Lea Schick is the editor and moderator of this debate forum. During the RETHINK exhibition she will facilitate the RETHINK ART discussions here on her blog. We will very much encourage you to participate in the debate! 

Welcome

Welcome to the debate forum for rethinking and discussing the character and role of art and climate change. It is my hope to establish and moderate a discussion covering a broad variety of art and art forms that in different ways deal with global warming. The debate forum is still only in its initial phase but more content will soon be added

At the RETHINK exhibition you can experience a broad range of artworks dealing with climate change from different perspectives. Artists collaborating with scientists, artists using and reforming scientific data, aesthetic art showing nature, social networks and activist movements aiming to intervene in people’s lives or make them more aware of climate change, political art discussing climate change, new technological designs, live role plays etc.-- artworks that opens up a wide discussion about the role of art today.

Can art really tell us something about complex matters as climate change?
Where are the borders between art, design/technology and science, and do we need to maintain these borders to protect science as well as art? What do artists do different from scientists or engineers? Can art help us change the way we live, the way we consume and the way we understand the ecological system we live in? Does the artist have a special position in the discussion about climate change, or is it just a lucrative area for the artist to get involved in? How can artworks, as those presented at RETHINK, influence public awareness and opinion and the political negotiations at COP15?

These questions and many more Will be on this blog for you to read about and debate.

Writers that contribute articles, which you will soon be able to read:

  • Emma Ridgway, Arts and Ecology, RSA, UK
  • Amanda McDonald Cowley, Curator and director of Eyebeam, NY
  • Marda Kirn, EcoArts
  • Troels Degn Johansson, Lector at the Danish School of Design, Denmark
  • Roger Malina, Leonardo Books, USA



 

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Contributions for RETHINK ART

 

ABOUT RETHINK ART

The arts have a long tradition of engagement with issues in both the socio-political and environmental spheres. Art reflects contemporary and historical developments, challenges dominant paradigms, and asks key questions, raising awareness of powerful and controversial topics by highlighting both their essentials and their complexities. As a natural development of this tradition, many artists have inevitably addressed and continue to address climate change, a subject which with ever-greater urgency demands immediate and comprehensive action, and which promises dramatic changes for all of humanity, whether we face it successfully or not.

But is it possible to successfully apprehend and work with an issue as complex as climate change from an artistic, non-scientific angle? What role does and can art play in the all-pervasive challenge of climate change? Or conversely, is the widespread attention given to climate change today, with events like the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, merely providing artists an exotic and lively arena within which to work, with lucrative results?

We here encourage you to read about and discuss which role art as or will get in the increasing attention emerging around climate change.

 

BLOG

Discuss the RETHINK ART contributions on the blog to the left.