Reasoning For Climate Change Art

 I would argue that if effective lessoning of climate change is to be made through art we need to look at the background related to climate change, a symbiotic relationship with nature, and how nature is abused. It’s only with these combined that we will be able to see why environmental art is so impactful in contributing to solving this ongoing problem of climate change. This will also provide reasons why educated art is of the utmost importance.

        Humans started conquering nature and its power instead of fearing or living in a symbiotic relationship with it.  In “Climate Change and the Industrial Revolution: Informing Policy through History, Memory, and Literature” (Goodbody, 2018) it adds that in reflection of the progress from the Industrial Revolution, there is still a need for  “acknowledging the importance of institutional factors and scientific advances, but focusing on the availability and use of energy, links economic history with contemporary issues of energy and environment, and writes of the dangers of pollution and climate change.” Without this acknowledgment, we would lose track of the fact that this event was done with little regard to the harmful effects it caused. When looking back we can see that certain civilizations never wanted complete control over nature's power. Instead, they used it and gave back to nature. Such as with indigenous communities and what we are seeing with the resurgence of ecovillages.

        Changing the Age of Progress into the Age of Resilience (Rifkin, 2023). A very important idea from shifting from progress, as previously mentioned with the Industrial Revolution, to an age where we are adapting and finding new sustainable ways to live. In the example Oil! (Rutkauskas, 2013) we were able to see the devastating impacts of the oil industry on the environment and community that lives there. While also gaining a better understanding of just how long this pollution can last on the environment.  This adds to why it is so necessary that we solve the problem of climate change because it is impacting people disproportionately. In indigenous communities, we see their land taken away from them, or the reality        Andreas Rutkauskas, Oil!, Video installation view, 2013     of having to live with pollution as a way of life. This has been going on for some time and needs to be reconciled but the reality is that those companies polluting hold enough power to keep impacting lands negatively with little retribution.

There is a Strong Symbiotic Connection Between Humans and Nature

We see a small number of specific communities realize the power nature has and learn to give back and worship the earth we live on. While many others pollute nature for their own gain. In “The Mother Tree and in Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures” (Sheldrake, 2021) specifically the section called Wood, Wide, Web we see a connection throughout the Earth such as with the microorganisms, trees, fungi, and animals. This connection is through the ground and the resources we all need to sustain life. In the artwork Icewatch (Eliasson, 2018) the photograph to the left, we are shown an artist's interpretation of bringing the connection back to the people. Here we see people hugging ice as it melts because it was shipped from a glacier to a city center for people to observe. This instills the idea that the connection is still there but on the other hand there has begun a trend toward humans disconnecting from nature as discussed in “The Distinction between Humans and Nature: Human Perceptions of Connectedness to Nature and Elements of the Natural and Unnatural”(Vining, Joanne, Merrick, and Price, 2008). This trend is upheld by the rising number of people moving out of rural areas to city centers where nature and its connection aren’t always the strongest.

The effects of this disconnection to nature are shown when pollution occurs through European practices and we see it affect those who are most in tune with nature first.  Although everyone is connected to nature, again through the “World, Wide, Web”, and is reliant on it even down to the basic elements that make up our world, but this connection has been lost for some time in many cultures.

This is why many artists show the aftermath of what a disconnection to the environment might lead to with such examples as in  Copper Geographies, Scars of Extraction (Acosta, 2012) The photograph to the right. Now in societies where we praise the achievements and usage of nature, we have lost the connection we once had and this is where we see the shift to Amensalism, A taking from the land with little to no benefit to the land, which is a very harmful product of human consumption. As we can see this idea is what causes disastrous pollution that will impact these areas for years to come.

Humans Take Earth’s Power for Themselves

To show how humans take the power of the earth we can look into Fountain by Rebecca Belmore (2005). In this video we see a woman interacting with nature and with specifically the element of water. Belmore shows how this beach on indigenous land in Canada is polluted with a random combustion of firewood. This combustion represents the pollution from a plant up the way that has been dumped onto this beach for some time. Bringing a sense of wonder and fear of how these lands could be polluted bad enough to cause a fire. Then we see her go into the water and bring out a pail we assume has water in it. After walking on the beach she goes on to throw it at the camera and it turns out to be blood. When this film is shown to audiences it is on   a wall of streams of water and when the blood is

Rebecca Belmore, 2005, Fountain, Video  thrown at the camera the streams turn red creating a Rebecca Belmore, Fountain, 2005.        powerful image of what has been occurring on indigenous lands here.  Through analysis in the book Creative Presence (Merson, 2020), This symbolizes how governments and businesses take elements such as water for granted, like in the building of fountains, but also pollute it for the indigenous people who live on these lands. This demonstrates my point that society has used the power of the elements for its own gain at the expense of others who still are reliant on these elements in a more symbiotic way. So when a company negatively impacts the lands people live on, essentially taking the power people could have had in the symbiotic relationship with nature, they prevent this from happening.

Again this can be seen in the artwork Deep Float (Qadiri, 2017) where a hand is shown sticking out of oil to represent the environmental impact of crude oil and oil drilling. This shows another way of looking at how the impact of large corporations exploiting resources negatively impacts the environment and its people in a way that is basically “killing” them off, such as is thought when first analyzing the depravity shown in the hand reaching out of a       Monira Al Qadiri, Deep float, Sculpture, 2017   black liquid. Almost grasping for help. That is why these pieces are so important. It shows how the power is being taken away from the indigenous people or others living near extraction or pollution by turning a necessary part of life, such as water or the body, into a red liquid symbolizing blood or oil and potentially the death caused by pollution.

The human relationship with nature has shifted into one that is based on Amensalism, this is a power gain instead of a symbiotic process. Nature is broken down into elements within my analysis and from this we see that these elements hold so much weight and power and yet they are being abused for that very thing. This abuse is related to the lack of thought towards nature's elements and those who rely on them. From this connection to elements and the devastation of climate change, the best way to combat this is through the emotional response gained through art. This will embody the issues and create an outlet for change by connecting people back to nature. Giving us the opportunity we desperately need to create a more sustainable culture.

Art as a Solution

By examining the different methods in which art can display the innate interconnection between humans and the natural world, our project exemplifies the way art can be used as a catalyst to change the way people think and ultimately inspire them to reconsider the normalized abuse of nature in many modern societies. We discuss the shift in mentality when working symbiotically with the natural environment versus the more modern idea that we as humans are entitled to everything the earth has to give and how art can impact these different mindsets.

What Can You Do?

In today’s day and age, it is easy to feel overwhelmed with environmental doom when the remedy to climate change is seemingly so far away it feels almost nonexistent. This feeling is only exemplified when the majority of environmental damage is seen coming from large corporations and governments, yet the pressure to fix the environment is placed on the individual consumer. It can make a lot of people feel powerless, leading many to not do anything at all. Finding creative ways to channel those feelings out into the world, whether through just a few word poem or a sketch or even just admiring other people's work, can be an important first step to take in order to start taking action. Because of this, I encourage all people to submerse themselves into a little bit of art and find ways, even if small, to reconnect with nature.

Bibliography

Goodbody, Axel. “Climate Change and the Industrial Revolution: Informing Policy through

 History, Memory, and Literature.” RCC Perspectives, no. 3 (2018): 53–58.

Vining, Joanne, Melinda S. Merrick, and Emily A. Price. “The Distinction between Humans and

 Nature: Human Perceptions of Connectedness to Nature and Elements of the Natural and

 Unnatural.” Human Ecology Review 15, no. 1 (2008): 1–11.

Sheldrake, Merlin. Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our

futures. New York: Random House, 2021.

Rifkin, Jeremy. The age of resilience: Reimagining existence on a Rewilding Earth. Swift Press,

 2023.

Merson, Emily. Essay. In Creative Presence: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous

 Self-Determination, and Decolonial Artwork, 152–63. Lanham, MD: Rowman &

 Littlefield, 2020.