Published May 6, 2013

by igarrett

Adapted from the original here: http://songofthebirdking.com/2010/05/14/ian-garrett-speaks-about-art-and-eco-justice/

In December of 2009, I traveled to Copenhagen for the fifteenth Conference of the Partners meeting, better known as COP15. I was there to serve as a witness to the artistic and creative responses to COP15. I was not looking to observe the UN Climate Change Conference itself; I felt this was easily accessible through remote media, and, in some ways, the less interesting event. While COP15 itself had far reaching implications for international governments, I felt my presence could serve to chronicle the other voices that were trying to be heard through less formal means. And, in the winter edition of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts Quarterly, I asserted that this creative sound -- from the gallery exhibitions to the street-performance demonstrations -- was the only collective, non-political voice. There is no political body that serves as the voice of the holistic sense of Planet Earth quite like those of artists.

About six months later I participated in the Arts in the One World Conference at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). In this past year, its fifth, the theme was guhahamuka, a Kiri Rwandan word that refers to the breathless attempt to articulate the inexpressible. And again I came to these thoughts of giving voice to that which can not speak for itself, and trying to communicate things which are nearly impossible to communicate. I continually come back to the necessity of art to fill this void. I see creativity as not just that oversoul of our celestial orb and home, but that which gives all people and things a chance to communicate with others without requiring political power or similar agenda-ed platform.

Invisible 5, a project by Amy Balkin, is a prime example of this type of work. Organized as a self-guided audio tour through the California Central Valley along US Interstate Highway 5, this project highlights ecological issues related to the history of this thoroughfare from Los Angeles to San Francisco. This additional layer of spatial encoding transforms the experience of transiting across a typically uneventful stretch of highway into a shocking story of rapid ecological disturbance, injustice, and racism. It reveals a hidden past, lending the inspiration for the project's title.

My own motor-touring experience comes with a personal history of making this driving numerous times. My father was raised in the San Jose area, and my paternal grandparents were laid to rest there. I grew up traveling back and forth fairly frequently. My brother and sister in-law lived in Oakland, and my wife and I traveled when we could to visit our little nephew. Were I not to have met Amy and heard her speak about this project, I perhaps never would think about the secrets just beyond the shoulder of the road as I barreled along this route. Without this piece, there would only be silence, and I would have traveled on, ignorant of the veiled violence.

In Balkin's project, we are told of the duality of this region's former riches. We hear about building up the area surrounding this new thoroughfare, the impact of oil, the creation of large agribusiness, industrial farming, toxic waste, and deadly fog. The stories are told by activists, residents, officials, and rangers. Without this compilation, though, one might never know the tales this land now holds. There are those who would prefer we weren't paying attention; things are rarely hidden for the sake of being hidden.

From the largest gatherings of political powers on the future of global ecology to the environmental maladies laid at the feet of small rural communities that aren't expected to say much, it is important that silence isn't encouraged. There is no advocacy in silence. There is no remembering in silence. The small island nation of Tuvalu, who became a household name through advocacy at COP15, is about to vanish due to the rising seas, and uses its little might to assert that it doesn't want to be forgotten while the larger nations jabber. This example is most compelling because it was the closest to a pure voice that exists in these political talks. It is not talking about the threat to its economy, but simply survival.

We could start to talk about any number of instances where advocacy is needed. The Bhopal incident in India was only recently revisited when Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide and had to answer questions about this tragedy. In order to appeal to developers, structurally sound public housing projects were closed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The list goes on in terms of injustice and ecology, and a lack of advocacy predicated on environmental grounds.

This is what makes a project like Susie Ibarra's "Song of the Bird King" so important. It is an effort to amplify the voices of those affected by the over-fishing, commercialization, and subsequent acidification of Lake Sebu in the Philippines. But it also shows use the problematized arena that art must step into. It is easier to talk about the negative environmental impact of an action. There are more metrics for the destruction of habitat and ecosystems than the cultural consequences; We can talk about sea levels rising. We can talking about the annual fish kill of a body of water. We can talk about the toxicity of particulates in the air. But we cannot empirically state the effects on a population and how this affects its culturally sustainability.

We live in a world where so many are culturally and geographically disconnected from their lands of origin that we rarely consider the importance of place to people. As Susie's project notes, only four percent of populations live indigenously. But we find it difficult to even understand the connection of people to their non-indigenous homes, like the farming communities of California's Central Valley or those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. When a storm is coming, we ask, "Why don't people just move out of the way?" without valuing a personal or a cultural attachment to place.

This is the root of ecojustice, providing fairness to a person's or people's habitat, and, while images of drowning polar bears are heartbreaking, helping us recognize our humanity in environmental issues. Balkin's work highlights those we don't see in an area we see as vacant -- the "away" where we keep throwing everything. We forget about the tragedies like Bohpal that continue to affect lives discarded by corporations on the other side of the globe. Who knew about the small islands in the Pacific until their inhabitants spoke up? Tuvalu and others are merely tropically anomalies with little to exploit. And, in Song of the Bird King, there is the vision to look at Lake Sebu, not just as environmental issue, but one of those rare places still connected to a culture and people.

Posted in: Arts & Culture | Blogs

Published April 30, 2013

by igarrett

Sustainability is a complicated idea. Amongst other possibilities, it can refer to environmental and economic issues. With the effects of the global economic climate on arts funding, both are hot topics when taking about the creative sector. However, most conversations don't address both this definition AND issues of environmental sustainability, even though both are equally included with the most commonly held definition of sustainable development and ideas of the triple bottom line.

In August of 2011 Ron Berry and Brad Carlin got in touch with the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts to talk about the Fusebox Festival and issues of sustainability. Leading up to the festival through the end of 2011 and the first part of 2012, we developed a methodology for measuring various impacts of Fusebox on its community with two primary things in mind. First was to explore the idea of cultural offsetting; looking how environmental, social and economic impacts of the Fusebox interrelated. The Second, because this was Fusebox, was how this would, itself, fit the programming.

To address the first concern of interrelated impacts, we tracked the carbon footprint of audience travel, the density of audience attendance over time, various forms of engagement, the potential economic impact of the festival, and key external factors like weather and non-Fusebox events across Austin. Using the various data sources, we then generate graphic representations of how these factors related to time and space in Austin. It was the next step which made the project part of what makes the Fusebox Festival and the CSPA unique. The infographics we created were enlarged by hand to create an installation which covered the East wall of the festival hub. The former Tops Furniture Warehouse, and the adjacent field had been temporarily taken-over by the festival to serve as the central gathering point for audience, artists and curious passersby. Using reused 8’ x 4’ scenic flats--generously donated by the Austin Scenic Co-op--the computer graphic data representations were translated into spray paint and string, by local leaders in sustainable practice in theatre, Derek Kolluri and Jennifer Lavery.

While the project hasn't explicitly drawn a clear link between the economic and environmental sustainability of the Fusebox Festival, it has given us common ground to consider the connection between culture and climate as a direct and metric relationship. Many of the environmental issues we look at in the cultural industries, outside of the messages we express, come down to resourcefulness, and have a positive financial impact on the arts organizations and producers who actively pursue more environmentally sustainable practices. So, as organizations which already balance mission and money, valuing sustainability both environmental and economic should easily fit in our administrative framework. And, building these connections will make us more nimble, smart and responsive in the markets we're tied to in our greater society.

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Posted in: Arts & Culture | Blogs

Published April 24, 2013

by igarrett

Why do we care about environmental sustainability in the arts? As art makers, It is already difficult to keep our doors open, get audience in seats, sets on stage, paintings on the wall and so on. Is this another restriction on how we can do things? Are these more restrictions on what we can create?

Why do we care about the arts in environmental sustainability? We're already trying to cut carbon from private automobiles, change over to renewable energy sources and figure out what to do with all of this plastic. What makes the arts any different from what people are doing in their homes and offices? Are the arts unique in this equation? As a small percentage of our economic engines how can the arts drive innovation like the construction or another industry?

As director of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, an organization devoted to exploring the intersection of sustainable development and the arts, these questions are the center of every decision we make. It is clear to us that these issues are intertwined, but how do we express this to our partners and stakeholders?

The truth is that these questions aren't easily answered. Not like ones about why we should choose electric mass transit versus private vehicles powered by fossil fuels. The issues of cost of living, emissions and pollution, political holdings and global conflict bombard us constantly. Billions of dollars are spent on both sides of these issues. There are constant global discussions on trying to make sure our planet will be livable, in a quality way, for our grandchildren and beyond. So who has time to worry about art? Isn't it a luxury in these times of extreme crisis?

I ask about what we're trying to save, if not our culture and way of life. If art is lost in our efforts to carry on, what is it that we're carrying on? Our earliest record of how we interacted with the world is artistic. These elements of our identities and culture define "us"; not just who we are, but that we are. These signifiers of humanity and what we value establish the very things which we're attempting to sustain. If we're to consider the quality of life and ability to function in keeping a person on life support, shouldn't we attempt to do the same for our entire civilization? Looking at the cultures of the pacific, threatened by rising sea levels, erasing their homes and the culture that ties them to their place, how can we not say that the entirety of sustainable thinking has a cultural element?

And for the converse, how can we say we represent the ideas of our culture unless we are mindful of how we act within it? If we don't think about how we make, being mindful of resources important to our creative output, how can we claim to speak for a society where resources are limited? If we don't think about what we are making, being mindful of how our creative output represents ideas, at the forefront or in the background, which are at the center of our thinking on the ability of our civilization to continue, what exactly are we talking about of merit anyway?

We do live in an era where we see a division between art and science... or anything we can measure and quantify. It is easier to predict how many degrees the planet will warm, or that sea level will rise based on parts per million of definable elements than it is to say how many children will lose touch with their ancestry because of catastrophic climate change or how the stress of forced migration to pursue arable land will cause traditional dances to be lost. It's easier to express what will happen than it is to express how we will experience the change.

But as seemingly difficult as this might seem, this is our fourth dimension of sustainability, which is what we are trying to sustain. And, without this, who and what are we beyond another invasive species?

Posted in: Arts & Culture | Blogs