Aviva Rahmani

Savage Minds

Pioneering ecological artist Aviva Rahmani discusses her latest book Divining Chaos: The Autobiography of an Idea (New Village Press, 2022) outlining her political and artistic coming of age in the 1960s in downtown New York, her development as a feminist, and her evolution into an ecoartist who employs a multi-disciplinary approach to take on the current ecological crises. Having worked at the cutting edge of the avant-garde, Rahmani explains the differences between ecoart and land art stating, “Where land artists such as Robert Smithson were using sculptural techniques to stamp their own philosophical comments on the Earth, as my father had, ecoartists are driven by the sense that the Earth desperately requires healing much more than stamping.” Rahmani elaborates how it is imperative that we understand the entire spectrum of change within the natural world without interrupting these spaces as she delves into what she calls “trigger point theory,” a pro-active relationship to change based in the physics of the natural world. Incorporating the diverse disciplines of art, music, law and science, Rahmani views the siloisation of disciplines as part of the problem leading is leading to ecosuicide. Instead, she engages the ecosystem through a trans-disciplinary paradigm whereby knowledge from various fields is brought together in order to address the ecological problems of our day.

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