CLIMATE CHANGE: CAN ARTISTS HAVE ANY INFLUENCE? NO?

This is my overview and analysis of the second he second half of the article in TATE ETC Magazine the summer edition 201and alternative opinion on whether artists can really make a difference. I have pulled out the main points of the argument by Alastair Smart from the Head to Head feature below.

Alastair Smart: Freelance critic and former arts editor at the Daily Telegraph.

Smart argues that artists do not have any influence over the issue of climate change. He starts by the citing environmental activist Bill McKibben's 2005 essay What the Warming World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art. In this McKibben laments how few artists were tacking in his view "the single most significant issue" of our times. He offered the reason for this being that the issue was simply too big a topic for artists and that "something happening everywhere all at once, becomes the backdrop and context instead of event". It harks back to other research I have carried out and this small gradual shifts rather than a climactic event are harder to appreciate and reflect.

In the intervening years between then and now there has been cautious optimism in the Paris accord and Chinas investment into renewable energy. However Smart argues that artists have paid no real part in this change and it is still the then and now photos of glaciers.

 James Balog: Columbia Glacier in Columbia Bay, Alaska

Echoing McKibbens thoughts he argues "global warming of 0.06 degrees per annum fails to arouse passion quite like the facist bombing of a small Basque town". He does mention that artists of Picasso's calibre do not come along all that often too though! He agrees that global warming is simply not evocative enough to get pulses racing, seems to have minor impact on our comfortable lives in temperate cities and has no clear narrative, character or villain.

Another reason why he feels that artists have in his opinion not contributed to changing and influencing hearts and minds is the complexity of the science and estimations and forecasts on the world and the pace of the change. The politics is also confused and often contradictory on what to do economically, politically, legally and on a local, national and international level.

Lastly Smart argues that there is also the risk of hypocrisy being levelled at artists taking on the challenge and trying to deal with the issue. Research for and making as well as exhibition of art often "involves a carbon footprint very much at odds with any environmentalist cause being addressed."

In his opinion artists' influence on the debate has been limited so far and is highly likely to stay that way.

My Thoughts.

You can see some truth in what Smart says but Ledgard did point out some artists that have been highly influential in the field and have had an impact in creating discourse around the issue. There has not been however a superstar break through yet in the field. I do agree that the tiny incremental change in climate change is not a huge sell in a world where we need impact, an obvious force or obstacle to rally against and spectacle. There is no obvious villain (although Trump is doing his best to be one) outside of a mass of faceless global fossil fuel energy giants and politicians. Perhaps there is an opportunity here though to create a narrative, characters and villains for the issue to play itself out on. In my own practice I love working with these themes and perhaps they could be integrated into my work as a docu-drama threading fiction and non-fiction together. The Hypocrisy is a very valid point. I have been aware of ow carbon film projects and grants and perhaps this is an issue I need to apply to my own work. How can I make it the carbon footprint of my work as small as possible.