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151 14 CULTURE NATURE CATALYST Betty Beaumont Betty Beaumont’s underwater Ocean Landmark (1978–80) project, an interdisciplinary intervention, is a public art work that most people will never have the opportunity to see, as it is in the Atlantic Ocean. Created by a process of coal ash recycling off the coast of New York, it is a kind of public art that changes the world we live in by transforming the ecology of the fish habitats near Fire Island. Since its inception, the habitat has encouraged fish and vegetation to thrive in an area of the ocean floor once devoid of such life. Still in production, Beaumont’s Decompression cyber project will enable the public to experience the Ocean Landmark using a variety of technologies. Teddy Bear Island (1973), Riverwalk (1989), and Toxic Imaging (1987) can be counted among Beaumont’s earlier interventions, and evidence her profound ecological and political interest, as well as her ability to integrate political concerns into actively transforming and improving habitats and environments. More recently, education has increasingly played a role in her art. JG Art can often be segregated from the flow of life and from real living environments. Human creation is placed at a higher level than nature’s ontological processes of birth, life, decay, death, and rebirth. BB The first industrial revolution is now officially over. And another one is beginning to take form. It is in this space, this gap or cusp between these revolutions, that my work has taken place over the past thirty-three years. It is in this new transformative space that I will continue to work. It is a political space that has the potential of aligning and integrating how we support life economically and ecologically. To imagine this space, it is vital we change our belief systems. I am suggesting a cultural transformation that will encourage our community to consider nature as an integral part of the human value system. JG Your ambitious and farsighted Ocean Landmark project was unlike most art practice at the time. It remains a landmark work, and actually involved creating a living underwater ecology that is sustainable. Culture Nature Catalyst 152 BB At the end of the 1970s I wanted to do a project that combined metaphor with underwater farming. The result was Ocean Landmark, which exists underwater and is made of five hundred tons of processed coal waste, a potential pollutant transformed into a productive new ecosystem in the Atlantic off Fire Island. It was during the first OPEC-constructed oil shortage that I became interested in energy. I was concerned with the consequences of converting oil power plants to coal use. Today more than 50 percent of our electricity comes from coal. Coal is a fossil fuel: the transformed remains of plants that have been underground at high temperature and great pressure for millions of years. It is mined, burned in a flash, and then its ashes are thrown away. Ocean Landmark is not meant to encourage the use of fossil fuels. While fossil fuels are used they generate tons of waste material. Ocean Landmark considers stabilized coal waste as a new material and plans for its sustainable future. Renewable energy such as solar and hydrogen-cell technology are energy sources that we must embrace. While investigating the Atlantic Continental Shelf, a dream emerged: to build an underwater “oasis” that would be a productive , flourishing site in the midst of an area of urban blight caused by ocean dumping. The work was inspired by the potential of the continental shelf and a team of scientists experimenting with coal waste looking for ways to stabilize this industrial by-product in water. I watched their test site for a year before proposing to use their materials to create an underwater sculpture in the Atlantic Ocean. In researching Japan’s construction of artificial reefs, I discovered that a certain shape and size block or structure placed underwater will attract a particular kind of fish, which will then reside there to eventually be harvested as food. The Ocean Landmark project developed over time with the participation and cooperation of biologists, chemists, oceanographers, engineers, scuba divers, industry and myself. We dove for a season and found a site just off Fire Island about forty miles from New York City’s harbor. It was selected for its close proximity to shore and potential for fishing. Seventeen thousand coal flyash blocks or bricks were fabricated and shipped to the site. Ocean Landmark started...

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