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Monitoring - tracing damaging sources, walking, getting to know..

 

( reclalamtion ) -

Discussions with Hydrologist, Botanist, Ecologist, Artists, Quarry owners, Engineers, Cement Truck drivers

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures from the 5 stations in the creek

 

 

station one- Concrete Flags' Road

Left over cement from highway bridges' buildings, used for casting 100 flags and 50 palettes, as flags' bases..

Cracks I

Dumped cement blocking the stream.

Holes to allow rain to penetrate ground water. social work with quarry workers.

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Concrete Creek 1999-2002 - Shai Zakai, (artist statement)1st stream reclamation via eco-art in Israel

"I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin: ..to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs." Georges Perec, Paris 1973-74 .*

In my quests for visual expressions which would bring man and the environment closer together I have conceived of a reclamation plan which operates concurrently on the physical level – cleansing the stream, and on the social and spiritual level – healing people from their environmental indifference.

The quarry workers – welders, concrete bridge builders, cement-mixer drivers, foreign workers, Bedouins, moshav members, Palestinians, as well as the quarry and factory owners – all took part in the artistic creation, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I believe that transforming them into “fleeting artists” makes it possible to put issues they have never addressed before on the agenda, thus inspiring a changed state of mind, and consequently, a higher level of awareness.

The process of reclamation incorporated a local reference to a global problem – unawareness of environmental issues and ongoing pollution of streams in Israel and the world. The reclamation plan did not strive a-priori to reconvert nature to its original state; rather, it was aimed at observing the eyesore, resolving the ecological problem by means of art, and leaving traces of the eyesore for the wide public to see, so they would continue to explore the field and take responsibility.

The mode of work involved documented hikes along the stream, focusing on the sources of pollution; forming an interdisciplinary team of professionals who would follow through on the reclamation from different angles (an ecologist, botanist, hydrologist, representatives of the Ministry of the Environment, Green activists); conversations with cement-mixer drivers,

those responsible for loading the pollutants on to the trucks, the dispatchers, and other factory employees. All this while, at the same time, generating an ongoing work of art spawned from the environmental eyesore and introduced as a part of the reclamation process, as a time-out for observing the daily routine of the factory and quarry and exploring the causes for the disease (pouring concrete leftovers on the roadside, contaminating the stream).

Rather than threats of being fined or standing trial (the current situation), I opted for the identification and collaboration approach. This is an eco-centric, eco-feminist approach which regards the “rehabilitation” of both man and nature – the stream, organic and inorganic elements found in it and its flora and fauna – with equal importance. Physical work – collecting the waste, hewing, filing, surveying, photographing - is an essential part of this course of action.

For me, an eco-artist is comparable to a doctor practicing alternative medicine, who would never offer you a painkiller, but would examine the body as a whole; or to a judge, who would send a transgressor to a rehabilitation program rather than to jail; to a philosopher who would always explore multiple versions and variations before he finds that singular insight; to “sublime nature” that often invokes in its beholder magical sensations that are never quite deciphered; wishing to utter our admiration, we feel close to the place and it becomes so precious to us that we want to preserve it.

The reclaimed stream and the works of art around it invite the hiker to experience nature and disfigured nature that has been rehabilitated. It is fundamentally different than yet another weekend spent strolling in nature. The experience would heighten hikers’ awareness, perhaps even bequeath a profound sense of responsibility for the stream, which they would be able to project onto another eyesore in their own area. In a wider perspective, the Concrete Creek project may serve as a model for the reclamation and rehabilitation of other streams and rivers through interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, scientist, industrial factories, and may even, once again, raise questions concerning the artist’s role in Israeli society.

The project carried out in this particular stream is targeted toward artists - in the hope that they will incorporate environmental conceptions into their future works, toward scientists – to include artists in environmental ecological projects, toward industrialists – to include a “house artist” on their team, thus allowing for a different perspective and shedding new light on routine factory procedures, toward local inhabitants – to take responsibility for the preservation of nature in their environs, toward decision makers – to encourage, initiate and finance interdisciplinary teams from the social sciences, natural and ecological sciences, law, etc. to work on environmental projects.

Shai Zakai, ecoartist, Director and Founder of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art* Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, penguin books, 1997, 90-1

Concrete Creek 1999-2002 : Project Status Quo ( abstract )

1. The Creek is now Clean for the 2 km. reclamation site. As part of the project, we have succeeded in removing literally tons of concrete dust, asphalt and garbage.

2. Truck drivers are now more familiar with the designated dumping grounds for the remainder of the concrete in the quarry area and it is now more usable.

3. Local truck drivers’ awareness has now increased.

4. We have written up a series of long-term proposed solutions for creek conservation, submitted the list to the quarry management and to the Deputy Director of the Ministry of the Environment following three years of collaboration.

5. We have inaugurated an eco-tourism hiking path as artwork along the route of the reclaimed creek. The artist’s studio conducts guided tours for school groups and tourists along the route.

6. The route now appears on the most recent edition of hiking and orienteering maps as published by the Israel trail Committee, of the Society for Protection of Nature ( SPNI ) 2002.

7. The Ministry of the Environment has decided to include and promote eco-artists in environmental projects.

8. The artist has conducted study-tours and courses for SPNI guides on the the creek route and on eco-art.

9. We have produced two short video-art films documenting sections of the of the Project, each about 15 min. long.

10. We have archival material on the reclamation project for services and research.

11. We produced a catalog in Hebrew. We distributed about 75,000 copies to "green" leaders, members of parliament, ministry officials and newspaper subscribers of Ha’aretz, Israel’s most distinguished daily newspaper.

12. Lecture-exhibition on the Project took place in various countries including the USA (Arizona, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Nevada); Germany (Berlin, Bonn); and throughout Israel (Elah Valley, Tel Aviv and other areas).

Matan VilnaiIsraeli Minister of Science, Culture and Sport

The artist’s relationship with the world, the environment and reality has always been one of simultaneous rejection and attraction. Refusing to accept the world as it is, through artwork the artist attempts to create an alternative universe vis-à-vis the existing reality.

Vincent Van Gogh once said that “God must not be judged on this earth,” adding that “the world is a study of God which has turned out badly.”The artist attempts to rectify that study which had not succeeded, but this is almost always done indoors, in the studio.

In the Valley of Elah, where David went into a seemingly lost battle against Goliath and defeated him by the power of faith, Shai Zakai has embarked on an equally impossible battle of her own against habit and routine, impassivity and indifference – and brought salvation to the Etziona Stream.Israeli Minister of Culture Science and Sport write about - Concrete Creek - 1999-2002 by Shai ZakaiIt was not only an act of cleansing a stream, but also an intricate creative act; not only an ecological process, but also a social process of raising the awareness of those who had contaminated the stream in the past, but now were participating in its reclamation.

In this process, Zakai played the role of the artist, whom she perceives as a “social worker,” a catalyst of awareness and involvement, as well as a healer of a society that pollutes its world.The Concrete Creek project attests to eco-art’s capacity to bring about change in Israeli society.

I call upon my fellows, artists of Israel, to follow in Zakai’s footsteps: to invest of their time in environmental issues, and in their unique way raise awareness in Israeli society of ecological problems.In order to ensure the efficacy of this call, organizers must be open to including artists on planning, conservation and reclamation teams, and must be willing to apply their creativity and social perspective to projects that would have an impact on society as a whole.

For me, the greatest milestone in Concrete Creek was the introduction of a multi-faceted dialogue, an exchange between artist, scientist, citizen and establishment toward joint efforts for the environment.Collaboration between artists and scientists – two quality groups with which I have had the pleasure of a close acquaintance ever since I was appointed Minister of Science and Culture – is simply called for.

These two communities possess a sense of social responsibility, and both strive to bring about change in society and the world. Together the changes they could make would be considerably more significant.The Concrete Creek project must not remain one of a kind initiative. We must find the necessary resources for additional artistic projects geared towards the environment, while harnessing the experience of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art chaired by Zakai.

Thanks to Shai and to her many co-workers in this wonderful act of creation. See you all again on the next project!

Concrete Creek 1999-2002 Tzachi Hanegbi

The Israeli Minister of the EnvironmentThe reclamation of streams in Israel and their transformation into key recreational sites is a significant contribution to improving the quality of the environment in Israel.The Concrete Creek project is an initiatory, experimental and unique model for planning, reclamation and conservation of a damaged environment in collaboration with those who caused its contamination and are now toiling toward its rehabilitation.

As an example for cooperation between industry and art and between artists and scientists for the sake of the environment, it is an important, welcome project.A reclaimed stream is a stream whose surroundings are preserved and cultivated. I am hopeful that this project will turn out to be a deserving, feasible model for the reclamation of many other streams in Israel, the majority of which are presently damaged and polluted, and in dire need of rehabilitation.Not only would their reclamation be a highly significant ecological contribution, but it would also expand, enrich and diversify the potential recreational sites at the disposal of the Israeli public.

Artist Shai Zakai, founder of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art, who has been working tirelessly on the Concrete Creek project for two and a half years now, deserves all the credit and praise for her inexhaustible initiative and energy in harnessing various bodies and organizations to take part in the project.I hope that in the near future approval will be granted, which would allow us to change the name of the rehabilitated Atzmona Stream to “Concrete Creek”, as befitting its essence and as a token of appreciation to the project and its initiator.“Concrete Creek” brought together various professionals who would probably never have met had they not taken part in it: cement mixer drivers with museum curators; welders with musicians; quarry workers with gallery owners; and all these with the highest ranking representatives of the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Culture, Science and Sport.This project is the first real test for artists’ ability to initiate and lead crucial ecological processes.

The Ministry of the Environment under my supervision strives to be a pivotal partner in this initiative to improve the appearance of landscape, an enterprise whose contribution to the quality of the environment is vast and vital.I hope that the close and fruitful cooperation between the authorities and visionary, creative artists will serve as a model for further instances of commendable endeavors within the scope of fields under my Ministry’s responsibility.

Shai Zakai: Cleaning Worker, Art Worker  
Ruth Direktor
Art critic and free-lance curator. Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Teaches and lectures about different issues in and aspects of contemporary art.
In the olden days everything was simple. If you were an artist, you would go out to the landscape and paint pictures of the mountains, fields, trees, sea. Nowadays everything is much more complicated – being an artist does not necessarily mean taking an easel and pallet and painting outdoors, and the landscape is not what it used to be either. What hasn't already been polluted and destroyed, is probably infected, processed, cultivated, tamed, or engineered in one way or another. In the age of the end of innocence, when an artist like Shai Zakai harnesses her creative powers for preoccupation with the landscape, she takes into account an entire history of landscape painting and earth art, channeling her activity between factories, organizations, economy and market forces, exploiting her dissonant presence as a woman in a world of men – all this in order to ask, ostensibly with the utmost innocence and politeness, but in fact with tenacious persistence: Have you cleaned a creek today?

To clean a creek? When was the last time we saw one of those? Shai Zakai cleans streams; she does so under the canopy of eco-art, a very general term encompassing a wide range of activities, motivations and people. When is a person who deals with pollution issues considered an artist? A scientist? An environmentalist? Zakai comes from the field of art; she thinks art, and even if her practice, to an outsider, may seem like that of a Green activist, her activity – including the most prosaic aspects, such as negotiating with factory owners and workers, fund-raising, and producing events – is artistic in essence. A called-for archetype in the context of such practice is an artist such as Christo, who has been wrapping buildings, bridges, islands, and beaches for decades. The technical production of large-scale environmental happenings is an integral part of his artistic practice; for him, having moved in 1972 from one ranch in California to another, and talked to the ranchers (namely, people who are very far removed from contemporary art and its underlying notions), asking for their permission to run a fabric fence through their land in order to fulfil his fantasy of a “running fence” – it was all part of his activity as an artist.

In the past two years Zakai has conducted countless conversations and discussions – with workers, factory owners, representatives of the local authority, scientists, ecologists, administrators in the Ministry of the Interior – as part of her activity for reclaiming the stream, as part of her activity as an artist.The point of departure for the large-scale project she has been promoting for more than two years now is a seasonal stream whose watercourse had been lined with concrete. The stream is located not far from Zakai’s place of residence, in the center of the country, not far from Beit Shemesh, in an area where you can still find occasional enclaves of nature, nature of wild expanses that convey an illusion of something relatively untouched. Ever since accidentally discovering the concrete creek flowing there, she has gradually become an expert on ecological issues of the area. Her commitment to this matter is manifested on several levels: in addition to artistic expressions, Zakai founded the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art; she has introduced the ecological discipline into the academic curriculum and teaches the subject in several art schools. Her artistic practice itself begins with fieldwork – tracing the sources and causes of pollution, researching environment protection laws, as well as the intricate interrelations between factory owners who are supposed to abide by these laws and those who are supposed to enforce them. During the past two years she has persistently documented the stream and its changing degrees of pollution. In a superficial glance from afar, the stream appears, at least in part, like any “natural” wadi. The untrained eye of someone who has momentarily gone to the open fields outside the city can hardly differentiate between slightly dirty gravel and a gray concrete current which ultimately blends in quite well with the surrounding rocks. But Zakai can tell them apart perfectly well: this is soil, and that – concrete washed off from the piles of waste dumped by quarry employees from their cement mixers on their way to or from their destination; once upon a time there used to be a waterway here, and now there are only deposits of concrete, asphalt and industrial waste. The concrete mixers leave the quarry with concrete and return on an (almost, but not quite) empty stomach. The leftovers are discharged at the side of the road. Zakai dubs these large concrete heaps “cutlets”, a word that ridicules the industrial waste, rendering it an element taken from the woman’s domestic, kitchen-minded world. The “concrete cutlets” slowly transform into a source of pollution, whether they remain where they were dumped or are washed off into the riverbed. Pollution, says Zakai, has a strange quality: it doesn’t disappear of its own accord.

Zakai operates in several concurrent channels: on one hand, there is an attempt to negotiate with the owners of the polluting factories, with the workers, and with the functionaries in charge of keeping the cleanliness on behalf of the regional council. It is an activity which, as aforesaid – in terms of the stereotype associated with the (heroic, romantic, larger than life) act of creation – has ostensibly nothing to do with art. Phone calls, meeting coordination, technical explanations, endless conversations, gaining the trust of people who initially regarded the peculiar young woman who calls herself an “artist” as an enemy who comes to intrude upon their work routine.

On the other hand, there is an attempt to create objects that would, more or less, live up to the definition of “artistic objects”. Following a prolonged dynamics, the “enemies” have become collaborators – Zakai managed to convince the concrete factory owner to join forces with her enterprise and to occasionally provide her with manpower and technical resources. Together with the workers – those who only a week or two earlier were still dumping the “concrete cutlets” on the side of the road – Zakai outlines forms within the concrete. She carves the contours of flags in the concrete deposits created in the stream, drilling holes in them which allow infiltration of rainwater into the ground, and installs an impressive sequence of concrete flags that emerge from a palette-like base mounted on high masts, creating along the road a route parallel to the winding stream. An avenue of concrete flags leading to the factory form a buffer between the trucks and the stream. The eyesore has become aesthetics, the pollution - recycled into art. Environmental solutions have been spawned out of the language of art.

On the third hand, her activity is typified by an educational-informative aspect – striving to prevent future pollution and raise awareness of the problem. It is within this framework that the open day by the stream is held, which is akin to a mini-festival for the environment. It is a day of activities, some educational, others more artistic in nature; both types of activities, as aforesaid, are part of the totality of Zakai’s work as an ecological artist. The public is invited to the concrete creek. For the majority of those attending, it is a first encounter with the issue, with the problem, with ecological concepts and concerns. They may be unwittingly making a little history: inaugurating the first artistic-ecotouristic route in Israel.

However, in terms of the order of affairs, the Concrete Creek project’s debut exposure to the public occurred several months before the open day in the creek, within the framework of the Environment fair held in Tel Aviv’s Exhibition Grounds in April 2001. This was the first exposure of Concrete Creek, and it happened outside the area itself, outside its natural habitat. One must forthwith add that the word “natural” in this context obviously acquires ironic overtones, for the concrete creek’s “natural environment” was conceived in pollution, waste and corruption of “nature”.

The exhibition in Tel Aviv’s Exhibition Grounds was entitled Have you Cleaned a Creek Today? It functioned as an external extension of Concrete Creek; at the same time, given its location within a commercial show of factories specializing in technological solutions for solid waste disposal, its presence in the Exhibition Grounds was at once called-for and – due to its anomalous character – tantamount to a subversive bubble. In many respects, a fair comprising ecologically-minded and ecologically-active organizations seems like Zakai’s called-for environment, but her way, via art, proposes a totally different option than the conventional commercial-practical-pragmatic mode.

The installation itself created a maze covering an area of over 180 sq. meters in size. It was constructed from pollutants gathered from the infected concrete-lined stream. The public found itself moving along paths covered with a red carpet, flanked on the left and right by dust, concrete, and asphalt, and straight ahead, on the wall – a large photograph of the site from which the waste piles were extracted. As aforesaid, the impressive photograph, almost unwillingly, glorifies the site of pollution, thus reinforcing one of the paradoxes intrinsic to Zakai’s practice: since she works with the concrete cutlets, admitting the rubble into her studio, imbedding it into the table, photographing the wound and enlarging it to make a huge blow-up – at some point one cannot ignore the dimension of seductive beauty emanating from these acts. A concrete cutlet is, ultimately – at least in the context of art – a lump of matter which certainly possesses aesthetic qualities and can be ascribed to various trends in modernist art. Is it possible to momentarily neutralize the significance of its being a polluting material in the specific context of the creek? It seems that Zakai’s attempt to show the “beautiful” side of things as well is her very strategy: taking the slow, pleasant route, rather than conducting herself in an aggressive of militant manner; befriending the transgressors who inflict the pollution, and recruiting them into the reclamation enterprise; becoming familiarized with the eyesore and gradually dissolving it, gently, as happens in slow natural processes, through acceptance rather than destruction, total eradication or decisive, drastic measures.In the background of the debris maze at the Exhibition Grounds, the voice of American choreographer Meredith Monk was played, talking about how she had forgotten what seashells were, what a forest was, mumbling words in German. Words in German have a surprising, even disconcerting effect. In this specific context – of pollution and destruction, ruin and corruption – they may even have generated an analogy to the penetration of human evil.

The culmination of the show was the presence of polite stewards that mingled with the audience and asked in all seriousness: “Have you cleaned a creek today?” – a surprising, as well as an embarrassing and funny question, which sounded like a current incarnation of the scout’s honor of doing a good deed on a daily basis – “Have you helped an old lady cross the street today?” As in the scoutesque question, in Zakai’s question too there is something tedious and nagging, but simultaneously, there is, of course, also an awareness of the archaic tediousness and the scout-like spirit arising from the question, and thus an undeniable dimension of irony in the age of the end of innocence.Those who happened to answer positively to the question “Have you cleaned a creek today?” were entitled to pick a gift from a tray carried by the polite stewards: on the tray, wrapped in paper, were small concrete lumps, lumps of concrete masquerading as colorful cookies, and thus dubbed “concrete cookies” as part of Zakai’s kitchen jargon (on which I will soon elaborate). Those who promised to clean a creek in the future, or at least perform an equivalent act, were also given a concrete cookie. The “cookie” distribution act is ironic in terms of the desire to generate some artistic object at all cost, yet its true charm lies in the very act of giving. A spirit of generosity and giving characterizes the project as a whole. This is also the case in the event taking place in the creek:

Zakai sets a long table for a meal, and all the participants are invited to take their place around it. A 16-meter long iron table constructed in collaboration with the quarry workers, the tabletop was made out of concrete into which waste collected from the stream during the two and a half years of work are imbedded during the event. People insert essays on ecological issues under transparent saucers??, so that the table becomes a monument for putting a stop to the pollution. Visitors are invited to taste a (real!) hot stew served in plates made of leaves, and at the end of the meal they are asked to throw away the leaf-plates in nature for the goats to eat. Thus they mimic natural, environment-friendly, economy modes of eating customary in various places in the non-capitalistic, pre-industrialized world. Leaf tea is served for dessert.The very invitation for a meal creates a stratified associative context, from Plato’s Symposium to the Christian “Last Supper” – two key meals in western culture, both distinctly male. However, it is clear that the long table installed by Zakai in nature (albeit at the entrance to a polluting factory), a table set for an expendable meal, invokes a more immediate association to Judy Chicago’s 1978 Dinner Party, a pioneering piece in the field of feminist art. Just as Chicago set a table for all the women excluded from canonical history, so Zakai offers an alternative for the heroic and romantic acts in nature performed by male artists. All the associations to food and nurturing, cleanliness and cultivation, render her a female eco-artist, someone whose social statement is rooted in feminist thought.

Caring for the creek's cleanliness is housewife-minded - the act of setting the table, the concrete cutlets, and the concrete cookies, are tantamount to a subversive dislocation of notions drawn from the world of kitchen and nurturing into the male industrial world, which in this context is also a source of sabotage and destruction. In reference to the traditional binary identification made by western culture – man=culture / woman=nature – Zakai creates a new place of her own within polluted nature on one hand, and vis-à-vis industry, which is the source of both pollution and technological (male) solutions for that very pollution, on the other.On one hand, she operates within nature, within the landscape, from a place usually preserved for mythological landscape artists – Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Richard Long. However, while Smithson pours black asphalt on the side of a deserted quarry in Rome (1969), transforming the mountain into a painterly surface and creating an expressive abstract painting on/within the landscape itself, out of a heroic, romantic act of creation, Zakai performs within the landscape acts of an industrious housewife, or alternatively – a nurse. She cleans, gathers, compiles, strokes, uses whatever is at hand, economizes, and mainly – forgives. From the perspective of time, Smithson’s act seems disputable: On one hand he speaks out against environmental pollution, and on the other – leaves traces in nature with an aggressive substance such as asphalt. His famous photograph featuring the truck pouring a big wave of black asphalt on the mountainside is inscribed in consciousness as a moment that glorifies the industrial act, lending a heroic aura to the boiling black spillage.In this sense, Zakai’s ecological stand is clear and unequivocal, whereas her tactics are entirely nonmilitant – in her encounter with the concrete factory owner and workers she takes the path of understanding and reconciliation, thereby obtaining communication, the results of which are indeed slow and unassuming, yet deep-seated and profound. Similarly, she shows forgiveness towards the eyesore itself – not necessarily calling to uproot the concrete lumps from the creek and pass them on. The damage has already been done, the wound has been opened; now it is time to understand, treat, bandage, maintain, minimize the damage, try to render the wound decorative, and mainly, raise public awareness to make sure things like that won’t happen (or happen less, to be realistic) in the future.

The romantic dimension attached to 20th century landscape artists’ act of going out to nature is replaced in Zakai’s case with prosaic female laboriousness, gray in many respects, which was not intended to survive in a grand manner.The creek’s reclamation becomes a metaphor for a good deed, an act possessing an ecological dimension not only on the level of the site’s pollution, but also on the level of interpersonal relations, relations within the community, with one’s self, between man and his environs.

One of the questions with which Zakai is concerned as part of her work in the creek is how to generate something that conforms to the definition of artistic object, which would not be an intrusive presence. During the event held in the creek she invites others to take part in the happening, throwing down the glove of ecological challenge to them: Nine dancers who form stations of motion along the stream (naturally leaving only footprints which immediately disappear), and four artists, comrades in concept, were recruited to create works pertaining to recycling and cleansing. Ultimately, none of the works – neither Zakai’s nor those of the other artists – were meant to survive in the long run. They are all designed to dissolve, be consumed and become extinct in the course of time.The public is invited to take a 30-minute hike along the concrete creek. Along the route they come across various degrees of pollution, cleansing and artistic intervention. Subsequently they feast on stew served on leaf plates, read manifests on ecology, and go back home. But in the meantime, until we do clean a stream, or at least perform a similar good deed, we can help ourselves to a concrete cookie and contemplate art per se, artistic practice in and of itself, as a paramount act of cleansing, purification, cleaning; a first rate ecological act.

New Zionism, Knesset Member Mossi Raz Chairman of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art “We shall clothe you with a cloak of concrete and cement” is the well-known Zionist ethos on which we were all raised. Build, build, and once again, build – this is the true Zionism. Based on our upbringing, Concrete is our best friend (another settlement, another road, another factory – no matter what the cost). We have almost forgotten the following lines of the aforementioned song: “and roll out gardens, carpets at your feet.” Slowly and systematically we have built our beautiful country, one of the densest in the world, through overuse of concrete and an appalling waste of land. We hardly rolled out any flowering carpets, and even less so – preserved its natural, virginal beauty. “Concrete Creek,” the marvelous combination chosen for eco-artist Shai Zakai’s spectacular project, is practically an oxymoron: Creek and concrete? And in Israel, of all places? It is virtually a vision of the end of days when “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb”. In the past one hundred years during which we engaged in overuse of concrete, we made sure we destroyed every stream and creek in the country; we transformed the Kishon and Yarkon rivers, previously known for their clean waters, into sewage streams par excellence. A stream is supposed to channel clean water into the sea, to permeate underground, and water agricultural crops along the way. Concrete, let alone concrete waste, is the exact opposite: it pollutes the water, prevents flow and contaminates the underground water. In her project, the outstanding multi-disciplinary artist Shai Zakai, who introduced the notion of eco-art into the Israeli discourse, employs art in a highly-creative, fascinating mode to convey the ecological message of the stream’s preservation. This is the true Zionism of the 21st century; continuing to build the land while preserving the environment. Blue-and-white Zionism, with a bit of green, and perhaps a little red too.

November 1, 2001

Concrete Creek

Eliezer Frankenberg, Israel Nature and Parks Authority

 

Restoration and Rehabilitation

As the impact of human activities expands, biological diversity diminishes. Thus, greater efforts are made to reclaim and restore habitats and ecosystems. Although restoration and rehabilitation is a relatively new science, more and more resources are being utilized all over the world towards ecosystem restoration projects. Since nature on one hand and man on the other are the main factors that mold our landscape, existing natural resources depend on human culture and on man’s affinity to nature and the environment. Every development project must be tested to determine whether the natural resources and ecosystems will indeed be protected.

 

Restoration and rehabilitation of ecosystems, habitats and landscapes is a multidisciplinary task that must take into account aspects of planning, ecology and culture. The link between the ecology and planning disciplines has been recognized in recent years, but the human culture aspect is still insufficiently accounted for in the current approaches. Our goal is to bridge this gap by incorporating the art discipline into the plans for rehabilitation of an area or the restoration of an ecosystem. The Concrete Creek project is designed to apply an interdisciplinary approach and involve the local community, employees and inhabitants of the area, in the rehabilitation process of a damaged ecosystem. The

 

artist's endeavors to include the contamination generators in the process, thus raising their environmental awareness, is highly significant. This project is a test case or a model for reclamation of creeks that are adjacent to industrial areas. This can be achieved only through the interdisciplinary collaboration: artist-scientist-planner, which is the very goal of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art.

 

Biodiversity

The term “biological diversity” describes the number and diversity of world organisms and the ecosystems that accommodate them. It is defined in terms of genes, species and ecosystems derived from more than 3,000 million years of evolution. The existence of humankind depends on biological diversity, hence the term is practically equivalent to life on earth. Today there are 1.7 million known species. The exact number remains unknown, however it is estimated between 5 to 100 million.

 

Species’ extinction is a natural part of the evolutionary process. As a result of human activity, however, species and ecosystems face a higher risk than ever before in documented history. Loss occurs in every ecosystem: rivers, lakes, deserts, temperate forests, mountains, islands, and tropical forests – which are inhabited by 50-90% of the defined species. According to current figures, at the present rate of forest extermination, an estimated 2-8% of the species will be extinct within the next 25 years. These catastrophes are not only environmental, but also have a direct impact on the economic and social development of our world. At least 40% of world economy and 80% of human consumption are derived from biological resources. The richer the variability in life forms, the

greater the chances for medical discoveries, economic development and adaptive responses to new challenges, such as global changes. The diversity of life forms is our insurance policy; our life and environment depend on it.

 

The Natural Landscape

Israel is very rich in plants and animals in terms of both number and diversity, due to a range of factors:

a.  Climate changes in the past 20 million years, and especially the last million.

b.  The position of Israel at the center of the old world, functioning as a land bridge connecting the mild northern zones to the dry deserts of the south to the tropical forests of the far south.

c.  The great diversity in landforms and landscapes that gave rise to many biotopes.

d.  The rich climatic diversity, being the southern border of the Mediterranean and the northern border of the arid zones, with a gradual transition in-between.

e.  Local climate conditions, represented by local temperature and precipitation crucial for living organisms.

 

The Project Area

The project is carried out in a wadi linked to a quarry in the Judean Hills. It is an area where most Mediterranean landscape types are represented. Israel is rich in biological, cultural and landscaping diversities resulting from climate fluctuations, diverse geomorphology and local variations in environmental conditions. However, due to Israel’s long history of settlement and its repercussions, one can no longer talk about “pristine natural landscapes”. The existing landscape nowadays is a compromise between human activity and natural conditions; as a consequence of the local history in each area, diversity is increased even further. In any event, a distinction must be made between human activity in the past and in the present.

 

Past activity in the area was based on natural conditions, requiring human adaptation to the ecological system while ensuring its continuation. After Israel attained independence, some human activities such as over-grazing, woodcutting and abandoning agricultural lands, were minimized. Rapid regeneration of natural vegetation altered the appearance of the area and rehabilitated the local ecological system. Today’s human activity often transforms the constituents of the ecological system entirely, changing its functions and functioning. This process of change, due to its uniform technical execution, reduces the landscaping, biological and cultural diversities. Unfortunately, it is discernible in the Judean Hills area too. Endemic vegetation and the natural and cultural landscapes were either damaged or destroyed as a result of the elimination of the terrace culture, the construction of unnatural, ‘disharmonious’ roads, as well as large-scale landscape manipulations, such as afforestation covering up and replacing natural assets. Add to that large-scale catastrophes such as fires, and other environmental elements, such as human settlements, dumping grounds, converting land uses and transforming them into residential and industrial areas, and we find ourselves on the road to losing those characteristics that make the area so unique, rendering it increasingly homogeneous.

 

Conservation and Restoration

The question now arises: how do we preserve the open nature of the Judean Hills in a way which will be beneficial to all its inhabitants, while protecting and maintaining its diverse uses as a functioning, serviceable ecological system. The area has many, at times overlapping, uses, including planted forests, agricultural fields, orchards and groves, pastures, picnic and camping grounds, and the vestiges of ancient and more recent cultures. Ecologically, they function to prevent dust and erosion, to protect and maintain water balance in the soil and air quality, to recycle elements and to create corridors connecting the habitats for the various organisms.

 

Every area is diverse in its landscape – rock and soil, contours, current lines, natural vegetation – and this natural diversity should be protected in order to maintain its unique character. Since human beings have a fixed concept on the landscape necessary for their various activities – an orderly, ‘well-equipped’ forest with tall trees and small clearings for recreation – all recreation areas are becoming "artificially natural," thus the unique character of the area fades away. We must conceive of a way to bridge the gaps in our expectations from the landscape and to conserve the special ecosystem and landscape of each area.

 

The Project

An integral part of this project was the study and documentation of the effects a quarry and a concrete plant, and all the activities that go with it – such as substance transportation, carrier cleaning, leftover washing and dumping– had on a nearby natural river. The process included documenting the spatial and temporal changes of the river environment resulting from the activity related to the quarry and the concrete plant, and the way in which various river-objects could be used as part of and as a basis for the creative work.

 

The spread and flow of quarry dust clearly demonstrate the impact on the environment. The concrete and wash residuals along the river, and the stratification of the materials on the riverbed, which create solid layers and coat the stones, and to some extent the local vegetation too, with a concrete blanket, transformed the natural river to a concrete one. Concrete leftovers dumped into the river at various locations cause stratification, change the contour of the river and introduce various substances incongruent with the natural gradient of the river.

 

The site is an open natural area, a dry riverbed that is supposed to be washed by the winter rains and renew its appearance each year. Its banks are covered with natural vegetation sustaining the wildlife in the area. Such areas are crucial to the conservation of the natural biodiversity and landscapes typifying the country. This diversity is the very essence of people’s sense of belonging to the place, thus implementation of a combined view and conceptions pertaining to the future of such places is extremely important.

 

Exploitation of natural resources and their environmental impact on the environment can be documented and described in different ways and through various disciplines. The most common modes are those pertaining to health and ecological considerations. In order to illustrate these repercussions and act for their eradication, a novel approach is needed, one which combines aesthetic and emotional points of view and takes into account not only health and ecological considerations but aspects of planning and human sentiments toward the area as well.

 

The dilemma is whether to let the typical ecosystem be mutated into a concrete channel, thereby institutionalizing man's imprint on nature, or rather find ways to rehabilitate the ecosystem and moderate the effects of natural resource exploitation and industrialization on the river. Rehabilitation can be natural, by making substance outflow higher than its influx. For this purpose, a study of in/out dynamics and balance must be carried out. Another potential solution is active rehabilitation via periodical cleaning of the accumulated substances by physical and mechanical means. This too, necessitates a study of the effects of such activity on the ecosystem.

 

In a series of observations and excursions in the area with the artist, we monitored the creek’s condition, drew up a plan to clean and restore sections of it, documented the various stages of the process, and examined whether the winter floods help rehabilitate the system. We also examined whether the substance carried to the river becomes an integrated component. Will the mechanical intervention have future repercussions on the system? Should other aspects be tackled on the ecological and landscape levels? (The latter being a direct consequence of the artistic approach to and treatment of the given system.)

 

Management and rehabilitation of areas must be implemented through a combined approach incorporating ecology, planning and art. Ecology and planning have already been recognized and applied, but the artistic dimension has yet to be introduced and incorporated into the actual conservation management of the ecosystem.