Bonds of Earth - Empathy & Attachment It's What Makes Us Human

Surrounding thoughts around climate change and the ongoing climate crisis in our current world today have allowed many people around the world the ability to act upon and inspire those around us by challenging us to become active participants for a world without climate disaster. In this class on Art and Climate Change: Becoming Participants in Global Change and Resilience, my classmates and I decided to tackle the opportunity to raise awareness by each coming together to bring a topic or idea that addresses issues important to us and through art and sewing, come together to create a quilt that highlights the idea of unity amidst climate uncertainty. For my square as part of and contribution to the group, I decided to create a square made from textile pillow fabric and paint it with the visual of two hands, one black and one white that have been placed on planet Earth surrounded by four colors that border both hands and the planet. My art piece is titled “Helping Hands” The inspiration partially comes from a quote Eva Horn relays in the article Aesthetics of the Anthropocene where she says, “Art should thus not only help us see things differently; it should mobilize us as well.” (Horne, pg. 21) The colors Orange, Purple, Yellow, and Red with no specific meaning in color are used to demonstrate multiple themes starting with Rifkin’s analysis regarding his thoughts on empathy and attachment, which is what makes us human.

Helping Hands

Figure 1 Helping Hands, (2023), Painting on Fabric, Roland Hairston

My artistic project, by combining and juxtaposing the aspects of climate change with empathy and attachment bonding components of memory, survivance, relationships, and underlying care for our world in art, my square intends to offer a different angle on climate change in the sense that we as humans on this special and unique planet no matter how we got here, must cherish this place that we call home and recognize the many interesting and talented ways artists and art is used as a means to reflect such.

Ice Age is not just a popular fictional movie that some of us know and love, but for some people, the love and relationship between Ice and the people that call Icelandic environments and ecosystems home is just as real and as important. That Which Once Was by filmmaker and scholar Kimi Takesue is a science-fictional film that explores the complex relationship between the collapse of the natural world and the disintegration of memory through absence. Identifying themes surrounding displacement, loss, trauma, and of course survivance, Lisa E Bloom, author of the article At Memories Edge raises the question of how memory and culture are kept alive when you are no longer at home and cannot reconnect back with the land in which you came.

That Which Once Was Kimi Takesue

Figure 2 Kimi Takesue, That Which Once Was, Still, Film, 2011.

Memory in the film serves as a bridge between what was and what is now. The background for this shot in the film shows an elderly indigenous man who takes in a young boy who becomes saddened and depressed because he has lost all cultural connections to home. Through this man's artistical talent of being able to create Ice sculptures, he recreates figures associated with core and important memories of the boy's early life that help retrieve his love for his once home in what we see literary theorist Gerald Vizenor calls Survivance, or the continuance of stories. Here’s how this film relates to another artist's sculpture next.

Minimum Monument Nele Azevedo

Figure 3 Minimum Monument (2014), Ice Sculpture, Lima. Néle Azevedo

In Nele Azevedo’s practice of creating Ice sculptures, he does so by raising awareness of the current climate crisis. This Brazilian artist created an art installation made completely out of ice entitled, “Minimum Monument”, “The melting sculptures create a connection between a subjective self and a collective consciousness” (Azevedo, 2022) With the rapidly rising climate changes, and the current state of climate change intensifying, this reflection of global warming shows how fragile life is and that if we don’t make the proper adjustments, will melt away into extinction like these mini-sculptures eventually do. Inspiration for my art piece, I use the hands as a meaning of a collective partnership for climate activism.

Relationship Building

Relationships between one generation to the next are a crucial part of environmental stewardship. It is important to let those coming after us know that they are not alone in the climate of grief that they may suffer and that some have come before them who are willing to walk along with them on this journey of life. In the book Art and Climate Change by Maja and Reuben Fowkes, in the chapter on reparative histories, they mention a special film that in a way shows a good example of relationship building on the road to preserving positive memory.

The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland

Figure 4 The Karrabing Film Collective, The Mermaids, or Aiden In Wonderland, 2018.

In the film The Mermaids, or Aiden In Wonderland created by the Karrabing Film Collective, similar to our previous film, a situation unfolds where the younger is comforted by his elder. In this scene a young indigenous boy Aiden, journeys to his once home now destroyed by a forest fire on behalf of the hands of white colonialist settlers who sought to take advantage of the land. Taken away as a baby along with other children to be a part of a medical experiment. On his return home, Aiden struggles with his past, present, and future circumstances of climate change impacting his home. While walking along the damaged ruins left behind a gentleman who claims to be Aiden’s uncle takes him along for a walk to revisit positive stories of how beautiful and flourishing the land used to be before settlers came in. As a part of my art painting, I also envision the hands shown together to be a symbol of relationship and love for one another as people, having and showing empathy for one another amid disaster and crisis, a topic that leads to our next subject.

The Age of Resilience

Figure 5 The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence On A Rewilding Earth, Jeremy Rifkin, 2022

The Age of Resilience, Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth is not just the title of Jeremy Rifkin’s scholarly article but merely a compilation of ideas suggesting a moving of ideals that go hand in hand with this thought process of resiliency amidst the climate crisis. Under the section entitled Empathy and Attachment, It’s what makes us Human, Rifkin highlights the role attachment and behavior play in our human development. What he finds here based on research studies by many scientists, psychologists, and sociologists is even more interesting. “What they have discovered is that at the core of our being and what makes our species so special is the innate biological drive to empathize with the other…When we experience other’s emotions such as pain, suffering, or joy as if it were our own, the empathetic impulse that emanates from inside our neurocircuitry is an emotional and cognitive recognition of someone else’s vulnerability and struggle to flourish in their one and only life…Emotional solidarity is the deepest expression of our support as a spirit who too carries this burden and blessing or mortality with us at every moment of our existence. Our compassion is our way of reaching out saying we are fellow travelers who are each here for a moment of time for one another in the indescribable journey we call existence.” (Rifkin, pg. 226/227) I believe that a lost aspect of the issues of climate change and the many crises surrounding the topic that has gotten lost is the underlying emotional aspect we as humans have with our relationship with our planet and that is also why I wanted to highlight this in my artwork.

That’s What Makes Us Human

In Helping Hands both hands are joined together touching each side centered on earth. I wanted to symbolize this as man's pledge to be better empathizers with the planet we are all blessed to share. Also drawing from an art piece entitled That What Makes Us Human by Marjolijn Dijkman depicts a hand holding a rock, just like we as a human race hold the fate of rock in our hands. Not literally, but figuratively speaking, every day we hold the power of our future as civilians of this planet to each day be conscious enough to try and make the best and safest decisions, we can to keep our rock healthy and clean.

That What Makes Us Human Marjolijn Dijkman

Figure 6 Marjolijn Dijkman, That What Makes Us Human, 2016, Bronze and Titanium.

Age Of Extinction

I use this as a reminder because up to this point, we haven’t been doing this, and there is art inspired to prove it. Extinct Animals by Marcus Coates. “This collection of cast hands depicts different animal species whose extinctions were caused by humans.”

Extinct Animals Marcus Coates

Figure 7 Extinct Animals, Marcus Coates, Cast Hands, 2018

The artist has cast his own hands in poses that playfully recreate an approximation of the animal in shadow. “They are a memorial but also remnants of a detached and futile resurrection.” (Coates, 2023) Animals play a tremendous role in the impact of the climate health of our planet, human intervention throughout history in efforts to pursue capitalism, greed, profit, and other personal gain have hurt our environments and the places in which these animals live, thus affecting those of us who rely on these animals for food and farming. By playing off Coates’ artistry, the hands in my artwork also tie in the theme of nature and the non-human that is unprotected and uncared for in this world. That holding the world together in our hands is to also hold dear the plants and animals that are born of it, that without them, we as a human species cannot survive.

The Nutmeg’s Curse???

In The Nutmegs Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis written by Amitav Ghosh, he explains this inability for humans to work hand in hand with our planet and environments to sustain ourselves and this planet as such. In chapter six, Bonds of Earth, Ghosh writes the following. “The project of terraforming enframes the world in much the same way that the Banda Islands came to be seen by their conquerors: this is the frame of world-as-resource, in which landscapes (or planets) come to be regarded as factories and “Nature” is seen as subdued and cheap. In principle, there is no reason why reducing any particular terrain to a resource should lead to its depletion, in terms of either meaning or productivity. It should be possible, after all, to “use” that terrain rationally, matching ends and means. And yet that is not what happens. It would seem that there is an inherent instability to the framework of world-as-resource that impels it to devour that which it enframes.” (Ghosh, pg. 73) Ghosh here notices the same thing we just pointed out, way too often humans time and time again have shown ourselves unable to use our planet as a resource positively and environmentally friendly consistently enough in a way that protects and sustains it, which ultimately protects and sustains us. This is why I’ve Titled my project “Bonds of Earth” as a hope that in everything we as humans do, it should always be in partnership and in love for our planet.

Solidarity For All

This leads me to my next text, Art and Solidarity Reader: radical actions, politics and friendships. In this text, author Katya Garcia-Anton addresses the notion of “solidarity”. “Solidarity has re-entered the global zeitgeist with resounding force in the last decade, driving new thinking to counter the systemic failures and abuses of our society”. (Garcia-Anton, Back Cover) Topics surrounding global solidarity from the seventies to the present day in association with migration, neocolonialism, rising radicalization, inter-religious conflicts, class divisions, new technology, heteronormativity, and the environment are very much present correlate very much with the notion of the many different sub crises we as humans are facing already under the umbrella of climate change. “It emphasizes the centrality of artist-led empathy and personal connectivity in building networks of solidarity and concrete actions that generate profound transformation in society.” (Garcia-Anton, Back Cover) Again this shows a connection to Rifkin’s piece concerning the factor our human emotion plays a part in climate situations as well.

The Art World Showcase

One of the ways we can show our care for our world is through the artistic talents used as art. Zina Saro-Wiwa is an artist from Brooklyn, New York who is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes her work through the avenues of video installation, sound, photography, culinary, and other unique artistic mediums. In her rendition of Kariko Pipeline (2015-2021), Zina engages with the cultural-political, ecological, spiritual, and economic dimensions of life on the Niger River Delta. She analyses the relationship between land and place with use her use of poetic displacement.

Karikpo Pipeline Zina Saro-Wiwa

Figure 8 Karikpo Pipeline 2015/2021 five-channel video installation, 27’31’’, Courtesy of the artist and Niger Delta Flow Gallery

“Karikpo Pipeline, shot in Ogoniland, juxtaposes sequences showing the infrastructure of oil extraction with evocations of invisible and spiritual energies… For Saro-Wiwa this particular slippery, poetic homonym ‘possession’ has opened a portal for this multi-channel video work that questions authorship and stewardship of contested landscapes such as Ogoniland.” (Saro-Wiwa, 2021) Saro-Wiwa rethinks the idea of nature by establishing a new foundation for the work, using soundtracks of unique instruments in her dances, Saro-Wiwa shows how it still is possible to think creatively to demonstrate environmental activism. I’d like to believe similar to Saro-Wiwa, that my art also establishes a new way to rethink the relationship between land and people as well that puts a positive and hopeful outlook on climate activism.

Concluding Statements

The climate changes in our world today have stemmed from many factors throughout history. In this essay, we’ve looked at just a few of how we have or haven’t intervened enough at the hands of our current climate crisis. My friends and I through this class have bonded together with greater understanding and appreciation for the work and awareness being done to highlight the people and art that are bringing the topic of climate change front and center. With art as a special means to be able to do this, I hope that going forward, we can all find a way to be Helping Hands for climate justice and show much greater empathy and care for our amazing planet, and by doing so give us all the climate-healthy planet we long to live on and sustain.

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