Going to Glasgow

I think this is our last year to have a hope of surviving climate change, and even many, many of us are already casualties, as are so many other species.

Everyone I know has the COP26 Glasgow, even though the consensus is that fossil fuel corporations have a stranglehold on governmental outcomes which could reverse or even halt the worst of the ecological damage and therefore little will come of the meeting.

The tacit assumption is that despite global urgency, the power of corporate finances carries more weight than concern about the fate of the planet. Nonetheless, I expect the COP to mark an inflection point in our global discourse. Colleagues such as Wendy Brawer, Robyn Woolston and Marda Kirn are already gathering in Glasgow, participating in side events, in some cases mounting exhibitions and attending gatherings. The most hope I have is for the impacts of featured and very visible participations of Indigenous peoples worldwide in the COP to educate people about the stakes and the options.

My reasons for not attending are all pragmatic:

1.      Health

2.      Carbon emissions from flight

3.      Finances

4.      I resist putting my energy where I’m not sure I can do good

5.      I don’t think this is a matter of bodies in a location

That was not how I felt in 2009. I attended COP15 in Copenhagen that year with high hopes for what might be accomplished. My attendance came at the tail end of beginning my dissertation work in Zurich, Switzerland with the Z-Node program http://www.z-node.net/cms/index.html, which will culminate next summer with the launch of my book next summer, Divining Chaos; The Autobiography of An Idea with New Village Press. In 2009, I had set aside my misgivings about flying, to which I had been deeply committed since Katrina because I thought what I might accomplish might justify the carbon cost. But by the end of the 2009 COP, I left Denmark profoundly disappointed and disillusioned. I wrote about my experience for CSPA.  My take away conviction was that if there was going to be any change, it would have to come from the bottom up. That conviction was something that motivated creating The Blued Trees Symphony, manifesting my certainty that the only answer to our current crisis was to immediately arrest fossil fuel use.

I am not the only artist applying law to a practice that addresses environmental issues. Eliza Evans does and Rebecca Zorach has written a book about Chicago artists who employ law in their practice.

Artists who are engaging with the law cross over the acceptance of conceptual art, which Lucy Lippard, who is writing a foreword to my book has written and curated about and the evolution of activism in the arts with social practice work.

The question I always ask, pursuant to my trigger point theory, is where to identify the small likely point of emergence and as an artist, how to flesh out what will activate the new system. Will Glasgow be it? I think it’s more likely that it will be a pivot point for more ground up agitation over climate change.

How might that manifest? I’m not sure yet, but I and many others are watching closely and we have some strategic plans that will unfold over the next year. My attention for some time has been entirely on demanding accountability for ecocide and the reparations that should come out of that accountability. It is a primary topic in my book. It is also gaining traction internationally.