By Joan Sullivan

Imagine future archaeologists, post-Anthropocene, discovering an ancient display of colorful solar panels arranged in a straight line. The archaeologists hypothesize that this “solar tapestry” was created to provide future generations with an illustrated epic story of how 21st century Homo Sapiens wisely – but narrowly – averted a climate emergency by embracing the sun.

Imaginative ideas like this – a Bayeux Tapestry for our times, according to UK artist Chloe Uden – inspired her to found the Art and Energy collective in 2018 with her long-time collaborator, the artist and botanist Naomi Wright.

“The Art and Energy collective re-imagines solar technology as an art material for the future,” explained Chloe in an email exchange. “We’re still at the experimental level, testing ideas, exploring the cultural dimensions of energy systems, and planning for future collaboration. We want to share our knowledge widely so others can design and make their own solar panel artworks. This will help create new stories for our energy future.”

2019 has been super-charged for the year-old collective. In March, Chloe and Naomi unveiled their first solar panel artworks during MikroFest at Kaleider Studios in Exeter, UK. Comments posted from visitors included one from the poet Matt Harvey, whom I’ve written about previously, who wrote “This is wonderful and inspiring work – I would love to see it ‘scaled-up’ perhaps a cathedral or an enormous building.” In fact, this great suggestion is already a reality across the big pond: the Cathedral of the Holy Family in the Canadian city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan was the first cathedral in the world to integrate solar cells into its stained glass windows, designed by Canadian glass artist Sarah Hall in 2011.

Several months after Art and Energy’s first unveiling, the collective was invited by Kaleider Studios in July 2019 for a year-long residency to research new processes, work on new pieces, deliver workshops and continue growing their new creative venture. In August, Chloe and Naomi are running solar artworks workshops at the International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge, UK. In September, they will be exhibiting artworks at the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI), as well as offering solar charger making workshops at the Totnes Renewable Energy Society (TRESOC) in Totnes.

In October, Chloe will be participating, along with 20 other start-ups from across southwest England, in the Dartington School of Social Entrepreneurs. Earlier in the year, Art and Energy exhibited at TEDx Exeter‘s “The Art of the Possible” event by providing phone charging points in the exhibition hall. For more information on Art and Energy’s incredibly busy 2019 schedule (yes, there’s more!), check out their website.

“Mostly, we are not just interested in art illustrating the existence of climate change, or going on about how terrible it is. We want to make art, and we want to respond to the climate emergency AT THE SAME TIME. So, our solar panel artworks generate electricity from the sun,” Chloe explained in an email.

“(But) some people have told us that art can’t be useful too – that it is too much to expect art to actually make a difference. If art is doing anything other than being art, then it isn’t art any more. In fact, they suggest that if our solar art panels didn’t actually work, THEN they might be art.”

As a renewable energy photographer, I have received similar unhelpful feedback on my work. In a climate emergency, perhaps the definition of “art” needs to change? Barry Lord, one of the world’s great cultural thinkers, explains in his 2014 book Art & Energy: How Culture Changes how major cultural and artistic shifts have accompanied each energy transition since humans first mastered fire. We are currently living through the third energy transition – from oil/gas to renewables. In this transition, Lord argues that “the so-called energy debate is really a conflict of cultures.” I will write more about his provocative and prescient thesis in my next post.

So. “Who cares really at this time of crisis what definitions (of art) we are using?” asks Chloe. “We will either respond to the climate emergency, or we won’t. And the way I see it is, if we can make beautiful things, why not make beautiful things that respond to the reality we live in and reverse global warming?”

Hear, hear!

Over the last 15 years juggling two careers – one in renewable energy, the other in art (puppetry and illustration) – Chloe has come to realize that creatives more than most will recognize what the climate emergency requires of us:

1. A commitment to bring our attention to the challenge and work, work, work
2. A compulsion to follow our curiosity, reflect, learn, synthesize and do
3. A need to be brave and willing to find a way
4. An acceptance of possible failure and the humility to accept whatever

“Responding to the climate emergency is like deciding to make art: some of us feel it is the highest form of human endeavour, and mostly you’re not in it for the money.”

Perhaps the same could be true of the artists (or shall we refer to them simply as “artisans”?) who created the magnificent 70-meters long Bayeux Tapestry, which preserved for future generations the details of the great medieval epic – illustrated in humble wool thread embroidered on linen cloth – of the 11th century conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy.

Perhaps artists like Chloe Uden, Naomi Wright and their many collaborators will find a way to weave a similar tapestry for future generations in humble silicon PV. I will be their biggest fan.

(All photos reprinted with permission from the Arts and Energy collective.)

This article is part of the Renewable Energy series.

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Joan Sullivan is a Canadian renewable energy photographer. Since 2009, Joan has found her artistic voice on the construction sites of utility-scale wind and solar projects. Her goal is to keep our eyes on the prize – a 100% clean energy economy in our lifetimes. Joan is currently working on a documentary film and book project about Canada’s energy transition. Her renewable energy photographs have been exhibited in group and solo shows in Canada, the UK and Italy. You can find Joan on Ello, Twitter and Visura.

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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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By Amy Brady

This month I have for you a fascinating interview with artist Jamie Martinez, who recently participated in a climate-themed group show at Yi Gallery in New York City. Jamie is a Colombian/American artist who immigrated to Florida at the age of twelve, where he eventually attended The Miami International University of Art and Design before moving to New York. Jamie is also the publisher of Arte Fuse, a contemporary art platform that gives more visibility to art shows and is a home to several artist interviews. In addition, Jamie is the founder and director of The Border Project Space, which was recently featured in Hyperallergic’s top 15 shows of 2018. The space is dedicated to showing the work of immigrants.

Why do you focus on climate change in your art?

Climate change is very important to me. I believe that we have to protect and take care of Mother Earth. The way things are going, we are not going to leave much of a future to humankind, and this is a serious problem. It seems like we are only looking out for ourselves. Change has to come, and as an artist, I feel the need to say something.

Your work also addresses immigration. What role do you see art playing in the world at large when it comes to big, complex issues like immigration and climate change?

About a year and a half ago, I opened an art space called The Border to address the issue of immigration. I only curate group shows there with mostly immigrant artists. I want to give them a platform to display and nurture their work so that they can create even better work. It’s also a place where immigrant artists can network and meet other immigrant artists.

When it comes to climate change, it seems like a lot of artists are taking on this subject more and more. I think that [artists] can help influence and educate the young so they can be future protectors of this wonderful planet. Art can also help communicate the enormity of the problem and what might face us if things don’t change.

Triangulation is a repeated motif throughout your work. What draws you to these shapes and patterns?

I have always been obsessed with the triangle and especially the tetrahedron. I find this shape very strong and mysterious, and when you put a lot of triangles together, the shape becomes even stronger. That’s because it spreads its weight evenly throughout its form. I use the concept of triangulation throughout my work. My process involves constructing, deconstructing and fragmenting images, data, and information geometrically into triangulated segments.

Please tell me about your recent experience showing work at the Yi Gallery in New York City with other artists who are exploring climate themes. What did you take away from that experience?

I enjoyed participating in that show. Cecilia Jalboukh did a superb job of putting the show together. I thought that all the pieces complimented each other, giving the show depth and meaning. We got some great press, including coverage in Vogue China. It was also great to show with a friend and to get to meet and know the other two artists in the show.

Sacred Quetzal Mayan Poem, oil and spray paint with silver leaf and embroidered thread.

You lived in Miami after immigrating to the United States. Did spending some of your formative years in a city threatened by sea-level rise affect your views of climate change – and of art?

I am a surfer, so I pay a lot of attention to water. It is sad to see that every time I go to Miami, mostly for Art Basel, the threat of sea-level rise seems to be getting worse. The locals are taking it more seriously, at least; they see that it’s going to be a big problem. Miami didn’t really change my art – that happened here in New York City. But it will always be a place I care about deep in my heart.

What’s next for you? 

At the moment I am taking a break. I had the busiest six months so far of my career, and I feel drained. I needed to step back before coming back in September, which is when the art season officially opens. I will have a show at my gallery. It opens on September 13th at 7pm. I also have a show confirmed for early 2020 and some other projects and installations that I am starting to work on now.

This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter. Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing about art, culture, and climate has appeared in the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, and other places. She is also the editor of the monthly newsletter “Burning Worlds,” which explores how artists and writers are thinking about climate change. She holds a PHD in English and is the recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship. Read more of her work at AmyBradyWrites.com and follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x.

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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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By Nikki Lindt

I arrived early that cold spring morning to the only car rental in Fairbanks willing to allow their cars to be driven up Alaska’s James W. Dalton Highway. I examined the car with Mandy, an employee, who helped put me at ease as she described some of her adventures on that road. As an artist coming from New York City, I was more than a little out of my element. I was relieved to see a CB radio, as there would be no phone reception, but the two spare tires in the trunk worried me.

The Dalton highway is a 414 mile stretch of dirt, gravel and potholes that runs along the oil pipeline from the town of Livengood all the way north to the Arctic Sea. The road is one of the most remote and dangerous in the country with only three very small towns along the way. My partner Mark and I would be sharing the desolate road with occasional truckers.

Alaska’s Dalton Highway follows the old pipeline all the way north to the Atlantic Ocean.

I buckled down for the long drive, my worries dissolving as soon as we started our beautiful ride out of Fairbanks through the rolling hills. Several hours later, we crossed the Arctic Circle where alpine meadows surrounded us. This was followed by miles and miles of scrawny black spruce forests that seemed to come straight out of a Dr. Seuss book. Eventually, we drove through the snow covered Atigun Pass of the Brooks Mountain Range, which released us on the other end into endless tundra. I had assumed that this grand landscape was the true unspoiled beauty of the last frontier but I was learning otherwise.

Travel sketch, permanent ink markers and acrylic paint on paper, 6″ x 9″

This was a year ago. I had been working with a scientist from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Permafrost Lab just days prior. He taught me how to identify various permafrost features just by looking at the landscape and also helped me understand the underground pressures and temperatures which affect the way permafrost behaves. Accelerated permafrost thaw due to warming temperatures expresses itself in many ways and can create a very extreme, unstable and surreal landscape. I saw forests, called drunken forests, growing at all imaginable angles, even horizontally. I also saw the sinkholes of the north, called thermokarst failures. I documented one larger than a football field with adult fir trees dangling off the edge like toys.

Travel sketch, permanent ink markers and acrylic paint on paper, 6″ x 9″

In the nine months that followed, I created a series of paintings called Tumbling Forests of the North. I decided to make the works on large scale paper, eight by five foot, in watercolor with acrylic pen. The images are expansive, airy, and bright in color. This stands in stark contrast to the surreal and at times ominous aspect of the changing landscapes. As I observed this destruction in the vast Alaskan landscape, what stood out to me was the duality of terror and inspiration I felt at once. Though collapsing, the places I saw were growing lushly in their new form. This duality reflected the complicated relationship and struggle between the immense destructive power of climate change and the insistent nature of growth. For me, the strong vibrant color also spoke to the strength and positive collective voice that are needed to best move forward to protect our ecosystems.

This summer I found myself back on the Dalton Highway with a new destination: a remote science research station. As I pulled out of the expansive tundra, with light still illuminating the nighttime sky, I focused my attention onto a cluster of structures at the end of a small road. They could have been mistaken for a tiny village, but all the buildings were either made of  shipping containers or tents. I wasn’t sure what to make of this odd place.

Drunken Trees, permafrost thaw, watercolor and acrylic on paper

I soon understood that this was a very special community of scientists and thinkers who come together yearly for their arctic field work. Dinner conversations were very lively. Everyone seemed dedicated and hard-working, and this collaborative environment was very conductive to new ideas. I spent my days hiking and scanning the tundra for thermokarst failures. I sketched, recorded, and documented them as future source material for my work. In the evenings, I shared what I had seen and, in turn, heard what others had been up to. Someone had measured plant growth in a nutrient treated plot. Others had taken infrared photos from a drone imaging carbon emissions, or done work in the field. I left the field station with new friends, collaborators, many ideas, and a lot of documentation.

As I was leaving, I wondered why I found it so hard to go. Outside in the transcendent landscape, I was reminded how enriching working as a team had been. As I traveled home, I started to think back to various times I had collaborated over the years. I realized how these collaborations came to define pivotal points in my personal growth in relation to my understanding of the broad implications of climate change.

Within the Thermokarst, Ghost Forest, watercolor and acrylic on paper

I thought back to my first collaborative work on climate change in 2000, in Amsterdam, where I initiated and then worked with a team of creatives to actualize a climate multimedia opera, The Noahs. And then to meeting Glenn Albrecht, an Australian philosopher, who coigned the term “solastalgia,” the feeling that people experience when they lose their natural environment due to climate change and development. The Solastalgia series then led to contributing to The Eco-topian Lexicon, edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy. The book explores 30 new words introduced to the western psyche to help reshape our perception of community and relationship to our rapidly changing world. Without this type of collaboration with experts in other fields I would not have the same depth of understanding of the challenges climate change presents us.

This tiny remote place in northern Alaska, perched at the edge of the earth, reminded me of one of our greatest gifts: our capacity for collaboration, an essential tool for moving forward together in this age of uncertainty.

(Top image: Rapids, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 7.5” x 5”)

Nikki hiking the tundra in search of Thermokarst Failures.

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Nikki Lindt is a Brooklyn artist currently working on a series of paintings on the thawing permafrost in the Fairbanks area and North Slope Borough of Alaska. She has worked on more than a decade of projects dealing with the impact of climate change. She has given many talks about her work and exhibits nationally and internationally. She is represented by Robischon Gallery in Denver and Heskin Contemporary in New York City. She has received the Pollack-Krasner Grant, the Dutch Artists Grant (Fonds BKVB) among others and has been awarded the Environmental Cultural Award, Milieudienst (Environmental Protection Agency) Amsterdam, Netherlands. Nikki received her BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and her MFA from Yale University.

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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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By Joan Sullivan

If you haven’t seen the stunning results of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI)’s sixth international renewable energy design competition, announced last month at the 24th World Energy Congress in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, you’re in for a treat.

Since 2010, the biennial LAGI competition has invited artists, landscape architects, designers, engineers and other renewable energy enthusiasts from around the world to submit proposals for large-scale works of public art capable of producing clean energy for a specific site. I wrote about LAGI’s first five competitions here and here.

For the special LAGI 2019 Abu Dhabi competition, nearly 300 teams from 65 countries responded to a free and open call to design artwork for a new public park that uses “renewable energy technology as a medium of creative expression.” At the same time, this artwork will provide on-site energy production consistent with the master plan of Masdar City.

“Renewable energy as a medium of creative expression”

LAGI

Sponsored by Masdar and in partnership with the 24th World Energy Congress, LAGI’s 2019 competition “Return to the Source” encouraged applicants to “design a clean energy landscape for a post-carbon world that will help to power the city and inspire the future.”

Of the 300 submissions, 28 were shortlisted in the first stage of the competition. Collectively, these magnificent and luminous proposals inspire us all to imagine how beautiful a post-carbon world will be. Below is a selection of some of my favorite shortlisted proposals:

Forest of Light, by Joo Hyung Oh, Jae Ho Yoom, Su In Kim, Sunjae Yu, and Hyuksung Kwon

The 28 shortlisted designs were on display at the LAGI exhibition throughout the 24th World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi. The jury, led by Yousef Ahmed Baselaib, Executive Director Sustainable Real Estate, Masdar, announced the two winning designs on the second day of the congress.

The $40,000 first place prize was awarded to New York-based architect Sunggi Park for his team’s innovative Starlit Stratus, an example of his studio’s focus on flexible, re-configurable architecture.

Starlit Stratus incorporates a folding pattern of solar modules inspired by Ron Resch’s origami tessellations. Sections of the triangular geometry are made from conventional rigid photovoltaic material to produce clean electricity during the day, while other sections are made from fabric that can easily fold at night to transform the canopy into glowing orbs that illuminate the urban park.

According to Robert Ferry, LAGI’s founding Co-Director, “What impressed the judges about this project is the pragmatic approach to maximizing solar surface area in a manner that radically and dynamically transforms public space.”

If constructed, Starlit Stratus would provide Masdar City’s grid with 2,484 MWh of clean electricity annually.

The two gifs below illustrate how Starlit Stratus is transformed from a rectangular light-absorbing “umbrella” during the day to light-emitting globes at night:

For a virtual tour of Starlit Stratus, check out this video which is downloadable from Sunggi Park Studio’s website. Such a brilliant and inspiring project!

“With energy storage so key to a successful transition to renewables, a number of LAGI 2019 entries address this issue,” explained Mr. Ferry in an email. “One such example is the integration of gravity energy storage within the weighted armatures of Sun Flower, the second-place winning entry by Ricardo Solar Lezama, Viktoriya Kovaleva, and Armando Solar.

“As the solar modules of Sun Flower generate electricity during the day, they gently lift the armatures (“petals”) until they reach a vertical position at sunset. The weighted arms are then allowed to fall in a controlled manner to produce electricity after the sun has set and when demand is at its highest as the city begins to illuminate.”

If constructed, the Sun Flower artwork would contribute 1,400 MWh of clean electricity to Masdar City’s grid.

According to Elizabeth Monoian, LAGI’s founding Co-Director, “There were also some outstanding design entries to LAGI 2019 from Emirati design teams, many more than we received to LAGI 2010. For example, The Pulse by Fatima E. Almheiri, Haya M. Eiran, Moustafa M. Abou-Almal, Esam A. Essa, Joseph R. Limeta, and Husam Z. Almuzaini proposes a sinuous parametric form of solar energy that provides many paths of exploration through the park. The Atoms Light by Mona Abudalla Al Ali and Sreegith Madambi Karunakaran is inspired in its form by the microscopic shapes of sand particles, and inspired in its function by the respect for the natural environment instilled by the words of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.”

“The results of this year’s challenge have risen beyond our expectations and clearly point us in a positive direction toward a sustainable future,” said Monoian and Ferry in a press release. “Rather than despair about the havoc that human activity has already wrought on our planet, we can instead unite behind the manifestation of beautiful ideas such as these that reflect an emerging human culture of environmental stewardship.”

(Top image: Sun Flower, reprinted with permission from the Land Art Generator Initiative.)

This article is part of the Renewable Energy series.

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Joan Sullivan is a Canadian renewable energy photographer. Since 2009, Joan has found her artistic voice on the construction sites of utility-scale wind and solar projects. Her goal is to keep our eyes on the prize – a 100% clean energy economy in our lifetimes. Joan is currently working on a documentary film and book project about Canada’s energy transition. Her renewable energy photographs have been exhibited in group and solo shows in Canada, the UK and Italy. You can find Joan on Ello, Twitter and Visura.

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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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By Rosie Jones

Some of my fondest memories come from visiting galleries and museums and walking around in admiration. I first took an interest in art when I saw impressionist paintings on the walls, capturing nature in a way I hadn’t imagined before.

Art from that era made me increasingly aware of the beauty of the environment. This was expressed through colors, the use of which in impressionism, makes paintings seem very real. The sky in Berthe Morisot’s Hanging the Laundry Out to Dry looked like one I’d seen on a March afternoon, and her In a Villa at the Seaside pictured a seascape I felt I’d photographed once, on a holiday maybe. I started to take notice of fields, parks, stretches of woodland and sky, looking to see if they reminded me of the paintings. What actually began was a profound love for the natural world.

Around this time, I started to paint, inspired by the art I liked. I read more into the movement, learning that the name came from Claude Monet’s 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise. To me, the scene of a boat heading out to sea immediately defined the era as nature-focused. Monet’s work became synonymous with enchanting depictions of gardens, rivers, countryside and coast. As one of the leading figures of impressionism, he created paintings that garnered a new respect for the environment.

Paris at the time acted as the heart of impressionism, and the Île de la Jatte, a small island and serene haven for wildlife near the capital, provided inspiration for many established painters. Artists like Camille Pissarro understood the need to portray nature as something to be treasured, and came to the island to practice the technique of painting outdoors or en plein air. Impressionists used the setting to create some of the best examples of artwork today, including Georges Seurat’s most famous piece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

I visited the island back in May to find inspiration for my own work. I have written about global warming and the environment in articles online, though for the past few months, I’ve instead been making art, focused on the threat of the climate catastrophe. I wanted to make paintings about a subject I felt strongly about.

I set out to paint in a way that showed one of the key ways rising temperatures are altering ecosystems and their dynamic equilibrium. The current climate emergency is disrupting seasons and changing species’ life cycles, which have been stabilized over millennia.

Birds are migrating earlier, causing them to miss out on vital resources for the season ahead, outcompeted for food and nesting places. This is made worse by other environmental pressures that continue to damage habitats and make supplies scarcer. Hibernation is cut short and species are using up energy faster than they can replace it, relying on food sources that are no longer available.

Whereas before I had been learning to trace Levitan’s careful saplings in Autumn Day and master blooms like in Vonnoh’s Poppies, I started to realize that in my new project, I could paint to communicate how climate change is throwing the features in these wonderful landscapes out of balance.

My first painting for this project was a snowscape, taking inspiration from Monet’s The Magpie. I traced trees and walls covered in snow on the canvas, then brushed on traditionally spring synonyms – bluebells and daffodils. My aim was to paint an impossible picture, to act as a take on the consequences of temperature rise and its role in species decline. I used the techniques I had learnt in the impressionist style but always completed the painting in a way that portrayed the message.

All of my paintings follow in this trompe l’oeil format. One painting is modeled after a photograph I took the previous year. Increases in temperature are causing some animals to come out of hibernation earlier than others, only to be met with another cold front. This year, news outlets have covered the phenomenon of earlier and hotter summers, causing flowers to bloom at sporadic times, some plants relying on certain factors that are lost or delayed due to the changing climate.

My favourite painting is based on another photo I took, where I tried to replicate the great colors of the sky. In the shadows of dried wetlands, I put sunflowers and early spring snowdrops side by side – environmental cues that never usually coincide.

After completing the project, I tried to find information about what was happening during these crucial changes of seasons. I found many stories, notably about birds and their need for accurate weather as a reliable indicator for all activities.

There are thousands of visual artists putting grave concerns about our climate into context through their work. These artists are pioneers in helping us build a new relationship with nature, based on respect and a willingness to protect all that is made possible by the environment, especially an environment that is healthy and thriving.

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Rosie Alice is an English painter and writer whose work focuses on the changing global climate. First writing about endangered wildlife as a contributor for an online publication, she started to paint in order to explore more mediums. She wanted to create art that is reminiscent of what helped people appreciate how beautiful and precious our environment is.

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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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By Peterson Toscano

Elizabeth Doud takes on the role of Siren Jones in her one-person performance, The Mermaid Tear Factory. Based in Miami, Florida, she has been a catalyst in engaging other artists in conversations around climate change. Each year she helps organize Climakaze Miami.

Elizabeth explains why she sees Miami as the city of the future – both with its changing demographics and the many ways climate change is reshaping the city. She also shares why artists need to break away from telling the story of climate science and instead dig deep into the hard emotions around climate change.

Judith Ann Isaacs writes,

Elizabeth Doud was born to a tree-hugger momma from the Midwest (that’s me), and grew up in Seattle with the sight and smell and sound of salt water as her daily companions. She channeled her family’s passion for protecting the environment into a devotion to the sea. From Seattle to Miami, where she’s lived for 20 years, to an island in the Bay of Salvador, Brazil, where she currently studies, the ocean has been a constant familiar backdrop. And it has been her great sorrow to witness the ocean’s rapidly accelerating degradation. With her poetry – and her intellect – with her very body she has made climate change her mission. No one who has known Elizabeth (even for a short while) was surprised when years of passionate commitment to environmental issues evolved into the first Climakaze Miami in 2015.

Coming up next month,  Sean Dague walks us through a powerful thought experiment that helps us envision a world without fossil fuels. We hope this vision will help you in creating your own art that reveals what climate action success looks like.

If you like what you hear, you can listen to full episodes of Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

This article is part of The Art House series.

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As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson reissues The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org

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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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By Mary Woodbury

In this spotlight on climate change authors I talk with Brian Adams, who has become a prolific fiction writer covering various environmental themes for teens and young adults. I first talked with Brian in November 2014 after the publication of his novel Love in the Time of Climate Change. 

Meet Casey, a community college professor with OCD (Obsessive Climate Disorder). While navigating the zaniness of teaching, he leads a rag-tag bunch of climate activists, lusts after one of his students, and smokes a little too much pot. Quirky, socially awkward and adolescent-acting, our climate change-obsessed hero muddles his way through saving the world while desperately searching for true love. Teaching isn’t easy with an incredibly hot woman in class, students either texting or comatose, condoms strewn everywhere, attack geese on field trips, and a dean who shows up at exactly the wrong moments. What’s a guy to do? Kidnap the neighbor’s inflatable Halloween ghost?  Channel Santa Claus’s rage at the melting polar ice caps? Shoplift at Walmart? How about all of the above!

Who would have thought climate change could be so funny!  Actually, it really isn’t, but Love in the Time of Climate Change, a romantic comedy about global warming, is guaranteed to keep you laughing. Laughing and thinking.

After our previous chat – a portion of which follows – Love in the Time of Climate Change won the 2014 Gold Medal INDIEFAB Book of the Year in the Humor category.

You are a professor of Environmental Science at Greenfield Community College in western Massachusetts, you are active in the climate change movement, and now you have written a romantic comedy about something similar involving a climate change activist teacher. How did your real life experiences inspire your novel? Any funny anecdotes to share?

As a professor I have struggled for years with how to present the issue of climate change to students without them resorting to substance abuse, slipping into profound depression, sending me poisoned chocolates, or, worse case scenario, doing absolutely nothing. The teacher in my novel undergoes the same sorts of struggles, many of which are based on my real life teaching experiences. The process of guiding students to the abyss and then gently pulling them back, giving them hope, and motivating them to get off their asses and do something, is incredibly challenging. If anyone has figured out how to do this please contact me!

Funny anecdotes…being the awkward fool that I am, I have so many I could share! One of the scenes in the novel takes place during a field trip to a solar home, and the love interest (Samantha) is attacked by geese and falls into a farm pond. Her teacher (Casey, our hero) lends her dry clothes, which makes for an awkward moment when the dean shows up. This is based on an incident I had when teaching and I had my students in the Green River doing aquatic insect sampling. One of my students fell in, I loaned her dry clothes, which led to, wait for it, awkward moments. I have a great deal of awkward embarrassing teaching experiences that I embellished (or not!) and used in my novel.

Can you tell us more about your background in climate change action and environmental science teaching?

I have been an activist all of my life around energy-related issues, and a teacher most of my professional life. This is my 20^th year at the community college where I teach. I’ve found activism to be an effective and productive way to deal with climate change angst. There is great joy to be found in the struggle, and to be surrounded by active young folk who want to change the world is incredibly inspirational. On campus, I am active with our Green Campus Committee as we work to reduce our carbon footprint. Off campus, I am increasing my activism with Climate Action Now, a local western Massachusetts node of 350.org.

Love in the Time of Climate Change is about a serious subject – climate change – yet you use humor to address it. I think comedy is a great way to tackle dire subjects because laughing is good for the soul and helps us put this overwhelming crisis into an identifiable and human perspective, which might be more motivating than the scary facts. Yet it takes a special skill to treat subjects like this with humor – without making light of the facts – and you seem to have succeeded. How did you accomplish this?

I’ve attempted something that I think is rather unique in that I’ve tackled potential world catastrophe in a fictionalized form through humor, drugs, social awkwardness and sex while being uncompromising about the science of climate change. I have found that many people avoid climate change nonfiction given how depressing and absolutely paralyzing it can be. I mean, seriously, how many people read climate change nonfiction? It can be an incredible downer! Extreme weather, food insecurity, drought, famine, melting glaciers, drowning polar bears, out of control wildfires, rising sea levels… My thought is that humor, silliness and love present an ideal opening not just to climate activists but to a larger audience as well. I love awkward romance and relationship angst, so it was a lot of fun to write.

Quite a few novels are being written today about climate change. How do you think fiction can address this subject in ways that other literature cannot?

Fiction can clearly go where non-fiction can’t, and draw readers deeply into stories and drama and relationships where they get hooked while getting educated. My novel is very didactic and quite preachy, and I make no apologies about it. But if it wasn’t for the awkward romance and silly adolescent antics, I’m not sure people would stick it out. I love stories where you’re laughing while saving the world!

Are there any inspirational authors you grew up with who inspired you to tackle environmental issues through fiction? And, I have to ask, are you a big fan of Gabriel García Márquez?

I love Edward Abbey (all of his writing) but particularly his The Monkey Wrench Gang. That was a great revelation to me. Activism can be fun! And that’s the take away here: How do we bring humor into the most serious of topics without trivializing the gravity of the situation? How do we make climate change an issue people want to take on and have a good time doing it? How do we foster the sentiment of the great anarchist activist Emma Goldman who supposedly said “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”  How can we dance while saving the world?

And yes – Gabriel Garcia Marquez rocks!

Back to your book, the teacher in your novel suffers from OCD, or Obsessive Climate Disorder. Can you describe this?

There is a scene in the novel where the hero is in the midst of “fooling around” with a very attractive woman who is clearly interested in him, and he is simply unable to free his tortured self from the energy no-nos in her apartment: inefficient light bulbs that are all turned on; the open windows and the cranked heat; recyclables in the trash can, etc. I can’t tell you what happens (read the book!) but, when climate change rears its ugly head in the midst of foreplay, that is clearly and unmistakably obsessive climate disorder!

Well, I just got your book in the mail, and can’t wait for this scene! Your book audience is probably all ages to an extent, but your main characters consist of a youngish teacher and his young, college-aged adult students. Young adult fiction is growing by leaps and bounds, even in climate novels. Why is this audience so important?

Youth will save the world! My goal was to promote activism among younger folks and get them psyched and motivated to get out there and make change. For anything good to happen, the younger generation must be active! I’m working on a novel now that features a 15 year-old protagonist battling mountain top removal in West Virginia, sort of a coming-of-age to activism novel.

Bill McKibben, of 350.org, said that you are “funnier than most of us environmental types” and that it was a pleasure to meet you. How did that feel to be acknowledged by such a well-known activist and author?

I was SO flattered to be blurbed by him! I believe, however, that he meant it was a pleasure to meet the main character in my novel, not me. If I met Bill McKibben, I’d probably do something really awkward and make a complete fool of myself! Bill is a hero to so many of us in the climate change movement, but his dig at those “environmental types” is quite revealing. While there is absolutely nothing funny about climate change, we do need activists to take joy in the struggle and have fun in their activism. My goal was to bring humor and hope into a genre that is noted for dystopian despair.

Since then, Brian has come out with KABOOM!, and his third novel, Offline, came out April 22, 2019. Brian recently told me about his second novel:

KABOOM!, my second novel, is the story of Cyndie and Ashley, two spirited and spunky teenage girls living in the heart of coal country, West Virginia, who discover that their beloved mountain is to be blown sky high by the coal company. It’s a young adult romantic comedy that focuses on first love and finding your voice through environmental activism. While KABOOM! (Kids Against Blowing Off Our Mountaintops) is fictional, mountaintop removal is definitely not. It’s a horrendously destructive and extreme method of coal extraction and it’s heartening to know that there are many true-to-life committed activists in Appalachia intent on fighting it. The times we live in are tough, so rather than dwell in dystopian nightmares, I try to use humor and romance as tools to promote environmental issues and move my story along. KABOOM! won gold medals at the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Literary Classics Book Awards.

It’s great to see youth activists taking on fossil fuels, one of the leading contributors to global warming. Brian’s stories are an example of how humor can be used to shed light on serious issues, without demeaning those issues, and how youth can be empowered to take on Big Things.

He also was excited to discuss Offline, coming soon:

Offline is a young adult romantic comedy about two spirited and spunky teenage girls. The novel’s focus this time is on cell phone and online addiction. Meagan, the heroine, is banished by her parents to her gay grandfather’s farm to deal with her “netaholism,” and a lot of the novel’s humor is Meagan and her bestie’s bumbling forays into the offline natural world. The inability for so many people to disconnect from their laptops and phones and get outside is driving me crazy, so I wrote a novel about it. It’s timely, it’s funny, and I hope it gets people (not just kids!) thinking about going offline.

Brian and I also talked about what’s been going on in the five years since Love in the Time of Climate Change.

Feedback from my first novel, Love in theTime of Climate Change, has been very positive. Published in 2014, the novel chronicles one semester in the life of my community college professor hero (mot me!) as he muddles his way through saving the world while desperately searching for true love. I tried to tackle potential world catastrophe in a fictionalized form through humor, social awkwardness and sex while driving home the essential science of climate change. Once again, silliness and a love story can hopefully entice readers into picking up my novel who might otherwise shy away from reading anything to do with such a paralyzing, mind-numbing issue.

In my non-literary life, my wife and I have inherited quite a bit of money, which we are using to install photovoltaics on non-profits whose mission we agree with. It’s an exciting project that allows us to put our money where our mouth is and help tackle climate change on the local level while allowing wonderful organizations to use more of their resources to do good work in the world. Climate action now!

I appreciate Brian doing the good work he does and taking the time to chat with me again about his novels. He tells me he is also working on another…stay tuned!

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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By Karen Malpede

“There’s a wilding inside that connects with a wilding up there,” Uncle, the elderly environmentalist, says in my 2014 play Extreme Whether. That is what it feels like when creation takes hold of one. Necessity flaps madly in the gut like a free-flying bird that will dash itself to death or find release. This is why poetry is wild nature produced by human nature, a song between a living cosmos and an ever-emergent self. This is why preservation of life in all its sentient forms is the work of the dramatic poet and why the poet must be fiercely engaged in the exploration, creation and manifestation of justice on this earth and for earth’s creatures.

I had written ecofeminist theatre all through the 1980s and mid-90s. In Better People, 1987, a rare beast wanders into a geneticist’s lab, and rather than be cloned, she swallows him; he emerges an animal-rights ecologist. But, I was sidetracked by the Iraq war and the US torture program so it wasn’t until 2012 that I turned my attention to the warming climate. As I did the research necessary to begin to understand, I came, of course, upon the resistance to scientific truth from the fossil fuel industry, a Republican Congress and successive administrations. Extreme Whether is about this conflict within a family (à la Ibsen). One twin is a renowned NASA climate scientist being censored by the government, the other, a publicist for the fossil fuel industry, married to a Republican lobbyist. I came to view climate scientists as visionaries and altruists, ill-suited to the public battle forced upon them but fighting for truth in the face of falsehood. The relationship between a deformed frog, Sniffley, who exists in the minds of the characters and the audience, and an Asperger child, who is also a fierce environmentalist (prefiguring Greta Thunberg), and Uncle provides the play’s subplot.

Extreme Whether is the last of my mid-life ecotheatre works. Now, I have found my way into cli-fi futurism and at the same time, the dictates Edward Said outlines in his last book On Late Style seem particularly apt. I am calling my new play Other Than We, a Late Style work. Writing now, at the “end of the world,” (at very least at the end of the stable climate we’ve known since writing began), and closer to the end of my life than I’ve ever been, I think about Edward Said’s concept of Late Style in both ways, personal wisdom on the edge of singular mortality, and the madness of unthinking ecocide.

Said writes: “Lateness is being at the end, fully conscious, full of memory, and also very (even preternaturally) aware of the present.” Lateness, according to Said, includes the facility to rip through one’s own style, arriving at dissonance and resonance, surprise, entangled themes and variations, a strange sort of buoyancy, ending in irresolution, and mystery.

Said died in 2004, the year of the invasion of Iraq. (His daughter, Najla Said, would play three roles in my play Prophecy, about the costs of the war.) If Said had lived, he, too, could not help but become increasingly obsessed with the climate crises. In her Said memorial lecture in London in 2016, Naomi Klein focused on the environmental themes already present in his work. I have never before set a play in the future and doubt that I could have done so were my own future not becoming short. While I had thought about and researched the play for several years, I wrote most of Other Than We in the months following Trump’s election. In part, a debate about the origins of consciousness, “from a glob of flesh thought, think of that,” in main, a thriller about the creation of a post-Homo sapiens species, Other Than We is preternatural, outside the known order of things. Its final transformative moment represents, simultaneously, the death of Homo sapiens and dawn of a new species’ consciousness.

In the middle of the night, working from 3:00 am to 6:00 am, literally shocked out of sleep by an image or thought, I wrote. This futurist cli-fi play takes place after “the deluge,” when the survivors live in a surveilled and increasingly unsustainable Dome. The two women scientist-lovers, joined by a physician refugee from Africa and an elderly linguist, knowingly sacrifice themselves in order to birth a new and finer species that will run on four legs or two, tolerate temperature extremes, be able to go for long periods without water, be androgynous, and, most of all, be capable of language and rational thought BUT no longer have a head separate from a heart. Every thought henceforth will be felt through.

These characters exhaust their own bodies in a daring escape, creating, birthing, nursing, nurturing the new beings, without knowing if their experiment will be a success. It’s a metaphor, of course, a fable, for what we do anyhow when we give birth, if we dare, in this harsh new world. There’s an unforeseen transformation at the end. No answer, but a glimmer. The play inhabits the liminal space between knowing and not knowing. Late Style supposes clashing feelings, tonalities, and resolutions that devolve into rising crescendos again. The climate crisis moment we inhabit imposes, like Late Style, the impulse to rework, rip up or revivify old structures, transform social systems, to dare in face of the imminent end of species and habitats.

To rewild our intellects.

Other Than We will have its world premiere at LaMama, NYC, Nov. 21-Dec. 1, 2019 and be published by Laertes Books.

(Top image: Uncle (George Bartenieff) and Annie (Emma Rose Kraus) construct a frog pond for Sniffley and others, Extreme Whether, 2018, LaMama production. Photo by Beatriz Schiller.)

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Karen Malpede’s earlier ecotheatre works include A Monster Has Stolen the Sun (1984), Better People(1989), the adaptation of Christa Wolf’s ecofeminist novella Kassandra (1992), The Beekeeper’s Daughter (1995) and the short Hermes in the Anthropocene: A Dogologue (2015). Blue Valiant, scheduled for production in 2021, continues her fascination with animal-human communication. She is author of 19 plays produced in the U.S. and Europe and of the anthologies: A Monster Has Stolen the Sun and Other Plays and Plays in Time: The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life, Extreme Whether;  her plays and essays on the environment have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Dark Matter, Transformations and elsewhere. She is co-founder of Theater Three Collaborative and Adjunct Associate Professor of theater and environmental justice at John Jay College for Criminal Justice, CUNY. National McKnight Playwrights Fellow, NYFA Fellow.

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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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By Peterson Toscano

In this episode of the Art House, we use the power of our imagination to experience the future we desire. Right now, we need to reduce localized pollution and global heat-trapping greenhouse gases. How do we build the political will so that the public clamors for legislation and policy that will change how we get and use energy? We need to communicate to the public what success looks like.

But envisioning success in our climate work requires imagination.

To help us with this task, Sean Dague, the group leader for the Mid-Hudson South chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, leads us through a powerful exercise. He asks us, What does a decarbonized world look like? What does it smell like? What does it sound like?

Once you hear Sean’s vision of a successful future, we invite you to continue the exercise. Try some creative writing. Write a short story or a letter from the future about what you see, smell, and hear. Maybe create visual art, a drawing or painting. If you can’t draw or paint, get images from magazines or online then create a collage. Write a song, create a map, choreograph a dance. Use art to capture a vision of a decarbonized economy.

Even if you don’t see yourself as an artsy person, just try it.

Towards
the end of his life, writer Kurt Vonnegut would say, “Everyone should
practice art because art enlarges the soul.”

Please feel free to share your art with me at radio @ citizensclimate.org and let me know if I can share it with listeners, on the podcast, Facebook, and Twitter.

Coming up next month, poet Catherine Pierce crafted the extraordinarily moving poem, Anthropocene Pastoral. It was published in the American Poetry Review. She reveals the creative process from the original inspiration, through the many choices and changes she made, to publication. Then she reads her poem for us.

If you like what you hear, you can listen to full episodes of Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

(Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash.)

This article is part of The Art House series.

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As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson reissues The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org

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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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By Gab Reisman

In bed at night, my partner scrolls through Instagram and sends me memes and headlines, even though I’m lying right next to her. A few weeks ago it was an article from the Onion: “Average American Must Have Life Ruined By Natural Disaster Every 6 Minutes To Fear Climate Change.” I guffawed and sent it to my brother in New Orleans.

For the last three years I’ve been working on Jeune Terre, a play about climate change and disaster in south Louisiana. Due in part to rising sea levels meeting the ten thousand miles of oil and gas canals that crisscross its marshy coast, Louisiana is currently losing a football field of land every hundred minutes to the ocean. In an attempt to slow this land loss and protect coastal communities, the state has a Master Plan of multiple projects, everything from building new levees to elevating houses to diverting sediment from the Mississippi River. Every five years it updates the plan based on what currently seems feasible and fundable.

The play tracks residents of a small bayou town as they learn they’re no longer getting the levee they were promised in the previous Master Plan. The state, essentially, will give them up to the water. The story also follows a theatre troupe that comes to town to make a musical about local pirate legend Jean Lafitte, weaving pop-inspired songs about the pirate’s murky history into the uncertainty of the present. Act II of Jeune Terre is set ten years in the future when the imagined town is underwater and its inhabitants have moved up the road. In 2030, town residents, state scientists, and theatremakers alike have blithely adapted, and we hear about the last decade’s hardships only in passing. Characters’ discussions of a marriage or job promotion are intercut with mentions of Miami being flooded or the fallout of the Pence administration.

While the play’s town of Jeune Terre is a mash-up of bayou communities, it is most directly influenced by Jean Lafitte, Louisiana. Jean Lafitte sits twenty-two miles south of New Orleans. In the past fifteen years, it’s been battered by over half a dozen hurricanes. Though many coastal towns are shells of their former selves – weekend fishing camps up on poles but not much sense of community – Lafitte keeps rebuilding, maintaining a school, a community center, and a grocery store. When the state’s 2017 Master Plan removed a levee previously set to surround the town, Lafittians raised hell, packing community input meetings and demanding state legislators have the plan restored. With the maneuvering of longtime mayor Tim Kerner, they’ve secured a smaller tidal levee around the town and an open-ended promise to raise it higher when the time comes. If Jean Lafitte eventually goes the way of the fictional town of Jeune Terre, it will not be without a fight.

In wrestling with what my play is saying around climate change, I’ve been wrestling with the ways theatremakers and audiences alike might similarly shift our narrative of adaptation—from a continued acceptance of a new “normal” to a collective model of accountability and civic action.

Climate activist Mary Annaïse Heglar wrote an essay for Vox earlier this year where she talked about the way this sort of collective involvement must take priority over individual environmental action. While, sure, Heglar says, recycling is important, being focused only on our personal eco-sins becomes a bait-and-switch for holding corporate damage-doers, such as the oil and gas industry, accountable. Framing the fight against climate change as only a fight of individual consumer choice will lead to a sense of isolation, then helplessness and apathy.

This is not to say the inhabitants of Jeune Terre or Jean Laffite are fighting primarily for climate justice. They are fighting to stay living where they live, even as those places become less and less viable. When it comes to holding oil and gas accountable, many Louisianans’ relationship with the industry is deeply complicated, both in the play and in real life. While oil and gas provides jobs for thousands of coastal residents, the industry’s canals cripple the marshes that protect many of those same residents’ homes from hurricanes and increased flooding.

My meme-sending partner, Giovanna McClenachan, is also an ecologist who studies the role these canals play in Louisiana’s shrinking coast. A 2018 paper she co-authored points out that almost a third of the entire canal network leads to oil wells no longer in use. If oil and gas allowed the state to knock down, or backfill, the banks of these abandoned canals they would no longer act as conduits for storm surge, slowing coastal land loss considerably. Calls to hold oil and gas accountable have been quashed for years by sympathetic state and local governments. The industry has historically resisted canal backfilling because they’re worried that any environmental restoration they allow on their land could be seen as an admission of guilt.

In Jeune Terre, a scientist employed by the state begins knocking canal banks in on her own. Her officemate who works closely with oil and gas is terrified of the potential blowback. But before we can see what comes of her work, a hurricane blasts through the play and we jump forward into the future.

Playwright Erik Ehn has a theory about writing further and further into the middle of a play – of ramping the action up higher and higher and then leaping to the moment right after the end or resolution. In this leap, Ehn says, is a space where the audience can be lifted out of their seats and into potential collective action. Similarly, my plays will often race towards a climax only to jump to a sudden moment of stillness, a “sandwich-sharing” beat where characters split a drink or a story or a song or a sandwich as they wait, inevitably, for the future. In the final moments of Jeune Terre, the theatre company, now on tour with a musical about the town’s past and present, resets their show-within-a-show to the beginning and we see the musical’s opening number, “Watch it Come Back.” Composer Avi Amon wrote the score to resemble ocean waves – a wash of concerns for the future from both long-gone pirates and current town residents at once. The song exists simultaneously both inside the musical and in the minds of contemporary Jeune Terrens, a coda of shared concern amidst the forward march of climate change adaptation.

Working on Jeune Terre, I keep coming back to the idea that, as theatremakers, our greatest weapon in the fight against climate change may ultimately be this sliver of audience-lifting space. In this space comes an expanded capacity for empathy and, perhaps, the ability to be more collectively accountable. As humans it is our forte to blithely adapt to current circumstance – to one new normal, then the next and the next. But we needn’t have had our lives just ruined by disaster to be able to empathize and organize with those who might be next. That we will be affected by climate change is inevitable. How we share our sandwiches is our narrative to shift.

(Top image: Jeune Terre workshop production at Barnard College in 2018. Photo: Stephen Yang/Barnard College.)

This article was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on September 29, 2019.

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Gab Reisman is a New York / New Orleans-based playwright and immersive performance maker with a history of making theatre in non-traditional spaces. Gab’s playwriting explores the relationship between cultural geography and individual identify – the ways place writes itself on our bodies. Interested in the liminal and irreverently political, her plays often queer time and space, sometimes using history as a prism to expose our current zeitgeists.

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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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