"High" Art and Science Fiction

I am a fan of science fiction and fantasy as a reader.  I am not knowledgeable about the current issues in the science fiction community; if you’re interested in that, go read John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever or Mary-Anne Mohanraj (who also writes on many other things). The title of this entry is also meant to raise traditional questions about how we classify genres--high vs. low, select vs. popular.  Science fiction as a literary genre struggles with this as much as visual arts have.

In a recent conversation with my husband, we discussed how the biggest award in science fiction, the Hugo, has categories for several visual forms (Best Graphic Story, Best Professional Artist, and Best Fan Artist).  I’ll relinquish the graphic story category here as well since there is an interplay with text that the graphic story relies on that I think moves it into a writer’s purview. I’m omitting the categories for dramatic presentations, which because they include film and television could be considered visual forms.  The nominations for best professional artist tend to cluster: “During the 61 nomination years, 59 artists have been nominated; 20 of these have won, including co-winners and Retro Hugos. Michael Whelan has received the most awards, with 13 wins out of 24 nominations. Frank Kelly Freas has 11 wins and 28 nominations, the most nominations of any artist. Other artists with large numbers of wins or nominations include Bob Eggleton with 8 wins out of 23 nominations, Ed Emshwiller with 4 out of 8, and Don Maitz with 2 out of 17. David A. Cherry and Thomas Canty are tied for the most nominations without an award at 10 each.” (Wikipedia) The works (both professional and fan) tend too to be ones that cluster with written forms—book covers, illustrations in science fiction magazines, comics (printed and web), and text based games (like Dungeons and Dragons).  I (like many of the Hugo concerned community) seem to be a little unclear on the professional/amateur status distinction. 

But for this blog, I’m not going to be able to read enough quickly and thoroughly to bring myself up to date in the history of the Hugos and their disputes beyond the basic outline.  I do want to address science fiction as a matter of subject in the works of many contemporary artists. I tend to think that the Hugo committee could benefit from widening their field of exploration beyond works which are connected to the printed word BUT I also see the benefit to them of defining their categories as specifically connected to writing (I myself am NOT a member of the voting group so I don’t really have a car in this race).

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And this is the interlude, where after a few folks have read it and pointed out in other venues errors with my understanding of the Hugo awarding, I feel a bit of a fool.  Blogosphere prerogative, right? However, I stand by my general feeling that the Hugos are generally still strongly connecting their visual and text forms and that the forum for popular science fiction does not strongly overlap with the venues for visual artists who are not working with text.

For the record, my friend Jed Hartman who is far more involved in this community than I, as a writer and editor, corrected me: "wanted to note in passing that there's no Hugo committee per se defining this stuff. The voters could, if so inclined, nominate and vote for any kind of artist in the fan artist category--and potentially in the pro artist category too, though that might require some flexibility of interpretation about what constitutes a "professional publication" and how seriously to take the word "illustrator." But Hugo administrators tend to be flexible when nominators make their will known.

The categories themselves can be changed by WorldCon attendees who attend meetings, but changing a category is very hard and requires a lot of work over multiple years, including overcoming resistance. But the artist categories don't specify the medium of the art as such.

Your basic point about the Hugos is well taken: it's unfortunate that the categories are described using terms that focus on illustrations of textual material, and it's unfortunate that Hugo nominators aren't generally aware of other kinds of relevant art. I'm just saying that it isn't quite a matter of a committee casting a wider net."
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Science fiction and science fact are part of our contemporary existence.  We live in a world of gene sequencing, global climate change, and paleo-biology.  The advantage of science fiction has always been the ability to use science fact as a jumping off point for imaginative speculation, for exploration beyond our current knowledge.  To suggest the questions of “what if?”.  Science fiction has always allowed us to stretch beyond our physical limitations to consider what we might do if we were not hampered by our material bodies or Newtonian or Einsteinian physics.  Science fiction has allowed us to imagine worlds where microbes exhale methane to evolve a whole new range of creatures, where bilateral symmetry is highly overrated, where our extraordinary human sense of intuition becomes a mundane shared practice of telepathy.  MOST importantly, in my mind, it gives us a forum where we can explore our feelings about our limitations and boundaries, creating stories where we reinforce our social strictures about race, gender or sexuality and stories where we are freed from those social strictures (both for good and ill).

As a starting point here, I thought I’d try to regularly (or at least as regularly as I do any writing) showcase the work of an artist or two really exploring the boundaries of science from a visual point of view. 

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are two collaborating Puerto-Rican artists whose work intersects science and politics.  I first noticed their work, Growth (2006).  It features a number of grafted cactus plants.  About the work, they have said: “We also like the idea of the monstrous. What’s interesting is that it’s a deviation that’s still part of nature, or part of culture or humanity, but it stands as a kind of distorted mirror against it. It becomes an active point from which to understand what a society or culture views as its norms and boundaries, and to show the limits of one’s own thinking or a set of cultural values.” (Art21; there's lots of great stuff on them here, including interviews and videos)

Allora and Calzadilla, Growth, 2006

Human Legacy (2010), seen at FIAC 2010, also suggests so much to me in the realm of science, fantasy and fiction.  The leg comes forth from the tree—our Western Greek myth heritage of tree nymphs has always bespoke our hope for human communion with nature.  But the grotesque element of the tree birthing a form that is not fully human, that looks human but is wooden, a whole different material.  Could we could be that in our evolutionary future/science fiction parallel?

Allora and Calzadilla, Human Legacy, 2010

In its minimalism, Solar Catastrophe (2011) is a beautiful repetition of color and form; it is only when we know that it is made from fragments of solar panels that we can feel the sinister elements: failure of energy policies, global climate change, and the anxiety over our adaptabilities. 

Allora and Calzadilla, Solar Catastrophe, 2011

Works like Nature of Conflict (2004) also hit at this with the beauty created by spilled oil on water.  Even more pointedly, a work like the sculpture, Petrified Petrol Pump (2010) uses fossil-filled limestone to draw attention to the organic history and the stultifying effects of oil/gas production.

Allora and Calzadilla, Nature of Conflict, 2004

There is always a political point here—these artists are pointing often not just to the science of climate change but the politics that keep it in place.  They are also Puerto-Rican so there is a fraught history coming forward in works like Vieques that addresses US naval use as a bombing range as a colonial connection as well as an environmental issue.  Vieques as a place is the fusion of extraordinary beauty in the water and lush growth, vibrant life in the turtle breeding grounds, and harsh destruction in the bomb craters.  To pull one parallel work, look at a piece from the Fault Lines installation—The bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame (2010) a bird made from technology and weaponry.  For Allora and Calzadilla, our Western heritage is a story we tell ourselves, taming our wildness with technology, even while it consumes our very nature.  It is impossible to turn away—science fiction as our fascination with the fantastic.

Allora and Calzadilla, The Bird of Hermes is my name.., 2010