Frontiers in retreat – multidisciplinary approaches to ecology in CONTEMPORARY art

Art and ecology, experimentally, across the edges of europe

In the five-year, EU-funded international collaboration project Frontiers in Retreat (2013–2018), seven artist residency sites at the edges of Europe were approached using various artistic and multidisciplinary methods. These remote sites were seen as “frontiers” where entanglements between human and more-than-human life forms become tangible. They allowed very special insight into the entwined processes of ecological, social, and economic change – in their local manifestations and across a planetary scale.

The project mapped out artistic practices that respond to ecological concerns, and explored the diverse ways in which ecology can be perceived and approached in and beyond art. In total 25 artists were invited to conduct research and produce new work in response to particular ecosystems. Their research ranged across fjords, forests, islands, villages, towns, cities, and mountains in Iceland, Finland, Scotland, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, and Spain. Throughout the project, the participating artists and organisations challenged the initial premises of the project – productively, towards increased diversity. Rather than a fixed set of theories, concepts, and methods, there were multiple voices and views, positions and practices: the edge effect, indeed.