Monthly Archives: June 2020

Gas Masks and Honeybees: The Visual Culture of Earth Day

By Thomas Peterson

I’ve never been all that moved or inspired by Earth Day, or at least not by the 21st century Earth Days I’ve known. I have experienced April 22nd primarily as a celebration of aestheticized environmentalism and corporate greenwashing, when I’ve noticed it at all. I’m not alone in these feelings: in a piece in Sierra calling to â€œReturn Earth Day to Its Revolutionary Past”, youth climate activist Jamie Margolin writes that she “hate[s] Earth Day. Or at least the modern-day, Hallmark-card Earth Day.”

The Earth Days I remember have offered sanitized visions of an almost Edenic world – a planet afflicted by a few human messes that might be cleaned up and set right if we were all to plant a tree or look at the internet through an emerald filter once every 365.25 days.

Rather than exposing the dire ecological straits we find ourselves in, the corporate-driven visual culture of Earth Day tends to impose a delusional image of a near Arcadia: cartoon flowers encircling a blotchy turquoise dot, a corporate logo inscribed on rolling green hills, the sun emerging just over the horizon. I’ve always found the saccharine messaging about “caring for our mother” to be cruelly disingenuous when accompanied by no greater action than a green-lettered press release, another twist of the knife of anthropogenic environmental destruction. Corporations have spent the last several decades weaponizing idyllic aesthetics and pristine natural scenes to mask the ecocidal violence they have wrought, and I regret that artists have sometimes been enlisted in crafting the visual culture of this International Day of Greenwashing.

Let’s take Google as a case in point. One of the most powerful and profitable companies in the world, Google has recently come under fire for funding climate deniers, making large contributions to purveyors of politicized climate misinformation like the vaguely-named Competitive Enterprise Institute and the State Policy Network, alongside Koch-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. Google made these donations all while claiming to support global action on climate change.

The most visited webpage in the world, April 22, 2020.

Google also happens to maintain the most visited website on the internet. Each day, all of its pages are graced with a Google Doodle, a little drawing or animation typically celebrating an event, holiday, or anniversary. Earth Day is no exception. Google’s Earth Day Doodle will likely be the most widely seen image in the world this week, the work of art with the single largest audience: Google processes 3.5 billion searches every day.

The internet giant chose to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with an interactive game: an animated bee flutters next to a cartoon planet, oddly ocean-less and dotted with shrubs. A “play” button pulses on top of the planet, inviting the user to begin.

I click. Flowers bloom in a row and the bee, rendered as a little yellow dot, zooms around the pastel planet, still alarmingly lacking in water. The following text blips across the screen as the anthropomorphized bee zooms up to greet us:

Happy 50th Anniversary of Earth Day! Today we celebrate our planet and one of its smallest, most critical organisms: The bee! Did you know? Pollination by bees makes two-thirds of our world’s crops possible… As well as 85% of the world’s flowering plants! Learn more about our winged friends, and help them in their journey to pollinate a variety of blooms…

No mention of climate change, no allusion to environmental degradation, barely a hint that these bees or the plants they pollinate might be in danger. Tinkly, synth-y music fades in and I begin to mouse my bee through ceaselessly scrolling identical meadows, bumping into flowers that magically multiply at contact. Every so often, I’ll do a particularly good job pollinating one of these determinedly non-specific flowers and an inoffensive bee fact will appear: “drones are male bees!”

Earth Day 2020 Google Doodle: I mouse my bee through ceaselessly scrolling meadows.

Setting aside Google’s failure to mention any environmental risks to bees in this sweet interactive, the designers of this widest-reaching Earth Day image would have been hard pressed to choose a less climate-related environmental problem than the plight of the honeybee. As David Wallace-Wells has reported, the panic over bee colony collapse is essentially a “climate red herring.” While most of the planet’s insects are disappearing due to warming, â€œcolony collapse disorder has basically nothing to do with that.”Commercial honeybees are dying because industrial beekeepers expose them to insecticides called neonicotinoids.

While Google partnered with a lovely organization called The Honeybee Conservancy to create this interactive, the truths omitted by this visual celebration of Earth Day says much more about Google’s priorities than the messaging they’ve chosen to include. On this international day of environmental action, the company with the world’s largest platform marked the day’s passage with a visual representation that makes no mention of the greatest crisis (environmental or otherwise) that humanity has ever faced, instead choosing to highlight an environmental issue that, in fact, has very little to do with our accelerating climate catastrophe.

It all comes down to aesthetics, and Google is not alone. Somewhere along the line, we decided that the visual and artistic language that accompanied Earth Day would soothe and sanitize, coddle and greenwash – rather than expose and motivate.

But Earth Day hasn’t always been like this, and it doesn’t have to stay this way. Earth Day began in 1970 as a day of mass protest and consciousness-raising, and it initiated vital political recalibration in the United States, ushering in a decade of legislative and legal protection for the environment.

Official national Earth Day poster, 1970. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the aesthetics of the first Earth Day were very different. The official national poster showed a clogged highway under an ominous orange sky, the sun blocked by smoke-spewing factories, airplane contrails dusting a tilting Capitol dome. The poster represented environmental reality, not an imagined natural idyll. Dirty industry and fossil fuel-powered transportation were a danger to us all. 

Another inaugural Earth Day poster, created by Robert Leydenfrost and Don Brewster, was even more ominous, a full-face gas mask enveloping a darkened earth in a shadowy void. The message was unambiguous: all life, human and non-human, was endangered by atmospheric pollution.

“Earth Day” by Robert Leydenfrost (designer) and Don Brewster (photographer), 1970.

Eerily familiar now that masks have become de rigueur across much of the United States, the iconography of the gas mask was central to the aesthetic identity of this first Earth Day, which drew 20 million Americans, a tenth of the country’s population at the time. Protestors nationwide wore masks and carried flowers, emphasizing both the stakes of the environmental crisis and the real-time harm done by air pollution.

Earth Day, 1970, Bettmann/Getty Images.

This flower and mask combination was a brilliant visual protest: the masks left no doubt about the severity of the situation. The visual culture of Earth Day in 1970 made it clear that the planet was in crisis and people were in danger; no cartoon forest or paean to Mother Earth would be sufficient. At the same time, the flowers were a persistent reminder of all that might be lost, of the beautiful world worth fighting for, of the hope that such a world might bloom again.

City Hall Park, Earth Day, 1970, AP Photo.

This Earth Day, and for all the Earth Days to come, we must find a way to strike that balance again. The stakes are too high for cute utopianism. Earth Day may have devolved into a corporatized greenwashing opiate, animated flora and fauna masking collaboration in ecocide, but it can become revolutionary again if we pair an unblinkered exposition of the extremity of the crisis with a reaffirmation of our love for life on earth.

We must make images that tell the devastating truth about what is happening to our planet and the life that inhabits it, images so powerful they cannot be sanitized into endless cute bee oblivion. These images must radicalize us, radicalize us with love. Smell the blooming magnolias, in spite of the gas mask. 

(Top image: New York City, Earth Day, 1970. Santi Visalli/Archive Photos via Getty Images)

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Thomas Peterson is a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis. He is an Artistic Associate with The Arctic Cycle, co-organizing Climate Change Theatre Action. He recently returned from a Harvard Williams-Lodge Scholarship in Paris, where he wrote a thesis on the aesthetic of the sublime in the theatrical representation of the Anthropocene. He created Roy Loves America, a multi-form performance piece about Roy Cohn, and is developing an original adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, set on a dying planet. His engagement in climate activism stretches back to high school, when he led a successful fossil fuel divestment campaign.

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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.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Dear Earth: I Love You

By Chantal Bilodeau 

Dear Earth, today is as good a day as any to tell you how much I love you. Cooped up in my apartment in New York City, helplessly watching the news as thousands of people suffering from COVID-19 breathe their last breath, I’m reminded of how much you mean to me. And though I’m heartbroken at the pain and suffering of my fellow humans and can’t bring myself to properly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I still want to take a moment to express my gratitude.

Gratitude, because every morning, the sun outside my window beckons me to get up, even when I don’t feel like it. And when the evening comes after an aimless day spent in isolation and I don’t know where to direct my attention anymore, you give me the unexpected gift of a newly clear sky filled with a million stars.

I find it amazing that your seasons still march on, from winter to spring and soon to summer, whether we pay attention or not. As the weeks go by, I see flowers bloom and buds turn into leaves, coloring the urban landscape in soft pastels and tender green. I had almost forgotten that you can do all of that without us. And how astonishing that some of your wild creatures – the ones we usually only see from afar because they’re too weary to wander into our towns, the wild goats and the coyotes and the fallow deer – are now visiting the places where we no longer roam! “Hello,” I feel like saying. “Can we hang out? I’m a little lonely over here, separated from my own species. Maybe we can keep each other company?”

And by the way, thank you for putting up with our excesses and our temper tantrums, our greed and our indifference, our honest mistakes and our willful ignorance. You patiently endure our petty in-fighting, our endless politicking, and our deflections. No matter how disruptive our actions are, you continue to hold us in your embrace with great compassion. When the future is so uncertain, your calm and steadiness are comforting.

It’s true that we have a tendency to complain about you a lot. It’s too hot or too cold. Too rainy or too humid. It’s too far, too unpredictable, too dangerous. But don’t pay attention to any of it. Really. We don’t mean anything by it; it’s just how we relate to each other. It’s how we make conversation when we have nothing better to say. Because oftentimes, what we say is less important than the simple act of reaching out and talking to another human being.

You and I have gone on grand adventures over the years. I have been to some of your furthest reaches, and every time, your beauty and sheer magnitude have taken my breath away. In fact, it was those experiences that led me to fight for you. I saw everything that you are, everything that you so generously give, and I felt a responsibility to ensure that no harm was done to you. You have inspired me in ways I can’t even begin to describe and in return, I have vowed to use my artistic gifts to encourage others to honor and respect you.

At the same time, it’s strange that it has taken this falling away of everything familiar to realize how much I miss you. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy to lose myself in the busyness of New York life. It would be easy to think of you almost in the abstract. But in our current slowed-down state, I’m acutely aware of feeling both separated from you and so connected that my day-to-day wellbeing is intimately linked to yours.

Which brings us back to today: Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. A milestone. For 50 years, billions of us have celebrated this day and pledged to do everything we can to keep you safe. Billions of us have recognized that our breath and yours are intimately connected, that our inhale is forever your exhale. And, lest we forget this important lesson, the COVID-19 pandemic is here to remind us with great urgency. It’s here to teach us anew what we already know but often conveniently forget.

Dear Earth, I love you so, so much. One day, like so many people this past month, I will give you my last breath. But in the meantime, I promise to continue to do everything I can to keep us both alive and thriving.

(Top image: Fort Tryon Park in New York City. Photo by Chantal Bilodeau.)

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Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the founder of Artists & Climate Change, and the Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle, an organization that uses theatre to foster dialogue about our global climate crisis, create an empowering vision of the future, and inspire people to take action.

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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.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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The Green Rooms: The Earth is Watching… Let’s Act

What it is:

All Green Room events are in English only

As part of its response to the escalating climate crisis – and in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic – NAC English Theatre in partnership with Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA), the Canada Council for the Arts, The City of Kingston, HowlRound Theatre Commons and The National Theatre School is bringing together participants for an extraordinary three-day/three-country digital experiment to re-imagine the future of theatre.

Join us for spirited conversations with leaders in fields such as climate activism, ecological economy and environmental humanities, as well as with theatre artists and leaders who have found innovative ways to engage with the climate crisis.

A limited number of active participants will join the event on Zoom, from eight cities across three countries: Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, and Halifax, as well as London (U.K.) and New York. In addition, a livestream of the event will be accessible to spectators everywhere.

Please note: If you are not in one of those cities, you can still participate by joining the city closest to you or the one most meaningful to you!

Co-curated by Sarah Garton Stanley and Chantal Bilodeau.


Schedule: (subject to change)

DAY 1: Wednesday, June 10, 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. (EDT)

  • Opening Picnic

DAY 2: Thursday, June 11, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. (EDT)

  • Climate Despair – 3-4 p.m. (EDT)
  • How Artists Respond – 4-5 p.m. (EDT) 
  • Leadership and Structures for Change – 5-6 p.m. (EDT)
  • Averting Climate Breakdown – 6-7 p.m. (EDT)
  • The Future: What is it? – 9-10 p.m. (EDT) 
  • DJ Syrus Marcus Ware: Dance Like the Earth is Watching – 10-11 p.m. EDT

DAY 3: Friday, June 12, 2:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. (EDT)

  • The Closing Act

How to participate:

The Green Rooms are an online gathering space where we will engage with the climate crisis. There are two ways to get involved:

As an active participant

If you wish to actively participate, experiment and play, send an email expressing your interest to climatechangecycle@nac-cna.ca.

Please note, there is limited availability for active participants. If interested please be in touch at your earliest convenience: climatechangecycle@nac-cna.ca.

During the three-day event, active participants will be called upon to help create an environment of curiosity and play. This multi-layered gathering has never been tried. As an active participant you will be part of creating a raucous space that is part-picnic, part-convening and part co-creation.

As a spectator

Spectators can join the livestream throughout the scheduled times above and witness all the sessions, discussions and performances over the three days.

Watch the livestream here


For more information:

Contact climatechangecycle@nac-cna.ca 

Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘Love, like air, must be filtered through face masks’

By Meghan Moe Beitiks, Nora Fry, Rebecca Anderson, Sravanthi Mamillapalli 

Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories hereSubmit your own here.

When up is down and down is up

“It’s funny you’ve been telling me to go outside for the past year,” my client laughs. “‘It’s healthy,’ you said. Ready to eat your words?”

“Not yet.” I appreciate the irony.

As a counselor, maybe I should tell my clients: “You were right in choosing video games over face-to-face friendships,” but that doesn’t feel right, even when fresh air is dirty and direct human contact may be deadly. All I can do is accept that it’s okay for me to be confused, my client to be smug, and for anyone else to feel whatever they feel.

— Rebecca Anderson (New Bern, North Carolina)

Now we do therapy in the park.

* * *

Breathe through the confusion

I’m not waking up at 5:30 am anymore. Watching far too many series and movies. I’m up until 2:00 am, easy. Sleep! It doesn’t feel earned. Missing out on the deadlines I’ve set for myself. But I’ve done this before; driven by my heart, the deadlines set by my brain hold no water. Same goes for logic. Logic dictates, “this is how it should be,” but my heart laughs and says, “well it’s okay! Do what your heart says.” But then my subconscious says, “if we know anything about us, this will probably go on.” Just breathe.

— Sravanthi Mamillapalli (Hyderabad, Telangana, India)

(Top photo: Breathe. This too shall pass.)

* * *

Digital Suns

I’ve been doing a lot of studio visits via video conferencing with students. They’ve had to transition their final exhibition for the semester to online social media platforms. One student has been working on a time-lapsed video of a painting she was making: celestial, with deep browns and oranges. I asked if she had seen the hi-res photo of the surface of the sun that came out this year. It served as a useful prompt. In the meantime, I made a gif of its wrinkled, cellular surface, in grayscale. The sun seems very distant, bodily, remote as all other things.

— Meghan Moe Beitiks (Gainesville, Florida)

Based on the Inouye Solar Telescope hi-resolution photo of the surface of the sun.

* * *

Homeschooling: Lessons Learned

Love, like air, must be filtered through face masks. Hugs hold not people, but danger. Home has become a lifeboat on a sea of time with no safe land in sight. We only hope we have enough supplies. A knock must be ignored until the delivery man is far enough away to safely open the door. A sneeze is an assault. A cough is a weapon of intimidation. The unmasked face is now the dangerous one. One man’s right to gather is more important than another’s right to live.

— Nora Fry (McMinnville, Tennessee)

Building something, together.

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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.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Wild Authors: Nancy Burke

By Mary Woodbury

Thanks to Nancy Burke, author of Undergrowth (Gibson House Press 2017), we travel to 1960s Brazil to explore the historical problem that continues to repeat itself today: the logging of forests and catastrophic environmental and cultural conflicts that follow.

In 1960s Brazil, an indigenous group is on the brink of a tragedy, the dimensions of which they are only beginning to grasp. A small band of disaffected government agents, academics and visionaries is determined to fight for their cause. Among them is James who, along with his nephew Larry, travels to Pahquel, a village in the crosshairs of an environmental showdown. When James dies en route, Larry is left to decide: Should he attempt to escape his own personal demons by immersing himself in a completely foreign culture? Or retreat and resume his disaffected life in the U.S.? What costs will he bear if he chooses to press forward?

In this luminous first novel, Nancy Burke gives voice to the complexities of social, anthropological and environmental forces. Melding poetry with touches of magical realism, here is a page-turner of an adventure story that rests upon deep and unsettling layers of undergrowth. As stated in Booklist:

This densely packed debut novel…demands that readers set aside their preconceptions about society and civilization and immerse themselves in the world of this small band of renegades, whose personal journeys are every bit as dark and dangerous as any voyage into Brazil’s wilderness.

CHAT WITH THE AUTHOR

What kind of environmental showdown is happening in your novel, and does it reflect real-life happenings?

An issue I often talk about when I do readings is my experience of a struggle – one that many authors face – regarding the question of how to allow myself the space to write fiction while still respecting the integrity of my book’s setting. The concern is even more acute when the setting has, in life, deeply affected people in traumatic or tragic ways. And absolutely, in 1960s Brazil, where my book is set, there was a catastrophic confrontation between the indigenous tribes and the government, and the environment was hanging in the balance. 

Many aid organizations today, Amazon Watch and Survival International are two of these, recognize that partnering with indigenous groups is generally the best way to preserve the forest, and problems arise when ecologically focused groups try to intervene over the heads of those who best know the land and whose lives are at stake. My novel highlights the reckless and dehumanizing ways in which the “Indian problem” was handled by many during that period, when some who were hired supposedly to protect the tribes exploited them instead because of the monetary value of the natural resources upon which the tribes were sitting. Attitudes toward the tribes and towards the land go hand-in-hand; a failure to respect one amounts to a failure to respect both. Historically, after the double-rape of the tribes and the land by SPI was exposed, awareness was raised to some extent, but I’m sad to say that with the recent election in Brazil, we’re returning to the bad old days and worse.

I was scheduled to do a presentation at Amazon Watch just days after the election, and I honestly debated about cancelling just because I didn’t think I could speak without weeping, though I was glad I went, because I needed to be with people who appreciated the extent of the disaster. Bolsonaro promised on the campaign trail to roll back both environmental and tribal protections, will certainly slash the already devastated budgets of the government agencies that protect the tribes and their lands, and has given a sense of impunity to individuals, families and especially companies that the forest’s riches are theirs to harvest.

Thanks so much for your work on this and bringing these problems to light, both in fiction and in real life. You’ve been compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez (one of my favorite authors!) and Isabel Allende, and have a touch of magical realism. Can you tell us more about this?

I sure am happy and honored (though a bit bewildered) to be placed in their company, by anybody ever! Their words and visions are profound, transformative, and their magic isn’t confined just to their talents for making stuff up. I used a bit of magical realism with great trepidation in my book, because I wanted to get across how temporally fragile these tribes become the minute they come into contact with the so-called civilized world. I had started before I knew what the book would be about with thoughts about pets, how strange it is that we witness their entire lifespans, from youth to death, which is not how we experience people. Animals show us the transience of our lives. It’s true what Joyce said – we don’t deserve them.

Can you tell us more about how you were inspired to build your characters, your world?

The book began with an image, and it just took hold and grew. I sat in on a class with an extraordinary professor when I was in graduate school and remembered him showing us a film about his work with the Kayapo, talking to a group of Kayapo men as he waved a book of revolutionary theory in the air. The image was compelling, and from then on, it expanded into a world I walked around in in my head for years. I did research, of course, but then just put it all aside and focused on capturing the world in my mind, speaking that made-up language to myself, and forgetting the Chicago winters as best I could.

Comparing the 1960s to now, what ecological crises are similar or have changed?

There’s that old proverb: May you live in interesting times. We’re in one now, for sure, because never in recorded history has there been such a deep appreciation of people and experiences that are “other,” on the one hand, and then such a political/ economic/ technological engine of destruction on the other hand to steamroll that sensitivity.  Both multi-nationals and governments represent authoritarian regimes of such power as has never been seen before, and their yield of climate change means that the destruction of Earth is now possible in a way that it wasn’t before.

Anything else you want to add?

Just that I wasn’t intending to be such a downer! The world is full of beauty and small, miraculous kindnesses, and poetry, and we must never give up on those gifts. They’re what we live for, and that’s as close to immortality as we’re going to get. As they say in one of my favorite songs (“Mayfly” by Dolly Varden), we are lucky, and the story is not over yet.

You’re not a downer. In fact, we need to have a multi-faceted approach to recognizing and fixing our problems, which includes some hope and appreciation as well as some dire and blunt warnings. Thanks so much, Nancy, for your time and interesting information about Undergrowth.

BRAZIL TODAY

They say history repeats itself, and progress means taking one step forward and two steps back. In Brazil’s recent election, hard-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro – similar to the president in the United States – campaigned on rollbacks that had been set in place to protect the environment. This worries people everywhere but particularly indigenous people at ground zero. According to National Geographic, Beto Marubo, a native leader from the Javari Valley Indigenous Land in Brazil’s far-western borderlands, stated:

We are very worried, based on what the president-elect has stated. If what he has promised comes to pass, there will be chaos and upheaval in the Amazon. Many brothers tell us there are invasions, people entering the territories with no regard for the rules and no fear of the authorities.

Some facts on the ground:

  • Brazil once had the highest deforestation rate in the world.
  • Since 1970, over 700,000 square kilometers have been destroyed.
  • Between May 2000 and August 2006, Brazil forest loss was an area larger than Greece.
  • Forest loss includes deforestation for cattle ranching, development, hydroelectric, mining, soybean farming, and logging activities.
  • Rainforests are needed for the critical carbon dioxide exchange process to help mitigate global warming.
  • Brazilian rainforests are one of the most biodiverse in the world.
  • Indigenous people are the most affected by this disaster.
  • Other problems include pollution, diminishing water supply, soil degradation, and local temperature variations.

Source: Wikipedia

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Dragonfly.eco.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change(Routledge). Mary lives in the lower mainland of British Columbia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

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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.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Water Wars: The Postponement of Ecological Issues in a Pandemic Crisis

By Ian Rowlands

Water Wars is an eco-thriller that takes as its premise Steven A. LeBlanc’s position in Constant Battles: Why We Fight: “the consequences of environmental stress will be scarce resources and the consequences of scarce resources will be warfare.” Set in a “heated” future, the action of Water Wars, my latest play, takes place in Wales, a nation that sees its fair share of rain. However, it happens to be situated next to England, a nation that even at the turn of the twenty-first century was experiencing water stress. According to Fred Pearce in When the Rivers Run Dry, “in Southeast England summer rainfall is expected to halve by mid-century and evaporation rates from reservoirs could increase by a third…the echoes of Ethiopia and Sudan suddenly seem not so fanciful.”

Put simply, in order to protect its own ecology, Wales is forced to cut the water pipelines connecting it to England. The historic Other responds in the only way it has ever known, not through negotiation but through negation: an invasion. While political at heart, a strand of Water Wars is domestic: the betrayal of a family by a father. “How could you have compromised us for that woman?”, an ex-wife asks her husband (Eben, an officer in the Eco-force). “You wouldn’t betray this ecology, so why did you betray us? Ecology starts with family, Eben, the smallest sustainable unit.” But describing the play’s plot is beyond the remit of this short reflection.

What is of immediate interest is that rehearsals for the production began on Monday, March 9. On March 11, the markets rallied 1.5% and I remained confident we would open. However, the following day, they dropped over 7%. I recall a government advisor who began a TV interview talking of the epidemic. Then, a small slip mid-conversation and the epidemic turned into a pandemic, the first time I’d heard it termed as such. From that moment on, so it seemed to me, the production was destined to be shelved. By Friday the play was fully blocked and the producer was eager to record it for webcast before any threat of lockdown. However, on the Sunday, the production designer self-isolated and events overtook our best intentions.

There are countless other productions around the globe held in similar abeyance. Many of those will be about ecological issues; postcards from what was the front. However, another front has opened up and the battle for the world’s ecology is relegated to column inches on page seven. The currency of ecology has been devalued.

But everything is ecology, for all is family. Searching for feelgood stories during the pandemic, our media lists the positive impacts that this current calamity has had on the environment: Jalandhar residents awake to a view of the Himalayas for the first time in 30 years, people can breathe in the streets of Beijing, and car use in Britain has returned to levels not seen since the 1950s.

In this time of crisis, when the cult of celebrity is shown to be the vacuous shibboleth it is, ecology has taken up its frivolous role: a diversion from the real. I realize that I am being glib, but, as a fellow theatre maker in Iceland recently wrote, “everything has changed, and nothing has changed.”

Soon, Trump will open up the United States economy, regardless of the human consequences,  for the markets profit from both life and death. To paraphrase Homi Bhabha, in an emergency, there is only the emergence of financial opportunity: new billions to make. And make no mistake, people are on the make, and this is what concerns me. The bull market will trade more viciously after this pandemic. While the emphasis will be on economic recovery, the human and ecological cost will be weighed and found wanting, as will democracy, I fear, and anything else that stands in the way of liberal economics.

The cast rehearsing the play with the director, producer and stage manager in Cardiff.

After six weeks on lockdown, I now wonder whether Water Wars will ever be realized. Not that it is unrealizable – the set is constructed, the soundscape gathered, the light plot drafted, the lines learnt, the text proofed for printing, the desire to stage, great – rather, I wonder whether the people will have any interest in it (and all eco-theatre) when they emerge traumatized from this time of fear? A shame, for I think they should. How many will draw the line between the pandemic and ecology?

And yet, in order to rebuild, we (for we are all complicit) will further compromise our planet (the desire for that latest iPhone, stag parties in Prague, strawberries in December) and in so doing, we shall run backwards into the future yet again. We are all Benjamin’s Angel of History, progressing blindly, heedless of further destruction.

Zoonosis â€“ the transmission of pathogens between non-human and human (the probable cause of this pandemic) – is an ecological issue, for all is ecology. Ecology is not a feel-good story in a time of stress, it is the only story. The line must be drawn.

Script-in-hand reading in Carmarthen with the cast. From the left: Dick Johns, Gwyn Vaughan Jones, Bethan Ellis Owen and Russell Gomer.

Out of this tragedy, theatre must emerge stronger, more committed. It will emerge because it has to. For theatre presents us with opportunities for dissensus; that is, to quote Jacques Rancière, “a practice that invents new trajectories between what can be seen, what can be said and what can be done.” We will need our theatre. We will need it to see for us all, to say for us all, to invent, even demand, a better future for us all. I hope that Water Wars (and all eco-texts) will be seen at some point in the future, and that it will open up its own small dissensual space that can, along with other such spaces, allow the dreaming of new trajectories as we emerge out of this mess.

(Top image: Ian Rowlands directing actors Gwyn Vaughan Jones and Russell Gomer in Water Wars.)

______________________________

Ian Rowlands is a Wales-based director and dramatist. His short play Bottoms Up was included in Where is the Hope? An Anthology of Short Climate Change Plays, published by the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. Water Wars will soon be published in book form; see the Cwmni Pen Productions website for updates.

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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.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Open call: Reimagining Museums for Climate Action

In the lead-up to COP26, Museums for Climate Change invite concept and design proposals that radically reimagine the museum as an institution to help shape meaningful climate action.

Eight competition winners will be awarded £2500 each to develop their ideas for an exhibition at Glasgow Science Centre ahead of and during COP26.

What can museums be?

This competition invites you to think about how new approaches to the design, organisation and experience of museums can amplify and accelerate climate action in diverse contexts and at various scales, enabling museums and society to move farther, faster, together to a net-zero or zero-carbon future.

The organisers, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Heritage Priority Areaand Glasgow Science Centre, particularly welcome proposals that address the following two priority themes: climate justice and green futures.

Important dates

Registration deadline: 31st July 2020

Submission deadline: 15th September 2020

Winners announced: 8th October 2020

Exhibition opens: March 2021 (dependent on rescheduled COP26 dates)

For more information and to download the full brief, visit Reimagining Museums for Climate Change.

The post Open call: Reimagining Museums for Climate Action appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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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.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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One Planet, Many Names

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.”

Arthur C. Clarke

In English, earth means ground, soil, and land, but it also means our world – Planet Earth. From Hebrew to Spanish, to Zulu, to Cree – this dual meaning is common in many, if not most, of the world’s 7,000 languages. In many cultures, it also takes on a more spiritual meaning. Think of the Norse goddess Jörð, the Hindu goddess Bhumi, or the Greek goddess Gaia and her Roman equivalent Terra – all humbly named for dirt. It’s perhaps not surprising when you consider that in the evolution of language, the word for land predates organized religion and planetary science. This planet might be 71% water, but we are a terrestrial species. The surface beneath our feet, which we may or may not worship, is earth.

Many languages, however, have separate words for earth and Earth. Often, the planet bears a maternal name, as in Nabgwana meaning mother of abundance in Kuna, or Nahasdzáánmeaning our mother in Navajo, and in many other cultures that feature Father Sky and Mother Earth deities.

Throughout the Muslim world, the planet’s name is a reflection of the theological belief that Earth is the land of the living, while heaven is the home of the divine. The Arabic name, Dunyā, translates to lower place, as opposed to heaven, the higher place. Meanwhile, earthas in ground or land is called Ê¾arḍ in Arabic. In Indonesia, the predominately Muslim Sundanese people call it Marcapada â€“ the mortal place.

To an alien visitor, it might be surprising that we have so many names and understandings of our own planet, but that’s just the human way. Observing it from space, one might just call it as Carl Sagan did – the Pale Blue Dot. But for us humans here on Earth, it is the sacred ground, the holy mother, the land of life.


One Planet, Many Names (opaque text version) by Jordan Engel

Mapped here are some of the many names for our planet. 250 languages are represented in all.

The map itself is Pacific-Centered (150°E) and South-Up. It uses the Equal Earth projection, a beautiful equal-area projection developed in 2018.

As always, Decolonial Atlas maps can be reused under the Decolonial Media License 0.1. Feel free to print them yourself, and send us your photos of them out in the real world!

(Top photo: One Planet, Many Names (translucent text version) by Jordan Engel)

Originally posted on The Decolonial Atlas

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.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland

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Ben’s Strategy Blog: Navigating a future for our arts post-COVID-19

Implicit in much of the discussion about the COVID-19 lockdown is an assumption that we will exit from this pandemic and return to some sort of ‘normal’, albeit possibly a ‘new normal’. However, there is a small but real chance that there is no end in sight for social distancing and that our society, economy and cultural activity is enormously changed. How do we go about thinking through this possibility in order to prepare?

Scotland’s cultural sector is in terrible pain and filled with uncertainty about the future. Artists and freelancers have seen their work dry up completely whilst companies have had to cancel performances, exhibitions and events through to the summer, with a second wave of cancellations now beginning. Film and TV production has all but stopped and cinemas are closed, even if streaming is booming. Edinburgh’s festivals from Easter through to the August jamboree have all been cancelled and tens if not hundreds of others across Scotland will follow suit. Individuals and organisations are facing a massive loss of income, despite Creative Scotland’s re-allocation of its funding and support. Many staff have been furloughed. Meanwhile, audiences across the land are missing the thrill and inspiration that comes from seeing and hearing live performances and events and experiencing works of art up close and full size.

Social not-distancing

The whole of the European performing arts tradition is based on people gathering together in a space, usually a building, for a shared experience. In this experience the audience plays an important part: a feedback loop between the stage and the audience energises both parties; the audience member’s experience is changed and heightened by their sharing it with other audience members; the performance changes with the presence of the audience as they see or hear and respond to what happens on stage, which influences, in real time, the performers’ interpretations and delivery. Part of the experience of participating in culture is also the social element: the mingling beforehand, seeing friends, enjoying (or not) the event as a group. Accordingly, the very architecture of cultural buildings and the work they put on are designed for people not social distancing. Like the best parties, the best theatre, music and dance takes place when as many people as possible are squeezed into slightly too small a space.

When will the lockdown end?

In the media the discussion is all about when the lockdown will end but, in the absence of a vaccine, the infamous herd immunity or COVID-19 for some other reason fading away (as other coronaviruses such as SARS admittedly have), performing arts events at least seem unlikely to restart for some time. A vaccine needs to be proven safe and then produced in massive quantities and the experts are talking about some time next year at the earliest – if one can be developed, which is not a given. The chances are that there will be some loosening of restrictions before a total relaxation but bringing large groups of people together in enclosed spaces is likely to be last on the list. As a leader in The Economist (free, but you need to register) says: â€˜Managing [a part-locked-in, part-let-out world] depends on testing… It will not be available on a truly mass scale for many months’.

Time for difficult thinking – but how do we do it?

The UK’s status as one of the worst countries in dealing with the virus demonstrates why it’s important to prepare and think about difficult problems in advance. Although it’s hard and upsetting, while some of the cultural sector’s effort should be directed to working out how to get back to work, there also needs to be some thinking about what we do if that simply isn’t possible, at least for some years. But, how do we go about thinking about such an enormous change?

COVID-19 has provided us with an unwanted rehearsal for many of the issues that global heating raises (this article provides a take on this and it is interesting to read just three weeks after it was posted, when some of the more outlandish things it discusses have already come to pass) and there is a useful link with the way in which some people are thinking about adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

Creative Carbon Scotland is part of the Clyde: Re:Built project (a Deep Demonstration Project co-funded by EIT Climate-KIC) developing a transformational adaptation strategy and implementation plan for the Glasgow City Region. One of the project partners has done a review of the literature about what transformation actually means and what the barriers to achieving it are. The review isn’t published yet, but I’ll summarise some key points which may be helpful.

What is transformation – and why is this relevant?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines transformational adaptation as changing the fundamental attributes of a system in response to climate and its effects, so it’s easy to see the link with the situation we’re in: the system of cultural production and consumption needs to respond to a fundamental change in the environment we’re working in. Transformation is often described as ‘doing different things’ as opposed to ‘doing things differently’. There is also a common theme of moving from incremental adaptation, where effectively you change only as much as is necessary to keep things stable, i.e. doing the same things differently, to transformational adaptation, where you make bigger changes to the fundamentals, i.e. changing the system and doing different things.

Of course, doing different things is riskier and a greater step into the unknown, but it does also provide the opportunity to do better things. We know that the current system of cultural production is rife with inequalities in terms of who creates the work, who attends or benefits from it, the power structures and systems it represents and replicates.

In Scotland, it is (I generalise) largely white, older, educated and wealthy people who consume much of the subsidised arts and culture that we produce and those who produce it and work in the industry tend to be from the same demographic – except that often they are younger, female and ill-paid. (Hmm. Notice any links with the pandemic?) Why would we change the system simply in order to replicate the problems of the current one? The Scottish Government has adopted the Sustainable Development Goals and integrated them into its National Performance Framework. Maybe if we are going to ‘do different things’ we can genuinely address questions of social and environmental sustainability by shaping the new system differently. (This aligns with Creative Scotland’s focus on Equalities and Climate Change in its connecting themes, which I understand are increasingly important to the agency’s current funding review.)

What are the barriers to transformation?

The review also identifies some common barriers to adaptation. They fall into three categories:

  • Economic and financial: These might include the availability of finance to plan and make any changes as well as the risk that the changes simply make the organisational plan and budget unworkable. We might want to do better things, but the additional costs might make our work too expensive for audiences or other purchasers.
  • Policy, institutional and governance: Funding policy or agreements might not align with a changed approach (I experienced this at Contact in Manchester when I was told that the drama department of Arts Council North West wouldn’t fund a youth arts centre, which was effectively what I was proposing. That later changed, but not until the theatre had burned down and I had left!). Governance issues might apply when existing decision-making processes aren’t able to handle radically new ideas or ways of working that may involve different groups, cross-cutting themes or competing priorities. (Another problem I experienced at Contact, which interestingly now has young people operating at board level and participating in key decisions.)
  • Social and cultural: Emotional, cultural, psychological and cognitive factors can shape decision making and hinder change both in individuals and groups, such as boards or staff teams. Change is difficult and worrying, particularly when the potential changes are high risk or radical. Our habits may make change harder to achieve. We may be reluctant to cede more power to other people or to focus on different audiences that are not like us.

These aren’t all completely relevant here but are useful to consider. And crucially, uncertainty about the future underlies them all: should we spend money on something that may happen more slowly or not at all? What if the policy- and rule-makers don’t make the relevant changes, or move in a different direction? And we, our boards, staff members and audiences will almost inevitably find change more difficult if we aren’t certain about the need: maybe everything will be back to normal by September!

Interestingly, the literature review notes that sometimes barriers to incremental adaptation are themselves triggers to more fundamental transformation. Because it’s difficult to make the small changes necessary to maintain the status quo, particularly in a given time period, more radical change may become necessary, more possible or even more attractive.

Lessons for the cultural sector

As I indicated above, some of the lessons from the world of transformational adaptation echo my personal experience and could be useful for cultural policymakers and organisations, and maybe also for individual artists and freelancers. Addressing each of the barriers leads me to suggest the following, particularly for the boards of our cultural organisations and our policymakers:

  • Financial: It isn’t going to be enough to simply cushion ourselves sufficiently to get through the next few months or even years. We may well need to explore different financial and organisational models for a different world. These will surely involve different ways of bringing cultural work to the public, particularly digital ones, but this itself may not be sufficient. We need to be cleverer and think differently, perhaps radically re-imagining what it is that we do, what we are for: cultural organisations are social ones too. This applies as much to individuals as to companies, and funders and policymakers may need to rethink their support mechanisms accordingly.
  • Policy and governance: Building on this, are the boards of our cultural organisations stocked with the right people to do this clever thinking, with the right information and experience to hand? Contact solved some of its problems after the devastating fire by genuinely involving young people in its governance – it’s now thriving in a way that seemed impossible under the previous board (the chair for much of my time at the young-people focused theatre was 76…). Now’s a good time to think about who we will need to help steer and take responsibility for the long-term sustainability of our cultural organisations in this different future.
  • Social and cultural: Habits die hard and change is challenging. We may need help in changing our thinking, not just doing the usual sort of ‘revisioning’ and post-it note exercises, but addressing the emotional and cognitive biases that we all have. Funnily enough, artists (in the broadest sense) are quite good at helping with this. Let’s get them in (and pay them for their work).

Those who know me know that I call myself a long-term pessimist but a short-term optimist. I know that ultimately I’m doomed, but I wake up every morning thinking that I’ll do what I can today to make the world a better place. COVID-19 presents us with enormous problems, but we’re trying at Creative Carbon Scotland to find the opportunities in this situation: how can what we learn from the pandemic be applied to our work on climate change, and how can the necessary changes make the cultural sector a better, fairer one?


Image by Magda Ehlers from Pexels via Canva.

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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.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘New snow has fallen’

By Harriet Shugarman, Kristjan Urm, Maggie Ziegler, Sara Bir

Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories hereSubmit your own here.

Letter from far away

The email is from Bangui, steamy capital of the Central African Republic. I’ve been twice to this suffering place, wrecked by French colonialism and corrupt leaders. Alain writes that patient zero is an Italian priest returning from leave in Italy and that panic grows: westerners leaving and the wealthy emptying supermarkets for their pandemic hibernation. The rest dread confinement, fearing hunger more than the virus.

Looking up, I see my garden, my comfortable shelter-in-place life and an image, blurred by tears, of Alain, activist-citizen who loves his country. Then I reply that I will share his news.

— Maggie Ziegler (Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada)

Above Bangui.

* * *

Pandemic Phone Boyfriend

In art, it’s called continuous narrative. That’s the chat window blipping on and off throughout the day. He messages me about his dog. I text him a photo of my lunch. We discuss artificial intelligence and humans becoming obsolete.

We met before the pandemic and had plans to see each other, but of course had to cancel. Now our weekly FaceTime dates go on for hours. Are we assigning too much significance to this, I wonder? Is it mostly an escape from the leaden impossibilities that drag down our days?

“I’m glad we met,” he says. I am, too.

— Sara Bir (Marietta, Ohio)

Herb windowsill.

* * *

The Other “C” Word

Once you know the truth, it’s devastating. The mental anguish of the reality at hand can feel paralyzing and overwhelming. The storm is upon us. Understanding clearly that the outcome may not be okay – for me, my community, and my family – is both angst and grief-provoking. It is incredibly frustrating to see friends, colleagues, and those “in charge” downplay the facts; particularly when science and mother nature are telling us we must act with urgency and that we are out of time. A lifetime of climate emergency warnings and lessons – momentarily overtaken by another “c” word – Coronavirus.

— Harriet Shugarman (Wyckoff, New Jersey)

Just before the fog lifts…

* * *

Clean Territory

The virus was transmitted to humans from bats. According to scientists, the pandemic could have been prevented by letting the bats have their territory.

On Easter Day, new snow has fallen. Everything looks open and clean, like new space has been created outside.

Let’s consider corona as nature’s warning. Ever since the spread of agriculture, man has been conquering new territory, at a terrible cost at times.

Snow symbolizes hope. We can still reconsider our relationship to each other, to land, and to other creatures on Earth. Let’s leave to each one the territory they need and deserve.

— Kristjan Urm (Turku, Finland)

(Top photo: Clean territory, view from the artist’s window.)

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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.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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