Denmark hosted a number of exhibitions and projects about climate change during the UN Climate Change Conference in 2009 (COP15) [1]. The conference and related events raised questions about the role art can play in contributing to solving global problems such as climate change. It also raised concerns about whether artists should tackle issues of such a complex and serious nature. Some researchers argued that if art deals with global issues like climate change, it becomes ‘instrumentalised’, ‘ideologised’ and there is even a risk of diluting serious political debates.

The more optimistic view is that contemporary arts have a special ability to see the world in a different way – that is, more provocative, more inspiring and deeper. Artists have sensors that other people and experts do not have, and that is why their involvement in global issues is crucially important.

CO2 cubes: visualizing a ton of change

Others argue that contemporary art’s ability to challenge and provoke firmly entrenched images of oneself and the world is a prerequisite for healthy discussions and for discovering new ways of seeing the world. “My own view is that artists are addressing environmental issues, climate change, sustainability, the raft of reasons behind climate change,” says another of our Research in focus interviewees, Michaela Crimmin, an independent curator. “However they could be encouraged more, listened to more, included more in cross disciplinary debates about the future. The best art is likely to be the art that is not didactic, the art that elicits our own responses rather than telling us what to do.”

For more details, see the full interview with Michaela Crimmin.

Artists use different strategies and tools to convey the importance of climate change to the public. Some artists are trying to engage professionals and citizens in sustainable projects in their neighbourhoods and by finding a solution to a concrete environmental problem. Other artists and artistic organisations prefer to foster public debates or discourse, empowering people to push the issue for a broader social or political decision (e.g. The Planetary Pledge Pyramid, developed by The People Speak in collaboration with the University of Aarhus, Denmark).

Another approach is the artistic interpretation of scientific data and statistics relating to climate change: the use of the common knowledge and information on global warming in order to make it more visible, and presented in a creative and accessible form for the public (e.g. The Most Blue Skies project by Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway). There are also examples of artistic installations using sensitive equipment that turns attention to the environmental changes in the surroundings, and interprets the results in a creative way.

When looking at different approaches that use art to connect global issues to different locations, it is important to consider the artwork itself, as well as the way artistic work is presented in the public realm, and the interactive engagement as a result of it. Julie’s Bicycle and TippingPoint both provide many examples of such artistic-public collaborative approaches.

[1] For projects during COP15 in Copenhagen see: http://www.good.is/post/creative-acts-that-mattered-at-cop15

Research results: a collective response