Conservation Creation: Art as a Force for Change
In combating climate change, artists speak where leaders will not.
In 2019, worrying about the state of the world means so much more than doggedly following the whims of busy people making peace and war on its surface. It’s heating up. Since the late nineteenth century, the earth’s temperature has risen approximately 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit. The warmest years on record have been the most recent ones. It’s also falling apart. As temperatures rise, sea levels rise and lead to further flooding and erosion. Moreover, rising sea levels threaten a future refugee crisis, as someday individuals living in coastline areas will be displaced. Weather patterns have grown more intense and erratic, with once uncommon environmental disasters becoming more commonplace. Because a warmer atmosphere contains more moisture, ironically, storms now contain more rain and more snow. It’s often said that climate and weather are not the same, that unrelenting cold can be a symptom of a warming planet as well. With the earth’s vitality hanging precariously in the balance, we need to decisive leadership to shepherd us through an infrastructure overhaul and a values-based mental shift towards a sustainable future. Instead, we are simply wasting precious time.
President Trump has made rolling back environmental protections a centerpiece of his administration. He formally withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, in which 195 nations pledged to cut greenhouse gas emission 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and to give $3 billion in aid to poorer countries by 2020. He installed Scott Pruitt, a supporter of the fossil fuel industry and a climate-change denialist, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The fact that Pruitt ultimately resigned following investigations into his scandalous personal spending and abuse of power is not satisfying, particularly in light of the time squandered with him at the helm. More recently, the Trump administration has endeavored to weaken the Endangered Species Act, in order to provide more opportunities for oil and gas drilling. In addition, the Trump administration has endeavored to dismantle environmental statutes governing methane emissions, along with approximately 84 environmental rules that it has sought to repeal.
Even if a Democratic candidate is voted into the office of the presidency in 2020, a newly-empowered EPA would still face significant challenges in putting back together what has been broken. President Trump, his cohorts, and your average toddler all know well that is far easier to destroy than to create. And while parents know that the best way to tackle a tantrum, or Twitter-happy tirade, is to simply ride it out, there is an existential dread now in the waiting. As our inimitable blue jewel of a planet falters, we find our unity now in the recognition that time is not on our side. Yet, rather than bemoaning what the President of the United States (and like-minded leaders) will not do, activists are pouring their energies now into doing what they can.
With populist-driven, right-wing leadership on the rise, efforts to combat climate change have instead been galvanized by grass-roots movements, opposition representatives, and vocal constituents. Last week, teenage activists, inspired by activist Greta Thunberg, staged worldwide protests against the apathetic world leaders who refuse to acknowledge climate change. Meanwhile, 23 states sued the Trump administration to reinstate their autonomy, as it has revoked the authority of states to independently set tougher gas and emissions standards. This action follows a lawsuit earlier in August where 29 states attempted to thwart the Trump administration from loosening restrictions for coal-burning power plants; some speculate that this case could eventually go before the Supreme Court. These actions remind us that political representatives can challenge directives, and that teenagers — mercifully — make a lot of noise.
There is a limit to what light the powers that be may shut out; the scrappiest of lifeforms flourish best in shade anyway. Just as protest movements have found a foothold against a milieu of political apathy, notable artists have punctuated the climate-change message with their own provocative work. Recent installations challenge the status quo precisely because their meaning cannot be ignored, because their truth cannot be denied. Authoritarian regimes always shut down the artists fast. A compelling piece can too easily mirror some latent discontentment and mobilize a movement. The risk is always that a piece will resonate. Because an artist’s epiphanic expression is much more powerful than state-sponsored propaganda, autocrats cull any piece that could undercut the state’s message — or worse, empower individuals to find expression of their own.
The current political establishment requires a suppression of intellect. Established news organizations now peddle fake information. Scientific data is not to be trusted. The climate’s cycle cannot be heating when the weather sometimes makes us cold. If we’ve finally fallen through the proverbial looking glass, we must look to leaders outside of leadership to shepherd us towards a more sustainable future. In their work, notable artists demonstrate a vision decidedly lacking in leadership today: a doomsday scenario for what our world could become, and also a reverence for the natural world that could guide us out of catastrophe. Their pieces, their installations, their potent warnings walk in lockstep with protesters, screaming right alongside them for change.
In his work challenging our consumerist culture, Chris Jordan reminds us that items thrown away never actually go away. For his Midway: Message from the Gyre project, Jordan spent years photographing dead Laysan albatrosses whose stomachs were filled with plastic detritus. In his film, Albatross, Jordan expounds on his attempts to cultivate empathy in his work. Jordan referenced Picasso in describing his efforts: “The role of an artist is to respect you, help you connect more deeply, and then leave it up to you to decide how to behave.” Jordan highlighted the irony that a piece of plastic, designed to last forever, is thrown away after only a single use. His more recent contributions, in two distinct Running the Numbers series, stand as photographic mosaics of pollution. At close range, a nude woman framed by countless plastic bottles. Johnson constructed a dinosaur from plastic bags. These startling mosaics remind us of the large-scale devastation wrought by many small pieces of garbage.
Sometimes, nature itself provides the only materials necessary. Andy Goldsworthy, a environmental sculptor and photographer, is known for utilizing materials like flowers, twigs, and ice and documenting his fleeting designs in sumptuous photographs. In working with natural items, Goldsworthy becomes dependent on their life cycle: their vitality, and later their decay. He often alludes to the illusion of separateness between people and their environment: “We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So, when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.” Goldsworthy is known for his contributions to “land art,” as much as he is for his lack of personal attachment to his creations. Amazingly, often as soon as he completes his work, he lets it go. Because the wind that carries the leaf away and the stone that falls to the ground are all a part of the ephemeral nature of his design. In the documentary film Leaning into the Wind, Goldsworthy at one point lies down on a sidewalk in a rainstorm, knowing that the “rain shadow” that he leaves behind cannot last. The breadth of his contributions reminds us that we are just as temporary as his raw materials, attached the same beautiful and unforgiving life cycle.
While Goldworthy’s art documents the natural world as it is, another poignant installation recently offered a dire glimpse into what it could become. In Scotland earlier this year, Finnish artists Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho created an installation entitled, Lines (57’ 59’N, 7’ 16’W), that showed the watermark that will upend the Scottish coastline if sea levels rise as projected. The strings of light severed the landscape, putting into sharp relief what will be lost if we do not change course. The artists anchored the installation on Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland for its vulnerability. Because the area rests on a shallow archipelago, the threat of flooding and displacement there is all too real. Part of the problem in combating climate change is that it requires imagination. We are already keenly feeling the effects of global warming, but can still maintain a kind of blissful ignorance if we so choose. In order to avert catastrophe however, people must act before catastrophe hits. Unfortunately, mankind doesn’t have a great track record with exercising foresight. Lines, then, is a masterful depiction of a world that doesn’t yet exist. It shows exactly how much less we are bequeathing to the next generation. Its glowing lines are uncompromising, forcing a decision point from those who would waffle. Below the bright lines, viewers can still gaze upon precious landscape that isn’t yet a memory. There is still hope in that, though Lines calls forth the rising seas and the rush of time — time that is steadily dwindling with the land beneath our feet.
Earlier this week, Greta Thunberg, the unflappable teenager who has inspired global protests, connected with installation artist Michael Pinsky to tour his Pollution Pods. Pinsky’s geodesic domes each contain distinct samples of air quality from different cities. The World Health Organization (WHO) invited Pinksy to install his pods in New York City to coincide with the United Nations Climate Action Summit. Climart, the organization that initially commissioned Pinksy to create the work, sought to examine the potential for art to change behavior. Traditional art forms, such as a photograph or a sketch, cannot adequately capture this urban blight. We are unable to deeply inhale a painting of a cityscape. Pinsky’s pods provide an entirely new sensory experience, where a city’s health and vitality can exposed without the buildings and bustle that might distract us. The pods’ undeniable effects on people, from wrinkled noses to puckered lips, might prove such an embarrassment to cities that they do indeed inspire change.
Sometimes however, when you strike a nerve, you also light a match. In Austria, curator Klaus Littman planted a forest in a football stadium. Entitled, For Forest: the Unending Attraction of Nature, the project took inspiration from a drawing by Max Peintner. In Peintner’s compelling work, nature is relegated to certain designated spaces. Littman’s inspired project is Austria’s largest art installation ever. The timing of such a magnificent undertaking, however, has proven problematic. With Austrian national elections set for September 29th, the right-wing political parties have sought to mobilize protests against it. These groups maintain, incorrectly, that the taxpayers have funded For Forest. Littman claims that he has been verbally and physically attacked over the project. The controversy surrounding For Forest shows exactly what a lightening-rod issue climate change has become, with right-wing politicians and their supporters deflecting their political inaction by attacking opposition groups. Artists unfortunately run the risk of getting caught in the crossfire.
As the spheres of science and art overlap, the resulting alchemy is sure to make some people angry. There is too much at stake — too much money, too much power, too much first-world comfort — for a message to resonate quietly now. As Littman himself said: “For me, the installation is a rallying cry for the most pressing issue of our generation . . . . It seeks to become a memorial, reminding us that nature may soon only be found in specially designation spaces, as is currently the case with zoo animals.”
Perhaps, the real problem is that something must die (most likely an undercurrent of greed and fear) so that the earth can continue to support our life. Artists can best connect us to what that would mean and what we would need to let go.
The Tragedy of the Commons was an idea conceived by an American ecologist, Garrett Hardin, to show the inherent tensions that arise when competing individuals share resources. He used the analogy of ranchers. Ranchers will try to raise their profits by adding more animals. Ultimately, if all ranchers act solely out of personal interest, no rancher will be able to use the field as the grass will be gone from overgrazing. The problem of a lack of responsibility for the collective good is all around us. Think about public restrooms. Think about a cafeteria in a shopping mall. Working to combat climate change would require us to reframe our individual needs, as our survival depends on collective action. It would require an overhaul of selfish thought-patterns. It would also be the most massive group project ever undertaken, and no one likes a group project.
The United Nations Climate Action Summit commences this week in New York City. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged nations to attend the summit with specific plans for carbon neutrality, saying: “What I want is the whole of society putting pressure on governments to make governments understand we need to run faster, because we are losing the race.” The image of a runner is a good one, as it also points out those nations that remain standing still. The UN hopes that countries will commit to more stringent requirements for curbing greenhouse gas emissions than those outlined in the Paris climate agreement of 2015. In addition, there is concerted effort to convince wealthier nations to contribute more to the UN Green Climate Fund, which supports nations with emerging economies to develop sustainably. The Climate Action Summit presents many good ideas, but the Tragedy of the Commons illustrates that they could well be toothless without commitments from economic powerhouses like the United States and China.
Beyond merely rattling off frightening statistics however, the United Nations has taken steps to cultivate empathy and to inspire positive change. Following the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Paris in 2015, researchers found that the art on display did change people’s attitudes about the climate crisis — so long as the rallying message was one of hope. Similarly, Danish artist Jeppe Hein’s work called, Breathe With Me, will be on display during the summit this week. His installation encourages delegates to paint their breath. Their breath will be painted in two blue lines, offering a powerful, intimate meditation on the unity between individual identity and collective spirit.
The effective leaders of the future will the ones who show us how to set ourselves aside, how to sacrifice mightily, for the greater good. They might be well-intentioned men and women elected into office. They might be the children shouting in the streets. They might be the artists reminding us of shared breath, of our uniquely human capacity to be awestruck and overcome with wonder. Whoever they are, they won’t make played-out promises of what they will give us, but will instead show us what we can give up, what we can do without — and in so doing, what we stand to gain.
