How can the arts and artists work with environmental and civil society campaigners to address the multiple dimensions of the climate crisis, particularly in light of the covid-19 pandemic and COP26 postponement?
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, the culture working group of the COP26 Civil Society Coalition, Creative Carbon Scotland, and ecoartscotland are continuing to support networking and planning for COP26 and will be holding a discussion by video conferencing on 29 April (18.00-20.00 GMT). The meeting is open to artists, arts organisations, campaigners, environmental NGOs, and anyone who has been developing plans for COP26.
Covid-19 is affecting all of our communities – whether in the arts or in wider society – as well as planning for COP26. Acknowledging the current situation, while also recognising all the pre-existing work to bring together a broad and diverse climate movement to prepare for COP26, we are shifting the focus of this planned event. We realise that many of our colleagues will be badly affected by the current situation and so will make this a space for sharing and connection, as well as a place to think about the collaboration and creativity that will be needed, as we emerge from Covid-19 to plan for and respond to COP26 in 2021.
The arts have a specific role in addressing meaning, value and subjectivity – “What does this mean to us as individuals and communities?†“What do we value and how can we imagine acting?†– that is especially relevant to the climate crisis and the current context with Covid-19. We want to make sure that we can all sustain this role across the months ahead by continuing to work together.
The aims of the meeting are to:
promote new partnerships between arts, activism, and climate crisis policy and practice
discuss tactics which are inclusive and engage people ‘where they are’
understanding how our methods will have to change in light of the coronavirus pandemic
provide updates on developing plans in light of the COP26 postponement as well as information and useful resources
We understand that the current situation is difficult and unpredictable for many, so this event will be informal in character and we will ensure to share as much of the content of the meeting as possible afterwards with anyone unable to attend at the time. This discussion will also provide a chance to keep in touch with other members of the community during isolation.
Sign up here. Instructions will follow nearer the time on joining the meeting.
Looking forward to catching up on the 29th.
(Top image courtesy of UNFCCC)
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.
JUST BEING
Self-isolation? It’s my natural state, so I smile as people emerge, groping like moles, from their action-packed, noise-filled lives and discover a new world: a world of birdsong and the songs of neighbors, a book on the balcony, recipes concocted from the store cupboard, old clothes worn again. It’s a world of today not tomorrow, of talking less and listening more, of wondering and pondering. Not out there, but in here. Not doing, but being. Join me; it’s not so scary after all. You might even come to prefer it.
— Angela Dyer (Limousin, France)
(Top photo: Finding new patterns.)
* * *
OUT FROM INSIDE
Suddenly it is silent in the biggest city in South America. São Paulo used to be an orchestra of cars, buses, motorbikes, and horns all through the day. Birds adapted their communication, singing later at night, around 11 PM. People used to go to bars from Monday to Monday. Now, we hear a hope of silence and we meet every day at 8:30 PM. Everybody goes to the window to shout “Fora!†(“Out!â€). We are screaming our deepest wish from inside: that our president leave the government. In silence, maybe our voices will be heard.
— Nathalia Favaro (São Paulo, Brazil)
8:30 PM in São Paulo.
* * *
NOTICE
On Saturday, locals hung a sign on the light post: “go the fuck home.†This weekend, an electronic sign at the turn reads “parks closed by health order.†I look over to the east hills. They look bigger, brighter than I recall. The duck’s cry echoes across the water in a way that I have not heard before. Every three minutes a car drives north or south. I time it. The planes fly only in the evening. The store has taped red tape to the floor at six foot intervals. A white-gloved man opens the door.
— Gwendolyn Meyer (California)
Deep woods.
* * *
SHOPPING TRIP
At the store, I replenish food supplies and check, again, for cleaning products. I’m struck by the boundaries that have been placed, the subtle encroachment of a new age, an air of sci-fi dystopia. Tall robots clean the aisles. “We’re stronger together,†a soft, feminine voice says over the loudspeaker. There are acrylic shields between guests and clerks, tape on the floor designating six feet between each patron like marks on the stage of a surreal, somber play. I pick up a jar absentmindedly, put it back, feel guilty; I never realized how frequently we touch each other.
— Alexis Bobrik (Berryville, Virginia)
Please buy only what you really need.
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This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis.
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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.
Lead Editor’s note: We will be publishing excerpts from Q18: dis/sustain/ability, guest edited by Bronwyn Preece, in order to make the content accessible to blind readers with audio screen readers. We’ll also be including audio descriptions of the Quarterly’s original layout designed by Stephanie Plenner. Please stay tuned for future posts and share widely. In thischapter, Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi describes the process for the work “Skinny.”
“Skinny” Layout designed by Stephanie Plenner, described by Katie Murphy, Photos by Cheng-Chang Kuo
Making art about Crip bodies has always been an urge to not only explore the meanings of our existence — and the social relationships with others — but also as a deliberate choice for constructing visual and tactile languages to document disability as a cultural phenomenon and familial history.
Rahnee (named used with permission) and I are sisters, not by blood, but by our connections to disability. Our contractured fingers and toes, and our Asian blood, made us sisters. Rahnee is half Thai and half white; I am a Taiwanese. Rahnee has psoriasis and I was born with two fingers and toes.
As a personal assistant, I help Rahnee with personal hygiene, including showering, applying lotions, massaging her skin and dressing. Sometimes I use my finger tips to peel off the excessive skin to relieve Rahnee from her swollen and inflamed skin. I would feel the body fluid rushing out of her skin between my nails and finger tips, then I would massage her skin with a thick layer of lotion. We often talk throughout this process as peer support time: sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, and sometimes we are just exhausted together.
It always felt like I was making sculptural art with Rahnee’s body: our conversations — languaged through strokes of hand — became a part of the stories woven and shared by each other. At the end of each “hygiene-care art†sessions, I would sweep the skin flakes off the bed sheet and on the floor, and form mounds of them before tossing to the bin.
Most of us have taught to see disability as something negative, debilitating, weak, incapable or vulnerable. it is something that people try to get rid of. Peeling and tossing away Rahnee’s skin are actions of relieving her from pain and itch, but are they also metaphors of getting rid of her disability? What does it mean to remove traces of her disabled body? If her skin flakes were evidence of her existence, what does it say about the gesture of throwing piece of her away?
While I contemplated on the questions above, I decided to turn to sewing and made pods to hold pieces of Rahnee’s skin. Disability shapes the way we interact with one another, it reformulates the way people relate and access to another human being which otherwise is absent in the non-disabled world. As a Crip artist of color, having disability and providing care to and making art about another disabled sister is about creating intimacy and Crip sisterhood. Most importantly, it is about preserving and sustaining the existence of my own kind.
Title: “Skinny†Artist: Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi Material: Human skin flakes, silk organza, sewing thread, embroidery thread and lotion. Date: 2014 ~ On-going
Photos by Cheng-Chang Kuo
Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi makes small-scale body adornments exploring the meanings of disabled women’s bodies by remapping the narratives of skin, scars, and medical and surgical interventions on the disabled bodies. Her work examines the potential of art to address the relationship between the body and social standards pertaining to beauty and disability. Her latest project focuses on body reconfiguration through delineating memories of medical and surgical Unexpected Anatomies intervention. Yi received a BFA, and MA in art therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of California Berkeley. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests include, Disability Art and Culture, social justice based art therapy, museum studies and disability fashion.
Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.
A FOREIGN VIRUS
In these days of solitude, I remember why I no longer play my Baby Taylor and sing Psalms to the Lord, why I no longer sit in pews on Sundays and absorb the proclamations of charismatic men, why, now, I stare at my phone, at a Facebook post from a pastor I once admired, and war with myself. Should I say my Chinese wife owes him no apologies? Is it enough that people’s hearts have broken for those of his ilk to choose another adjective? “The virus is from there!†they’d say. And where it’s from is not here.
— Nathaniel Cayanan (West Covina, California)
(Top photo: Our wedding, on top of today’s news.)
* * *
A JOYFUL, SELFISH RESPONSE
It’s pouring. I wander, watching the torrent soak boxes carrying student valuables. Puddles coalesce. Students hug each other. They butcher pop tunes. Music reverberates from several dorms. Beer cans and wine bottles clog trash bins. “A far cry from social distancing,†I tell myself.
After avoiding handshakes and giving virtual hugs or elbow-bumps to favorite professors and not-so-close friends, I find someone I’ve missed dearly. We hug and catch up over dinner. I briefly think to myself, “how many people can’t hug loved ones because of carelessness?†We hug again and say goodbye. Letting go is hard.
— David Vejar (Tustin, California)
Even the fog doesn’t adhere to social distancing as it suffocates the Pomona College clocktower.
* * *
IN FLORENCE, A NEW FRIEND
For two days we walk the empty streets. Only permitted to view David’s replica, not the museum he guards. A late dinner. The full moon behind her as she speaks in Italian. “He will take us to Rome before the lockdown tomorrow.†We pack the art history books. I read her tarot cards as we wait for our future. Tuscany fades away as we are lulled to sleep by the car, our knees touching each other, burning and tingling. In Rome, I look into her eyes, then she disappears behind a door, which David guards and I cannot enter.
— Devi (Cascade Mountains, Washington)
March 10, 2020. Florence, Italy.
* * *
CRISIS
“Crisis†in Chinese is written with not one, but two characters: danger, followed by opportunity.
Danger is everywhere. But what about opportunity?Have you noticed that our leaders are now capable of making change overnight? Transportation in Spain has been reduced by fifty percent. China’s pollution has dropped by a quarter. People are buying local and consuming less. Are these not the very behaviors that must occur to mitigate the environmental crisis?
A month ago, we were struggling to discuss the changes needed to avoid two-degree warming. Today, we are witnessing just how quickly agreements can be made.
— Camille Hanson (Madrid, Spain)
Crisis.
* * *
RJÚPA
The wind-driven snow has piled up all month into towering drifts with knife-edge crests. There is a white bird, a Rjúpa, a ptarmigan in winter dress. She nestles down in the lee of the drift just below the crest to ride out the storm. Against the snow her eye and beak make tiny black marks. She stays there for hours. She is patient, calm, enduring, safe, well-equipped by nature to survive the storm. I bring this memory forth, and I feel calmer, more able. Nature is generous with her gifts.
— Andrea Krupp (Pennsylvania)
March 14, 2020. Siglufjörður, Iceland.
______________________________
This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis.
———-
Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.
The formal beauty of John Newlings’s work belies his self-questioning and interrogation of our relationship with the more-than-human world.
Reviewed by Anne Douglas and Mark Hope, unfortunately Newling’s Dear Nature exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham is a victim of the current lockdown. This in-depth review is for the time being your guided tour. Anne and Mark are Board Members of The Barn, a multi-arts organisation in Aberdeenshire that focuses on the relationship between art and ecology. John Newling was artist in residence at The Barn (2015-17) and continues to actively engage with and support the development of the organisation.
In the corner of the gallery, the last work of John Newling’s exhibition is entitled ‘Reconciliation Steps’ (2019). It consists of a mirror and a rubber stamp on a small shelf. Looking into the mirror, a text reads “We have signed our names in your soil. So sorryâ€. This work evokes John’s response to the reality of the Anthropocene. As stated in the exhibition text, John is determined to understand “what it is to know that we have profoundly affected our environment… you can trace our evolution to a point where we have subdued nature, but to our own cost because we will make ourselves extinct.†This is the sharp, critical end of a stunningly beautiful, formally aesthetic body of work, which moves between nature and culture, materiality and ideas, interwoven with different notions of time.
‘Reconciliation Steps’ (2019). Image courtesy of the authors.
What is it to know that we have profoundly affected our environment?
The Dear Nature exhibition is situated in three large rooms that open into each other on the second top floor of the Ikon Gallery. As the title implies the work addresses nature throughout, at times with a deep sense of awe, at others profound curiosity and at others of irony, “Can we ever truly be together (with nature)?†John asks (Newling 2018).
“It is learning that deepens our love.†(Newling 2018 ‘3rd February, 2018’)
In the first room ‘365 days and 50 million year old leaves’ (2019) consists of a row of carefully constructed stacks of sticks that are as identical in size and shape to the extent that the material allows. John picked up a stick every day for a year, cut each one to the same length and blackened each of them with charcoal, then painted each end white.
‘365 days and 50 million year old leaves’ (2019), detail.
Installation view Courtesy the artist and the Ikon Gallery.
In this way John joins the cycle of growth and decay in nature, interrupting it by transforming abandoned branches into ‘stick wands’, then into formal sculpture. The similarity yet difference between one stack and another exposes the singular, wilful character of each stick. We come to realise that they are each unique forms of energy that are particular to the time and place in which they have grown, then fallen. It is as if by interrupting the trajectory that nature has set from growth to decay, by collecting and transforming what nature has given, a new element is introduced. The three stacks feature other objects including soil balls, feather quills and an ink well that extend the play and tension between nature and culture. The reference to magic in this relationship is strongly present.
John’s artistic process involves a deep paradox. His way of making art is rigorous, painstaking, structured and controlled and yet the outcome also feels improvisatory, as if somewhere along the way chance and serendipity had played their part.
John Cage, the experimental composer and visual artist, once criticised improvisation: “Most people who improvise slip back into their likes and dislikes and their memory, and don’t arrive at any revelation that they’re aware of†(Fiesst, 2009). Cage wanted to free sound from personal taste, to let sounds be themselves. It is this quality of letting things ‘be themselves’ that John evokes again and again in this exhibition; the sense that the work we are looking at ‘happened’ or ‘occurred’ in ways that were unpredictable and unforeseeable, even to John himself. He attends to the work in progress, continually responding to its emergent life.
‘From my garden’ (2018)
detail. Images courtesy of the artist.
In the second room of the three rooms we encounter ‘From my garden’ (2018), a large work in copper leaf and paint which creates a different record of John’s practice of collecting. This time it is a leaf from every tree within his garden. The leaves are formally organised in a grid and once again it is John’s particular approach to form building that frees the singular shapes of each species and reveals the immense variability across species. This play between determinacy and indeterminacy, between degrees of control and openness to serendipity and chance, is a distinct quality of both Newling and Cage’s work. It is a particular quality of freedom that is does not stand in opposition to constraint. Both artists evoke the way energy moves through material in nature, the blood through arteries, the wind through water, movement that is made possible by being contained, constrained but, free not just from personal taste, but also individual, human control.
‘Design for the duvet cover of a farmer’ (regrown 2019), Courtesy the artist and the Ikon Gallery
Dear Nature (2018), Courtesy the artist and the Ikon Gallery
In the third room ‘Design for a farmer’s duvet’ (regrown 2019) follows from an invitation to make work with a co-operative of flax farmers in Dieppe, Northern France. John created compost into which he planted flax seeds given to him by one of the farmers, Franck Sagaert. When the seedlings were a few inches high, John plucked each one out of the soil, wound each plant and root into a circle and pressed them, generating the motif for a ‘design’. The completed piece was created by gluing each pressed plant in rows onto a large sheet of flax woven in France. The structure evokes the linear form of a script. It is also repetitive in the time-honoured way that designs repeat but it is anything but ‘designed ‘ in any determinate sense. A seed becomes a seedling and then becomes material for new life as an artwork. The pattern is cyclical and rhythmic as well as linear and developmental, unfolding like a story that we are invited to explore, but not literally read.
“Love John†– a detail from a Dear Nature Letter printed in Nymans Language (2020)
Nymans language (2018)
Script appears as a leitmotif in this work. In ‘A Language from the garden (Nymans language)’ (2017), exhibited in the second room, John invents an alphabet drawn from different species of trees in the gardens of Nymans, West Sussex. The National Trust, who now own and run this historic property, commissioned the work. The leaf of each species forms a letter engraved in marble. Nymans Language is also a downloadable font that the public are invited to use. Where normally the shape of the letters of the alphabet are simply a means to an end rarely noticed, Nymans Language draws our fascination through the significance of each leaf shape and a sense of play and discovery that is fundamental to the way we, as human beings, decipher meaning. We become the child who is excited when he or she learns to read. We share the thrill of the code breaker who ‘cracks’ a secret.
Soil Books (detail) (2019). Image courtesy of the artist and the Ikon Gallery
‘Soil Books’ (2019) in the third room of the gallery are a series of nine sculptures in which the content of each ‘book’ is made with leaves picked up each day as John walks from his house into his garden. “It’s like a ritual, so that every leaf in those books – the language of the books – is from my gardenâ€. Each ‘page’ is made of processed soil with leaves that are pressed, gilded and stained with watercolour and each book contains twenty pages of which only the middle two pages are displayed. We might never read the pages beneath the ones that are presented, but we come to know the labour that has led to their coming into being. This is a spiritual labour that evokes the monastic but in some strange reversal. The order of the books is crucial because it indicates the change of seasons. Instead of renouncing life to focus on the spiritual, this series of works reconnects us with mystery in everyday experiences. Cage shared a similar sense of mystery and used different tactics to reveal this: 4’33 “(1952) frames an interval of time in which we as audience are invited to encounter the sounds we make as human beings when we gather together. It appropriates the ritual of the concert and concert hall to open up to the life that exists beyond the frame just as John’s gathered leaves experienced through the frame of the book in Soil Books, make visible the unpredictability and sheer beauty of the life in one material encountering another. In the work of both artists we continually move between the human and nature, co-creatively.
This particular dynamic is deeply felt in the ‘Library of Ecological Conservations – Leaves and Me’ (2017-19) also in the third room. The work consists of 36 ‘letters’ composed over the course of three years in which the apparent artifice of gilding in silver, gold and copper from the ‘base ‘materials of leaves and paper made from compost manifests a present day alchemy. We sense the magic that is contained in this library displayed in three groups of 12 works. In each work the materials have undergone a transformation, creating a life of their own, one that John has nurtured into being through carefully judged constraints and a practice of care, firstly in each individual work and secondly in the placing of each work within its group of 12.These works breathe within their own space and yet combine to create an almost mystical whole. The vaulted upper floors of this particular area of the gallery can rarely have been so evocative of a medieval cathedral, inviting us to reach out for something beyond.
View from the second into third room including Soil Books and Library of Ecological Conservations – Leaves and Me (2017-19). Courtesy of the artist and the Ikon Gallery
In the presence of such beautiful work focused on continuing nature’s processes, why do we have a final work that frames the need for reconciliation? The exhibition is entitled Dear Nature, a reference to an art work created in 2018 when John wrote a letter to nature every day for 81 days. Each letter begins with the recognition that human beings are degrading the conditions that enable us to live, a widening gap between ways of being that are incompatible and are indeed in need of reconciliation.
‘Dear Nature’, letter of 10th January, 2018.
Dear Nature
We have been lovers. We made deities from your wonders We worshipped you; laid our fears at your feet. We thought that we needed you to need us.
But wasn’t that just some way of seeking control?
Maybe we find it hard to accept that you are the most powerful and complex set of relationships that we can encounter; perhaps we got jealous of all your other affairs.
In our rush to evolve in our fights and flights, we have got lost among our own conceits; spinning such a terrible storm.
I am sorry.
What to do?
Yours John
The downward spiral implied here from love to worship to control gets to the core of the question of what it is to know that we have profoundly affected our environment. Each work in the three rooms of the gallery addresses this question in distinctive ways. The exhibition also spills over into public space. In the square opposite the Ikon Gallery there is an office complex belonging to NATWEST bank. In front of the bank with its proud NATWEST sign, is a tree in which John has placed large but discrete metal lettering that follows the line of the trunk with the words “So Sorry….â€.
‘Dear Nature’ (2019). Courtesy of the authors.
An apology is both the act of saying sorry for a wrong doing and the explanation and defence of a belief or system, especially one that is unpopular (Cambridge online dictionary). Dear Nature (2020) functions in the first way, saying sorry for the damage we have inflicted on nature and also in the second to expose problems of belief and practice that have led to our current predicament.
‘Dear Nature’, letter of January 15th, 2018
… Our need for surplus focused attention on improving you, efficiencies melded in the pressures of a market. We wanted more and more from you; growing yields belied the damage we were doing.
We signed our name in your soils.
Perhaps we did not know of this but we do now. It is a cycle that shows us our deficiencies. It is us that need to improve. We can do better.
No more signing in your soil.
Yours John
We have only described here a small sample of works in the exhibition. And no review can do justice to either the scope or the authority of this exhibition. It has been curated by an exceptional team at the Ikon Gallery under the directorship of Jonathan Watkins.
There are other exhibitions in the Ikon Gallery at the moment including, in the First Floor Galleries Judy Watson, an Australian artist of matrilineal Waanyi heritage, addresses Australia’s ‘secret war’ in relation to indigenous Aboriginal people and brutal forms of colonisation.
In the Tower Room of the second floor, Mariateresa Sartori (until 5th April, 2020) in which Chopin piano pieces are visualised as conversations between two people.
Yhonnie Scarce, who belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu people in Australia, will open in the Tower Room on 9th March – 31st May 2020, exploring the political and aesthetic qualities of glass, in particular the crystallisation of desert sand as a result of the British nuclear tests in her homeland between 1956-63.
(Top photo: Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and the Ikon Gallery)
References
Feisst, S. 2009, “John Cage and Improvisation: an Unresolved Relationship,†in eds. Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl. Musical Improvisation: Art, Education and Society, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. pp. 38–51.
Newling, J., 2018. Dear Nature. Warwick and Nottingham: Warwick Arts Collection and Beam editions.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
The John Byrne Award is open to anyone who is 16 or over living or studying in Scotland. Submit creative works in any medium to enter the competition for a £7500 top prize, and £500 quarterly prizes.
The John Byrne Award is Scotland’s most inclusive competition for emerging artists. Our aim is to encourage a discussion about societal values by promoting the creative work of our entrants.
We are looking for work that is thought-provoking and displays a sophisticated consideration of values.
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour; Communicating with their audiences; Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.
Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.
SOCIAL ISOLATION
It is four of us and a dog in one house with a porch facing west and as much of the world as will fit through two copper wires buried in a hill that is wringing out five days of rain that ripple down the storm drain into the creek that winds toward the whistle and rumble of an upriver train and a single swift against the sunset.
— Michael Terry (Columbia, Missouri)
(Top image: The view.)
* * *
CELLS
A gibbous moon rose, we slept through Wuhan, another SARS thing, it’ll blow over, the south-east Australian autumn, relief from the broiling summer we’ve survived, the pain in our chests, pushing out against our ribs to envelop the billion sentient mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, cremated in fire storms even hell trembled at; now the unemployed queue, one million, two million, hungry like the land is thirsty; I’ve given instructions: no funeral, burn me to ash, let the wind carry me with the cells of the billion to the sea, mountains, desert, let me go home at last.
— Barbara Curzon-Siggers (Clunes, Victoria, Australia)
Blazing silky oak.
* * *
A STEP AHEAD
It is the same every day. Wash your hands. No, you touched the sink handle. Wash your hands again. My brother struggles with OCD, and he also has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He is in a wheelchair and can’t move his hands, so we serve as his hands. Disinfect the package. Did you disinfect it with the wipes? I didn’t see you do it, you have to do it again. And again. And again. We are on full lockdown. We stay one step ahead of the news. Spray it down with Lysol. We can’t take any chances.
— Gabriella Brandom (Newport Beach, California)
Dusty spending time with our cat, making the most of the small moments.
* * *
ORDINARY THINGS
I wonder how we got here. To the place where ordinary things frighten. A doorknob, the handle on the mailbox, the faucet, our own hands.
When our daughter learned to walk, ordinary things frightened us too. The corner of the coffee table, the brick fireplace, the stairs. It took six months for her to steady and for us to take a breath. Once she swallowed a small piece of plastic. A trip to the ER. A kind, older doctor who blew bubbles to calm our fears. Does that kind doctor have ordinary things: a mask, gloves, time to calm fears?
— Brittany Adams (Huntington Beach, California)
Steps.
* * *
QUARANTANGO
We came to create an artist-residency program in the half-abandoned, mountain village of Fontecchio. Last month: Rome, no lines at the Vatican Museum, the Auditorium Parco della Musica, a dentist appointment. Three weeks ago: a winding drive for blues at a rural restaurant, to kiss both cheeks of everyone is good manners. The week after: a small dinner party where we sip rum, tap shoes, joke about The Decameron. Last week: to see friends or hike trails solo is a violation of the order. This week, restiamo a casa: he teaches me Tango, I remove wallpaper in long strips.
— Allison DeLauer (Fontecchio, L’Aquila, Abruzzo, Italia)
The master bedroom of a vacant house that sits prominently on the piazza with a view of the fountain. It will be transformed.
______________________________
This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis.
———-
Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.
4th March 2020: This Green Tease brought together representatives from Renfrewshire’s arts organisations and local government alongside visitors from further afield to discuss the ways that arts and culture in the area could respond to the climate emergency as declared by the council.Â
Introductions
Leonie Bell, Paisley Partnership Strategic Lead, gave us a quick update on Future Paisley, a programme of events, activity and investment that aims to harness the power of culture to radically change the area’s reputation and help lift its communities out of poverty. As part of this, a major exhibition and events programme will launch in Paisley’s Piazza Centre, which will involve opportunities for communities across Renfrewshire to feed into discussion about the area’s future.
Colin Grainger, Renfrewshire Council, discussed the council’s declaration of climate emergency and its target for net zero emissions by 2030, emphasising the role that arts and culture in the area could play in this and the importance of the response to the climate emergency recognising the specific economic and social issues that Renfrewshire faces.
Lewis Coenen-Rowe, Creative Carbon Scotland, laid out the argument for why urgent action on climate change in the arts and culture sector is necessary. He pointed to the recent storms and how climate change is making Scotland’s winters wetter as well as making extreme weather events more likely. He also showed a map showing how predicted sea level rises would significantly affect Renfrewshire. He discussed how responding to climate change is a matter of culture as much as science and requires fundamental changes in the ways we think and operate. Arts and culture are well positioned to do this, reaching most of Scotland’s inhabitants and having the resources and mindsets for tackling our ways of thinking, but they must also ‘walk the walk’ by reducing their own environmental impact. He recommended joining the Green Arts Initiative as a good starting point.
Presentation from Heather Claridge, Architecture and Design Scotland
Heather set the scene for us by laying out some of the ways that arts and culture can be mobilised towards sustainability goals. Her presentation discussed three projects that involved creative means of tackling sustainability issues in the west of Scotland.
Living, working, playing with waterwas a project involving artist Minty Donald using creative methods to engage members of the public on our relationship with water and how it could become more positive in light of increased rainfall and flooding following climate change
Land Art Generator Initiative had artists, architects and engineers collaborate on designing innovative renewable energy generation facilities that integrated social, cultural, and aesthetic concerns into their designs, trying to simultaneously work on technical and social solutions
Stalled Spaces was a project that encouraged and supported community groups to make creative use of unused land within cities, with an emphasis on environmentally inflected projects
Her main lessons from this work were:
Create a flexibility-defined brief: artistic and creative work is most effective when open-ended, allowing development during the project rather than working towards pre-defined outcomes
Nurture a sense of partnership: take the time to allow people coming from different fields to properly understand each other’s perspectives in order to collaborate effectively
Connect dots to strategic outcomes: think about how artistic and creative work can collaborate with work in other areas and support wider strategy
Group Activity: Walking the walk and talking the talk in sustainability
We then moved on to trying to think about how we might apply some of the things that Heather had discussed. In groups we designed and planned cultural activities of a wide variety of kinds, depending on the experience and backgrounds around the table. The aim was for these events to engage with specific issues pertinent to the climate emergency that would make a contribution to our wider culture shift, but would also avoid negative impacts by being designed in a sustainable way. Responses included:
A bike-powered film screening
An event promoting sustainable and active travel taking place alongside a congested road
An event taking place at a stalled space starting as a performance and creating something permanent to remain on the site
An event getting people to weave or knit together a poem that could then be displayed in public
A green celebration of Ferguslie Park, working with artists and members of the community to change perceptions of the area
A litter-pick where the rubbish is then used to make art or for other creative purposes
Speaker Panel
We finished with quick-fire presentations from arts organisations who are already carrying out environmental work.
Becca Lewis, Glasgow Women’s Library, discussed her involvement in their ‘Green Cluster’. She emphasised that worldwide gender inequality means that climate change impacts fall more heavily on women than men, making it a feminist issue. She led us through practical actions they had taken, including joining the Green Arts Initiative, developing and publishing an environmental policy, carrying out an energy audit, using vegetarian catering, installing a more efficient boiler, and encouraging staff to travel using low emission forms of transport. Their current plans include a strong ecofeminist angle to their Open The Door festival in May 2020 and running a consultation with their local community using Climate Challenge funding.
Gillian Steel, ReMode, introduced us to some of the environmental issues in the fashion industry, with less than 1% of discarded clothing being recycled and clothes now being worn fewer times before being thrown away. She pointed out that clothes require a huge amount of water to be produced and many cannot be recycled. Renfrewshire-based ReMode sells re-used and upcycled clothing through their shop, offers creative workshops and training in clothing repair, and puts on talks, events, and fashion shows. They aim to help shift the fashion industry towards more sustainable ways of running.
Scott Morris, Scottish Ensemble, led us through their sustainability ‘journey’, from beginning to record their emissions, to writing an environmental policy, to advocating within the cultural sector, to premiering Elemental, their first creative response to the climate crisis. He emphasised the importance of getting buy-in from management staff and board members in order to make progress and pointed out that, like many arts organisations, travel was by far their largest source of emissions and the issue that most urgently needs to be tackled across the sector. He finally led us through potential future steps for Scottish Ensemble, suggesting potential methods of reducing travel emissions from touring.
Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.
In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.
We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.
Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:
Changing their own behaviour; Communicating with their audiences; Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.
I was never one to believe in “art for the sake for art.†There are simply too many imbalances, injustices, and ignorance in our world (and in ourselves) – it would be a pity to waste our creativity on nonsense. The divorce from the environment, the abuse of Mother Earth and our single-sided relationship to it… these underly much of our suffering. For, what is war but an attempt to control, monopolize, and deplete natural resources? What is the root cause of many diseases if not the toxins we pump into the Earth and our bodies? And what is gender inequality if not a reflection of our skewed attitude towards all things feminine, beginning with Mother Earth?
In 2019, I was invited to participate in Climate Change Theatre (CCTA), spearheaded by The Arctic Cycle in New York City. CCTA is a biennial, worldwide participatory project that coincides with the United Nations COP meetings. It utilizes theatre to bring people together to shed light on climate change issues and encourage communities and individuals to take environmentally conscious action.
It was my first time participating in CCTA. I was asked to write a 5-minute play about an aspect of the climate crisis. The project resonated with every level of my being, as a writer and theatermaker, an ecofeminist and a human being.
Seeking inspiration for writing, I walked among the trees. I am one of the luckier people who live close to nature – in a forest to be exact. If you listen with all your senses, you can hear the song of all that lives. I dialogued with the elements, and from that, The Butterfly that Persisted was born – an ode to Nature, the ultimate warrior that persisted to exist and abound in spite of everything. And to the human being who persisted to envision and strive for betterment, taking action no matter how small.
I wrote The Butterfly as a poem, a lyrical spoken-word poem, with two primary voices – one in “regular font†and the other in “italics.†One voice represents the elements of nature, beginning as a butterfly and morphing into Water, Wind, Mother Earth, and the Thought itself. The other voice is that of the human being.
I was tremendously pleased to see The Butterfly land in more than 24 cities, to places I’ve never been… from Australia, to India, England, Canada and across the US.
I wish I could have seen all the presentations, but that would have been a financial and environmental catastrophe. The great thing about writing, however, is that your words can travel so you don’t have to! Thus said, as a playwright who also directs and performs, I was terribly curious about the process and staging of the various Butterfly editions. So, I contacted the organizers and directors… and I am so glad I did.
The casting and directing was so diverse, it was quite exciting. I had written the play for one feminine voice, suggesting the possibility of a duet or an ensemble. Not only were all these options realized, but in combinations I would not have thought of – and transcending gender.
Faces of The Butterfly
The Butterfly’s first appearance was in Bridport, England, performed by Sally Lemsford as a one woman play, in a street car. I am quite fond of site-specific performances and the new and unexpected flavors that come along with that. I recall an instant when a cat walked onto the podium while I was performing my play Turaab in Turkey. Another time, dancing with bird wings in the Bay Area, the sun shone at the very end of the performance – as if the sky was “working the lights.â€
At Iowa State University, The Butterfly was staged as an ensemble piece, with the butterfly in the middle (see photo below.) The organizers had contacted me earlier to ask for a family-friendly version of the play, with three instances to consider. It’s not so straightforward to censor one’s own work, but I’m glad I did it. I even ended up keeping one of the changes for my final version of the play. An unexpected result.
Britney Walters in The Butterfly That Persisted at Iowa State University.
Theater Alliance Kansas staged The Butterfly as a solo reading with the actress rotating the music stand while taking on the different voices. At the National Center for Performing Arts in Mumbai, it was presented as a staged reading with two women.
In New York, Hudson River Playback Theater staged The Butterfly with two females, accompanied by sparse improvised music. This was followed by audience members’ personal stories enacted on the spot, echoing the emotions in the play. Powerful!
The Wilbury Theater Group at the University of Rhode Island cast The Butterfly with one female actor playing the elements and several mixed-gender actors playing the human(s). This surprised me at first. My inclination would have been to cast one human and many elements, as I regarded the human as the one going through a transformation and the elements of nature as “the one and the many.†However, if we look at the butterfly as the metamorphosing being in conversation with multiple humans, it makes the experience universal. Again… another way to look at it – another effect.
Culture*Park Theatre in Massachusetts staged the play with a woman and a man, standing with their backs to each other. Now that would have never come to mind! But oh wow, what a beautiful image. I might have thought of including male voices amongst the elements of nature, but as a duet with a man! But why not? Nature has both a feminine and masculine side – and we have both expressed within us.
Another staging that would not have immediately come to mind took place at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. There, The Butterfly was on stage in a spotlight, and the actor playing the human was seated in the audience, just as a voice. This must have made the audience feel part of the play, part of the problem (and the solutions.) Very nice!
Then there were the Young Womxns Voices in Colorado, whose poster keeps drawing a smile on my face. They represented the humans with three performers standing center stage, and the elements with seven performers appearing around them – as if heard and not seen. A few weeks before the performance, the team had gone on a retreat in the mountains to work while being immersed in nature. “The tone and content of this play unleashed a new maturity amongst the group,†said Sarah Fahmy, who directed the play in Colorado.
This is the ideal scenario, when a written play results in a product (performance) and serves as a process for the actors, and hence the audience. Add to that an environmental initiative… well, it doesn’t get any better!
Climate Strike on the CU Boulder campus. Photo by Beth Osnes.
The Young Womxns Voices took the symbol of the butterfly and made it their own during a Climate Strike on September 20, 2019 on the University of Colorado campus, while 16-year-old Finny Guy declared on the megaphone: “If a dove is the symbol of peace, then a butterfly is the symbol of change.â€
Yes. Young people will lead the way to a greener future. I know that with all my heart.
As a performer, I couldn’t resist doing my own interpretation of the play. I presented it as a one-person audio performance, launching with it my podcast ArabWomanTalking.Â
Finally, I’ve said this before, but I will say it again: Thank you CCTA for a most rewarding experience – professionally and personally. From the theme of “Lighting the Way,†to the process of writing, and the insight that it brought, to seeing The Butterfly spread her wings, to connecting with wonderful people around the world who share a love for the environment and the performing arts – it all leaves me feeling expansive and optimistic. I guess that’s what happens when you talk about something that really matters to you. Always good to remember. When it comes from the heart, it’s usually right on.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Raúl Hernández and Homero Gómez, two activists campaigning for the conservation of monarch butterflies and the woods in which they hibernate in Mexico. Both men were found dead at the beginning of 2020 as a result of their activism. May they rest in peace, and may our world be freed from the greed that is killing Nature and the heroes who strive to honor and protect it.
(Top image: Young Womxn Voices at the University of Colorado. Photo by Beth Osnes.)
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Lana I. Nasser is a Jordanian-American writer, performing artist, facilitator, and researcher based in the Netherlands, telling stories on the page and on the stage. Working across genres, wearing various hats. Informed by academic background in psychology, consciousness studies and dreams. Inspired by language, nature and mythology. Working internationally; an award here – a grant there; publications in Arabic and English, and most recently in Dutch. Founder of Aat Theater and Maskan for artists in a forest. An ecofeminist, beginning permaculturist and beekeeper.
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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.
Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.
PANDEMIC REVISITED
I spoke with my 95-year-old aunt yesterday. Her mind is on her parents, Americans who met in Paris after losing their spouses to the 1918 flu epidemic. They had their first baby out of wedlock, more common than scandalous in a time when a quarter of the world’s population was infected by the flu. That baby was my mother. As a widow in her eighties, my grandmother penned poems of longing about her true love, whom she hospiced in a deserted hotel in Kissimmee, Florida: the young husband who died in her arms.
— Bethia Sheean-Wallace (Fullerton, California)
(Top image: My grandparents home, The Jungle Prada, in St. Petersburg, Florida.)
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I HELD HER
The morning they announced the pandemic, my grandmother died. She died in one day.
My grandmother’s body shook on that afternoon. I held her. It would be the last time I would hold her. In the afternoon, I was visiting her and doing my homework and there was no quarantine. Eight hours later I was sitting inside the car and my mom sent me a text. She couldn’t make the phone call.
All of that seems far away because my dad bought twenty rolls of toilet paper and now I’m making my way through twenty bottles of beer.
— Cameron Diiorio (Costa Mesa, California)
Cameron with her grandmother, taken in 2018.
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THE OFFLINE PROFESSOR
I wake at 3 AM, as if prompted by an alarm, but I have nowhere to go. My school is closed; I am suddenly supposed to teach online. Fuck online. I miss my students, my colleagues, work. Do the students have reliable wifi? Do they even have computers at home? Are they working because they need to pay rent? So many of them work in food service. What is this tickle in my throat? Was that a dry cough? I get up and find the thermometer. No fever. No fever, but no more sleep tonight either.
— Melissa Knoll (Corona, California)
Missing home from home.
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SEARCHING FOR COURAGE
I’m thankful my mother isn’t dealing with all this. I’m thankful she doesn’t have to live in fear of another disease infecting her compromised body, though I do wish I could hear her voice.
She would respond to the current state of the world with words of courage and comfort. Neither dismissing my fears nor playing into them. She would repeat the words she always spoke to her students:
“Face the future with warm courage and high hopes.â€
My days at home begin by looking out the window and searching for her courage.
— Lisa Kitchens (Brooklyn, New York)
A view from my kitchen window, where I spend most mornings.
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This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis.
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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.
