Persuasion Equation - NATURE 2.0The term Anthropocene, first used by Nobel Prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000, is now broadly employed to refer to the Earth's latest geological epoch. Since the 18th century, our planet's environmental conditions have dramatically shifted from relatively stable, to progressively fierce and erratic. This change is both a direct consequence of mass industrialisation, and a defining feature of the Anthropocene. Now for the first time in history, human activity has (somewhat accidentally) come to dominate and threaten the natural systems that have sustained life since life began. Though the term Anthropocene is relatively new, we have been imagining this future for some time in science fiction (think classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Logan's Run and the 'Apocalyptic' and 'Dying Earth' subgenres generally). Countless environmental movements have attempted to raise the collective consciousness, motivated by a belief in the value of preserving nature for generations to come, or a simple fear of what might happen if we don't. Now as we start to experience the impending social, political, and cultural changes ahead, our imaginations begin to shift focus from picturing what might be, to more directly dealing with what is. Updating Nietzsche's The Gay Science we might well remark 'Nature is dead. Nature remains dead. And we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves?'1 Perhaps this is how... Akira Akira's Football consists of an imitation-wood soccer ball packaged in a bag made of fine plastic netting. This strange conflation makes reference to our persistent, yet inherently conflicted desire, to hold nature close by modifying it into more palatable standardised forms. Entire forests are destroyed forests are destroyed in the clamour for raw materials which we then fashion into sweet novel products of little to no use, that temporarily engage, but rarely satisfy our appetites: a comparatively suspect equation. Similarly Huseyin Sami makes simple but impressive painting machines to conduct his novel exploration of the physical properties of liquid paint. In poignantly plastic colours, Sami's machines fabricate the grandeur of a waterfall, albeit a strangely sticky one with pungent petro-chemical smell. His work is an overt attempt to develop a surrogate for nature, working to create the sensation of nature's presence rather than its image or texture. Simultaneously captivating and repugnant, Sami's work seems a rather succinct appraisal of our time. Chris Bond's mysterious Remote gives the appearance of commanding some unique, possibly military control. Like a traditional fetish object, the formal qualities of this appliance seems to express its capacity to dominate the environment that it blends into, for either fancy or power. Or more alarmingly, perhaps Remote is a wry comment on our complicity in the world's continual destruction as we watch conflict after conflict, at a safe distance, on our deluxe home theatres night after night on the news. Catherine Bell and Matthew Hunt both fashion works that are less concerned with essences, and more playfully post-apocalyptic. These artists depict our current state as regressive, highlighting the decline of humanity in civilisations that degrade nature so deeply. Bell's Gorilla Girl and Hunt's New Orbits and Man & Ape both reference a popularised caveman aesthetic that calls to mind Albert Einstein's enduring statement, 'I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones'.2 In part we can be comforted by their renderings in which nature will endure, surviving in the shadows. It is a rather cold comfort though, as one might further deduce it is humankind that is set for the greater fall. Peter McKay 1. Nietzsche's original text reads 'God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we
comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?' Section 125 (The Madman).
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photos: Dean McCartney
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Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts
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