Mark Dion

In class we looked Mark Dion's work and i really liked his piece called "Neukom Vivarium". The reason i liked his piece was because he was taking a piece of nature (tree) that had fallen, took it to a new place and made something new out of it. He made a garden. He took something that had no use left and made it useful.  He took it a protected water-shed and preserved it, the tree didn't touch the ground which allowed it to not rot away as quickly.

I think that the most important thing in working with things like this is being positive and its a nature experience. He took a dead tree that still had a living system of insects and organisms and bringing it back to life and taking it to another site. Being in the greenhouse they are able to support the life system by giving it air, humidity water and rich soil to keep it going. By doing all those things is a substitution for what nature does.

I believe that he is trying to say that despite all the technology and money that they have, when you destroy a natural system its impossible to get it back, and he is proving the sense of failure. It is kinda of like seeing a tree hooked up on life support.

The display is really beautiful and when you look at it, you see all the nature that is building back up, even though its not out in the real nature environment -  the nature is still growing just in a enclosed environment. The nature is still developing and then insects and organisms are still growing and developing. They didn't actually kill anything.