Life in Film: Hamish Fulton

Since the late 1960s British artist Hamish Fulton has made sculptures, actions, images and text pieces in response to his direct physical engagement with the landscape. In 1973 he resolved to ‘only make art resulting from the experience of individual walks’, a strategy that he maintains today. He has recently had solo exhibitions at Centro de estudios Lebaniegos, Cantabria, Texas Gallery, Houston, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome and Christine Burgin Gallery, New York.

As a ‘walking artist’, I like films, notwithstanding all that sitting. Being an artist who by now should have made his own film, I relate to them in terms of subject matter but you guessed it, nearly every film I’ve enjoyed was deemed of no critical interest. (As a character in 1994’s Dumb and Dumber says, ‘you’ve one chance in a million.’) I gave up the approach of only going to exhibitions I thought I might like and decided to see anything. My idea is to support the creativity of artists; what the art looks like is of less importance. However, the problem for me is that the films with subject matter I can relate to seem to be less well made.

I saw an unforgettable documentary directed by Peter T. Furst. about Ramón Medina Silva, a Huichol shaman from the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico; it’s about a peyote pilgrimage, a journey of several hundred miles on foot and public transport (To Find Our Life: The Peyote Hunt of the Huichols of Mexico, 1969). The strength of ‘the people’ seemed to burst out of the film medium, despite its low-budget quality.

Is it really necessary to like the subject of a film? It helps. I watched Everest (1998), the IMAX movie by David Breashears, Stephen Judson and Greg MacGillivray – interesting filming, but less interesting direction. This is not a low budget film. There are some good scenes, but behind them lies a whole other story. In his book, High Exposure, (1999), Breashears wrote, ‘We had a small video camera in the tent with us, and I’d considered bringing it along. It would add a few pounds to the load, but could serve as a way to record the climb if the IMAX camera failed. I made the decision to leave it behind. Exhausted, at the edge of my working capacity, I would surely get enticed by the relative ease of shooting with the video camera, and I could justify not setting up the IMAX behemoth, maybe even abandoning it altogether. I had no problem with jettisoning the IMAX camera if we hit a storm or someone collapsed. It was a lifeless thing. I had no attachment to it. If anything, I had come to despise it.’ Unlike Gilbert & George, Everest gets a lot of bad press. I must be the only contemporary artist with any interest in Chomolungma. More than 100 years ago the conservationist John Muir wrote: ‘To obtain a hearing on behalf of nature from any standpoint other than that of human use is almost impossible.’

So Everest does not get ‘used’? I hear you ask. It’s polluted. It’s a big mountain. A snow mountain, a sacred mountain. In our ‘sudden’ worry about global warming I feel we have forgotten nature. Global warming as a news item often seems to be more about the deterioration of our investments. Earth First! Polar bears standing on remnants of melting ice makes a powerful image. For a change, it is bears that take the centre stage – not the sculpted human form (for human eyes to view) standing in a landscape, landscape as mere backdrop. As Alexander Pope put it, ‘The fur that warms a monarch, warm’d a bear.’ In his 1999 biography of Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse, Larry McMurtry described the Ziolkowsky family’s ongoing project to carve the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota ‘… out of what was once Thunderhead Mountain. In the half century that the Ziolkowsky family has worked, millions of tons of rock have been moved, as they attempt to create what will be the world’s largest sculpture.’ A European style sculpture of Crazy Horse imposed on Thunderhead Mountain. More Cararra marble than Oglala Sioux.

Industries evolve, from shipbuilding to information technology and, in very recent times, contemporary art itself has become a kind of industry. Now life mimics art – but what about nature? The problem with nature is that it gets in the way. Half the world’s population now lives in cities. How are people supposed to become acquainted with nature, with other life forms? As ecologist Michael J. Cohen has written; ‘Rocks and mountains, sand, clouds, wind and rain … nothing is dead.’ As a certain type of 1960s artist, I rejected form, scale and texture in favour of ways of living. In other words the pavements outside the art school became more interesting. Moving quickly along, this lead to an interest in the lives of mountaineers and so-called first-nation people, who I believed ‘lived close to nature.’ Various films have been made about the Kogi people of Colombia. One was made for the BBC in 1990 by Alan Ereira, entitled, From the Heart of the World – The Elder Brother’s Warning. Here are some quotes from his book, The Heart of the World (1990):

‘We are already aware of the signs that our environment is likely to change catastrophically, and that we ourselves are creating that change. But our own response is to look for the technological “fix” that will stave off disaster: lead-free petrol and catalytic converters for our cars, “scrubbers” to clean up factory emissions, perhaps more use of nuclear power in place of coal. None of these proposed solutions offers any real hope, if the Kogi are correct, because they are products of the same attitude which has created the problems. We have to learn to understand the world in a different way. That is why they (the Kogi) are desperately anxious for us to listen.’

‘The Mamas say please BBC, inform other countries – no more ransacking because the earth wants to collapse, the earth grows weak, we must protect it, we must respect it, because he does not respect the earth, because he does not respect it. Younger Brother thinks – Yes! Here I am! I know much about the universe! But this knowing is learning to destroy the world, to destroy everything, all humanity.’ At the top of the Sierra, the world is dying. The water cycle has been broken. ‘They have taken the clouds from the paramo. They have sold the clouds.’ (Mamas are Kogi priests and judges. Younger Brother is us.)

‘This area – tundra, paramo, whatever the ecologists want to call it – is a great sponge. It holds the water of the snow-melt and the high rains. It fills the lakes from which the rivers are born. It is the fresh water supply of everything below; the life of every tree, every animal, every plant, every human in the Sierra depends on the fresh water that is stored in the ground and grasses here, and that filters into the lakes. There was no water. The grass was dead. It had shrivelled into tight dry yellow spirals, which turned to dust between my fingers.’