On Yasmine, Janine Randerson asked Can Art be a ‘mediator’ between Art and Climate Science? www.out-of-sync.com responded: In relation to our own work, Talking about the Weather, and an exhibition we co-curated at UTS Gallery, Sydney (with Jacqueline Bosscher), The Trouble with the Weather — here are some initial thoughts on your opening questions.

1. Is an emergent mode of “relational” art developing that is more receptive to public anxieties and concerns about climate and atmospheric pollution?

Our project description for Talking about the Weather, which involves social encounters in public places, directly addresses this, so hope you don’t mind if we just repeat it here:

“Talking About the Weather” is an ongoing cross media project sparked by our response to the terrifying spectre of global climate change. Sheer terror at the possibilities that are being talked about led us to talking about the weather. In this project weathertalk is no longer a banal exchange of local weather conditions, but instead we ask people to donate their breath - the breath, which they would normally use to talk about the weather and the same breath that is spread far and wide as described by Tim Flannery. Working with breath emphasises the dynamic nature of the atmosphere and our part in its creation and destruction. As Tim Flannery says, every breath you take makes you part of a dynamic system called the atmosphere, or the aerial ocean.

2. Does climate science need art? Is the collaboration between artists and scientists useful for both parties and for society-at-large?

There are various ways this collaboration takes place. In our exhibition, “The Trouble with the Weather” we sought the collaboration of University of Technology, Sydney scientists in the exhibition catalogue where Stuart White and Jade Herriman, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures and Tally Palmer from the Institute for Water and Environmental Resource Management. They wrote catalogue essays and, among other things, suggested the importance of art in bringing issues of climate science to society-at-large. As Tally wrote: “This exhibition challenges us. The images and sounds break into our senses, perhaps more clearly than other, more linear ways of understanding. These luminous works call out for adventure, courage and a willingness to learn new ways of thinking. New ways of tackling this trouble with the weather….”

3. Does the ambidextrous figure of the “artist-scientist” or “scientist-artist” become more relevant at a point of crisis like climate change?

This does not relate to our own work nor particularly to our exhibition. Our focus was more on artists engaging with the issue and on opening new ways for the public to engage. What made it all the trickier was that one minute climate change was not on the agenda and then suddenly it was so ubiquitous in the media that people were talking about climate change fatigue. In both instances, there was also a fear factor that we saw art as enabling people to bypass.

4. What expectations do curators and artist-participants have for the audiences of current group exhibitions such as Eco-Media, (Madrid, 2007), Weather Report (Boulder, 2007), and The Trouble with the Weather (Sydney, 2007)? Are new audiences expected?

Here’s what we said in our curatorial statement: “The Trouble with the Weather: a southern response brings together artists from the South Pacific, Australia and South America, working across media, to respond to global warming. Using humour and the absurd, displays of excess, sensual environments, intense imagination, and personal and emotional responses, the artists offer us new ways to engage with this politically overloaded and emotionally charged subject.” It’s not so much that we wanted new audiences, though we did actually get some, but to offer new ways in to the concerns at a time of overload and fear.

5. How do art projects and exhibitions function in relation to climate activism? Are aesthetic experience and political consciousness diametrically opposed?

Not at all, we see aesthetic experience as opening up to political consciousness –in an open ended and non-didactic way. Re this, we agree with Roger Malina’s recent post about art’s developing new senses.

6. Can art influence public policy on climate change? Is there a social imperative for artists to act politically?

Talking about imperatives seems somewhat tricky… And it’s hard to know these days what influences public policy, living in Australia where massive public mobilisations, eg, against the war in Iraq went nowhere. We see it as important to keep a place alive where art can also disturb social rules and regulations – so there can be an artistic climate of diversity and multiplicity.

7. Roger Malina proposes in the introduction to the Eco-media catalogue (2007), “The arts, as all other forms of human activity, must be contributors to the new cultural vision of a different kind of techno-scientific society. Currently artistic interactions with science and technology are “homeopathic”; they need to become systemic.” How can this call for a systemic reconfiguration of science-technology-art interactions be actioned?

Your question here seems to raise a wider question, beyond climate science, about new media art and its relation to technology. Steve Dietz has argued that we’re now at a point where “new media art” needs no longer to focus on technology per se. This seems important to us, to be able to move beyond a formalist attention to technology (which sometimes fell into beta testing for industry) to explorations where as artists we can explore what’s happening in techno-scientific society with any technology or media.

Best
Norie Neumark and Maria Miranda
www.out-of-sync.com