sustainability

Been talking all night tonight with John at Material Exchange about things they are doing, and you will hear more about that later (next week?), but it was an odd surprise to then stumble on this from the other side of the world:

The artist [Dalibor Martinis] bought 365 shares of an investment fund through the MAN (Man, Art, Nature) Foundation and once a month climbed in the mountains to an altitude that matched the fluctuating value of his investment over the preceding month.[...]Every month the artist wrote a climbing log in which he connected the experience of being in nature, world events, and natural catastrophes, and noted the influence they have on the international stock markets: “the news about the booming of the Chinese economy forced us down into a deep depression in the landscape, and we ended up at 1036.4.” The project also involved adverts in a banking magazine, showing the artist’s desire not just to borrow financial language for use in an artistic context, but also to project art back into the world of business.

Just seemed like a nice mix of Al Gore and something naturey and something human too. Is the American slant on business/social critique just too harsh lately? Could I be responsible for that?