Climate Change

HowlRound: Climate Scientist’s Challenge to Artists

Via HowlRound.

Playwright Karen Malpede recently wrote an essay for HowlRound, a Center for the Theater Commons, highlighting how tragedy and theater needs to be restructured around the truths of climate change. At the end of the essay, she highlighted important theatre artists and playwrights making work to begin challenging art to take on a more active role in leading climate change, including a regular contributor to the Center of Sustainable Practices in the Arts Chantal Bilodeau.

Here is the beginning of Karen Malpede’s article:

Relatively recently, the climate modeling of climate scientists has allowed us to see into the future. While we don’t know everything we know enough to ask if we wish to damage the planet beyond repair in this the new Anthropocene era, when the earth’s ecosystems are being altered by human beings at an unprecedented rate. The knowledge we now have thanks to climate models creates both a terrifying certainty and a spiritual dilemma for every person. And to confront the spirit, humans turn to art. Literature changes paradigms, whether the literature of the Bible or of the great Greek Tragedies, we learn our selves through the word.

To read more of how she traces climate’s importance and the arts’ historical role in shaping paradigms like climate change, see here for the full article.

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Festival in Australia: ‘Arts+Climate=Change 2015’

This post comes to you from Culture|Futures

The Australian organisation CLIMARTE is developing a major festival of climate and culture which will take place in 2015.

CLIMARTE-logo

CLIMARTE is an independent not-for-profit organisation in Australia that aims to harness the creative power of the arts to inform, engage and inspire action on climate change.

With the collaboration of participants such as Carbon Arts, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Heide Museum of Art, Tarrawarra Museum of Art and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, the festival ‘Arts+Climate=Change 2015’ is intended to engage the arts community and its wide diversity of audiences.

The organisers hope this and other projects will “help make climate change register in people’s hearts and minds, make them demand the sort of action that we need if we are to avoid the worst case scenarios of climate change.”

“Growing up I was lucky to be surrounded by beauty and mystery in artworks and in nature. I want the same for my children and for theirs in turn. I know that climate change is happening. I want urgent social, economic and technological responses and yet this isn’t happening. I hope that art might be one way to make people think. I might be wrong, but opposite my desk hangs an artwork by Los Angeles based street artist Ian Morely. It says ‘If you’re reading this, there’s still time’,” wrote Guy Abrahams, CEO and co-founder of CLIMARTE, in an article in Crikey’s Daily Review of the arts.

Guy Abrahams is a former lawyer and gallerist who left the commerce of art to focus on arts projects that would promote environmental sustainability and counter the threat of climate change. As a founder of the organisation CLIMARTE – Arts for Safe Climate, he is creating an arts network to inspire the broader community to take action on these issues through relevant events.

In the Daily Review article, Guy Abrahams discusses the reasons for establishing CLIMARTE and why he thinks the arts can be a positive force for change. An excerpt:

“The question for CLIMARTE is: can art “rearrange our sense of reality” about the state of our planet, sustainability and climate change?

Throughout history the arts have played a major role in recording and reflecting the state of human society, and the natural world of which society is but a part. At certain times, the arts have also been a catalyst for change, a call to action, a pricking of our collective conscience.

In Australia, there are Aboriginal rock paintings of animal motifs that may be 40,000 years old. These works clearly indicate the importance of the natural world to the people who created them. We have early Eurocentric visions of landscape by John Glover and Fred Williams’ revolutionary evocation of our unique bush. Now Mandy Martin’s bleak coal mine pocked landscapes, Fiona Hall’s tapa cloth depictions of our over exploited oceans, and Janet Laurence’s mystical and mysterious flora and fauna, allow us to see and feel the reality of this new human dominated age – the anthropocene.”

» Read the article here: www.dailyreview.crikey.com.au

» CLIMARTE’s home page: www.climarte.org

MandyMartin

The photo above shows Mandy Martin and the artwork Vivitur Ex Rapto (for Bulga) 2014. Photographed by Alexander Boynes

Mandy Martin is one of the artists who will join a panel at CLIMARTE’s public forum ‘Climate Art Ethics: What role for the arts?’ on Saturday 15 February 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.

Mandy Martin is an Australian artist with a national and international reputation for conservation and landscape. Her work is well represented within Australian public galleries and museums, as well as at the Guggenheim Museum New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno.

Imprint Magazine published a Climate Change Issue in 2013, which contained an article by Guy Abrahams from CLIMARTE. The magazine is not online, but the cover, an editorial and the index can be seen here:
» www.printcouncil.org.au/imprint

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Culture|Futures is an international collaboration of organizations and individuals who are concerned with shaping and delivering a proactive cultural agenda to support the necessary transition towards an Ecological Age by 2050.

The Cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policy-making, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research and development. It is those decision-makers and practitioners who can reach people in a direct way, through diverse messages and mediums.

Affecting the thinking and behaviour of people and communities is about the dissemination of stories which will profoundly impact cultural values, beliefs and thereby actions. The stories can open people’s eyes to a way of thinking that has not been considered before, challenge a preconceived notion of the past, or a vision of the future that had not been envisioned as possible. As a sector which is viewed as imbued with creativity and cultural values, rather than purely financial motivations, the cultural sector’s stories maintain the trust of people and society.

Vanishing Ice

This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

Narsaq Sound, Greenland

Narsaq Sound, Greenland by Len Jenshel

The Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington is currently showing the exhibition Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art, 1775-2012. Curated by Barbara Matilsky, with an accompanying catalogue distributed by University of Washington Press, the exhibition provides a 200-year overview of artists’ responses to the enduring fascination that frigid and isolated places seem to exert on the human imagination. While climate change is, at least in the public consciousness, a relatively recent concern, our desire to conquer the poles is not. In that context, it is interesting to step back and look at the evolution of Arctic imagery, from early 18th century romantic depictions of forbidden landscapes to contemporary works highlighting the vulnerability and fragility of polar environments. Artists from Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Russia, Switzerland and the United States are represented. Notable among them are Arctic veteran photographers James Balog, whose ambitious project Extreme Ice Survey was recently featured in the documentary Chasing Ice; Subhankar Banerjee, a leading voice on issues of arctic conservation, indigenous human rights, resource development and climate change; Gary Braasch and his World View of Global Warming project; and David Buckland, founder of the British organization Cape Farewell.

Other articles about the exhibition can be read here, here and here.

Filed under: Photography, Visual Arts

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau 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 Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Changing the Climate Conversation

This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

Not Listening

Living Green Magazine just published Changing the Climate Conversation, an article by Kassy Holmes that contains several examples of innovative people who are reframing the climate change issue using art and/or non-formal education techniques. Several of the organizations and individuals  mentioned are listed in the blogroll here or have appeared in previous posts, including Daniel Crawford, Climarte and Cape Farewell. Among works Holmes writes about that have not been covered in this blog, Greg Johnson’s illustrated haiku are definitely worth a look.

Filed under: Climate Communication

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau 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 Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Corporate sustainability messaging isn’t working – it’s time to look to the arts

This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

UN Climate Change Summit

A Copenhagen art work uses red blinking LED-light to symbolise that the world is moving towards a climate catastrophe. Photograph: Miguel Villagran/Getty Images

This great article by Oliver Balch in The Guardian explains why the arts can be a powerful tool to help communities address climate change challenges.

Filed under: Climate Communication

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau 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 Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Street Poetry

This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

The Earth Without Art Is Just Eh

From Street Art Utopia.

Filed under: Poetry, Visual Arts

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau 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 Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Open call STRANGE WEATHER at Science Gallery, Dublin

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Strange Weather

Should we adapt to a world of Strange Weather, or attempt to prevent it? How can we model, control and even generate weather? How can we sustain our planet and human culture into the future?

“Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” ― Mark Twain

Calling all future forecasters, weather hackers and planetary visionaries: Science Gallery is seeking project proposals for our upcoming summer exhibition STRANGE WEATHER. To apply, read on or visit the STRANGE WEATHER website. The deadline to submit your ideas is 14.02.14.

What is really going on with the weather? How can scientists and designers help us understand weather systems? How can we understand and respond to climate change? STRANGE WEATHER is a curated exhibition that will bring together meteorologists, artists, climate scientists, cloud enthusiasts and designers to explore how we model, predict, and even create weather.

How has the human experience of weather changed over millennia, and how will it change in the next 50 years? Will future weather be more, or less predictable and controllable? Should we attempt to prevent a future of STRANGE WEATHER, or embrace it? From hurricanes to droughts, from cloud-seeding to greenhouse gases, weather is of greater concern than ever. What consequences and opportunities will arise from the changing weather of our planet?

Curated by CoClimate, this exhibition will challenge audiences with novel visions of a global culture adapting to extreme weather, and zooms in, to explore how STRANGE WEATHER will affect daily commutes, the governance of our cities, and even our fashion choices.

Science Gallery is interested in works that offer a participative and interactive visitor experience for a broad age-range of visitors, especially those aged 15-25. We seek projects that inform, intrigue, provoke dialogue and engage audiences directly, making the complex and emotional topic of extreme weather and climate change more relevant to everyday experiences. In particular, we are looking for projects that connect massive planetary-scale systems to personal, localised and individual lived experience.

Science Gallery is interested in receiving proposals on a wide variety of topics including, but not limited to:

  • Tools for predicting and preparing for severe weather, climate change, and environmental change.
  • Climate change and the everyday: projects that respond to the consequences of climate change. e.g. how will climate change affect fashion, entertainment, transportation and education?
  • Examples and critiques of weather manipulation and GeoEngineering.
  • Tools for mapping the planet: from satellites, to ocean drones and weather balloons.
  • Designs that mitigate environmental change: architecture for migrating species, water management for more severe flooding, smog and air quality detection and prevention.
  • Future scenarios for cities, governance and culture on a changed planet.
  • Works that show how weather information is collected, compiled and disseminated.
  • Exhibits that speak to the social, cultural and political implications of strange weather and climate change.
  • Participatory experiences, field trips, site visits and workshops.
  • Scientific experiments that utilise data/participation from visitors.
  • Forecasting, not just of weather, but of many kinds of environmental patterns and change.
  • Your amazing project that is relevant to the theme ‘Strange Weather’.

CURATORS & ADVISORS

  • CoClimate, a think tank that studies the technologies and tactics used for sculpting the biosphere of planet Earth
  • ​Michael John Gorman, Founding Director of Science Gallery and CEO of Science Gallery International
  • Martin Peters, Computational Scientist at the Irish Centre for High Energy Computing
  • Gerald Fleming, Head of Forecasting at Met Eireann

APPLICATION DETAILS

The open call will close at 12 midnight on Friday February 14th 2014. To apply visit our open call site. If you have any questions about the application process, please send them to strangeweather@sciencegallery.com.

SCIENCE GALLERY, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
+353 1 896 4091
info@sciencegallery.com
www.sciencegallery.com

P.S. The curators note there is a budget for selected artists to make the work.  Thanks to Aviva Rahmani for highlighting this call.

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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Dare to Trust

This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Exhaust 3

Mike Cook is a sculptor who is passionate about recycled metal. After a lifetime working in the public and private sectors, where, among other things, he commissioned public art for the Portland Development Commission and managed the corporate art program at Mentor Graphics. He is now devoting his retirement to making his own art. His sculpture has been shown on the North Coast at CART’M Recycling’s Trash Bash, CBAA Green/Verde, Shadow and Light, and Clatsop CC Student 3D.  Chantal Bilodeau asked Mike to talk a little bit about his inspiration, his process, and why artists should address climate change.

What inspired you to start working with recycled metals?

When I was little, our Detroit home and yard was very tidy. But we looked out into Mr. Miller’s yard strewn with junk metal. My mom would say, “Just look at your room. You don’t want to grow up like Mr. Miller, do you?” I guess I did. Detroit itself had its influences: Iron Country, ore freighters, cars. My family, then and today, has always been committed to recycling. So as I committed my retirement to art, starting with life drawing, I found working with metals at the recycling center most congenial. It flowed for me. Unlike stock metals, each piece of recycled metal had a story already built in that spoke to me – the pitting, rust taking it back through its recycled lives – starting from the earth and returning as rust.   I’ve been tempted to move towards more finished, form based volumes, but with the time left in this life, I think I’ll just stick with the pits and rust.

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Arc

In the last year, you have been focusing on climate change. Specifically, how does your work engage that issue?

I noticed that my work was moving in that direction on its own, dictated by my stock of materials. It started with the Exhaust series, then Arc – which I also thought of as Ark of the Lost Remnant – then Engage the Scavenger and Atmosphere. Parallel with, and preceding this movement, I began noticing climate change – the imperative beginning with an image in National Geographic of a Russian tourist ship visiting the North Pole in open water. With the imperative of grandchildren and creeping age and arthritis, I decided I’d better focus my work. With this first directed piece, Awakening, I found some of the metaphors I started with faded and others appeared along the way.  Others may look at the piece and come away with different impressions, even non-climate stories. So instead of tackling climate change directly, I see it as an awakening, in me, and likely in civilization and in art – more of a flow, and a desire to reinforce that flow. Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises reinforces this idea. A piece sitting here in Manzanita, Oregon may impact me and a couple of others – thus my emphasis on interaction with other artists and exposure via the internet.

What can sculpture offer that is perhaps different from other art forms?

I don’t think that sculpture has a particular advantage in addressing climate change.  For me, I don’t seem to have a choice.  It’s what I can do to express myself. I’m sure these characteristics can be addressed more effectively in volumes I’ll never see. But for me,  it’s tactile, invites investigation, presents infinite vantage points and perspectives. It directly addresses space, time, gravity, light and sometimes sound. The material itself, often of the earth, contains its own metaphor. It demands strength, loves hammers and chisels and flame. It’s hard to undo or redo. I get to work with folks, body shops, muffler shops, junk yards.  It’s dangerous, sometimes deadly. Thanks for this question. I love it.

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Engage the Scavenger – stainless exhaust and copper water pipe

What do you think is the single most important thing artists can do to address the problem of climate change?

Trust. Trust in what you know and love. Trust that life has a flow, that you have a place, and just jump in.  Trust your ability to seek, to see and listen and know the way. For me that has meant: trust, take a step, trust, engage, trust, assess, trust, take another step, trust.

What gives you hope?

That there’s something to trust.

Through community involvement, I’ve found that as an individual, and even more as part of a movement, it’s possible to effect change, from housing for the homeless to nuclear disarmament.

Through my art I’ve found that I don’t create. I follow paths. I find I have the ability to discern a path that works. And I find that any step taken can ultimately, and likely with some pain, be made to work. I start with something, then the material or my muse pushes me, I respond and go on and it’s right. It’s OK. It seems these paths already exist and I just find them and execute. I figure it’s the same for the planet, for civilization; the path of evolution has always worked – pressure and then a next step for life, except this time the step is ours. What a time to be alive.

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Atmosphere – rusted fender and exhaust fragments

Filed under: Sculpture

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau 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 Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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What’s The Hang Up About Climate Change?

This post comes from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

Warsaw walk outCivil society organizations walk out of the Warsaw climate negotiations, November 21 2013
Photo: Adopt A Negotiator

A great article by Felicity Le Quesne was published this week in the online news provider The International. Titled “In-Depth: The Psychological and Social Roots of Climate Change Skepticism,” the article looks at people’s attitude towards climate change through a psychological, political and social lens, and makes the point that to be effective climate communication must go beyond the simple piling up of scientific evidence, and take into consideration the complexity of the human brain. This sounds to me like communicators have to know their audiences, and make sure they are addressing them in a way  that is both specific and appropriate. Which, I would then argue, is something  artists are particularly good at. So keep at it everyone. It may not always be immediately apparent, but what we are doing is helpful and has value.

Filed under: Climate Communication

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau 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 Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

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Call Out for Associate Artist #climatechange

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow is recruiting a freelance artist to work with the gallery to explore climate change, sustainability and environmental issues while we host Early Warning Signs, a work by Ellie Harrison.

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The successful artist will use their practice to help the gallery staff to learn new things about themselves as a community, and challenge them to explore the ways they work together as a staff team on environmental issues and sustainability in their programming. The ambition is to build a stronger internal capacity for collaborative, participatory working practice, which make a difference to our carbon footprint.

For any inquiries please see the contact details on the brief, although please note the gallery staff will be unable to answer any inquiries until after 6 January 2014.

Submission requirements
Submissions should be sent in electronic format to John Irwin (john.irwin@glasgowlife.org.uk )

Closing date for submissions: 12 pm Friday 24 January 2014
Interviews on Monday 3 February 2014

Image: Early Warning Signs by Ellie Harrison at GoMa

The post Call Out for Associate Artist #climatechange 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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