I have done several talks and interviews for media about my this project—Climate Commons—and the other works lately and find myself reiterating a desire for artists to throw themselves into the arena of activism and politics. The follow up questions are usually about things like what are the similarities between science and art, or how does this work function as activism, how can art effect a “real” change. Not bad questions, but are they the point? These fields or endeavors are corralled into their rigidly defined pens and only a specialized Knowledge pass allows one to enter. Why not move from one to the other, insist on permeable states of being, encourage intersection and analogy?
for those who’d like further reading: a great collection of essays on art and activism.

image: ”No Way Back?” poster. design by César Sesio

I’ve been working on an interdisciplinary collaborative hybrid art/research project for the last year and a half. Its called Arctic Listening Post and includes a series of works that explore our cultural imaginary of the Arctic, particularly focusing on climate change. This networked conversation, Climate Commons, began as I spent a year in a research blog project, Deepnorth, a virtual expedition to the North Pole, in which I gathered from the internet each day an image, a fact, or a story, and slowly accrued a kind of narrative mapping of the representations of the North Pole, from science, history, sports feats, mass media, art, fiction, and politics.