Climate Resilience as a Guiding Principle of Artistic Creation.
Olafur Eliasson’s Ice-Watch 2014/2015/2018
Photo: Charlie Forgham-Bailey (icewatchlondon.com)
8 February 2021
(Art) has to testify to the original ‘disaster’ of the soul, to the immemorial dependency of the human mind on the immemorial law of the Other inside it. Then it has to testify to the disaster that results from forgetting that disaster (...) Art thus becomes, in the strictest sense, the mourning of politics. This status of art goes along with the substitution of repentance and memory for any will to political transformation.[1]
Jacques Rancière’s proclamation of 2005 concerning the legacy of both Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism of the past century applies to art in its engagement with all forms’ catastrophes. As the mourning of politics, art epitomises the interrelation between the aesthetic and the political described by Rancière. Art becomes the figure of recapitulation of the political and social errors of society. By observing the distribution of sensual elements, Rancière elicits a path that diffuses between politics and aesthetics.[2] Thus, sensual experience seems to constitute a medium that makes people receptive to the aesthetic form of politics and the political dimension of art.[3]
As one of the most cataclysmic catastrophes of our time, climate change is at the centre of extensive scientific debate in various disciplines. Anthropogenic climate change as a crucial source of change also requires studying societal resilience to the ecological consequences.[4] As Martin Voss pointedly puts it, society and its politics face the task of discursively dealing with the changes and needs of the environment to create an overall resilient structure of the Anthropocene and the ecosystem. At the same time, Voss warns against repeating or continuing past mistakes by not adapting a discourse form.[5]
The artist Olafur Eliasson recognises this problem of mediation. In his works, Eliasson seeks new immersive methods to touch the beholders sensually and emotionally to induce a form of connection and responsibility for themselves and others. Empathy and sensual perception are the keys that, according to Eliasson, can awaken the potential of a transformation of consciousness in people.[6] With his work Ice-Watch from 2014/2015/2018 in Copenhagen, Paris and London, Eliasson states the aspiration of transforming the audience towards climate-resilient behaviour.[7]
In this paper, Eliasson’s methodology will be tested for its potential to build climate resilience, using the example of the Ice-Watch installation. First, the theme and meaning of ‘climate resilience’ in general will be briefly outlined before the work Ice-Watch will be examined more closely. Ice as an artistic material and its sensual interweaving in the chronicle of the beholder’s experience enables a well-founded classification of the work in the environment of artistic engagement with the natural material. The relevance of place and time as factors of determination identify the installation as a reflexive self-experience, which is fathomed in its further context. To this effect, the outline-like but essential counterpoint of political art canon underpins a corresponding identification. Whether the installation’s methodology can indoctrinate climate-sensitive behaviour in the beholders will be guiding this work, whereby the specific presentations will be measured against this directive. The ephemerality of melting ice as a non-resilient material will be examined as well as Eliasson’s decision for a matter this volatile, which gives impulse to explore the lasting values of a transitory element as a cultural product.
[1]Jacques Rancière, 'From Politics to Aesthetics?', Paragraph, 28 (2005), pp. 13-25 (p. 22).
[2]See ibid. pp. 13, 23-24.
[3]See ibid. p. 22; see also Eva Kulmer, Kunst versus Kapital. Zeitgenössische künstlerische Strategien der Kapitalismuskritik, (Hamburg, 2008), p. 31.
[4]See Martin Voss, 'Globaler Umweltwandel und lokale Resilienz am Beispiel des Klimawandels', in Die Natur der Gesellschaft: Verhandlungen des 33. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Kassel 2006. Teilbd. 1 u. 2, ed. by Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), pp. 2860-76 (p. 2860).
[5]Ibid. p. 2874.
[6]See Michelle Kuo, 'More than a feeling', in Experience, ed. by Olafur Eliasson (London: Engberg-Pedersen, Anna, 2018), (pp. 7-9).
[7]See Olafur Eliasson, 'Climate Action: Challenge Your Status Quo Bias!', (2018), (pp. 1-2).