Nature is as nature does: Recent sustainable artists and the practice of local ecology

Through a theoretical and historical exploration of the contemporary environmental works of Marjetica Potrc, Fritz Haeg, Bonnie Sherk, and Mark Dion, I will consider these artists' role in an ecology movement that positions humans and nature as a part of the same system in which the only way to change the world is to understand it. These works inhabit a site-specific environmentalism, a connection to the local, and a manifestation in situations that do not require the artist's presence. As prototypes that can be reproduced anywhere, the works are not about art objects, but about ways of relating through objects. In engaging with these works, we become participants in creating and perpetuating a knowledge system about nature and the environment.