Samuel, Mahima, Piero, Sritha

ART H 390 B

Group Project

Climate Zombies

Our creative project will examine the climate crisis, our current apocalypse, by drawing parallels to a zombie apocalypse. (Climate Change a Very short Introduction) The climate zombie is an apathetic consumer plagued by the climate zombie virus. The origins of this destructive virus, its transmission, the symptoms and their implications, will all be revealed. To allow for some sleep at night, the essay will close out with some insight from the experts on calamity who can help cure the virus.

What is the Climate Zombie-Sam

We are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, all around us we see the walking dead. The affliction is the Climate Zombie Virus. The Climate Zombie is an embodiment of extractive capitalism ideals. (Monsters of the anthropocene) The Climate Zombie is characterized by a need for consumption, a curated apathy for the destruction caused by capitalism and the self destruction of capitalism itself. The virus is contagious and much of the world is endangered by the crisis of its spread.

The origin of the climate zombie virus goes back quite far. The virus has been widespread throughout recent history but is greatly an affliction of the anthropocene (since 1950).(pollution is colonialism) Viral susceptibility begins with a certain set of ideals, and the loss of a different set of ideals. Jeremey Rifkin Stated in his: Age of Resilience:  “The underlying temporal orientation that directed the entirety of the Age of Progress is “efficiency”—the quest to optimize the expropriation, consumption, and discarding of natural resources and, by doing so, increase the material opulence of society at ever-greater speed”(Rifkin). This immense hunger for progress of the horde is clearly the driving disease vector, and it’s easy to be caught up in the popularization of efficiency and materialism.

Let's use this oil Jerker line system to reexamine the disposition of one of these undead devourers. In Rutkauskas Video Oil! a series of still landscape shots play out, each of which “reveal a different working part of a jerker-line system that has been in operation for over 150 years…; harsh angles and jerky movements of machines contrast with the fluttering softness of the trees, bushes, and grass… we are shown the fruits of this machine’s labor: with each pumping movement, a small rig at the end of the line pulls up a tiny amount of oil onto the surrounding ground.There is a sense of unease or eeriness to the video; the jerker-line is a relic from a past that continues into the present, an ongoing machination that seemingly functions completely without human Input”(Rutkauskas Video Oil!). This art piece is a great metaphor for a climate zombie’s internal prerogative and external presentation. The current state of extractive capitalism is clearly portrayed by the depiction of this oil extraction technology. It is far past its time, yet still animated by the zombie virus. Dead and unnatural in the world, endlessly consuming.

Now that we understand how the affliction works once interred in a host, the question of how it spreads between individuals arises. Why can one not simply resist? “The fraught anxiety about the role of agency in the unfolding of modernity can be seen in Jünger’s text (1993) on the mobilization of war, and novels such as Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. Coping with horror requires taking some kind of responsibility, otherwise we are entirely subject to the whims of the war machine, the hive, the institutional and economic demands of mass consumerism and mass production” (Finis Dunaway, “OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE Children, Youth, and the Visual Politics of Climate Change,” )   It’s clear to see that in this late stage anthropocene, the economic demands on an individual make them undoubtedly more susceptible to becoming a climate zombie. In other words, joining the horde is always a safer bet than facing the unnatural destructive power.

A zombie apocalypse would not be complete without decay.   Economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, for instance, asserts that we are witnessing the dawn of a post-capitalist interregnum. Due to its internal contradictions, … capitalism is imploding, but there is no new socio-economic order on the horizon. Capitalism “hang[s] in limbo, dead or about to die from an overdose of itself but still very much around, as nobody will have the power to move its decaying body out of the Way.”(Jessica Mulvogue “ART OF THE INTERREGNUM page 3) The zombie virus puts individuals in limbo. Enduring an apocalypse, dead from the crisis yet driven to survive and made to extort or be extorted.

For our creative project, we’ll be creating a depiction of a climate zombie out of assorted garbage. The zombie will be constructed from discarded plastic. An enduring and seemingly undefeatable material that has already lived out its time of functionality, immediately zombie-esque. The zombie will have a gallon plastic bottle for a stomach, full of wrappers. Not only will its food be made of petroleum products, it will be an impossible task to fill it up to satiation. The zombie will have styrofoam eyes, apparently blind to the destruction it endorses, and lack legs as everything it likes will be delivered. The final things will be added commodities for a polished and chic appearance, appearance being a great aspiration.  

Social Implications-Piero

 As seen in section one, defining the climate zombie, when a zombie subscribes to this way of thinking, maximizing material efficiency, they lose a bit of their individualism and become willing to sacrifice anything to achieve the goal. This sacrifice is often  not their own but the destruction of native individuals and influences in the area where extractivism is ramping up. This was seen in the Rio Doce disaster (Isabelle Carbonell,” The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change”, page 144) where warning signs of imminent dam collapse, which would entail the absolute destruction of ecosystem and community alike, was ignored in the interest of saving money on repairs to turn higher profits.

To delve deeper into this disaster we must first be able to understand it in its entirety. Over the course of the history of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the popularity of gold led to excessive mineral exploitation, led by companies such as Samarco, which are owned by Vale and BHP Billiton. Unbridled extraction and unlimited development led to the Rio Doce disaster, where the Fundão dam collapsed, releasing toxic substances. Unfortunately, as mentioned above. Samarco, upon realizing the danger, decided to ignore the risk signs to obtain the greatest possible benefit, demonstrating a consumerist mentality that prioritizes profit over environmental and community safety.

This disaster not only contains an environmental catastrophe, but also portrays a contemporary story about the dangers of uncontrolled consumerism, in which companies, like "profit zombies", ignore warnings and cause disasters in their obsession with growth. Samarco's story is a warning about the risks of prioritizing profits over responsibility, leaving communities and the environment vulnerable to the companies' greed for more money.

Analyzing further the issue of the existing social implications of consumerism and materialism, we can find a similarity in our society today with these creatures known as zombies. Taking into account the basic existence of a zombie, we can affirm that its only purpose of existence would be to consume incessantly until reaching a moment in which it must “pay” for that voracity by being eliminated for representing a threat to people. Knowing this fact, if we delve into the writing, “The Age of Resilience" (Jeremy Rifkin's, “The Age of Resilience: Reimagining existence on a rewilding Earth”, page 6), we can see how it is suggested to us that we human beings, in a similar way to zombies, have become creatures that seek much more than mere daily subsistence. Within us, consciously or unconsciously, there is a constant search for the meaning of our existence. However, at some point in our search, we seem to have lost our way.

In our daily lives, the relentless pursuit of consumption, as Rifkin describes, traps us in a cycle of consumerism and materialism. This behavior, driven on several occasions for various reasons, can cause the perception we have of ourselves and others to be altered. This is because some hold the idea that consumer habits largely define a person, since purchasing decisions, choices of certain brands, and even the use of certain services can end up influencing the self-esteem of some individuals and how they are valued by others.

In the same way as the point already mentioned, for some, the demonstration of their social position is manifested through consumption. Obtaining luxurious goods or ostentatious spending has become a common way to display wealth and social status over time. Unfortunately, due to this practice, inequalities, jealousies, or social hierarchies can be generated in our society, a fact which can be witnessed in our daily lives.

Compounding Issues-Sritha

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 Cure-Mahima

The cure is not represented in our visual, since the cure is not a specific object, but rather concepts and knowledge that we can take and apply to aspects of our lives to turn from climate zombies back to people.

The cure to the zombie virus comes from Indigenous scholars such as Kyle Powys Whyte, Grace Dillon, Zoe Todd (Métis/otipemisiw), and others as they remind us that climate change is not unprecedented for Indigenous peoples’ who have lived through colonially induced apocalypses, Indigenous artists actively and collectively engage multiple forms of media to make visible Indigenous survivance and resilience against past/present/future disruptions.

The cure to the zombie virus is shown by the resistance to capitalism and living off of what is already available to you, a concept called subsistence which is widely taken from Indigenous cultures. And was spoken on directly by Alaska Natives the week of November 21.

In her interview, Rose B Simpson cites climate grief, a lack of agency, and denial of impacts as to why people are complicit in climate change. She mentions the importance of applying creativity to our everyday lives in order to regain agency in our fight against climate change. (With Applied Creativity we can heal, “Routledge companion”) This agency, when given back to people,

represents the cure to the mindless disease of the capitalistic climate zombie.

While nations like the U.S. employ logics of supremacy and colonialism as the viable way forward, Skawennati in The Return of the Peacemaker refuses such pathways. Instead of privileges the promotion of war, violence, stratification, hierarchies, and systems of bestowing and denying rights to some at the expense of others that are central to settler and US exceptionalist modes of being in the world, Skawenatti imagines otherwise. By centering Indigenous knowledge, narratives, humor, and the power of women and peace, Skawennati presents a means of escape from the current apocalypse that colonialist and extractive logics have ushered forth. In the modern day representation of the story of the Peacemaker, Skawenatti uses a Trump look alike to represent the Tadodaho, someone that in the original story was the most challenging to convince to join forces with them. By doing this, Skawenatti points out that there is hope, even with those that we consider the most hopeless. This belief is represented through our cure since even when the rise of capitalism seems inevitable, this cure of self sustainability provides hope. (Indigenous Media: Dialogic Resistance to Climate Disruption)

Conclusion

Together, each of our sections paints a picture of the possible demise of our world through our own selfish actions. They each show a different aspect but when put together, emphasize the reality that we are causing: to ourselves, to the environment, and to other people. But they also give us a sense of hope. This project serves to remind people to think of themselves as a part of a whole rather than as individuals and each of our sections emphasize that responsibility that is within each person.

The Climate Zombie is plagued with something that we are all guilty of: excessive consumption under capitalism. The world is ever changing, but what remains the same is that we as a population are slowly turning into climate zombies as we ignore the impacts of our actions and those of corporations. While it seems impossible, as we’ve seen from many Native perspectives, there is hope for changing the minds of ourselves and those around us in order to push towards a more sustainable future in order to save ourselves and future generations from the violence of the climate zombie apocalypse.

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.

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.

The Red Nation. The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth. Common Notions, 2021.

Tsing, Anna, et al. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet Monsters of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.