to reveal the rich experience that is available through such encounter, feeling their ancient wisdom and engaging with the ecological balance of their woods and forests. The poems are in the form of short audio-visual sequences and are being created out of visits to individual forested sites. Collectively the poems will form a metaphoric forest mounted on a website (see link above for mock up site) through which viewers can wander at will, not only sharing my experience but finding their own emotive and embodied encounters. Soundscapes for the poems are being largely created in collaboration with contemporary composers who are responding to my images. My ambition is to stimulate viewers to a greater emotional alignment with nature so as to underpin a more impactful, sustainable, and embodied response to the ecological challenges that we currently face. I anticipate that the content of the website will be transferable to physical onsite exhibitions so as to maximise outreach. Caught in the treadmill of endless economic growth. Entranced by material wealth, I feel the servant rather than master of the system. Impotent against misrepresentations of truth and the disdain of our politicians. Unable to grasp crises which are of global proportions. But...... body and soul are restorable. I can have hope. The ‘greening’ of society is not an intellectual exercise – we all know there is problem, we just don’t respond. As such it is an emotional engagement that Is missing, something embodied and from the heart. Art rather than science is what will deliver that engagement, art which evokes emotional engagement and so changes society from within. My photographic practice is a search for a revitalising and embodied understanding of the interconnectedness which is innate to our world – of the interdependence of self, others, and all that is around us. It is a search for insight and inspiration to a bodily disposition which is responsive to meaning, purpose and value. The work though is not a neat set of answers. Mine is an invitation to enquiry - the sharing of a search. My aim is to create spaces for individual, contemplative thought. Art that is committed, as I believe mine is, is not dogmatic, but rather is that which ‘awakens and activates a free choice to generate authentic intellectual exploration’. (Rachel Lee, Boston College, www.academia.edu). ‘Instead of standing firmly with your feet and holding tight with both hands in order to feel secure in your place, here you have to dart across the liquid, shimming surface like a long legged fly, swim with its currents like a fast moving fish’ - Stephen Batchelor, author and secular Buddhist https://vimeo.com/showcase/8253935?quality=1080p
I am a photographer and wanderer in the landscape (www.spiritoftheland.co.uk). My work is aimed at catalysing greater societal connection with earth on which we depend. I am currently creating an anthology of soundscaped visual poems which reflect on, and engage with, phenomenological encounter with trees. My aim is to reveal the rich experience that is available through such encounter, feeling their ancient wisdom and engaging with the ecological balance of their woods and forests. The poems are in the form of short audio-visual sequences and are being created out of visits to individual forested sites. Collectively the poems will form a metaphoric forest mounted on a website (see link above for mock up site) through which viewers can wander at will, not only sharing my experience but finding their own emotive and embodied encounters. Soundscapes for the poems are being largely created in collaboration with contemporary composers who are responding to my images. My ambition is to stimulate viewers to a greater emotional alignment with nature so as to underpin a more impactful, sustainable, and embodied response to the ecological challenges that we currently face. I anticipate that the content of the website will be transferable to physical onsite exhibitions so as to maximise outreach. Caught in the treadmill of endless economic growth. Entranced by material wealth, I feel the servant rather than master of the system. Impotent against misrepresentations of truth and the disdain of our politicians. Unable to grasp crises which are of global proportions. But...... body and soul are restorable. I can have hope. The ‘greening’ of society is not an intellectual exercise – we all know there is problem, we just don’t respond. As such it is an emotional engagement that Is missing, something embodied and from the heart. Art rather than science is what will deliver that engagement, art which evokes emotional engagement and so changes society from within. My photographic practice is a search for a revitalising and embodied understanding of the interconnectedness which is innate to our world – of the interdependence of self, others, and all that is around us. It is a search for insight and inspiration to a bodily disposition which is responsive to meaning, purpose and value. The work though is not a neat set of answers. Mine is an invitation to enquiry - the sharing of a search. My aim is to create spaces for individual, contemplative thought. Art that is committed, as I believe mine is, is not dogmatic, but rather is that which ‘awakens and activates a free choice to generate authentic intellectual exploration’. (Rachel Lee, Boston College, www.academia.edu). ‘Instead of standing firmly with your feet and holding tight with both hands in order to feel secure in your place, here you have to dart across the liquid, shimming surface like a long legged fly, swim with its currents like a fast moving fish’ - Stephen Batchelor, author and secular Buddhist https://vimeo.com/showcase/8253935?quality=1080p