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L’art, outil de médiation pour la science, est un nouveau fait auquel peu de recherches se sont intéressées. L’objectif de ce travail est de confronter deux courants issus du nouveau paradigme écologique que sont les sciences de la conservation et le mouvement d’art écologique. Si, d’un côté, l’écologie scientifique s’inscrit de plus en plus dans une démarche interdisciplinaire afin de concilier activités humaines et préservation de la nature, les créations des artistes écologiques synthétisent de leur côté les représentations, les pratiques sociales et les dimensions biologiques ou physiques d’un milieu. Il peut être utile de faire le point sur ces démarches.

Ecological Art, a mediation agent in Conservation Sciences?Art as a means of scientific mediation is a new and unexplored phenomenon. Our ambition is to compare two trends deriving from the new ecological paradigm: Conservation Sciences and the Ecological Art Movement. While on the one hand scientific ecology increasingly turns to an interdisciplinary approach aiming to reconcile human activities and the preservation of nature, the ecological artists’ creations on the other hand compound social representations, social practices and the environment. It may be useful to review these approaches and to understand how an artistic mediation of Ecology may provide a complementary approach to the classical popularization of science. We start by presenting the Ecological Art Movement, based on the latest major eco-art exhibition and illustrate our comments with artworks. We then describe the conservation tools available to scientists, given that conservation of global biodiversity depends on two major issues: the local preservation of biodiversity (through reservation/restoration) and the emergence of an ecological conscience among citizens (through reconciliation/reconnection). Third, we link eco-artworks to the “4R” Conservation principles. And finally, we discuss the artistic mediation of Ecology and the potential emergence of ecological conscience through art.