“There’s no single answer to the question of what art should do under the shadow of climate change – and besides, anything that’s worth the name of art is allergic to words like ‘should’. It takes a subtler kind of dialogue, an indirect approach, to stumble on the places where the work of art comes alive.”
In so many ways I agree with this, but even the use of the world “subtle” is so often part of art discussion and dialogue that I am allergic to that. Art "complicating things" is a wonderful definition and way to word things, also a quote I’ve found very useful lately by Alice Notley is “the truth is never self righteous.” Even in this statement by Notley, whose writing I also admire, the moment anyone tells me what art/truth is or is not I immediately want try to prove them wrong.
Perhaps the strength of art is that it resists being defined as well as being told what it is not. In the shadow of climate change, I am personally most weary of the university/gallery system and the business model of art. I don't mean to suggest these things aren't important though. I can’t speak for England and Sweden but I fear the art system including the University system is on the whole anti art. It simultaneously spreads art to places that might not otherwise experience art while also creating inescapable debt (at interest) which puts so many on a hamster wheel of debt payments that many lose faith in art as whole and creates mass cynicism. (For context nearly everyone I know who went to art school is 100k+ in debt)
“Bad art” or ineffective “message art” at least gives you something to reject and push against. As a whole I very much agree with your quotes, but also strongly feel art CAN actually do/accomplish things. It’s rare but I find most definitions of art so highly resistant to this very idea that it doesn’t even allow for the possibility.
Best of luck on your US tour, though I’m disappointed you won’t be making it to Colorado. "At Work in the Ruins" has been on the employee pick section at the amazing Boulder Bookstore since its release.
They brought me back to a phrase I've used now and then: "the weak power of art". Weak because it's not a tool that can be picked up and used to achieve predictable outcomes, yet powerful because it can be enormously consequential, in ways sometimes intended, sometimes unintended, and often somewhere in between.
The refusal of categories, the duty to whatever truth has gone missing from the "social truth" – these are some of the other markers for me of the commonalities of the strange set of activities that go under the name of "art", but even that name is a category and proper to be pushed against.
John Carey wrote a book called 'What Good Are the Arts?' where he starts out by quoting the gleeful comments on a British radio phone-in, the morning after the fire at a warehouse that destroyed a lot of works by the Young British Artists of the 1990s. What does it say about a society, he asked, that there's such an alienation between the work that goes on under the name of art and broader popular opinion? This has to do with the "art system" you name, I think, and both the high-end private market of art and the public funding of the arts have contributed to this alienation, not to mention the role of academia. I find it helps to place the weirdness of art in the end-times of modernity within the larger perspective of Ellen Dissanayake's work on art as the most distinctive and inescapable of human activities, the activity that marks us out as a species. And then I think of all the remarkable people I've known and sometimes worked with for whom "art" as it exists today functions (among other things) as a cover story for activities that make no sense according to the logic of "the world as we know it". This generally takes a degree of distance from and/or tricksterish relation to existing institutions.
Anyway, I can go on about this all day! But thanks for setting me thinking. And sorry I won't make it to Colorado this time around. In between my misgivings about getting on planes to other continents, I harbour thoughts of a further tour in the next year or two where I'd get to some of the parts of North America this tour won't reach, and Boulder is high on that list.
Thank you for this thoughtful and generous response. I am trying to push myself into writing my own essays rather than just commenting on the creative works of others with the awareness that comment/criticism is a much easier task than creating.
Should you find yourself in Colorado in the future there is a lot here I suspect you would find of interest. There is particular overlap between Naropa University and Dark Mountain. The poetry school was founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, their proximity to Gary Snyder meant Eco-Poetics was centered from the beginning. It is also considered a founding institution for modern mindfulness and somatic experience. Animism, Indigenous Cultures, issues of Race and Class are all centered in discussions there as well.
I agree with much of what you said, but with the first item on your list “Art can hold a space in which we move from the arm’s-length knowledge of facts, figures and projections, to the kind of knowledge that we let inside us, taking the risk that it may change us”, I would say that genuine and transformative art happens when we have already been changed, by the knowledge that we have let inside us or rather the incomprehensible blows to our hearts and bodies more than our minds.
When I wrote the list, I was particularly thinking of those kinds of art in which things happen in the present tense among people in a room together (including theatre), where from the perspective of many of those present that kind of move from knowledge to knowing is part of the transformation that may take place. (Though this depends, among other things, on us somehow slipping the trap of the habits of cultural consumption that can keep a well-trained audience in the shallows, even when the work itself contains an invitation to depth.)
But if I've understood you rightly, then I think there's a both–and here – that art worth the name tends to arise from experiences of having been changed, and that when it works, it also creates such experiences in those who encounter it.
I'm rereading Alan Garner's The Voice That Thunders just now and he talks about how the storyteller (as writer, in his case) and the reader are both involved in acts of translation, which seems like another way of putting this.
Thanks so much for your perspective on what you were expressing. It seems that each of us were referring to two different things. I was thinking of what moves an artist to create something but there is always the one who is beholding what has been expressed and they bring a certain kind of attention that will hopefully be open to receiving something new that could perhaps change them. I agree that the habits of cultural consumption can certainly numb the audience. I think this is where the preparation needed to receive something worth beholding is critical.
Have you come across JF Martel’s Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice? It accords well with what you are saying here and would definitely be of interest. JFM is the co-host of the Weird Studies podcast
I think art might work best as a verb, so we can talk of ' the bankers art", or 'you weave with great art'. As it presently stands the term refers to a rarefied subset in the edifice of western culture that has flourished intrinsically with capitalism and is irretrievably colonial.
As a verb, we cannot do art, or make art, it is a way of doing and making, and in this way makes sense within an indigenous way of thinking and speaking. We can return it into its place in living, through purposeful relationship with land and the sturdy project of provisioning ourselves (actually ourselves, not through someone else) from that land, which will take a great art.
You cannot make Art and go and buy your food from the supermarket, of course you can and everyone who calls themselves an artist and makes art does. Whatever action you may take; writing, painting, performance... it will be hobbled by this disconnection from land and foreshadowed by its hysterical relationship to a death cult. This is not to say don't do it but don't expect it to change anything. You can be honest with yourself; I am exploring through this medium some ideas and relationships whilst I subsist in a system of global exploitation that allows me to do this.
You can't say you have a good relationship with your gran if you see them once every 3 months. To take responsibility for our Earth Grandmother means to take part in the land in a useful (regenerative?) way, there really is no substitute. I can only imagine the impact of the army of misfits currently roiling under the moniker if art and artists were to set their formidable talents on the land.
I love that list of the roles art might play. I’m glad to have found your Substack yesterday, through a restack on notes, then this morning I picked a new book to listen, ‘At work in the ruins’. About 20 minutes in I realised you were one and the same. The universe is out there rooting for you!
This is so resonant and helpful for me today, especially the thought that art "complicates matters." I find this especially true when I try to articulate my entanglement in the world as it is. Thank you for your thoughts.
Some really interesting thinking points here and a strong argument for the role of art (which I probably would initially have agreed with entirely...), though I don't know that there is necessarily any one way, and sometimes less subtle, more didactic art can still be powerful and reach a different public in a different and nonetheless necessary way.
Thanks, John – I agree, there's not any one way, and "subtlety" can be its own trap. I was going to say that "art refuses to be put in a box" (including the box of my unfinished list) and then I remembered Ansuman Biswas, one of my favourite artists, spending ten days inside a box in the middle of a gallery.
Thank you Dougald, because I am writing fiction about a climate change activist/journalist who is so frustrated with lack of action, fence sitters and deniers, she is teetering on the edge of something! I love "art can hold a space ... the kind of knowledge that we let inside us, taking the risk it may change us." This ask resonates with Lorenz book The Waning of Humaneness, 1987 in English, which I am rereading having bought it back then. The writing is such an exploratory process, birthing a character and allowing a journey. My brother and I in Australia have both read WITR.
My copy of AWITR arrived this week, looking forward to it.
What you say here really resonates. That word 'should.' for example. The same idea applies to print journalism: years ago before I gave up on it I'd gotten to where if I ever saw the word 'should' in an article I would stop reading immediately and move on to something else. It could only be some feel good wishful thinking that would change exactly nothing in the real world.
And what you say even applies to what I would say is a failure of a culture of meaningful art to develop in (my country) canada as of yet. For as long as I've been around all art that isn't entirely independent starts with the question, "what boxes shall we tick?" and then the art proceeds from there. Always wanted an excuse to say that out loud, so there it is.
This is a very thought-provoking post! I totally agree that art that is too set on delivering a message will mostly fail. On the other hand, I've seen 'ecological art' that is so set in the conventions of modern art that it speaks to no-one other than people who are already appreciate and understand modern art. I think it can be very tricky to find the middle ground where you're not preaching, but your work is accessible enough to people who don't really understand modern art.
“There’s no single answer to the question of what art should do under the shadow of climate change – and besides, anything that’s worth the name of art is allergic to words like ‘should’. It takes a subtler kind of dialogue, an indirect approach, to stumble on the places where the work of art comes alive.”
In so many ways I agree with this, but even the use of the world “subtle” is so often part of art discussion and dialogue that I am allergic to that. Art "complicating things" is a wonderful definition and way to word things, also a quote I’ve found very useful lately by Alice Notley is “the truth is never self righteous.” Even in this statement by Notley, whose writing I also admire, the moment anyone tells me what art/truth is or is not I immediately want try to prove them wrong.
Perhaps the strength of art is that it resists being defined as well as being told what it is not. In the shadow of climate change, I am personally most weary of the university/gallery system and the business model of art. I don't mean to suggest these things aren't important though. I can’t speak for England and Sweden but I fear the art system including the University system is on the whole anti art. It simultaneously spreads art to places that might not otherwise experience art while also creating inescapable debt (at interest) which puts so many on a hamster wheel of debt payments that many lose faith in art as whole and creates mass cynicism. (For context nearly everyone I know who went to art school is 100k+ in debt)
“Bad art” or ineffective “message art” at least gives you something to reject and push against. As a whole I very much agree with your quotes, but also strongly feel art CAN actually do/accomplish things. It’s rare but I find most definitions of art so highly resistant to this very idea that it doesn’t even allow for the possibility.
Best of luck on your US tour, though I’m disappointed you won’t be making it to Colorado. "At Work in the Ruins" has been on the employee pick section at the amazing Boulder Bookstore since its release.
Thanks for these thoughts, Randall!
They brought me back to a phrase I've used now and then: "the weak power of art". Weak because it's not a tool that can be picked up and used to achieve predictable outcomes, yet powerful because it can be enormously consequential, in ways sometimes intended, sometimes unintended, and often somewhere in between.
The refusal of categories, the duty to whatever truth has gone missing from the "social truth" – these are some of the other markers for me of the commonalities of the strange set of activities that go under the name of "art", but even that name is a category and proper to be pushed against.
John Carey wrote a book called 'What Good Are the Arts?' where he starts out by quoting the gleeful comments on a British radio phone-in, the morning after the fire at a warehouse that destroyed a lot of works by the Young British Artists of the 1990s. What does it say about a society, he asked, that there's such an alienation between the work that goes on under the name of art and broader popular opinion? This has to do with the "art system" you name, I think, and both the high-end private market of art and the public funding of the arts have contributed to this alienation, not to mention the role of academia. I find it helps to place the weirdness of art in the end-times of modernity within the larger perspective of Ellen Dissanayake's work on art as the most distinctive and inescapable of human activities, the activity that marks us out as a species. And then I think of all the remarkable people I've known and sometimes worked with for whom "art" as it exists today functions (among other things) as a cover story for activities that make no sense according to the logic of "the world as we know it". This generally takes a degree of distance from and/or tricksterish relation to existing institutions.
Anyway, I can go on about this all day! But thanks for setting me thinking. And sorry I won't make it to Colorado this time around. In between my misgivings about getting on planes to other continents, I harbour thoughts of a further tour in the next year or two where I'd get to some of the parts of North America this tour won't reach, and Boulder is high on that list.
Thank you for this thoughtful and generous response. I am trying to push myself into writing my own essays rather than just commenting on the creative works of others with the awareness that comment/criticism is a much easier task than creating.
Should you find yourself in Colorado in the future there is a lot here I suspect you would find of interest. There is particular overlap between Naropa University and Dark Mountain. The poetry school was founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, their proximity to Gary Snyder meant Eco-Poetics was centered from the beginning. It is also considered a founding institution for modern mindfulness and somatic experience. Animism, Indigenous Cultures, issues of Race and Class are all centered in discussions there as well.
I agree with much of what you said, but with the first item on your list “Art can hold a space in which we move from the arm’s-length knowledge of facts, figures and projections, to the kind of knowledge that we let inside us, taking the risk that it may change us”, I would say that genuine and transformative art happens when we have already been changed, by the knowledge that we have let inside us or rather the incomprehensible blows to our hearts and bodies more than our minds.
Thanks for probing that first item, Suzanne.
When I wrote the list, I was particularly thinking of those kinds of art in which things happen in the present tense among people in a room together (including theatre), where from the perspective of many of those present that kind of move from knowledge to knowing is part of the transformation that may take place. (Though this depends, among other things, on us somehow slipping the trap of the habits of cultural consumption that can keep a well-trained audience in the shallows, even when the work itself contains an invitation to depth.)
But if I've understood you rightly, then I think there's a both–and here – that art worth the name tends to arise from experiences of having been changed, and that when it works, it also creates such experiences in those who encounter it.
I'm rereading Alan Garner's The Voice That Thunders just now and he talks about how the storyteller (as writer, in his case) and the reader are both involved in acts of translation, which seems like another way of putting this.
Thanks so much for your perspective on what you were expressing. It seems that each of us were referring to two different things. I was thinking of what moves an artist to create something but there is always the one who is beholding what has been expressed and they bring a certain kind of attention that will hopefully be open to receiving something new that could perhaps change them. I agree that the habits of cultural consumption can certainly numb the audience. I think this is where the preparation needed to receive something worth beholding is critical.
Have you come across JF Martel’s Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice? It accords well with what you are saying here and would definitely be of interest. JFM is the co-host of the Weird Studies podcast
https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/reclaiming-art-in-the-age-of-artifice/
Thanks, Peter - I need to read that!
I think art might work best as a verb, so we can talk of ' the bankers art", or 'you weave with great art'. As it presently stands the term refers to a rarefied subset in the edifice of western culture that has flourished intrinsically with capitalism and is irretrievably colonial.
As a verb, we cannot do art, or make art, it is a way of doing and making, and in this way makes sense within an indigenous way of thinking and speaking. We can return it into its place in living, through purposeful relationship with land and the sturdy project of provisioning ourselves (actually ourselves, not through someone else) from that land, which will take a great art.
You cannot make Art and go and buy your food from the supermarket, of course you can and everyone who calls themselves an artist and makes art does. Whatever action you may take; writing, painting, performance... it will be hobbled by this disconnection from land and foreshadowed by its hysterical relationship to a death cult. This is not to say don't do it but don't expect it to change anything. You can be honest with yourself; I am exploring through this medium some ideas and relationships whilst I subsist in a system of global exploitation that allows me to do this.
You can't say you have a good relationship with your gran if you see them once every 3 months. To take responsibility for our Earth Grandmother means to take part in the land in a useful (regenerative?) way, there really is no substitute. I can only imagine the impact of the army of misfits currently roiling under the moniker if art and artists were to set their formidable talents on the land.
I love that list of the roles art might play. I’m glad to have found your Substack yesterday, through a restack on notes, then this morning I picked a new book to listen, ‘At work in the ruins’. About 20 minutes in I realised you were one and the same. The universe is out there rooting for you!
Ha, that's fun to hear! Glad you found your way here.
This is so resonant and helpful for me today, especially the thought that art "complicates matters." I find this especially true when I try to articulate my entanglement in the world as it is. Thank you for your thoughts.
Some really interesting thinking points here and a strong argument for the role of art (which I probably would initially have agreed with entirely...), though I don't know that there is necessarily any one way, and sometimes less subtle, more didactic art can still be powerful and reach a different public in a different and nonetheless necessary way.
Thanks, John – I agree, there's not any one way, and "subtlety" can be its own trap. I was going to say that "art refuses to be put in a box" (including the box of my unfinished list) and then I remembered Ansuman Biswas, one of my favourite artists, spending ten days inside a box in the middle of a gallery.
Thank you Dougald, because I am writing fiction about a climate change activist/journalist who is so frustrated with lack of action, fence sitters and deniers, she is teetering on the edge of something! I love "art can hold a space ... the kind of knowledge that we let inside us, taking the risk it may change us." This ask resonates with Lorenz book The Waning of Humaneness, 1987 in English, which I am rereading having bought it back then. The writing is such an exploratory process, birthing a character and allowing a journey. My brother and I in Australia have both read WITR.
My copy of AWITR arrived this week, looking forward to it.
What you say here really resonates. That word 'should.' for example. The same idea applies to print journalism: years ago before I gave up on it I'd gotten to where if I ever saw the word 'should' in an article I would stop reading immediately and move on to something else. It could only be some feel good wishful thinking that would change exactly nothing in the real world.
And what you say even applies to what I would say is a failure of a culture of meaningful art to develop in (my country) canada as of yet. For as long as I've been around all art that isn't entirely independent starts with the question, "what boxes shall we tick?" and then the art proceeds from there. Always wanted an excuse to say that out loud, so there it is.
This is a very thought-provoking post! I totally agree that art that is too set on delivering a message will mostly fail. On the other hand, I've seen 'ecological art' that is so set in the conventions of modern art that it speaks to no-one other than people who are already appreciate and understand modern art. I think it can be very tricky to find the middle ground where you're not preaching, but your work is accessible enough to people who don't really understand modern art.