Sritha Sivaramakrishnan
ART H 309 B
Individual Project
Climate and Capitalism
Capitalism is something that our lives revolve around. Recently, the Black Friday sales were so “good” that it generated $9.8 billion this year (Bemer, Matt). With the increasing economic derailment in the United States and the decreasing buying power, sales are a big deal to us, the consumers. We are bombarded with greenwashing, cancel culture, fake activism on social media, and other intense propaganda that pretends to do so good that it is getting harder and harder to discern true sustainability and capitalism greed. I’ve personally noticed multiple SheIn advertisements that have a whole section of “sustainably” produced products and we all know the amount of harm this company causes- from stealing other artists’ work to critically underpaying and overworking their laborers. Skims, a clothing brand of the famous Kim Kardashian, has shamelessly commodified climate change highlighting the exploitive harms of capitalism when she clearly has the means and the money to afford to make sustainably and ethically produced items.
One very haunting story I have explored time and time again about capitalism greed is the Rio Doce disaster where A leaked message shows that the company Samarco was warned about the potential collapse of the dam and TWO years before the actual collapse and they chose to ignore it. They also forged and covered up several environmental violations. They are like the scientists that released the initial zombie virus out to the wild and now are reaping the benefits of the apocalypse. Rio Doce disaster (Isabelle Carbonell,” The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change”, page 143) One thing that’s often forgotten is the effects of slow violence- one very important concept the Rio Doce disaster explores. The river that provided the animals with nutrition and hydration now provides harmful chemicals and poison to these animals. These animals now suffer from generational diseases, chemicals have seeped through the ground the river flows on, the fish living in the river, the people who died when the dam initially collapsed and the people who have slowly been affected because everything that grows on that land is polluted. The continuous but nominal compounding of these ill effects of the collapse of this dam is represented by the slow rotting of the zombies- they don’t completely disintegrate but their virus constantly but slowly consumes them, driving them more and more away from humanity because of the big companies’ power hungry therefore capitalistic greed.
The climate zombies, the theme for our project, connects to Riffkins’ ideas because zombies represent the cyclical effect of destruction and spreading destruction. Capitalism does a similar thing where the craving for power and control leads companies to block entries for other small companies that could have more productive and cost effective technologies. This ends up pushing the economy into a “protracted shell”. Although these compounding issues of capitalism (slow violence; exploitation of workers, land, natural resources; destruction of entry points for other markets to enter), Jeremy Rifkin argues that the “capitalism paradigm, long accepted as the best mechanism for promoting the efficient organization of economic activity, is now under siege on two fronts”: previously distinct fields such as ecological sciences, chemistry, biology, etc have been brought together and on the second front, he believes that the internet is going to boost productivity to the point where marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero. The Age of Resilience" (Jeremy Rifkin's, “The Age of Resilience: Reimagining existence on a rewilding Earth”, page 2). Monopolies, like Rifkins suggests, tend to block the market from new products entering and makes the market slow and inefficient but limited enough for the consumers to keep consuming these products The Age of Resilience" (Jeremy Rifkin's, “The Age of Resilience: Reimagining existence on a rewilding Earth”, page 6). Inevitably, like the zombies spreading virus to humans and humans turning into zombies, our overconsumption and need for efficiency is slowly leading us to an antidote: the internet. With new technologies and self production of goods comes the interconnectedness of ecology and the market. These old monopolies have been the cause of the huge destruction of natural resources and with self production and the advent of 3D printing and the internet, people have started to make their own goods and educate themselves about ways to cost effectively live a comfortable life, thereby forcing capitalism to slowly subdue- just like how every action has an equal and opposite reaction, capitalism’s destructive nature will inevitably destroy it and we’ll rebuild the economy again, from scratch.
Recently, the talk about the “red deal”, a supplemental to the Green Deal, is a deal where indigenous communities are banding together to reclaim the “life and density” that has been stolen from the indigenous communities by capitalism. (The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth) By allowing Indigenous people to reclaim their lands and care for it properly, we can slowly recover from the generational destruction of the lands that capitalism has been causing. It is a call to action where a group of indigenous communities symbolically “scream” at the government and companies to undo the mess they have been doing for multiple generations since mass movements are extremely important ways to liberation. It is a call to action for indigenous liberation and much larger than the US colonial state. This deal aims to tie the exploited community to the exploitative economy. Although there has been a couple disagreements within indigenous communities about this deal and the economic collapse that could occur if this deal gets signed (due to our inescapability from capitalism), this idea can be explored and developed more in order to allow a better and inclusive conclusion to our exploitative capitalism and transform it into something more like, maybe ending the zombie apocalypse in the process?
The indigenous communities have been experiencing the effects of climate change before any of us did. As native flora and fauna started becoming scarce due to climate change, indigenous communities had to look for alternatives from their centuries long food habits.
Rifkin argues that as the marginal cost of production approaches zero, it would be economically better for the world to switch to the use of renewable energy and completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels “The Age of Resilience" (Jeremy Rifkin's, “The Age of Resilience: Reimagining existence on a rewilding Earth”, page 7), . However, with our current heavy reliance on fossil fuels, the crippling American debt of trillions of dollars, and the unavailability of land to install these renewable energy machines and the need of fossil fuels to make these machines, this idea seemingly isn’t sustainable in the long run. However, by exploring the complex relationship between environmental shifts and the evolving artistic expressions of American indigenous peoples we can start to understand Rifkin’s ideas through a lens that reaches beyond the scope of ourselves right now. identifying the socio cultural impact of climate change, we might be able to reach out to indigenous ancestral knowledge and practices to create the world in Rifkin’s drafts.
(Be)Longing
Cannupa Hanska Luger, 2019
mixed media life-size buffalo skeleton, sculptural installation (approx 42” H x 80” W x 80” D)
ceramic, steel, ribbon, fiber,
With the huge decline in buffalo populations, the indigenous grasses, which are used to make shelters and beds and other daily use products by these communities. This grass also provides a huge source of nutrition to other animals around these lands which are on the verge of endangerment. Like the Rio Doce disaster, the slow violence is extremely imminent but not sought for in this case Rio Doce disaster (Isabelle Carbonell,” The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change”, page 146). When we think of a disaster, we typically think of its immediate effects such as loss of life, pause of the commercial world, loss of contact with our loved ones, etc. However, the slow death and disappearance of local flora and fauna causing the slow death of the people and animals around us is never really considered. I also think this piece really connected with our climate zombies theme where the dead aren't dead because the impact of their life and loss lives on forever, just like the buffalo herds.
With climate having a constant impact on the lives of indigenous communities, we can’t help but think “what do I do to help them?”. Rifkin’s ideas about using the internet to self publish and produce your own goods, Rose B Simpson’s life filled with self sustenance, and educating ourselves about the world around us with books written by Leah Thomas and other indigenous authors and staying aware of the situation around us will help us stay mindful of the impacts on the indigenous communities. Because, the more we try to learn, the more we can help.
Works Cited
Bemer, Matt. “Black Friday Was a Hit Online, Reaching a Record $9.8 Billion in the U.S.” Barrons, Barrons, 26 Nov. 2023, www.barrons.com/articles/black-friday-cyber-week-online-sales-deals-total-970002b1.
Demos, T. J., et al. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.
Liboiron, Max. Pollution Is Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2021.
Maslin, Mark, and Mark Maslin. Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2021.
The Red Nation. The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth. Common Notions, 2021.
Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth. St. Martin’s Press, an Imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2022.
Rutkauskas, Andreas. “Oil!” Vimeo, 15 Nov. 2023, vimeo.com/61412355.
Tsing, Anna, et al. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet Monsters of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
“(Be)Longing.” Cannupa Hanska Luger, www.cannupahanska.com/sculpture/belonging. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023.