You asked us whether art can help us/the world, when we are surrounded by crisis on a planetary scale (global extinctions, global warming) and a human scale (war, bullying, terrorism, discrimination, etc).
I come to this question from my own professional evolution... 20 years ago, I was an idealistic environmentalist and an aspiring artist in college. I decided I could do most good for the environment by becoming a lawyer and fighting for the environment using the political/legal system (it was also the easier/more practical choice as a daughter of immigrants who wouldn't understand my becoming an artiste quite so easily). I loved art, but decided that would be a hobby in my spare time. So I went to law school and spent a decade doing public interest environmental law, at the Department of Justice and at the nonprofit ocean conservation group, Oceana. I was lucky to be able to make a difference: at the government, we sued polluters, defended American Indian sovereign rights, set up marine protected areas, and set precedents (I am quite proud to be responsible for affirming the principle of joint and several liability in the 11th circuit for collision damages caused to coral reefs and seagrasses). At Oceana, we sued the government for failing to be strict enough in its fishing regulations and in protecting endangered sea turtles.
As life intruded in the form of young kids and a move away from DC, I took the opportunity to switch gears completely and devote myself to art again, in the form of children's illustration and whimsical paintings. My art is not edgy or cutting edge; in fact, I am drawn to and draw accessible art. I figure that the more people I can entice to enjoy my work, the more easily I can convey my point of view. So, for example, I make infographics like this one:
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Or paint charismatic fauna like this lionfish, in response to the issue of invasive species:
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| © 2012 Sylvia Liu |
Or create cartoons that convey mild existential dread:
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| "Stay" © 2011 Sylvia Liu |
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| "Bottled" © 2011 Sylvia Liu |
Or work on my picture book project about rubber ducks that are lost at sea that find all sorts of plastic trash and marine debris:
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| a potential spread for my picture book, made from scanned plastic bags |
Sometimes art seems inadequate as a response to crisis. It can seem self-indulgent and cathartic for the artist to vent while the world is falling apart. Sometime I wonder if I wasn't more effective in my previous job where I could point to concrete successes in the water or on land. On the other hand, perhaps it's only art and stories that ultimately move people. Which is why, as we discussed in an earlier thread, we prefer to get our dose of news with humor (Colbert, Stewart), or our political education from cartoonists (Toles). It's why some of the most biting social commentary comes in the form of comics (think Doonesbury or Mafalda from Argentina).
I was thinking about all of this when I read about Damien Hirst's latest installation that ended up killing 9,000 butterflies. Though unintentional, what a statement about crisis and mortality and its relationship with art.
One more thought. After the attack on the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, I was really angered and moved (more so than I usually am from the constant barrage of horrible news, probably because I had grown up abroad and known a lot of embassy kids and have a good friend working at the Cairo embassy). My response was to do this:
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| © 2012 Sylvia Liu |
Even while I was making it, I realized it was sort of trite and cliche (really, light a candle?). But the act of drawing it gave me some comfort, and after I posted it to Facebook, my friend in Cairo who had spent the day holed up in the embassy and finally left through tear gas and who was a personal friend of Ambassador Stevens, asked me if I could send him a copy of this piece as a tribute. So I had it professional printed, tracked it through a ridiculously inept journey involving several misdeliveries, and it finally arrived. The inchoate sorrow made concrete on a piece of paper is now half a world away. A drop of futility from one point of view, but a connection between friends from another.
So what do you think? Persevere in the face of chaos/crisis? Curl up in a ball with a pint of ice cream?
this is amazing and wonderful -
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sandy, it's amazing and wonderful. I wish there were a way you could continue both this work and the Oceana work.
ReplyDeleteRe Hirst - this is in a way the crux of the artworld; I'd heard he's worth 282 million, one of the richest artists in the world. His work disgusts me. Tropical butterflies are endangered; they shouldn't have been removed in the first place. Anyone, even me, could have told him and the curators that the insects would die. He'd done the piece before so he must have known. The art world thrives at this point on bad-boy gestures like this.
Years ago when I was closer to the artworld, I liberated animals from installations. But even if I'd wanted to, in this situation it would have been impossible.
Your infographic at the top is utterly brilliant and conveys all of this and I wonder if you wouldn't be able to publish your art somewhere else, somewhere public where it would be seen by a lot of people? The passenger pigeons are a case in point - where did you get te statistic 3-5 billion in the 15th century? I'd read that there were at least 2 billion in single flocks in the 19th century - altogether there must have been many times that. When you compare that with the 8 billion humans, they're about equal.
The ant weigh-in is marvelous; the greatest biomass on the planet is apparently in the planet - in porous layers of rock world-wide.
Definitely persevere! There's an energy in your work that actually does make a difference!
Excellent stuff, I agree, and I agree with your impulse to respond to the world visually. The picture book is really cool-looking, too. In the same vein, I think that new visual ways to represent abstract economic issues was one of the best things to come out of OWS.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your infographic; I also love the ant weigh-in, too. Does the infographic have a message about overpopulation, or is it sort of neutral in that respect? Is it meant to raise the issue of overpopulation? I'm not sure, and I don't want to critique you for something you're not doing. I have been reading, however, a lot about how overpopulation is not only not the problem with the world, but that it ends up being quite a reactionary and even racist line of thought that serves the interests of dominant ideology and the ruling class. Almost all of the Co2 emissions come from developed countries with stable or declining populations, etc. There's been a lot of ink spilled on this, and I don't have time to summarize the arguments, but they're in this book, if you're interested.
http://www.amazon.com/Too-Many-People-Immigration-Environmental/dp/1608461408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350649694&sr=8-1&keywords=too+many+humans
Hi - I haven't read the book, but I do know about overpopulation, and thinking through it doesn't lead to racism or reactionary thought. It can lead to anything - libertarian, socialist, racist, whatever, thought. In any case the argument isn't based on Co2 emissions - you're absolutely right about that; the US has something like 3% the world's population but uses 25% of the world's resources. The overpopulation argument is based more on what Forrester and others called the carrying capacity of the planet, which has been placed at around 10 billion. Already there is starvation and rapid desertification in Africa; this has been growing at an uncanny rate. In the U.S., water usage and shifting population trends have created a water crisis in the midwest and far west; rivers like the Colorado are near ruin. So there are water and food issues which are world-wide and need to be addressed. Some of this is due to politics - the Jordan River in the mid-east is contested territory and use by both the Israelis and Arabs; the lack of peace of any kind has resulted in the absence of a general water policy for the region. In Madagascar and other countries, overpopulation results in bushmeat which is resulting in the killing off of the something like 37 lemur species. In Nova Scotia, overfishing has resulted in the collapse of the industry - this is the result of the U.S., and, I think, Japanese and Norwegian fishing policies.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any of this serves a 'dominant ideology and the ruling class' - I'd argue even against a dominant ideology that has to absorb so many different regions and cultures world-wide. I'd also be very careful about throwing the 'racist' term around - I'm not a racist and I've taught courses in futurology - i.e. the future of the planet - and it's dire. I don't know this particular book, but from your description I'd question it.
Again this has nothing to do with nuclear or chemical pollution, but everything to do with animal slaughter, genetically-manipulated foods, starvation, and so forth.
- Alan
Thanks for the great comments.
ReplyDeleteAlan, I got the passenger pigeon numbers from a Smithsonian Institute website. It also reminds me of the concept of "shifting baselines," where each generation accepts a lower standard of environmental cleanliness as the new normal. When the Jamestown settlers came to the Chesapeake Bay, for instance, the water was reportedly so clear you could see to the bottom, and boats had to avoid hitting huge oyster banks. Even in my own lifetime, I've seen this. I used to scuba dive a lot, and 20 years ago my (now) husband and I were lucky to have been to some amazing places in the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Now when we snorkel or occasionally scuba dive in Florida or the Caribbean, the degradation is quite obvious. But if we're on a group dive with people just getting their certifications, they are completely thrilled by what they see. A group of ocean groups put out a short slide show that discusses this phenomenon: http://www.shiftingbaselines.org/slideshow/pristine_hi.html
Jed, I wasn't really making an overt statement about overpopulation, because I don't know quite what to think about it. As you point out, the people with the biggest footprints on Earth are those in industrialized countries. I was sort of thinking about the issue of how when biodiversity collapses, the surviving species are those generalists that overrun any niche, like cockroaches, rats, and pigeons. I think humans might fall into that category too.
Recently, I have been publishing my work at a local alternative news/culture/arts site, www.altdaily.com, and Oceana has commissioned me to do some infographics for them (so in a way I'm still helping do their work), so I've found a modest audience. (I've gathered some of my graphics in my blog at http://www.sylvialiuland.com/p/infographics.html)
I love how the whole infographic explosion has happened, where designers and artist are putting out stories and information in the form of interesting graphics. Designer Toby Ng did a really interesting series of posters explaining the world, if it were composed of a population of 100 people: http://www.toby-ng.com/graphic-design/the-world-of-100/
Hi - running around like crazy at the moment and will look at the URLs later. In the meantime want to mention you might want to read the travels of William Bartram, who went through the deep south, including the Everglades region in the 18th century - it's the same story again; people are in awe of the Everglades, but in fact there's only 1%, if that, of the flora and fauna that were there when Bartram traveled. -
ReplyDeleteHi - looked at the URLs - the ocean shifting baseline site is heartbreaking, and I've seen these changes even in my own lifetime. In Florida, the manatees are now identified by the scars left by propellers on their backs - humans won't place propeller guards on their jetskis because they see this as an infringement on their freedom. Every single manatee is wounded (we belong to the Save the Manatee Club btw, which I strongly recommend).
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you've seen http://xkcd.com ? - this has the best infographics/cartoons/philosophy-in-them site I've seen. You'd have to dig through it to get a feeling for the whole.
The baseline is everywhere and what people are marveling at, at this point, are remnants...
The problem is capitalism, not overpopulation. The world currently produces 2,800 calories per person per day, foodwise. The problem is that people don't have the income to purchase that food. Each one of the resources you mention--fish, bushmeat--could be handled by conservation practices. The overpopulation argument has of course been around since Malthus and, I still urgently believe, is usually mobilized to blame the poor for the rich's problems. We can go ahead and agree to disagree, because I don't have time to write an essay supporting my point here.
ReplyDeleteProbably good we agree to disagree. Overpopulation via Mathus is of course antiquated, but not via the Club of Rome report. In any case "handled by conservation practices" - this is an area we work in, and my partner has a degree in it (not that a degree in it means much), and the practices are simply not there; many species are already beyond the tipping point...
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