How can creative and scientific practices fuse to help tackle our impending ecocide?
Gestalt Forms of the Anthropocene - Coral Bleaching, Rosie Stephenson, 2020, Print , © Rosie Stephenson
At some point this year we have all been stuck at home, isolated behind our front doors, sitting on our sofas, in our kitchens and on our beds amidst the chaos, in the grip of a natural disaster. This sudden sharp focus on our lack of freedom is a direct symptom of how we have abused the planet with our relentless exploitation of nature, invading the biodiversity and habitats of the earth and tampering with the natural interactions that enable life to thrive.
As expressed by the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme Inger Andersen, “There are too many pressures at the same time on our natural systems and something has to give.” No longer can we turn a blind eye to the environment: we are all firmly in its grips.
The Blue Planet is leaving the geological epoch of the Holocene and is rapidly transferring in to the Anthropocene, the current geological age, during which human activity is the dominating influence over the natural world, where man plays a significant role in modifying the Earth’s ecosystem on a global scale. Humanity’s mass tampering with nature’s interdependent web has already been extremely destructive, inducing the breakdown of critical systems and interactions we only inadequately understand. The force of man has grown indescribably stronger as technology advances have created a concoction that has massively accelerated climate change. It is now taking place on a global scale with no regard to country or border.
The increases in industrialisation, agriculture, greenhouse gases and overpopulation are among the largest factors in the climate crisis. Warming of the Earth is at a tipping point and it is predicted that we are less than 11 years away from permanent and irreversible damage. We will enter a state of runaway positive feedback and grave ecological damage, with our natural carbon offset sinks no longer able to cope. We are knowingly all partaking in mass ecocide: death of life as we know it.
Bird’s Eye View of Landfill During Daytime, Tim Fisk, 2019, Photograph
Early impacts on the climate started in the 19th century with the fossil-fuelled industrialisation of Europe and the USA. The ‘great acceleration’ followed this and business enterprise expanded precipitately. This evolved to the present day, where the whole fabric of everyday life revolves around our use of the Earth’s energy, man-made technology, and consumption of natural resources on a colossal scale.
In recent times, scientists have tried to alert society of the importance of protecting natural resources and habitats. ‘A Warning to Humanity’ document written in 1992 by Henry W. Kendall, contained signatures from over 1,600 scientists from 70 countries, and stated: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical irreplaceable resources.” This document was revised 25 years later in 2017, signed by 15,364 scientists globally. It was further revised in 2019 and the document was no longer called a ‘warning’ to humanity but now a ‘climate emergency’: the scientists felt it was their ethical responsibility to raise the alarm. “Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat with more than 10,000 scientist signatures from around the world, a clear and unequivocal declaration that a climate emergency exists on planet earth.” Both documents reinforced trepidations that have been recognised for decades, which have resonated with the alarming anxiety shared by many globally.
The bubbling of disorientation and unrest in the 21st century is becoming increasingly evident as people awaken from the habitual facade of social conditioning to the short term gains of wealth and power. Some social groups are starting to recognise the importance of longevity and reorientation with the earth. Individual beliefs and anxieties are flooding into social change and movements. This rapidly increasing awareness has been facilitated by more widespread and socially-connected organisations, such as the environmental activism group Greenpeace, and the emergence of shocking visual information, such as broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough’s BBC documentaries.
More recently the murmuring amongst the youth of the world has led to Extinction Rebellion’s effective branding, concise manifestos and ability to effectively gather and lead large global protests through the swift communication by social media. Individuals such as sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg’s compelling anthropic speeches have reached the ears of many ages. Greta’s speech ‘Our House is on Fire’ sent shockwaves through society. Her message motivated a mass assembly of school picket line striking warriors to protest in solidarity as part of her ‘Fridays for Future’ movement, in a bid to try and rewrite their – and our - collective futures, frivolously disposed of by past generations. All these movements share the same joint feeling of the immediate emergency in Gaia’s health.
Land Art, which emerged in the1970s, made space for discourse between man and the environment. It looked into the profound bonds between growth, time, change, flow, balance and the symbiosis of nature. British artist Andy Goldsworthy’s works often reach the very edges of collapse as his installations explore the perpetual change in the environment. This joining of Earth and creative practice has always made space for admiration of the land and nature’s grand designs. Goldsworthy empathises that,
“We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So, when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.”
This disconnect has evolved in the 21st century to act as a stimulus for environmental activism to amplify the climate emergency.
Serpent River Book Installation view, Eco-Visionaries: Confronting a planet in a state of emergency, Royal Academy of Arts, Carolina Caycedo , 2020, Photograph, © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry
As well as new forms of Land Art, we have developed many more ways to ignite and interact with climate issues. No longer is this just through traditional scientific research and evidential papers, a format known to be dry, unengaging and somewhat inaccessible to people outside the specialist academic fields. For me, scientists are lateral objective thinkers who work around factual, linear formats and logical evidence; whereas, creatives are communicators who construct narratives and tap into our senses and emotions, making us feel and think.
The Royal Academy’s 2019 Eco-Visionaries Exhibition publication discussed how
‘Scientists began to join forces with creatives to combat the damaging effects of modern life on the environment, and to explore a way to stabilise the planet’s endangered ecosystem and draw attention to its fragility.’
This engaging Exhibition used visually stimulating, immersive narratives and installations to connect the audience with climate crisis imperatives.
Ice Watch Place Du Panthéon, Olafur Eliasson, 2014, Medium, © Martin Argyroglo & Olafur Eliasson
“Art has great potential for changing the world and improving people's lives,” states Olafar Elliason, a Danish–Icelandic artist whose artworks harness elemental mediums, such as water, light and air temperature to intensify the viewer’s experience: a sensory way of conversing with humanity. Elliason, in collaboration with geologist Minik Rosing, created a series of interactive installations, called Ice Watch. Vast blocks of ice taken from floating melting icebergs that had broken away from Greenland’s ice sheet were relocated to the Place Du Panthéon in Paris, thawing and weathering, and were arranged in a clock composition. Elliason wanted to, ‘present a tangible and immediate testimony of the dramatic effects of climate change.’ By relocating the invisible landscape to a visible setting, he brought the issue into the public eye forcing viewers to confront the issue. People could no longer just continue their day-to-day business, blindly ignoring the warming of the planet and the melting of entire regions. The thawing process was taking place before their eyes, as the material turned from solid to liquid over time; the melting block of Greenland’s DNA at the physical mercy of western civilisation, visible for all to see.
This type of work is highly effective, as it creates a space to change a viewer’s perspective through undertaking a form of experience. It is a way of speaking to the audience, in essence taking them to another place and its landscape. By using installations in small scale juxtapositions with wider landscapes, this helps to connect the viewer to larger problems and environments.
Ice Texts, David Buckland, 2004-2005, Photograph, © David Buckland Art
The ‘Cape Farewell Project’ brings together a cross-collaboration of artists and scientists to undertake fieldwork and research, in order to collect scientific data as well as make creative responses from visiting the southernmost point of Greenland. Around the world, climate change is often invisible to people. By submerging themselves in the melting Arctic, the artists describe in the Tate podcast Sublime Environments of their creative and philosophical reactions to the far away landscape at the forefront of climate change. This absorption of the environment created a feeling of interconnectedness between humanity and nature.
Climate Clock, Ben Wolf, 2020, Photograph, © Ben Wolf
In September 2020, Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd, in collaboration with a team of artists, scientists and activists installed a clock in union square New York that exposed a real time countdown to collapse. Its intention was to be a stark relentless reminder of a point when we will no longer be able to go on living without consequence. The future intention is that it be replicated across the world, as a network of reminders of the climate countdown. Andrew Boyd explains that “The clock is a way to speak science to power. The clock is telling us we must reduce our emissions as much as we can as fast as we can. The technology is there. We can do this, and in the process create a healthier, more just world for all of us. Our planet has a deadline. But we can turn it into a lifeline.”
As creatives we need to use our skill sets and help bridge the gap between information and audience, in line with Richard S. Wurman’s philosophy discussed in his book Information Anxiety from 1989, in which he expresses a sense of disconnect from intellectual information and its inaccessibility for wider audiences. I believe that the climate crisis itself is in part an information design issue, due to the myriad of scientific technicalities. Humans connect through emotions, which spark behavioural change. I feel that by creating empathy and emotional connection with the planet we can help turn the tide and develop lasting change. Working in a symbiosis of practices, scientific and factual knowledge in collaboration with design mechanisms, can create powerful narrative and digestible information.
Ecological education is crucial for change: there can be no ethical responses without a true feeling of value and connection. Communicating the human-driven ecocide is fundamenta. As Patrick Curry states in the book Ecological Ethics: ‘Ethics also overlap with questions of knowledge, such as how we actually know, or at least decide what has value. This interplay of learning is key to encourage others to generate ethical responses and social shifts.’ Human behaviour is based mainly around emotive responses, by harvesting the senses and emotions I feel ecological education can be more effective. Ensuring audiences actively undertake real life interactive experiences means they cultivate a feeling of responsibility and ownership of the crisis. Creative art and design can inspire and educate, helping to make the world around us more tangible. Using effective communication, we can put the climate crisis at the forefront of everyday conversation. Confrontational works challenge people in their own public spaces to think deeply and connect the far away landscape with our everyday actions. We need to live in equilibrium.
Oil Bunkering #4, Niger Delta , Edward Burtynsky, 2016, Photograph, © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
Our values are being rapidly reshaped. No longer do we take for granted being able to go outdoors, but instead we actively look forward to it. The world is changing. This is the moment to question how we live - and how we should live. How can we use the ash from our burning house to spark rebirth and manifest an aligned vision of a sustainable future? The world is transforming and before we get back to ‘normal life’ it is important to start these conversations, and embody real life active change.
We are the caretakers of the earth and must now wake up to the drastic changes that need to take place. We must recalibrate our relationship with Gaia. As photographer Edward Burtynsky recently concluded, on World Earth Day:
‘The future of life rests in our hands. There might one day be a vaccine for this virus, but there is no vaccine for climate change.’
Rosie Stephenson is a communication practitioner using the power of emotive art and design to make space for creative thinking and conversations. Her main focus is the ephemeral natural world with an emphasis on audience interactions through experiences, tactile processes and materials.