Can art lead on carbon reductions?
Matthew Taylor in his blog on Monday sent out a mobilising call for ideas and active engagement by individuals and communities in addressing the absolute imperative of decreasing our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. At the moment, as Peter Head said recently in this Arts & Ecology interview, despite the talk there’s little sign from central and local government that we’re any closer to moving towards that target.
The arts have to be more involved than we are in responding to this.
Heaven knows, there’s abundant creativity in the arts sector, which is what is massively needed. I believe there’s also the will amongst an increasing number of individuals and organisations. We have some brilliant initiatives afoot that demonstrate this – galleries and theatres from TATE to Arcola are activating energy reducing strategies. Tipping Point, Cape Farewell and Julie’s Bicycle are doing their damnest to get everyone to wake up. Julie’s Bicycle is launching the Green Music Guide next month – an action plan that aims to reduce the London Music Industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2025. Many artists are incredibly carbon light already, Gustav Metzger being a prime example of someone who addresses the underlying issues in his work, someone who has refused to fly for decades and who nobody could accuse of materialism.
But somehow the impetus for fundamental change is still lagging somewhere in the inactive bracket of our collective arts sector behaviour and image. The message isn’t going out that we are fundamentally bothered. What the public sees are the financial successes, Damien Hirst’s auction being a sublime example, that are splashed across the media.
How do we encourage and reveal, far more publicly, the altruism and ideas that are currently under the radar? We are planning an Arts & Ecology month in June which celebrates and encourages altruism and treading lightly on the planet. Please get in touch if you are involved in initiatives that we don’t know about.
Here’s to getting more visibility for positive action!
Image: Still from Whole Earth by Christopher Keller 2006/7. Currently on show as part of the exhibition Moral Imagination: Current Positions Contemporary Art in the Face of Global Warming
How literature tackles climate change
A few months ago I reported on Ian
McEwan, currently writing a book inspired by his Cape Farewell
journey to the Arctic, who was saying how hard it was to was to tackle
such a “virtuous” topic in a novel.
The trajectory of a short
story is very different from a novel, but Helen Simpson manages it deftly in
her story “In-flight Entertainment” which appeared in Granta 100. In it, two men who meet in the first class cabin of a transatlantic flight discuss global warming, while, next to them, another passenger dies of a heart attack.
“Four hours’ delay,” volunteered Alan, “thanks to those jokers at Heathrow. Alan Barr, by the way.”
“And I’m Jeremy Lees. Yes, those anti-flying protesters. A waste of time.”
“Complete time-wasters.”
“I suppose so,” said Jeremy. “What I meant, though, was it was a waste of their time. They’re not going to change anything.”
“Exactly.
It’s nonsense, isn’t it, this global warming stuff. Trying to turn the
wheel back. Half the scientists don’t agree with it anyway.”
“Actually
I think you’ll find they do. Ah, red please,’ said Jeremy as the air
stewardess offered him wine. ‘What have you got? Merlot or Zinfandel?
I’ll try the Zinfandel. Thank you. No, they do agree now, they’ve
reached a consensus. I ought to know, I was one of them. No, it’s not
nonsense, I’m afraid. The world really is warming up.”
It was published well before the Heathrow decision, but manages to include the line: “Heathrow will get its third runway any time now.”
Nominations for other pieces of contemporary lit which tackle this sort of stuff?
Picture: Still from The Coming Race by Ben Rivers 2006. “An indistinct, slow-moving sea of humanity clambers valiantly up a rocky mountain.” Showing as part of Figuring Landscapes at the Tate Modern, February 6 – 8. Details here.
Dear Barack and Michelle
From the recent open letter from NASA climate scientist James Hansen to Michelle and Barack Obama, urging radical action when he takes office:
There is a profound disconnect between actions that policy circles are considering and what
the science demands for preservation of the planet. A stark scientific conclusion, that we
must reduce greenhouse gases below present amounts to preserve nature and humanity, has
become clear to the relevant experts. The validity of this statement could be verified by the
National Academy of Sciences, which can deliver prompt authoritative reports in response to
a Presidential request. NAS was set up by President Lincoln for just such advisory purposes.
Tomorrow at the RSA Arts & Ecology site, I’ll be publishing an interview with US environmentalist Bill McKibben in which he argues for a worldwide campaign in support of action to reduce carbon emissions to 350ppm, in line with James Hansen’s recent paper that suggests that our emissions are already too high for sustainable modern life. McKibben is taking the reins on this one with 350, which lets Jarvis Cocker off Ed Milliband’s hook.
Photo: RIBA President Sunand Prasad’s The Volume of One Tonne of CO2. As featured in Best of 2008. Photo by Nathan Gallagher
Jarvis Cocker saves the world
Invited to guest edit Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Jarvis Cocker launched into a passionate plea to government to take a less foot-dragging laissez-faire response to climate change:
A few months ago I went on a trip to the Arctic set up by an organisation called Cape
Farwell to see the effects of climate change at first hand. Whilst on
board we also went to lectures by scientists who told us, among other
things, what it was that individuals could do to try and help with the
biggest problem facing the world at this time, and that part I found
profoundly depressing because it basically came down to things like,
“Go and buy some energy changing light bulbs.”
Although
I believe that the actions of individuals are important, it seemed to
me that the problem was so large and so profound that it would be nice
if we got a bit of help from somewhere else. If the only things that
would have the necessary impact would be to make radical changes to
things like food transportation, deforestation or air travel, it would
be nice to think that the government might help out with some
legislation designed to address those issues. And that’s why I got
depressed. Because non-interventionist laissez-faire free market
policies have been the order of the day for so long, why would they
change now?
Then I came home.
The thing about being on a boat in the middle of the arctic ocean is
there’s no telephone or wi-fi coverage. Whilst we’d been up there
observing one kind of meltdown, it seemed that another kind of meltdown
had been taking place in the world’s financial markets. In fact, we
came through Reykjavik airport on the day that Iceland basically went
bust, though none of us knew it at the time.
Banks were going under and a massive stock market collapse had
occurred. And lo and behold, one of the first things that followed was
a massive government intervention. And I thought, “Hang on, perhaps,
bizarrely, there’s a chink of light here. If the government is wiling
to intervene decisively in such a huge way in this area, maybe it would
intervene in another area – climate change – too.”
Read more here.
More Bad Behaviour
The New York Times blog dot earth has picked up on Francesca Galeazzi’s Justifying Bad Behaviour piece for Cape Farewell.
It has ignited a decent barrage of comments from:
I love the way Francesca Galeazzi demonstrates the ambiguities of the issue.
To:
If an artist takes a boat to Greenland which spews thousands of tons of
CO2 into the atmosphere, and then announces that other people’s carbon
offsets are hypocrisy – does her self-righteous anger count as a
personal carbon credit?
And, after all, igniting discussion was what this piece was about. Galeazzi’s trip was part-funded by RSA Arts and Ecology, and there will be a full interview with her about the work and the reactions it has provoked on the new site when it goes live on 17th November.
Justifying bad behaviour
A few weeks ago, the artist Francesca Galeazzi travelled to the Arctic, to one of the world’s most beautiful, unspoiled places, a snowfield on the Jakobshavn Fjord, and deliberately, wantonly, turned the valve and released 6kg of pure CO2 into the atmosphere.
It was an act of environmental vandalism. Or maybe not? Afterwards she announced that she had offset the CO2 by paying the appropriate sum to a Gold-standard carbon off-setting scheme. In its entirety, the piece of work – offsetting included – was called Justifying Bad Behaviour.
Understandably, the piece provoked some hurt and angry reactions immediately among her fellow travellers on the Cape Farewell project, which took her and her ominous-looking black cylinder there in the first place. As Arts & Ecology were partly-responsible for funding her voyage, it seems reasonable to ask, was Justifying bad behaviour justifiable? Is it OK to deliberately despoil the environment to make a point – even if, as Francesca points out – 6kg is the equivalent to only a 25-mile car journey?
Or maybe, just how much carbon should she have released, in order for the world to sit up and notice? This was art as provocation.
Next month, when the new Arts & Ecology website launches, we’ll be running a major interview with Francesca about her piece of work and her views on the responsibility of the artist.
Thanks to Nathan Gallagher for the photograph
Short bursts
The artist and architectural engineer Francesca Galeazzi will be talking about her recent voyage to the Arctic with the Cape Farewell Project this Wednesday 15th October at 6.15pm at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire. Her fellow travellers included Sophie Calle, Jarvis Cocker, Jude Kelly and others. More information here.
Following on from Luke Johnson’s prediction that the bottom will fall out of the art market, several articles have started appearing suggesting he may be right.
Crisis imperils UK art fairs
Which over-inflated market will be next?
New York art market shows evidence of weakness
Former grafitti artist Steve Powers‘ grisly installation about the torture practice of waterboarding finds a new home.
“Futuresonic and FutureEverything invite submissions of artworks, social
innovations or technological interventions for inclusion in the
Futuresonic 2009 festival.” Futuresonic, who explore ideas of digital culture and music have extended their deadline for sumbissions for work for their next festival until 3 November. The theme of Futuresonic 2009 is Environment 2.0, with a fund for commissioning new artworks. More here.
Youth voyagers tell their tales
GEMMA LLOYD: I’ve just come out of Cape Farewell’s Youth Expedition Conference which took place at the RSA today and was organised by Creative Partnerships. 12 students were selected to board Noorderlicht, the vessel bound for Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic which became the crew’s temporary home between 14 – 23 September 2007.
Embarking from London, the chosen 15-16 year olds came from schools across the UK, Germany and Canada with the objective to explore climate change and see the very real effects for themselves. During their trip they responded to the issues from a scientific and artistic point of view, but perhaps paramount to this was the invaluable experience of sharing perspectives from their own cultures and feeding back their discoveries to a much wider audience via online broadcasts.
To assist with the communication and legacy of the project on dry land each school had a ground team who brought the project alive to those who weren’t on the trip – fuelled with pride and purposefulness these students made contact with the media and got the whole school on board in a philosophical sense.
I was totally blown away by the fascinating stories, observations and accounts from such a talented, articulate and positive group of young people. There was a privileged insight into the perspective from the Inuit community courtesy of Doriana and her teacher who call the Arctic their home. While Western eyes look at the Polar bear with wonder and spectacle, the Inuit community find their increasingly everyday presence alarming – Polar Bears are solitary animals but have been forced to come into villages to scavenge for food when the ice breaks up and doesn’t return when it should do.
After lunch Josef and Jethro played an acoustic and enchanting rendition of a score that they had written on the boat and we had the opportunity to see Franzi’s innovative short film which ingenuously told the tale of plankton from a fluorescent narrative!
I urge you to look at the site and read these amazing accounts; it was an inspiring and incredibly optimistic day. Creative Partnerships are now working on a tool kit which will be distributed to schools next year to ensure the outcomes and experiences reach a much wider audience.
RSA Vision
RSA Animate
RSA Comment
RSA Bookshop
The RSA Bookshop, in partnership with Blackwell's the UK's leading academic bookseller, offers Fellows and friends an opportunity to purchase books and to explore our speakers’ ideas in greater detail. Visit the RSA Bookshop.- Future RSA Events
- The Unforeseen Cost of Human Civilisation May 24, 2010
- The Selfish Society April 22, 2010
- The Big Short April 19, 2010
- The Tyranny of Guilt April 19, 2010
- Storytelling: How narratives shape our reality, ideas and behaviour April 8, 2010