──Living in Europe where extreme weather events are becoming common, how do you see the coming 10 years in terms of climate crisis and everyday life?
We’re at an interesting (ha!) time in the UK where the governing party keeps becoming more and more venal, incompetent and destructive; just when you think it can’t get any worse – it does. It seems that public opinion is finally turning against them; for example, there are high levels of public support for the various strikes that are going on. I think it’s likely that we’ll see a similar shift in support for strong climate action within the next ten years. This is way later than it needs to be and we’re likely to be locked into at least 2 degrees of heating globally by then. So...we’ll have increasingly extreme weather events which will affect day-to-day life more and more. Where I live in Manchester, we’ve had two Red (Danger to Life) Warnings of flooding in the last two years – something that was unthinkable ten years go. The risk is that those of us in the wealthy and relatively protected Global North will adapt to the “new normal”.
The far right and authoritarian leaders are making strong political gains in Europe and I think the next ten years will see a continuing push-pull against these regressive forces, with the right using migrants as a suitable target to deflect attention away from the real drivers of climate change, which is the actions of the most wealthy globally – the most industrialised countries and also the wealthiest individuals. The richest 10% globally emit 50% of the carbon, while the poorest 50% emit 10% of the carbon.
──Where do you get information about climate issues? Any specific websites, books etc? Do you talk with like-minded friends and share information and tips?
I get info about climate issues from a variety of sources. For example, Jessica Kleczka’s Positive Climate News is a useful counterweight to Climate Doomism – it highlight positive developments while maintaining a critical viewpoint. Since reading her book Under the Sky We Make I’ve been following the climate scientist Kimberly Nicholas. The Ecologist and The Guardian have a lot of useful articles; and DeSmog Blog is really excellent for investigating the forces that are hindering climate action.
I also talk to friends, many of whom are actively intervening our current trajectory towards climate breakdown. I’ve known the artist Kerry Morrison for a long time, and she’s recently started working for theThe Crichton Carbon Centre in Scotland – she has a job title of Project Officer but is working with them as an artist focussing on peatland restoration. I think this is a really interesting way of working – where she has a “normal job” which allows her to deploy her toolkit and skills as an artist, in the service of keeping carbon in the ground.
As part of my work for Castlefield Gallery, in 2021 we launched project called SUSTAIN which involved a digital exchange (where five artists from Greater Manchester and five artists from Aarhus will took part in a six-month programme of workshops and discussions focussed on low carbon artmaking) and a two-month slow culture residency where two artists travelled between Denmark and Manchester by train and did a two-month residency. We did this work in partnership with the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum and we are hoping to work with them again. Artists on this programme such as Maya Chowdhry and Chris Alton have a huge amount of knowledge, and two of the artists – Sophy King and Heidi Nikolaisen – made an excellent checklist for creating a low carbon website.
There was a lot of demand for places on SUSTAIN and in response we kick-started an artist network called SPARK, for artists wanting to intervene in the climate crisis. Again, there is a huge amount of knowledge and experience in this group of artists.
And I still have many friends and contacts through being involved in environmental activism for so long. It would be very hard work to be involved in without a good network of support!
──What kinds of initiatives do you think that the art sector should be more pro-active on regarding climate issues? e.g. restricting certain activities like flying? the role of cool museum spaces in the future? Local community etc?
Personally, I find it really problematic how much the art sector relies on international travel – for biennales, residencies etc. It’s such a norm, for people to make international flights for a few days or to commute e.g. between Berlin and Manchester. One of the biggest drivers of behaviour change is by example, and I think we can use our creativity to find much lower carbon ways of doing things. I really appreciate the nourishment there is from in person contact in an actual place! But I think air travel needs to become something special, not a norm.
Dani Admiss’ project Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline, is doing really interesting work on ways to decarbonise the artworld, as is the Gallery Climate Coalition. As part of Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline I took part in a workshop on digital decarbonisation, which looked both at how operating digitally can help reduce carbon emissions and also how we can reduce the emissions created by digital actions. As part of this we talked about ways that artists could reduce their air miles, for example by creating a network of people internationally who could “stand in” for artists – local artists who can install work or give talks in place of the artist who’s made the work being exhibited. Also including enough budget for people to use low carbon travel options, as IASPIS in Sweden does.
If we reduce flying, it is important to bear in mind the climate justice aspect; that it is harder for artists from the global South to get their work seen and to make money from their practice, and that it’s important for their voices to be heard. As they bear less of the carbon debt, so it’s fair that they bear less of the costs of decarbonising.
Again, we need to always bear in mind that the climate crisis is a systemic problem and that, although individual actions are important, we need to be looking at the broader systems and infrastructure. I think the art sector can contribute here by showing ways that thing scan be different – presenting different visions and possibilities, and providing ways for different voices to be heard, especially from the Majority World/Global South.
──Are there any artists, currently or in the past who you inspires you regarding earth issues, climate issues and adapting to crises?
There are many – here is a handful:
A constant source of inspiration is the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, whose experiments have included the Clown Army which was a feature of many protests in the UK in the Noughties, and also the Bike Bloc – mobile civil disobedience at COP15 in Copenhagen.
Ellie Harrison has been constantly provocative and incisive, as well as using humour really effectively in her practice. She has brought her artist’s repertoire to activism (for example in setting up Glasgow Community Energy to generate renewable electricity) and a really clear political analysis to her art practice.
Tom James and Alex Hartley did a brilliant project called The Clearing which centred around a geodesic dome at Compton Verney where people could learn how to live in the collapsing world that’s coming our way unless we radically shift trajectory.
During SUSTAIN I was introduced to the work of Kounaktif, an organisation in Morocco working at the intersection of ecology, art and technology, and also to The Forest Curriculum, an itinerant and nomadic platform for indisciplinary research and mutual co-learning co-directed by curators Abhijan Toto and Pujita Guha, which works with artists, researchers, indigenous organizations, thinkers, musicians and activists.
Rosalie Schweiker is a thoughtful and inspiring artist who has used participatory budgeting in her work, as has Cecilia Wee as part of the work on Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline.
Darren Cullen makes excellent agit-art and is actively involved in campaigns, for example with his Hell Bus.
Jane Interview Afterword. Roger McDonald.
I suppose I must begin my little afterword by saying that I have never met Jane in person. As with so many meetings during the Covid pandemic, our relationship has been fostered online via zoom and e-mail. This is perhaps also a reflection of how many of us are relating to the climate crisis, by choosing not to fly long distances on a whim, as perhaps we could pre-2019 (the age of cheap air travel). So I understand our online conversations and friendship as a sign of our times, and a sign of how the future will feel like.
Jane is a pioneering artist and activist, having been involved in the first climate camps in the UK. The fact that artists and people from many backgrounds participated in these actions is something we should be encouraging and looking to for inspiration. There is a tendency for the media to categorize climate activism by specific constituencies, most often ‘youth’ or ‘students’. The reality is that many people living in our society from all ages, backgrounds and concerns are aware of the crisis and doing what they feel they can. Some stop working and become full time activists, others work in local community organizations, some talk with friends, others think about the crisis. All of this constitutes what we can call an ‘assemblage’ of climate activism today, in all parts of the world. Not a single voice, but many, diverse voices, all aware of the crisis and doing what they can.
Jane clearly understands the climate crisis as a symptom of larger socio-political economic forces. She says that it is capitalism and its energy for endless growth that underlines our current predicament. This is such an important recognition. Too often, mainstream environmentalism backed by governments and large corporations fail to analyze the deeper causes of the climate crisis. They simply talk about the United Nations SDG’s and the importance of changing individual consumer behavior. Artists like Jane point us to wider horizons. Only when we begin to understand the climate crisis as rooted in very specific historical economic and political systems (what we can call capitalism, or neo-liberalism) can meaningful actions and thinking become clear.
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