Nathalie–here is a question I get very often about my work. I am asking the other artists who are posting these days to Climate commons to answer it as well:
“The question for me is, does making art about climate change ever get beyond preaching to the choir? Is it possible that art can play a role in changing the minds of those who continue to reject the scientific evidence? How can art make a difference, where a photo of environmental devastation, can not?”
this question was posted to my text about science and art a few days ago. am still mulling over my own answers… its a tough one.

It’s good to see how your project is progressing, Nathalie. Is anyone else using your data for other purposes? (Not to say that your purposes aren’t sufficient of course.)

Yes, it is having multiple purposes. Zach and Scott use my field experience to develop these quads for educational purposes. The idea is to keep these quads affordable and flexible for teachers and students to use in their classroom. I am also working with another artist and two science teachers to find ways of how my way of translating science data can be used to encourage visual, artistic explorations in the science classroom. My interest in this is to encourage people to use art as a medium of thinking something through, rather than approaching it as something that needs to be pretty enough to end up on someone’s fridge.

The first thought that entered my head as I read your questions was Chris, my former studio mate at MassArt, who was notorious in turning off my studio lights. I would briefly leave to go to the bathroom and would find the studio lights off. I would turn them back on. Next time I came back after a brief errand, they were off. Even though he probably was never aware of it, I saw it as this daily tug-of-war between his and my philosophy on light use. I was convinced you waste more energy constantly turning the lights on and off, while he obviously thought it’s better to turn them off when not in use. Even though I could rationally see why he was right, my annoyance had to do with something beyond the lights. He was trying to change my habit – and habits are hard to change. But habits is what this question is really about. How can art not just reach beyond “the choir” in talking about climate change, but how can it change people’s behavior to live more sustainable?

I think art can and must go to that next step if it is to have any impact beyond being a pretty picture on the wall to make some rich patron feel good. My guess is that as more and more artists will enter the issue through their own ways and means, we will have a growing multitude of examples and ways climate change can be understood. Personally, I’m not at all interested in educating people about climate change. I am, however, interested in learning about climate change by interacting and integrating climate directly into my experience in the studio. To me it’s a much more productive and optimistic way of approaching the topic. It is also a way of helping me understand climate change and its global connections in my own immediate environment. The trick is to make climate change less of an abstraction, but something every individual feels empowered enough to engage in so that they feel compelled to make drastic changes in their energy use. People who are doggedly ignoring climate change won’t change their mind with another article or another art work about global warming. It’s too abstract to find a connection between a tiny frog in Costa Rica fighting for existence and your own SUV in the drive way. For me that link actually begins to make sense when I start to understand my own backyard a little more. On my part that requires getting off the couch, out of the air-conditioned environment and out into the world – be it the inner city or the empty beaches of Provincetown. climate change happens everywhere, not just in Alaska or Australia. Zach keeps saying that the only way to really understand the interplay of all the different factors that create climate, you have to be outside and interact with it. After just a few weeks doing my daily trips to the beach, I couldn’t agree more.

In terms of reaching people ‘outside the choir’, my daily visits to the beach are more conscious-raising then my sculpture, because I come in contact with a much broader variety of people. That small act of just simply being out on the beach everyday and recording data, has, inadvertently, become my little segway into making the general public more aware of climate change. When I go to the beach, I am certainly the only one who bikes there at this time of year and, 99% of the time, am the only one who is actually on the beach. Most people drive there, sit in their car, and stare out at the ocean with their motors running. Several times, though, my odd-looking quad and recording activities has drawn people out of their cars to walk over and ask what I am doing. Many of these folks have lived on the Cape all their lives. When I tell them what I am doing, it often brings up stories of how they have seen environmental changes on Cape Cod over the years. And so it evolves into an exchange in which we actually talk about climate change in our own backyard. This has been a completely unanticipated aspect of this project, but one that is extremely valuable because I am talking to people about climate change that I normally would not reach through my art. They share their experiences, and I share my data findings and explain my art process. Meanwhile, they have shut off their motors and are standing outside on the beach with me.

“Actions speak louder than words.” Speaking strictly for myself, art has made me more aware of climate change. art often has a way of translating issues into daily life, by giving it that extra twist that makes you see the topic in a fresh way. Both art and science are perspectives, means, and venues through which one can access the issue in multiple ways. But for a piece of sculpture or a science article to have an impact beyond raising awareness, it has to do what Chris did in my studio. It has to convince people to change their habits. Perhaps it is my optimistic side that I do believe art and science together can spark some sort of social epidemic, such as Malcom Gladwell describes in the Tipping Point, when living environmentally sustainable will become an imperative even the densest amongst us can understand. It would begin with a few artists/scientists collaborations that inspire other artists and scientists, and it soon snowballs into an avalanche that reaches even those who never step foot into a museum. Perhaps overly optimistic, but I do have to believe in the ability of humans to change if I can ever make art about climate change.

Nathalie
read the comments from Joy Garnett on her post, Strange tentacles, I think you will be interested in them. these are great questions and thoughts for our talk in March…

Jane,

I would also say that art is less affected by Susan Sontag’s notion of anaesthetization. Unfortunately, yet another photo of environmental devastation simply fails to shock anyone anymore. Even the “choir” aren’t shocked, but at least they are already converted.

So, the question becomes how to make the art rich enough / stimulating enough / shocking enough to get beyond the anaesthetized populace and actually have some effect. But I certainly think it is possible.

working with kids on phytoplankton — microscope use is abstract, and high schoolers are not always enthusiastic about time in the lab — but two things always energize the slack. Sampling outdoors, and mixing in art projects.

students modelled two disparate views of a diatom (Odontella) from identification materials we were using.

Two students working iin entirely different groups, chose one diatom in two views in the micrscope(looking at the diatom in its top down orientation, and in its girdle view from the side).

They were able to demonstrate a difficult and abstract microscope concept with a visual model.

Now they have a much more defined idea of the identification characteristics I am looking for in their sampling, and our identification skills are improving.

art and science are inextricably linked by way of seeing:)