“Proposals for change”: Art, Ecology and Intermediation in Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle, Breathing Space for the Sava River and Endangered Meadows of Europe

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This article discusses intermediation in three artistic projects by American artists Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022). Entitled The Lagoon Cycle (1973-1984, based in Sri Lanka and the United States), Breathing Space for the Sava River (1989-1990, in the former Yugoslavia) and Endangered Meadows of Europe (1996, in Bonn), these projects defy commodification and openly assert the well-being of ecosystems and ecological change as their main objectives. How is intermediation achieved from these intellectual positions and in these circumstances? The projects have an exhibition component and a performative component of interaction with the social, academic, administrative, institutional or industrial frameworks that surround them (more or less successful depending on the project). They benefited from collaborations with museum institutions, science laboratories, politicians, decision-makers, associations and ordinary citizens. While capital is a major issue for funding these projects and museums represent significant venues where exhibitions were presented, a larger conversation with many of the actors involved was initiated, including the ecosystem itself, which, through the work and beyond it, becomes an agent of its own further dissemination.