Art, place, climate
situated ethics
pp. 235-246
in: Paul Macneill (ed), Ethics and the arts, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
It is argued that climate is as much a cultural as a physical, scientifically observable phenomenon. However few attempts have been made to explore fully the aesthetic, symbolic and spiritual values that we derive from our climate—what might be called the cultural rather than the physical value of climate. Drawing on the action-research programme of expeditions and commissions developed by interdisciplinary arts organization Cape Farewell, the chapter considers the creation and communication of interdisciplinary knowledge shaped to specific places and locales. Recent work by artists, including Antony Gormley, Olafur Eliasson, Ackroyd & Harvey, Anne Bevan and others, is described to illustrate how creative process engages with, and responds to, the methodologies of scientists in fields such as oceanography, marine biology and human ecology. These artists seek to define an embodied experience of perception enmeshed in complex processes and natural systems, drawing on the landscapes, resources and rhythms fashioned by particular climates. Aesthesis, in their work, is a form of active engagement with context and so has ethical implications. Climate art narrates transformation at different levels of scale and time, and proffers the artwork as an element in an assemblage of ecological elements which includes both the artist and the viewer as agents of change.