Since the 1960s the eco art movement has concerned itself with environmental degradation, the role of the human in this and has an explicit aim to affect behaviour change - but can art really get us to change what we do in our everyday for the good of the planet? I looked at this in depth in the course of my psychosocial academic practice have some questions.
At is largest operating level, art is our collective imagination and the artistic sensibility is our collective self-regulating device. When other social structures fail us, we turn to art for solace and enlightenment. So eco-art would seem a natural instrumental tool for the eco cause: eco-artists call on arts visceral qualities to affect behaviour and environmentalists and scientists have turned to eco-art as a communication tool exploiting arts perceived potential to weave message into society’s emotional fabric.
Eco-art, in literally and figuratively resituating the art experience, attempts to make that experience contiguous and coherent but arguably its real power lies in its potential to subvert. Eco-art’s affective potency lies in its position as a third space, questioning the authority given to the doctrines of science and environmentalism, presenting information as a trusted yet independent voice, agitating from this liminal space to affect behaviour change grounded in arts understanding of subjectivity, ambivalence and the non-separateness of the lived experience.
But more needs to be known of eco-arts affect; is it enough to say that art has a visceral, abstract affect, just from the experience of it? Does eco-art not need to be spectacle but tangible and work with its audience? Do we not need to empirically capture eco-arts ephemeral aspects and learn from this? How would we even go about this? And can eco-art learn from the wider social sciences and its understanding of the links between lifestyle choices and values?
In my own small way, I am committed to using the power of the arts to the benefit of the planet. I have volunteered with Brighton and Hove 10:10 to create a city and sector-wide arts group that both looks at its operational practice and that creates an artistic response to the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon. Its been reaffirming to see the level of interest in the eco-cause from the city, when there is just much more to campaign about in the arts right now, and from modest beginnings of a group of people with a shared interest who knows where we might end up.
More on the Brighton and Hove 10:10 can be found at www.brightonandhove1010.org and I’m interested to know from others their thoughts on the instrumental potential, role and responsibilities of the arts.
Cara Courage is an Arts Consultant, Head of Learning at Architecture Centre Network, and Transition Co-coordinator for the Creative Campus Initiative.