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- Convenors:
-
Ariell Ahearn Ligham
(Oxford University)
Jinjoon Lee (Oxford University)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Utopias and Temporalities
- Location:
- Elizabeth Fry 01.02
- Sessions:
- Friday 6 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel will facilitate a dialogue between anthropologists and artists about local responses to climate change. The conversation will focus on the different ways climate change is conceived of, experienced and imagined by artists.
Long Abstract:
Climate change has transcended its scientific terminology. It is no longer reducible to glaciers melting, sea levels rising and carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, it is a cultural entity. Yet different cultures conceive of, experience and respond to climate change differently. Climate change is a material reality of the present, a social injustice of the past, and an imagined disaster of the future. To communicate the ontological and social consequences of these different conceptions, artists in every culture respond to their own 'reality' of climate change.
This panel explicitly wants to investigate how artists respond on a local level to the global challenge of climate change. By bringing together a multidisciplinary collection of anthropologists and artists, we hope to create a discussion about how art is performed, conceived of and used in its responses to the multiple climate changes. The panel looks to highlight how art is used to communicate and digest the current and immediate effects of climate change and explore how art can cultivate public awareness and responses to climate change.
A particular focus will be on facilitating dialogue between artists and anthropologists from multiple institutions, cultures and spatial locations, to create a conversation about how climate change is differentially understood. Moreover, providing insight about the multiple realities of climate change can be a stimulus for both artistic practice and anthropological research.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 6 September, 2019, -Lenore Manderson (University of the Witwatersrand)
Paper short abstract:
In describing art/science programs I curated in the USA and South Africa, I consider the affective work of installation, performance and public art work. I argue that this work supports scientists and policy makers to develop alternative narratives to address climate change.
Paper long abstract:
Climate change embraces a unique breadth of scholarship and collaborations across institutional and disciplinary spaces. From the early 2000s, growing numbers of foundations, coalitions and artist collectives have worked on questions of global warming, climate change, and sustainability, directing their art practice to public engagement and advocacy. In my own work, I have taken up questions of climate change and sustainability. This includes the curation of six art/science programs on the environment - the Earth, Itself series at Brown University (USA, 2015-2019), and Watershed at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa, 2018). I consider the role of affect in effecting shifts in public perception, as a precondition to changes in policy implementation and as a way to promote narrative of alternatives. I describe firstly how initiatives like Julie's Bicycle and Cape Farewell promoted public awareness of climate change through engagement with practicing artists and scholars, and through art advocacy in policy contexts. I then consider performance and public art as affective practice. Drawing on the performance work of conceptual artists such as Atul Bhalla (India), Marcus Neustetter (South Africa), the sculptures of Icelandic-Danish artist Ólafur Elíasso, and the work of sound and visual artists as presented at Earth, Itself and Watershed, I question how art practice effects public discourse and shapes alternative narratives, and show how art and academic come together as a bundle of knowledge systems that are necessary to comprehend planetary challenges.
Marco Carpio (www.marcocarpio.com)
Paper short abstract:
Through my experience as an artist, creating from the coexistence with nature and cultures integrated to nature, I propose a reflection about the importance to decolonize the artistic process revaluing diverse artistic expressions so that climate change messages can transcend through art.
Paper long abstract:
Generally, we conceive art as universal, but its function emerged from Western culture, from where it was exported to the world. Bruno Latour calls for a collaboration between art and science, however, art does not always achieve public awareness. I suggest this is because artists have taken the narrative of the researcher that 'explores' as an observer, based on scientific evidence or from experiences of the built environment. We need a more interpretivist approach, to break the verticality of art, like in the expressions of animist cultures, supported in belief systems and lived experience in nature. Twenty years ago, I began to decolonize my process, creating from the coexistence with nature and cultures integrated to nature; a creative process I have named Integracionismo (Integrationism). I learned to listen and detach from previous concepts. When this is achieved, there is an unsuspected force producing a message that is often transgressive and politically uncomfortable, contradictory to the interests of the system. In my last two exhibitions in Lima, despite the institutional and scientific support, 'authoritative' voices and animal rights groups arbitrarily denied the intention of my work because of their distance, generating great controversy. In this paper I reflect on my experience proposing the need to decolonize art and revalue different artistic expressions for the message of climate change to transcend.
Patricia Jäggi (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts)
Paper short abstract:
By looking at current discussions in ornithology and environmental sound art the contribution looks at the influence of climate change on biophonies such as the absence of birdsong.
Paper long abstract:
By starting with Rachel Carson's environmental classics "The Silent Spring" (1962), the planned contribution brings the absence of sounds such as the absence of birdsong into view. In the recently started research project "Seeking Birdscapes - Contemporary Listening and Recording Practices in Ornithology and Environmental Sound Art" we investigate the perception of birdsong in the context of contemporary sound art, ornithology and ecology. Climate change influences specific bird populations in different ways (Pearce-Higgins/Green 2014). Unlike Carson's pesticide dystopia of the 1960s, the soundscape of the anthropocene will not simply become more quiet but due to the different chances of species survival (i. e. reduction of biodiversity) may diminish in its richness. Sound artists and composers such as David Monacchi (Fragments of Extinction) started to document and creatively work with field recordings of (still) highly biodiverse landscapes to raise awareness of our natural sonic environment.
By looking at current discussions in ornithology and environmental sound art I would like to focus on the influence of climate change on so-called biophonies. My contribution will address the following questions: How can the creeping absence or loss of individual living entities be grasped scientifically and artistically? Do discussions on climate change also require a new understanding and evaluation of the concept of absence (and, thus, of related terms such as silence or emptiness)?