Hermaphrodite Polar Bear

Gary Hume is a successful British artist who does not usually engage with environmental issues. He became involved with Cape Farewell and created some artworks in an attempt to engage with the issues.  As reported in an article in The Guardian, he found this a challenge:

“How do you depict global catastrophe?” he says. “I’m too selfish to describe the world’s dilemma, so I describe my own paltry dilemma of what it’s like to be alive.”

The image above – Hermaphrodite Polar Bear – is intended to bring attention to the significant changes affecting life on Earth as a result of damaging human activity. “The Industrialist” (below) is a lead tracing of smoke coming out of an industrial chimney. He describes it as an epitaph for industrialists.

But Hume is not really convinced by his own work. First of all he is wary of artists’ fascination with death, global catastrophe, etc. Depicting disaster is maybe the easy path to take. But most revealing is his take on the trip to the Arctic with Cape Farewell. Clearly he found the trip beautiful and was no doubt saddened by the prospect of the damage being done by climate change but found it ‘hard to relate to my life’.

So here’s the question: is all the talk of ‘global catastrophe’ making the problem seem so huge and insurmountable that it starts to be feel totally of reach – impossible for people to relate to their life? Is one possible result that people simply shut these issues out of their minds – the only coping mechanism they may have left to get on with their life?

Is it time for a new narrative?

David Buckland: The Great White Sale. These images are made in a short window of time when the power of the video projector matches the light of dawn, when there is both message and ice. This fleeting moment of human excess is so short, two hundred years, but for the glacier it is barely a single breath taken.

Cape Farewell has already organized a number of art exhibitions as a result of the works created during the expeditions. The latest traveling exhibit – u-n-f-o-l-d opens in Chicago on March 16th. According to David Buckland, “We intend to communicate through art works our understanding of the changing climate on a human scale, so that our individual lives can have meaning in what is a global problem.”

This blog has reviewed the work of a number of artists that have collaborated with Cape Farewell. These include Lemn Sissay, Iain McEwan, and Lucy + Jorge Orta. Buckland also curated the highly successful EARTH exhibit at the Royal Academy in 2009.

Adriane Colburn: Forest for the Trees is a meditation on the complex relationship between nature and industry; sustained land vs. commodified land; matter on the surface of the earth vs. the matter below ground; the morphing of the forest into an industrial landscape; and the fine lines between use and exploitation.

Cape Farewell is probably the most important undertaking to date that, in an organized and concerted way, engages the arts in issues of climate change and the environment.

I have always argued that when environmental issues start being incorporated into mainstream culture, then we stand a chance of some notice being taken.

It’s encouraging to note that “Greenland” – a play about climate change – has recently launched at the National Theatre in London. For a review of the play, see this article in the New York Times.

Judging by the review, the play may or may not be a wild success.  However, it bodes well that a major institution decides to give stage time to the subject.

Now, in this video, listen to the author himself talk about his book, its portrait of human failings and how it was reflected in the farce that was the Copenhagen summit.

The book is worth a read – with some qualifications.

"Solar" - Ian McEwan's new book inspired by climate change

Some parts of the book show McEwan at his best. The development of the selfish, self-centred, ‘human’ character of the main protagonist, Nobel Prize winning physicist Michael Beard, is vintage McEwan. In this book climate change issues form the backdrop for the novel but they are not front and center in the novel. As many of McEwan’s novels, this is a novel about the human condition – not a novel about climate change. Yet, climate change is the thread that runs through the novel – in some places easily and elegantly, in others seeming more like an add-on. Speeches and discussions on the intricacies of climate change and possible solutions sometimes seem pasted on to the main plot, interrupting rather than enhancing the flow of the book.

McEwan has clearly done his research – an in some depth. But it is not clear to me why he has to submit his readers to the tedium of the intricate detail of particle physics. He seems to have forgotten his own advice when saying that part of the issue with trying to communicate climate change issues is that all the jargon puts people off. In an interview prior to publication, he stated: “Even writing sentences about splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, already I know that about half the readers [will] see the names of those gases and their minds white out. Just seeing the word hydrogen they panic”.  You can imagine how my eyes and mind whited out when I came across this passage – and many more like it:

“…made elliptical references to BLG or some overwrought arcana in M-theory or Nambu-Lie 3-algebra as if it were not a change of subject.”

Still, given that, the book shows some vintage McEwan skills with the thoroughly unpleasant character of Michael Beard creates humor out of his very baseness. Apart from increasing the profile of climate change and, maybe, getting some to think about it further, the book also contains some points that should cause environmental and climate change enthusiasts to pause for reflection.

For those who have adopted the moral high ground and think of themselves as superior do-gooders, here is some advice worth taking when thinking about solutions:

“The matter has to move beyond virtue. Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilization, it’s a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might think they are. For humanity en masse, greed trumps virtue. So we have to welcome into our solutions the ordinary compulsions of self interest, and also celebrate novelty, the thrill of invention, the pleasures of ingenuity and cooperation, the satisfaction of profit.”

The Michael Beard character also raises another question: has the whole environmental movement now become an industry and a vested interest just like any other? Have the motivations of the days of Rachel Carson largely disappeared and are those in the environmental community now doing jobs just like the rest of us and primarily motivated by advancement of their own careers?  There would be nothing wrong in that, but it does suggest a significant change in the environmental community, how it behaves and how it hopes to achieve its aims.

At the end of this novel, the author leaves us hanging between a belief in climate change as a human problem with possible solutions and seeing the whole issue as simply another bandwagon on which have jumped a new generation of scientists and entrepreneurs. That ambiguity may be a true reflection of today’s state of the public’s acceptance of climate science.

In a recent column with the above title in Britain’s newspaper ‘The Guardian’, environmental writer Bibi van der Zee gives her views on whether the art works that surrounded the Copenhagen Climate Change conference would do any good at all.  Written before the summit finished in spectacular failure, here, in brief, were her conclusions:

• the art was generally good and much of it was very moving
• she could not believe that any of it would do any good and would make a blind bit of difference to the outcome in Copenhagen

I believe that both her conclusions are right.  But her whole article somewhat misses the point.

Producing artwork surrounding a summit like Copenhagen hoping that it will make a difference to the final negotiations is silly.  But to conclude therefore that art focused on environmental issues cannot have an impact is even sillier.

Let us start with Copenhagen. Over the past 20 years, we have had plenty of science, plenty of data, plenty of reasoned arguments, plenty of learned reports, plenty of demonstrations, plenty of NGOs making their points and telling the world about climate change, plenty of carbon heavy miles spent in endless multilateral negotiations – and it all ended in spectacular failure in Copenhagen. While it is easy to point the finger at politicians, the reality is that we have all failed.

On the other hand, there has been precious little art devoted to these issues over the past 20 years. Art is a powerful element that shapes the cultural environment in which decisions are made.  The art itself does not necessarily influence those decisions directly but it does shape the social substrate that drives the direction of those decisions.  Copenhagen did not fail because of lack of science.  Copenhagen failed because, as a society, we are culturally unprepared to take the decisions that need to be taken. Going forward, art and its popular application can make a significant difference in re-shaping that culture so that, next time round, we might stand a chance.

Ms van der Zee should realize that what we need is more artistic involvement not less.  The science/data/learned report route has, on its own, led us to nothing short of a spectacular failure.

Oh, and if anyone wants an alternative view of why the summit failed, read this article and its rebuttal.

The installation brings to London 10 rain forest tree stumps from a commercially logged, regulated rain forest in Ghana and installs them in Trafalgar Square to make what is doubtless one of the most striking visual statements ever about deforestation.

"Ghost Forest" - computer generated image of installation in Trafalgar Square

All the tree stumps in this installation came from trees that fell naturally due to adverse weather conditions. Seven different tree types are represented, all coming from the Suhuma forest reserve in Western Ghana.

Denya tree being washed prior to shipping

The scale of this installation and the size of the trees will no doubt be impressive.  Some of these trees will have stood as high as Nelson’s column. Lasers will be installed to show how high these trees once stood in their natural spaces.

Tree stumps installed in Trafalgar Square

This video tells the story behind the installation.

In December, the installation will move to Thorvaldsens Plads, Copenhagen, to coincide with the COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen.

Last year, she embarked on HighWaterLine – a conceptual art project exploring the impact of climate change on New York City.  She calculated the high water line following a rise in sea level by 10 inches. Using white chalk paint, she walked round the whole city marking this high water line and, by implication, the parts of New York City that would be submerged. Where she was unable to paint a line, she planted lighted beacons.

The aim of the project was, clearly, to raise awareness of one of the impacts of climate change on New York City. During her 5 month walk across the city she engaged with people on the streets, explained what she was doing and what the issues were, handed out leaflets, ran discussion workshops and embarked on other outreach activities to bring attention to the issues.

As a work of art, HighWaterLine could not be further from the elitist and exclusive world of the art gallery or the museum.  Its aim is to intervene in the daily life of ordinary people:

“High Water Line seeks to engage people on the street, in the neighborhoods where they live, work and play. People will encounter the chalk line and the beacons while going about their daily lives. The work is an intervention in routine – the public’s as well as my own. This aspect of the piece ensures catching the public’s attention, and it provides easy and direct access.”

The completed project showed that meaningful parts of New York City would be submerged if we continue on the current climate change trajectory

Eve Mosher has addressed climate change in other projects.  In one installation, a series of colored strings stretched across a space from one map to the next. They represented the mass displacement of people that will result from the effects of climate change.

Acclaimed British author Ian McEwan is one of my very favorite authors.  He is the author of, among others, ‘First Love, Last Rites’, ‘On Chesil Beach’ and ‘Atonement’ - adapted in 2007 into a major movie starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.  I was naturally delighted to hear that his next novel – due in 2010 – is inspired by climate change.

To my knowledge this is the first time that such a prominent, award winning author is producing a novel inspired by environmental issues. The entry of climate change into the literature through a work of fiction must represent a major milestone in the involvement of the arts in sustainability.

McEwan is an acute observer of the darker side of human nature, addressing complex psychological and moral issues in a terse style that is gripping and often somewhat disturbing.  What has been described as “McEwan’s preoccupation with disquieting subject matter” makes me wonder in anticipation as to whether he can be the first to bring out in a meaningful manner the truly disturbing human behaviors that are leading to climate change and its consequences.

Unfortunately we still have some time to wait.  But meantime, environmentalists might benefit from taking heed from what this highly acclaimed author had to say in a recent interview about what it takes to keep audiences interested and listening to your message:

“That’s another problem with writing about climate change – it’s full of facts and figures. We’re putting into the atmosphere 16 gigatons of carbon every year; it takes 16 terrawatts to run civilisation. It’s very necessary to keep these out. My character is engaged in a project to use light to split water, imitating something of the process of photosynthesis. Even writing sentences about splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, already I know that about half the readers [will] see the names of those gases and their minds white out. Just seeing the word ‘hydrogen’, they panic.”

Full interview here.