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Learning how to die in the Anthropocene

I recently read an a New York Times colm entitled “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene,”  The article makes a good point explaining that the current geological, technological, and climatic global situation has shifted the classic philosophical problem from how to die as an individuals to how to die as a civilisation which I felt was a very powerful statement!. Nature always contains and offers the prime matter for technology, whereas technology alters, transforms, and converts natural resources towards its own ends. Discussing that we as a collective are leading ourselfs towards our own deaths without even realising it. In my opinion nature will always win, we may be scientifically in an age where humans are having more power over the natural world, but we are undeniably stupid to think that we are more powerful, the force of nature could destroy that of humanity from one mass natural disaster wiping out all human life and nature would just carry on and continue to thrive as if we never existed.

Below are some cliche examples of how nature will effectively take back control.

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Essay Research: Art in the Anthropocene Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies

“Rather than engage with the Anthropocene as a teleological fact implicating all humans as equally culpable for the current socio-economic, ecological, and political state of the world. To tackle the intertwined and complex environmental crises within our ecological imaginations opinions on challenges around the globe cannot be constructed using one philosophical, epistemological, or ontological lens.” -  Art & Death: Lives Between the Fifth Assessment & the Sixth Extinction introduction by Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin

The article discusses how we must see the Anthropocene from multiple perspectives in order to gain a true understanding of whats really going on, is it the everyday people causing the mass impact on our natural landscapes from simply growing with technological times or is it the small number of multimillionaire corporations that are doing the majority of the damage? And the everyday people are being made to feel at fault?, Unless we research through multiple sources and educate ourselves fully, how can we be certain that the changes we are making are even having a positive effect on the natural world, we follow what the mass media tells us to do but we as everyday people could be trying to solve an unsolvable problem that could be fixed if the mass corporations just made changes to the way in which they operate.

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Justin Brice Guariglia, Ice Sheets Of Greenland

Justin Brice Guariglia accompanied NASA to create a project to map the accelerating melting of ice sheets in Greenland.

He shoots aerial photographs documenting the rapid rate at which 110,000-year-old Arctic glaciers are disappearing. 

To make the images of snowy vistas that look like cratered moonscapes, He modified a seventeen-and-a-half-foot-long printer and applies as many as 140 layers of acrylic ink, creating beautiful images that sit somewhere between painting and photography.

The abstract look of the images draws a line between obvious devastation and an open mind, they leave room for the viewer to explore and depict the image while making them think and process the issues the artist is addressing.

The curation of his exhibition is powerful and overwhelming, I feel eco art needs to be viewed at a mass scale to gain full impact. It has to be pushed into your face overpowering you.

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Art and Activism in the Anthropocene.

Over the last decade it has become scientific concern that our modern society is leading us to a planet with temperatures similar to hell. Ultimately talking about the possibility of the human species becoming extinct over the next few generations.

We have entered an epoch unlike any in human history called the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene marks an age where humanity has itself become a collective geophysical force of nature.

We are in an epoch where there are more trees growing in farms than in the wild, where more rock and soil is moved by bulldozers and mining than all ‘natural’ processes combined and where the climate is tipping out of control due to the burning of oil, gas and coal. Industrial capitalism is irreversibly altering the natural cycles of the biosphere, nature is now a product of culture. It is not longer just asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions that herald mass extinctions, it is us, the 20% of the world that is consuming 80% of it’s resources.      

This generation is now living through the final confrontation between capitalism’s need for infinite growth and the finite resources of the planet.  

Walter Benjamin said in his essay: The work of art in the Age of Mechanical reproduction  “Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicising art.”  Benjamin is suggesting that with the rise of film and photography it will cause a change in the structures of perception and would arise an alternative outlook of the world.

These reflections of the role of art and activism in the world at a time when neither seem like powerful enough tools to transform the world anymore.  They are an attempt to find some light in the shadows in a hope people will change their ways. 

Art allows a new power to convince the mind that the world can be much more than the world you live everyday. Activism could become an art work, a form of performance that is beautifully efficient. In a time of crisis art could not be about representing the world any more, but transforming it. 

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Don’t underestimate the power of silence!

This work would be the final main focus point of the exhibition, with the assisting video installations and prints surrounding to complement and create atmosphere.

The piece has been made completely silent, allowing the viewer to fully focus on the small details of the video. I experimented with the idea of having sound but in my opinion it took away from the power of the video on the viewer. 

i felt the video would act almost like a moment of silence for the village, the residence, the planet and everything suffering because of our climate negligence.   

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Christo and Jeanne - Claude

Running fence drew attention to the ordinary and under-appreciated rural landscape, the fence inspired and provoked a different relationship with the land, emphasising an unrestrained imagination of possibility rather than the arbitrary nature of political and geographical boundaries. The heavy woven nylon fabric had a dramatic and flowing quality.

As Christo poetically explains ‘it is the principal material to translate the fragile, nomadic quality of the project…like living objects, the fabric moves.’ Touching upon the life within the work and it’s reflection back onto the living natural landscape.

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I made another book dummy.
The order of images goes from the front and back cover, through to the last page in order of how to the book would be laid out in physical form. I created this book dummy of my seascape images from Fairbourne. Although the final pieces are moving image, i felt the stills were very atmospheric and would work well within a book. 
The book consists of 5 full double page spread full bleed images and 7 singular fill bleed images in between. I chose full bleed as i wanted the images to be dramatic and overpowering. The book is a symbol of the drowning of fairbourne village due to rising sea levels, this is a hugely overwhelming topic in today’s society and i wanted the book to reflect these issues along with the uncontrollable size of nature and how easy it is to swallow up human life.

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Prototype of my exhibition. x2

if i was to use a classical piece of music such ‘La Mer’ by Claude Debussy within the exhibition  i wanted the music to become a main feature of the space along with the projections. i wanted no still prints just movement and music that interacted more with your senses. 

I placed 4 speakers in the centre of the back wall allowing the music to become a significant part of the art work, playing music loud projecting it into the room.

facing each other on the right and left hand walls are video installations. The left wall shows 4 small grid style videos all playing simultaneously and opposite is one singular longer main video piece of a figure being seen walking towards the sea to be eventually submerged by the water. 

two benches are placed in the centre of the room to allow the viewer to sit down and fully absorb the experience within the space.

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A prototype layout of my virtual exhibition that didn’t make it to the final layout. 

The wall to the left has my largest project in the centre of the wall with the speakers placed equally spaced in a line underneath.The back wall shows a quad grid like formation of the four shorter projections played on loop. The wall to the right shows two prints placed equally on top of each other, no benches or seating areas are seen in this version of the exhibition just standing space.

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La Mer ‘The Sea’ by Claude Debussy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOCucJw7iT8 

I explored ideas of having a piece of music by Claude Debussy playing within the gallery space while my projections are shown on loop. i thought the intensity of Debussys ‘La Mer’ would bring a depth to the work while adding impact to the video pieces to create a more intense experience fully impacting all the senses.

Debussy was only eight years old when he first discovered the sea. and has said the experience has stayed with in him ever since.

Debussy said shortly after composing ‘La Mer’....“Only the randomness  of life made me branch off. I’ve nevertheless preserved a sincere passion for her. You'll tell me that the ocean doesn't exactly wash the hillsides of Burgundy...! And that this could well turn out like some studio landscape! But I have countless memories: that's better, to my mind, than a reality whose charm generally weighs too heavily on one's consciousness"

La Mer draws its influences from paintings by  Monet, Turner, and Hokusai...  "The Wave" by Japanese engraver Hokusai heavily influenced the piece so much so that Debussy asked could it be used as a cover for the score. 

"De l’aube à midi sur la mer" depicts the sunrise to its peak at mid-day, peak suggested by the powerful final D flat major chord. "Jeux de vague" suggests the ripples of the swell though busy melodic motifs, whilst the third and final movement portrays the clash between the wind and the sea. 

Debussy, did not simply compose a musical portrait of the sea. he went above all to convey the various emotions he experienced in the past provoked by the sea and channelled them into his music formation.

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Claude Debussy

“Nocturnes”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QMAlGAoiuQ

I previously touched upon the sirens and explored how Greek mythology has impacted composers and artists. Claude Debussy’s moving composition Nocturnes depicts the sea and its countless rhythms while amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the sirens as they laugh and pass on through the open waters.

The three movements of Nocturnes, Nuages (Clouds), Fêtes (Festivals), and Sirènes (Sirens) also took inspiration from a series of impressionist paintings by James Abbott McNeill Whistler that also took inspiration from Greek mythology.

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This is a wake-up call for the country,” she says, making her way up the steep shingle bank to the wall that protects her white bungalow from the waves. “This is going to happen elsewhere. Sometimes you have to see someone else go through it – we just happen to be the first.

Bev Wilkins 67 (Fairbourne Resident for 18 years)

When I read this quote while researching articles about fairbourne, it really moved me, I felt so sorry for the residence of the village losing everything from a sense of community to material possessions, I knew I had to make the art work more of a legacy to the people of the village like a grave stone to remember and signify that fairbourne did exist and the importance it has in terms of documenting its place within welsh history.

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Fairbourne lies on the coast of Barmouth Bay in Arthog community, to the south of the estuary of the River Mawddach in Gwynedd, surrounded by the Snowdonia National Park.

Fairbourne shown on a map of North Wales 

Map of Gwynedd county council in wales 

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Google Earth

Due to not being able to visit fairbourne again as the lockdown got worse within wales, I started exploring good earth images of the area to gain further inspiration for the project

The image shows fairbourne viewed from Golwyn state quarry on google earth.

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“Humans are a plague on planet earth”

- Sir David Attenborough 

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Mallarmé - QUAND MÊME LANCÉ DANS DES CIRCONSTANCES ÉTERNELLES DU FOND D'UN NAUFRAGE ("Even when thrown into eternal circumstances from the bottom of a shipwreck")

A THROW OF THE DICE

NEVER EVEN IF THROWN IN ETERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES

FROM THE DEPTH OF A SHIPWRECK WHETHER the Gulf whitened becalmed furious under a flat incline desperately from a wing its own by

advance declined from an evil to lift up the flight and covering the spurts and cutting short the leaps completely sum up inside the shadow buried in the depths by this alternative veil as far as to adapt to the breadth its gaping depth as long as the hull of a ship tilted by one or the other edge 

THE MASTER

appeared deducing

of this upheaval that as one threatens

hesitates corpse by the arm rather that to play maniacal, grey with age the part in the name of the waves

one

shipwreck that

outside of ancient calculations where the maneuver, forgotten, with age formerly he grasped the helm

of the unanimous horizon at his feet

 gets it 

ready stirs and mixes with the fist 

which would embrace him a fate and the winds be

another MIND to 

throw it in the storm to re-bend the division and to cross proudly pushed aside from the secret he holds invades the leader sinks in

 subdued beard direct from the man without a nave anywhere vain

ancestrally not to open the hand wrinkled beyond the useless head

ancestrally not to open the hand wrinkled beyond

 the useless head legacies in the disappearance of somebody ambiguous the last, age-old, 

demon with the nonexistent

countries induces the old man into this supreme conjunction

 with 

probability

that his childish shadow caressed and polished and returned 

and washed softened by the wave and subtracted 

 from the tough bone lost between the planks

 born of a frolic the sea 

by the tempting ancestor or the ancestor against the sea an idle chance Engagement

which

 the veil of illusion spattered their obsession 

 as well as the ghost of 

a gesture 

 will hesitate will collapse madness

WILL ABOLISH

AS IF 

 An insinuation in the silence in

 some close acrobatics

simple 

rolled up 

with irony or the hasty mystery screamed

 whirlwind of hilarity

 and of horror around the

 abyss 

 without sprinkling or running away and rocking the 

blank index

 AS IF 

Solitary 

feather 

overcome except

that the meeting or the touching of a cap at midnight and immobilizes 

 by the velvet crumpled 

by a dark laughter

 this rigid whiteness derisory in opposition to the sky too much not to stand out

 narrowly whoever prince bitter from the danger would cap as the heroic irresistible but content

by his small reason virile 

 by lightning

anxious expiatory and pubescent silent

 The lucid and seigniorial plume on the invisible forehead sparkles then shadowing a 

dark 

good-looking stature in his twisting of siren by the final impatient scales

laughs that 

 IF

 of dizziness up the time to enkindle bifurcated

a rock false mansion 

 immediately evaporated in fog which imposed 

 an edge to infinity

IT WAS 

 stemming from stellar 

IT WOULD BE

 the worst

not more 

or less 

 but equally as much

  THE NUMBER IT EXISTED 

 otherwise like a sparse hallucination of agony  

IT BEGAN AND IT CEASED  

rising up that denied and closed when it appeared finally by some profusion spread in rarity 

 IT ADDED UP

 clearly the sum for a little 

 IT ILLUMINATES

CHANCE

Falls the feather rhythmically suspended

 from the accident to bury itself in original foams 

not long ago as far as his frenzy

      leapt to a top withered by the same neutrality of an abyss NOTHING of the memorable crisis or it was the event

carried out with the aim of no useless result human

 WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE

 a common rise toward the absence THAT THE PLACE 

lapping lower as any to disperse the empty act abruptly as otherwise 21 by his lie had based the perdition in these parts of the wave in which all reality dissolves 

EXCEPTING at the height 

 PERHAPS so far as a place

merges with the beyond except the interest as for him indicated 

 generally to such indirectness 

by such 

a slope of lights towards it has to be 

 The Seven Stars also North 

 A CONSTELLATION 

23 cold of forgetting and of disuse not so much that it enumerates

 on some vacant and superior surface the successive clash sidereally of a total count in formation watching over doubting rolling glittering and meditating 

 before it stops itself in some last point which consecrates it 

          Every Thought emits a Roll of the Dice

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52° 41′ 49.2″ N, 4° 3′ 10.8″ W Contact Sheet of Fairboune Village i took these images during my second visit to the village during a red weather warning storm. i wanted to gain as much material as possible to explore with through out the project. The village felt fully abandoned already. I didn’t see a single person i felt as though i was in a post apocalyptic film set. The goal was to take very documentary style images just capturing the essence of the houses and the people that live there.