Making Art as if the Earth Matters

Making Art as if

the Earth Matters

This was clearly Art. Art as if the Earth matters, because the Earth mattered to everyone taking part. The leafletters, the Wellbeing co-ordinators, the Red People, the facilitators of Climate Assemblies, the parents and children, the Legal Observers artists, activists or both are all taking part as artists. No one was working in isolation and everyone had a stake in making the Earth safe.

In the extraordinary atmosphere of the April and October Rebellions of 2019 banners furled and unfurled around Nelson’s Column, people were locked onto a hearse for the Earth and traffic was halted by thousands of people sitting in roads. Whitehall was abandoned to samba bands, wild dancers and great groups of people in red drapes with weeping white faces. They swept slowly through crowds of arrestable and non-arrestable activists.

It's noticeable that in the Corvid-19 lock down the thing that people comment on above all is how much they miss being connected with others.

In 1991 Suzanne Lacy coined the term 'New genre public art' is public but not as in a sculpture situated in a park or square. It is often activist, engaging directly with the audience, addressing social and political issues, and some say it has to be presented to an audience within a fine art context. A Fine Art context can be the streets.

My learning is that as an artist I can initiate, collaborate, lead, or take part in, assist or even dip in and out of whatever is happening and I remain an artist. A small group may be involved, or thousands, and the working together and the connection between us is the Art.

I have learnt too that revolutionary culture must be regenerative culture if it is to succeed and work for everyone.it requires rewilding, regeneration and repair. That has to include Art. If anything has contributed to generative oddkin in the past eighteen months perhaps it is Extinction Rebellion and related parts of the climate movement. People have connected in extraordinary ways, and unexpected collaborations have sprung out of nowhere. An increasing number of we humans have found ourselves involved in extraordinarily uplifting activities, and collaborations way beyond our normal lives and our comfort zones. I have made small contributions and learnt much.

..... the difference between being an artist and being a social activist, where your role is to make a specific change. Art has more layers, because its also about your place within it and how you play these systems. It's a bit of an experiment in the end.

Mika Rottenberg