“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
What will happen if we try to see how we each play a role in the history of the world? I believe that we could discover that all organisms have agency and therefore are interdependent in creating the history of the world.
How can we learn to become sensitive to issues relating to our environment in a context where rational knowledge is valued more than sensory knowledge? To do so, we as humans need to consider the more-than-human beings (such as animals, plants, fungi, microbes and other organisms) with which we live. The resulting mindset questions modern Western anthropocentric thinking, which places humans at the centre of life. Do we realise that we (humans) are just a small part of the big picture? Ideas about the importance of more-than-human beings have come under fire in both public and academic debate. The sessions Becoming Unstable and Systems of Support address the current critical state of the climate, focusing on the dialogue between scientists and artists on both practical and theoretical aspects.
Conference Session: Becoming Unstable
Suzanne Dhaliwal, Anab Jain, Darko Lagunas & Theun Karelse
This first session covers the social side of the climate crisis, the impact of art, the importance of frontline climate activism, the illusion of human control, non-dualism and communication with more-than-human organisms.
Sociologist Darko Lagunas and artist Theun Karelse talk about their collaboration in the ecological field. Darko describes how, as an academic, he searches for mediators (such as artists) who can navigate between factuality and empiricism. He talks about “culture as a means to deal with changes’’, because the climate crisis has cultural as well as physical consequences (Crate 2011, 178). Culture determines how we humans experience, look at and interact with our environment. With a big smile on his face, Darko makes clear how fruitful his collaboration with Theun is! “Encourage playfulness!”, Theun answers. The artist adds that emotions and experiences can help to create connections with more-than-human organisms. But what role should we as humans necessarily take in restoring our relationship with organisms? What would a dialogue between humans and more-than-human organisms look like?
The two advocate a cognitive and an emotional shift to recognising that as human beings we are not exceptional, but equal to all other forms of life. It is also necessary to recognise that the idea of infinite human control over ecological processes is an illusion. This plea for a non-dualistic approach stems from the idea that we are in an incessant metamorphosis or recycling of transient stable and merging beings (Hollbraad and Pederson, 2017, 59). As an example, Darko and Theun describe how a participant in their research took them to the dunes, where he explained how he could communicate with the dunes. Physical presence and allowing space for emotions is essential in the search for interspecies communication, say Darko and Theun. Growing interest in the consciousness of more-than-human organisms provides an alternative to the “Western” views of nature.
Activist and artist Suzanne Dhaliwal expands on this by sharing her creative strategies to decolonise activism, including highlighting BIPOC voices in climate media and communications. During her presentation it becomes clear that we should not only recognise the importance of more-than-human organisms, but also listen to the people in the frontline communities during their fight for environmental justice. Her work exposes how colonialism is not over but has only changed face, where large corporations (such as oil companies) and their banks are concerned. Creative campaigning (in relation to design, for example) aims to widen the audience for the climate crisis narrative. She ponders what forms activism will take in future — how are we going to organise ourselves to change the narrative of our capitalist society?
Futurist, educator and designer Anab Jain, who argues in favour of slow critical activism through design, also agrees that the future is constantly changing. She creates speculative spatial experiences that develop our understanding of our shared future. Organisations and agencies should use Anab Jain’s work to gain insight into the underlying forces that shape our world.
Conference Session: Systems of Support
Abdelrahman Hassan, Ruben Jacobs, Kim Stanley Robinson and Bayo Akomolafe
Abdelrahman Hassan talks about the urgency of decolonising data sources within an ecological context. According to him, it is important to see the web as an ecology of which every individual, as well as governments and companies, is a part. We need to ask ourselves who has our information and why? Data is spatial, he says, it moves, and it follows the same patterns as colonial history. What is the impact of the large companies or online platforms that have this information? This relates to the question of who builds our world and who has built it before? Are we seeing a change in this? These continuous changes should encourage a critical attitude towards speculative design according to Abdelrahman Hassan. He states that we are not in a crisis of imagination, but one of positionality, or the dynamics of power. “Who is constructing and in control of our future?” Interestingly, Abdelrahman Hassan discusses the power of language, showing the impact language has on our actions and the way in which certain words are more dominantly used in our society. Hassan draws a parallel between the impact of language and the power of data.
Ruben Jacobs questions what degrowth could mean in a world obsessed with growth. What would that mean for the future? Should we question the idea of capitalist growth? He wonders whether degrowth could provide stability in the unstable situation we face today.
Kim Stanley Robinson uses the current pandemic to illustrate the many instabilities we currently face. The pandemic is a destabilising event, and the challenge is how we respond to it. According to him, art can help to communicate problems among different societies, to help them work together in adapting our human actions to the environment.
Finally, Bayo Akomolafe talks about modes of thought and our different perspectives of the world. It seems we no longer see ourselves as embedded in the ecological web and are constantly trying to seperate ourselves from it. He describes differences between cosmological visions: one based on rational, techno bureaucratic frameworks where names, facts and dimensions are of prime importance, and the other, drawn from his own indigenous community in Nigeria, where the earth is seen as vital and animated. Taking this approach to the earth, Bayo Akomolafe calls on us to investigate our instability and break away from the logic of globalised modern civilisation. In his view, that also means recognising that people are not the prime holders of agency, we have to take a step back and acknowledge the whole ecological web.
Bayo Akomolafe’s last remark is typical of the FIBER Festival’s theme of instability. Darko Lagunas and Theun Karelse, Bayo Akomolafe and Suzanne Dhaliwal all talked about the importance of listening to the more-than-human beings with whom we share life. This is inherently linked to a sense of equality, rather than a sense of superiority. It is also a call for affection for the unknown, for other people or other beings who are in situations that you may not (yet!) be in. Art and science, in disseminating these ideas, can embrace each other to stimulate the dialogue between people and more-than-human organisms within societies where this is not seen as a priority.
References
Crate, Susan. 2011. “Climate and culture: Anthropology in the era of contemporary climate change.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40:175–194.
Holbraad, Martin., and Morton Axel Pederson. 2017. “The ontological turn: an anthropological exposition”, 50–59. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Written by: Stan van Geel
Edited by: Rhian Morris
Stan van Geel recently graduated from Radboud University with a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology. Her thesis was about how cultural anthropologists and contemporary artists complement each other in forming a voice for more-than-human organisms within the current climate debate. She started from the potential fruitfulness of a dialogue between both (artists and scientists) in which the power and inspiration of nature would be discussed in relation to our cosmological perspectives and the way in which we live up to those ideas.
Watch the entire session of both Becoming Unstable and Systems of Support online at: https://2020.fiberfestival.nl/replay/
FIBER Festival is an Amsterdam based festival for audiovisual art, critical artistic research and digital culture. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the 2020 edition was transformed into a hybrid broadcasting platform, which brought together over 1400 visitors and more than 70 international makers and thinkers. With the theme of Instability the festival explored new ways of understanding and adapting to an age of planetary and societal changes. We asked: what opportunities are open to artistic making and thinking to contribute to this transformation? Missed the festival? You can watch all the sessions here: https://2020.fiberfestival.nl/replay
