Though this will read slightly strangely, having been the basis of a presentation given to a Design Conference in Aspen in 1970, it remains a searing critique of state-sanctioned environmentalism pertinent to our times (intro by Anthony on Mavis' behalf). [Addition 10/07/07] The text is re-posted from http://pipeline.gasworks.org.uk/2008/07/02/the-environmental-witch-hunt/

(reposting from the new Gasworks Pipeline commentary & materials site - very contemporary counter-Green polemic from 1970)

The French Group, which has been invited to this conference, has decided not to bring a positive contribution.

The group believes that too many matters, and essential ones, have not been voiced here as regards the social and political status of Design, as regards the ideological functions and the mythology of environment.

The recent research project and series of exhibitions After Neurath revisits the work of Otto Neurath, renaissance man of the Vienna Circle who had attempted to relate the puzzle of social change by pictorialising knowledge. Marina Vishmidt assesses Neurath's attempt to bridge the world between art and non-art in the terms of current debate and draws a materialist line under any positivistic expectations of the exhibition as research [1]

Since the early days of the net, the electronic pastoral has lent itself to all sorts of dubious agendas pushed by science, the military and even libertarian tendencies. In the most recent configuration of this new media - new nature clash Merijn Oudenampsen and Jakob Proyer visited the Natural Habitat exhibition at Montevideo Amsterdam and find amidst the pixelated wilderness a difficult to swallow cocktail of Faustian bargains, hyper-modernism, and pineapple shampoo