The Past is the Key to the Future
This feature article, at times, reflects an essay; as political aesthetics needs to be given the respect of an academic tone. But this article can be read by anyone who is interested in contemporary art and its place within the Anthropocene outside of an academic background. For this reason "The Past is the Key to the Future" will not give a complete answer to any questions asked, as quite simply I believe only time can do this. Instead, I will give my opinion on the global crisis and how I personally feel art can engage this level. More so, I believe art should act on this social responsibility to wake the sleeping audience into the reality of the Anthropocene.
In December world leaders will get together in Paris for the United Nations Climate Summit to discuss climate change and set global emission targets for the biggest polis on the little, abused planet earth. Through the very real world terror and disaster news that is beamed through the World Wide Web to the inhabitants of the connected world second by second, you will find unique members who become inspired and refuse to sit on the back bench and allow politicians and paid journalists to determine our response to real life drama. The creatives are often the ones to set the stage and invite, through emotional pressure, the people of our generation to stand up. To not let the people with fossil fuel companies in their pockets, but us as creators and designers to control our future in the western world and protect third world communities. Can artists and designers target the social masses, using relational aesthetics to create responsible architecture and art? A unique and personalised method is called for and a focused attempt to engage the public awareness of the Anthropocene. But where will we end up when we reach the tipping point to the post-Anthropocene?
The Anthropocene is relative to the work of Issac Cordal and Janet Laurence; they use the culture surrounding climate change to creatively express their artistic licence. Changes are called for if we want to prevent the complete destruction of tricontinental countries today, and underfunded communities within the western world. Cordal’s public art figures defy the grand structures that are normally mounted right within the comfortable eye line; instead they creep into puddles, water right up to their tiny viewpoint. “They catch the attention of the absurdity of our existence.”[i] With Laurence, she takes her background in art influenced by the environment right up to the Great Barrier Reef and uses phylum, biomass and studies with phenotypes to create art in test tubes that is designed to completely immerse the art gallery goer in the reality of the Anthropocene culture we live in[ii].
To create relational aesthetic art with a postmodern context to engage the audience on an environmental platform, you need to not just create art that is political; but also creative and imaginative. Crossing the borders between multiple mediums and meanings, in an age with knowledge quite literally at your fingertips. The age where you can browse entire collections of art, not just in galleries but also out-of-context-public art (quite possibly missing the contextual message). I really question the ease of creating truly chain-breaking art in 2015, this quote from Art in the Anthropocene puts art in the same context as nature: "anthropogenic mountains so ordinary we don't even notice them."[iii] We are so overwhelmed with sublime, ground breaking art (and shocking media of mass destruction) that challenges the social structure so, what's left to create?
The political world influences the Anthropocene, inspiring artists to turn their frustrations and broken hopes into art that will challenge the social structure and places questions into the audience's mind about what could be different. Can art set up microtopias with Nicolas Bourriaud's utopian dream of relational aesthetics?[iv] Looking at artists who have successfully tapped into Ranciere's idea of social and political aesthetics: Felix Gonzales-Torres, Sarah Lucas, Santiago Sierra, Ai Wei Wei, and Judy Chicago, who refuse to create work that is placid and obedient. Even if the work is designed to sit comfortably into an art gallery, the meaning is not, unifying the underrepresented.
Ranciere insists for art to be postmodern it needs to have a heterogeneous power; the artist can use this to adjust the audience's point of view and the way they see current affairs. Art in the contemporary Sydney postmodern context seems to be effectively politicising the social. Especially when you step out of the traditional internationally recognised institutions (making a small exception for the Prima Vera this year at the MCA[v]), art being created for the artist's moral and artistic high ground rather than for the general public's attempt to understand art. So, is the point to contend with the audience, or can it just quite simply exist within the general consensus public opinion within our Anthropocene culture?
Emily Parson-Lord's recent exhibition, Our Fetid Rank (Margaret Thatcher's Bottom Lip and Bill Clinton's Tongue) (2015) at Firstdraft, Woolloomooloo has, without any words, managed to make a harmonious yet conflicting statement about climate change. The piece is entirely multimedia that showcases politician’s treatment to the environment. Politics with interests only in regards to where the next pay cheque come from, not whom from. Parson-Lord expresses this desire to change the way we look at politics, highlighting the "private moments of cognition/ reflection, glimpses of emotion, unconscious ticks, and dubious authenticity", expressed between sentences of rehearsed nonsense; pretentious talk; bold and deceitful absurdist language used to deceive the public[vi]. Parson-Lord uses relational aesthetics to effectively get the viewer engaged in her mission, she plays on the subconscious tendency to mirror breathing patterns so the longer you spend watching the breathing the more you become part of the installation. She makes us question our involvement within the spectacle and disastrous treatment around climate change.
Making sustainable art (or anything!) has never been so important, but as it appears so is the increasing weight to make art that will probably not last forever instead to be brought up by the 1% rich crusaders of capitalism of a sign of their culture and class[vii]. To enter the post-Anthropocene, Benjamin Bratton argues, we also need to enter post-capitalism, using geopolitical aesthetics to transition into the next stage[viii]. Bratton discusses that using algorithmic capitalism and a hyper post-human epidermal biopolitical extension onto the earth (like one of Time magazine 2009's super inventions, the Planetary Skin, which allows scientists to gain a better understanding of global emissions[ix]) we could enter the post-Anthropocene. But as Hernan Diaz Alonso demonstrates through his Parametricism architecture, you'll be entering a rabbit hole of layers: "parasites within parasites within parasites." Can science and art work together to fix climate change without removing all the humans from earth?
Art still has a place outside of this post-human geopolitical aesthetic theory and can make a difference to helping fix our damage (outside of Bratton's horror story of Algorithmic Capitalism). Focusing on Steven Shaviro's comparison of accelerationist aesthetics to "what it feels like" to live in the contemporary moment, what does it feel like to live in the contemporary moment Shaviro?[x] Mitch Gobel is a good example of an artist living in the contemporary moment whilst making a strong attempt to repair the damage already done. He uses himself as a public figure, endorsed by Greenpeace, to create resin 'paintings' with fluid motions, tapping into the sublime with my personal interpretation of apophenia earth like line and post-fordist method creating unique pieces. His work is also incredibly marketable with soft pastel colours and unoffending style. Perfect for a capitalist art figure, but when the aforementioned individual buys a piece; the money goes to MGRA Wildlife and Habitat Conservation, which is a not-for-profit charity funded entirely by Gobel's art. The conservation works to protect part of the rainforest in Australia from destruction. As Gobel so poetically expresses on his website "I worked fucking hard to get what I wanted and I got it."[xi]
I posed this statement “The Past is the Key to the Future" as something to ponder throughout this article. Was I referring to the earth before the industrial revolution (before the Anthropocene) and the ideas shared by Foucault: the key for the future lies in the past?[xii] You could ask what has been created with climate change at the headliner in our society that has helped reduce global emissions. I find the way we treat nature within in the Anthropocene has resulted in a personification, look at the way I talk about the earth, like a sick friend living in an abusive home[xiii]. A recent Conservation International Campaign took famous actresses and actors gave them the role of Nature[xiv]. Julia Roberts does a great job of personifying Mother Nature, she says: "You need me, I don't need you." A reminder that the earth will most likely continue to exist with us or without us; adjusting the fight for climate change to be a fight for communities across the world.
I have included footnotes throughout this article to continue this discussion, as this article can pose as the starting point. If you’ve got this far then you should keep digging into the Anthropocene and see what other key theories are posing answers to these questions, inside and outside of the art scene.
[i] http://cementeclipses.com/abou...
[ii] I recently went to a guest lecture by Laurence where I learnt about her involvement with environmental aesthetic art. She informs her work with a range of mediums including: alchemical transformation, history and perception. http://www.janetlaurence.com
[iii] Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. A collection of articles and essays edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. (Open Humanities Press, 2015)
[iv] I found Claire Bishop’s essay on relational aesthetics useful in the context of the Anthropocene and political aesthetics ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’. From October 2004
[v] The emerging artists this year have showcased that relations are still incredibly important to young people. Looking at the work on display I was very pleased to see art pieces on a huge scale, reflecting sublime qualities, dealing with our relationships within communities. How some of those communities are dead set on destroying what they can for "underground suns and ancestral forests.“ (quote from Art in the Anthropocene) And also the treatment and engagement with the indigenous people of the land before we became so obsessed with pulling it up.
[vi] This quote was taken from the floor sheet of Parson-Lord's exhibition. For further information on her climate change crusade: http://www.emilyparsons-lord.c...
[vii] Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Simon & Schuster 2014) Disclaimer: this opinion is mine; Klein just comments that to even out the climate we need to eradicate certain elements of capitalism, like artists such as Jeff Koons making BMW custom cars.
[viii] http://www.e-flux.com/journal/...
[ix] http://content.time.com/time/s...
[x] e-flux dedicated July’s 2013 journal to Accelerationist Aesthetics and Gean Moreno's editorial offers important issues with our Anthropocene culture: “Where did the critical tradition of art go? Maybe that’s the wrong question. Because we know the answer. It went into spectacle. It went into finance. It got privatized, democratized, scrutinized, defunded, bureaucratized, then professionalized.” He discusses Shaviro and other creatives working in this money driven culture. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/...
[xi] http://www.mitchgobelresinart....
[xii] Art in the Anthropcene uses Focucalt to compare his ideas of the clinic to the environment.
[xiii] The comment is in no way meant to trivialise domestic abuse, instead offer the view that this is how important climate change should be taken.
