“Nature Becomes Joyride”

The works of Finnish artist and photographer Ilkka Halso focus on the role of humanity in nature, offering interpretations that explore the dialogic relationship between technology and the environment and the tension that emerges between the commodification of nature and drives for preservation.  A series of projects spanning the last fifteen years have displayed Halso’s belief that the “countryside is a thousand-year old remnant of the battle and co-operation between man and nature.”

Cultural Landscape relies on a series of 1:1 scale photographs to show the effects of attempts to impose order on the landscape.  The images–ranging in size from 1.4mx7m to 1.4mx120m–show normal terrain disrupted or defined (depending on one’s point of view) by the presence of a measuring rod.  When exhibited, the images form walkways and appear portal-like.  The idea of marking nature also inspired Excavations, a faux archaeological dig that explores the paradox of knowledge emerging from destruction, as well as the ways that humans affect the world through time.  In the search for our own history, Halso argues, our irreversible actions leave remnants that testify as much to our own presence as to the activities of previous generations.

The fantastic images in the Museum of Nature show a world in which engineering and technology have been devoted to preservation–but at a price.  In Halso’s imagined future, massive geodesic domes protect pockets of forest and other areas from an increasingly hostile climate.  These preserves, however, serve as amusements:  a roller coaster skims across the surface of a wetland; an amphitheater entombs a waterfall.  The images raise the ethical debate the rages around the efficacy of using the market to promote conservation and research.  From projects that find ways to index environmental issues in financial terms to more visceral genetic prospecting efforts that hinge on applying copyright and patent law to research, market forces help drive and define environmental issues while raising questions about ultimate goals and the public good.  Halso’s work reminds viewers of the spectrum of environmentalism, with Progressive Era conservation for use at one extreme and deep ecology at the other, and makes viewers more aware of their own sometimes utilitarian views of nature.