Project Report - Personal Biosphere

A Personal Biosphere at the Berwick Research Institute

Winter in Boston is sometimes painfully gray. As March ends every whisper of the possibility of things growing is an urgent promise. Even in the summer the city can leave it inhabitants yearning for green. Parks are like green shelters from the sun on the concrete and the harsh sounds and smells of traffic, so we seek them out. It is not just the brilliance of foliage that we long for - the dampness, coolness, and smell of growth are all part of the experience of green space that is often lacking. Perhaps even more important is the experience of change. As the seasons roll on, our buildings and structures do not respond to the flow of time. Their decay is slower, not tied to the seasons. The patterns of urban life - of public spaces and construction sites, streets and stores and restaurants- are not by necessity linked to the changes in weather, in light, and in life cycles of living creatures except humans. The city is vibrant, exciting, and full of the fascinating complexity of human organization. I am an urbanite, and love this place, but also long for an experience of another ecosystem. Perhaps this is a response to the memory of other, less human dominated places, a desire to recreate a remembered garden.

The biosphere at the Berwick Research Institute was a response to this felt need. The protective structure was as simple and easy to build as possible- made purely as an enclosure for moisture. Inside lived a re-created forest floor of various species of mosses and whatever else was in the soil, with a stone and sand pathway for people to walk around on. Central to the experience of the biosphere was the almost overwhelming sensory immersion of going from the dank concrete industrial structure of the Berwick into this warm, moist, earthy smelling room, in which bits of sunlight from the windows high up played down on the moss floor. Immediately the smell was noted - especially in contrast to the absence of the smell of growing things in the rest of the Berwick space. Then, the eyes were brought downward to the details of the green surface on which we would walk. A meditative walk around the circular pathway inside the structure would bring the viewer back to the beginning, out the flap and back into the other world.

Sense of artlessness, yet of design – Japanese garden

The biosphere was not self-sufficient. While self-contained, it needed an influx of water and care from the outside. I was this channel, this tether, and I also attempted to present others with the chance to act as caretaker for the biosphere. At the same time, my act of caring for the biosphere was a reciprocal action for the role it played in caring for me. I became increasingly fascinated with the psychological component of the act of caring for the space. As another living body, this green space presented both opportunity and responsibility for its maker and viewer. In addition,
the fragility of the venture created a set of ethical concerns: In the long run, how would this piece of earth have fared inside the Berwick? How long would the moss survive? When researching Japanese gardens, I learned from the landscaper of the “Garden of the Heart of Heaven” at the MFA in Boston that gardeners had to replace many of the mosses in the garden every summer. The very artificiality of the biosphere necessitated further human intervention, much as in other highly manicured landscapes.

Enclosed and sheltered by its own skin, the biosphere was both separate from and dependent on its urban infrastructure, and entirely dependent upon my own activities of maintenance. Yet at the same time, within the small landscape inside the biosphere were processes beyond human control. Brought into a foreign location, the species contained in the biosphere continued on with their own patterns of growth and decay. A written log of the biosphere contains notes of these details- mushrooms popping up, sprouts shooting skyward and then becoming leggy, insects growing huge and clinging to the enclosure, then dying off. Many more tiny details went unnoticed. One day one would see that lichens had grown over a patch of moss, another day that a patch was dying, and yet I could not see these changes as they took place. And of course, the responsible party, maker and viewer, was also watcher and tender- watering, misting, and pulling up pieces of dead plants to make room for new.

Ultimately, the activities in the Berwick biosphere became an ongoing exploration into different models for experiencing and interacting with the landscape. In the process, a series of questions were posed: in what way do we exert control over the landscape? What ideal place do we wish to create? How much randomness is permitted in this garden? Are these acts of maintenance done to make it conform to an image, like an exquisitely tended Japanese garden? Or is this a piece of “wild” growth that is living indoors on an umbilical cord of human care?
Much of our discourse about nature relies on the premise that a landscape is fundamentally different if it has been manipulated by human intention. At the current juncture, very few, if any, pieces of landscape could be described as being unaffected by human activity. (Take for example Bill McKibben’s idea of the “End of Nature.”) Why do we find “wildness” so precious, and how could it be Thoreau’s “preservation of the world”? In one sense, the biosphere experiment was an answer to, or repudiation of, this idea of the value of “wildness.” This romantic conception of the natural world ultimately depends on an idea of sublimity that derives from the otherness of the natural world.
However, as soon as the landscape is “owned” by people, it fails to serve its role as something mysterious and powerful, outside of human control. The biosphere, rather than fulfilling our desire for a divinely grand, powerful landscape, instead presents us with a small, intimate, and tenuous experience. The biosphere was a collaborative event between the living, organic matter inside the plastic and its tenders and visitors. In this version of ownership, when the landscape belongs to us, we can no longer remove ourselves from it, and it cannot live without us.
The issue of ownership was also a continuing thread in the experiment. Throughout its duration as an installation, the space inside the biosphere belonged to whoever chose to inhabit and tend it at any given time. Seemingly in contrast to the idea of collaboration, of mutual symbiosis and integrity, the final event of the research period became a “land grab.” The land grab drew on the language of conquest and plunder. Visitors were given small flags and invited to “stake their claim” on the biosphere. The use of this language, playing on a pioneering myth of manifest destiny, called sharp attention to the tension between desire for land as a commodity and commitment to land as place.

The literalness of the “land grab” made it all the more ridiculous. Here, the land truly was something you could grab, something you could hold in your hands and take ownership
of. Yet after the guests had staked their claim with a bright pink surveyor’s flag and received their land portion, they received not a bill of sale, title or deed, but an adoption contract stipulating their responsibilities to the “biosphere portion” that they had just received. A complete mixing of metaphors, between ownership and guardianship, dead object and sentient being, resulted in a hybrid ritual to end the unified life of the Berwick biosphere. But, even as the Berwick biosphere dissolved, the place became a series of multiple places and experiences that mirrored the multiple experiences of the viewers who attended it.

The mixing of metaphors that characterized the biosphere’s growth and closing event was really a mixing, and questioning, of different visions of stewardship of land. The combined role of owner/adopted parent was matched by a blurring of the line between gift and commodity. Lewis Hyde points to a “gift economy” as a set of economic relationships between people in which the exchange of items is marked by the strengthening of social relationships- of responsibility and connection. In some ways, the adoption ceremony is an example of this gift exchange. The biosphere/artwork, as a gift, entails a set of responsibilities that creates a link, however intangible, between giver and receiver. The “biosphere portion,” then, is not mere object for it requires a continued investment of creative energy. As such, the land grab/adoption ceremony defies our expectations of ownership, proposing an alternative vision of how to relate to a place that is ours.