Consultant Dan
11 June 2010
Planet.Art : a new model for art, climate change and cultural power
Over the past 18 months I have been having some interesting conversations about climate change, culture and the future of the traditional model of international art exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale or Germany’s Documenta.
I see the conversation as a philosophical investigation and also a political process, a step in Cultural campaigning. We need to use culture and political economy in tandem, to generate the clean energy transition.
Planet.Art is the name I have given to the model or approach that we are discussing. The punctuation and capitalisation is supposed to convey two ideas:
- The Planet is our context or base and we are destroying it. Artists and curators, like all people, should at least acknowledge this reality, even if their practice is not deliberately environmental
- Art is ongoing or open and does not have to be determined by the environment and how we think about it
I have been lucky enough to talk about Planet.Art with some people I admire, who know much more than I do about art and culture. Here are some of them:
- Ross Gibson: artist, academic
- Felicity Fenner: curator, academic
- Jan Bryant: academic, critic
- Marcus Westbury: writer, event maker, cultural advisor
- Kevin Murray: writer, curator
- Sam Bower: Green Museum director
- Lianne Rossler: designer, climate activist
If you want to know more about the idea you can download an essay here. It was commissioned by Eyeline, an art magazine based at the Creative Industries Faculty of Queensland University of Technology. It is a review of environmental works at the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, in the context of the Planet.Art conversation.
Thanks Erland, that’s an interesting observation. Is that convergence just in Sydney, Australia or globally in contemporary art do you think?
I will have a look at artRiot – thanks for the tip. Good luck with it.
There are a lot of artists doing as well as talking. I have posted about their work from time to time: use the tags “art”, “music”, “poems”. If you or one of your group wishes to write about similar work in Australia I would be delighted to publish.
Have just put a link to your international law paper (published by ABC) in my Cancun report card: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KkfFLkG-fv14OUtNjhTBrKi0Kf5llafUfLa83xjqEeY/edit?hl=en#
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I think this is a pretty interesting conversation to open up. I think there'sa little bit of convergence happening here – while not climate/environment-specific I think sections of the art world are turning back to a broader practice that deliberately addresses social & environmental issues and further, seeks to inspire action in audiences for a better future.
I’m part of the artRiot collective, working on discovering some of this work and exhibiting it in Sydney but have heard of many others starting to do similar work.
If anyone’s interested, check out what we’re up to at http://artriot.org.au