Political Art
Q & A
The strategic process shown in the infographic below has been developed by Aviva Rahmani to express her view of what is needed for “saving human civilization,” “resisting ecocide and ecosuicide” and “mitigating climate change.” Her view is that political and activist ecoart can act as a catalyst for achieving this with the final step showing, “This is art as democracy and Earth rights.”
Conversations between Aviva Rahmani and Felicity Stone, Art Thinker:
1) Why does the job of awakening human consciousness to the perils of climate change fall to art activists and ecological artists rather than politicians?
Artists have a relative comfort level with calling things as we see them and speaking truth to power no matter how provocative. In fact, that’s often the only way we get attention. The art world encourages us to be outrageous! But in the case of climate change, we can’t make or match just how catastrophic the realties we face already are. All we need to do is bear willing witness to the calamities staring us in our faces while governments fiddle.
2) In your writing you have discussed the way in which fascist ideals and ideas about white supremacy, impunity, and patriarchal structures drive ecological destruction and decimate the natural environment. Could you give some specific examples of how this happens?
You have to follow the money when you consider the viability of the economic system. In September 2020, the young activist Greta Thunberg tweeted, “Regardless of what we call the economic system, it is essential that it functions within the planetary boundaries.” White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism concentrate wealth in the hands of a small group of white men without regard to planetary boundaries. As a result, extractive industries are destroying the entire planetary ecosystem human civilization depends on preserving.
3) With the Black Lives Matter movement, following George Lloyd’s death, millions of Americans took to the street in protest in outrage (and around the world) and yet very little legislative change has happened either within states or at the federal level. With a democracy this slow to react, how can change actually be affected?
We must look at precedent and history. Judges are as susceptible to public opinion as anyone else. That was how we won gay marriage. Legal activists and artists collaborated to keep the pressure on about the issues, driven in part by the tragedy of AIDS. Black Lives Matter arose most vociferously during the last administration, but progress has been hampered by propaganda from the same administration. Art has the power to sway public opinion very quickly, but we still need to go through the courts. We will see what happens under the Biden/Harris presidency takes power.
4. Have you always had a nonconformist streak from a young age? If so, do you know why that is?
I come from people who defied conventions, survived wars and participated in rebellion. It was always clear to me that the courage to stand up for one’s ideals and convictions was commendable aspirational behaviour. I was also the youngest of two daughters in my family. Psychologists often say the youngest takes the role of the rebel to distinguish ourselves from the more traditionally conformist paths of an oldest child.
5. Some of your videos (Fish Story Memphis and Hunt for the Lost) were recently shown as part of “The New City - Navigating the Future, A How-To,” a virtual conference featuring global and civic world leaders, creatives, and innovators. How do you feel about politicians such as Andrew Yang speaking at events like this?
I can’t think of anything more critical now than for politicians to pay attention to the clairvoyant visions of artists. Donald Rumsfeld famously commented on the “unknown unknowns.” It is often artists who can imagine what that might be.
6. In The Blued Trees Symphony, you explore how the copyright law that protects art can be used to protect land in danger of seizure under the rule of eminent domain. What gave you the idea to do this and how do you feel about the outcomes so far?
The sculptor Peter Von Tiesenhausen had tested this idea with his ranch, by copyrighting the top 6” of soil on his land in 1996 and charging natural gas corporations $500 an hour to talk to him. The caveat is that his theory was never tested in the courts. That was what I hoped to do with The Blued Trees Symphony. The mock trial was pretty close.
7. As a follow-on to The Blued Trees Symphony and the legislative approach to protect the land you produced a mock trial. How did this mock trial help to demonstrate the issues that this project was tackling?
The most important result of the mock trial was that a New York Supreme Court judge, April Newbauer of the Bronx, issued an injunction against the fictional corporation. Since the whole point of a mock trial is to test the legal theory, that was a momentous outcome. Outside judicial circles, it is hard to grasp the significance because we are all used to Law and Order’s stories of swift justice. It is very hard to move forward with environmental and Earth justice with the vast cadre of conservative judges appointed during the last administration, but opportunities for case law will emerge. At that point our mock trial will provide a blueprint to build arguments to save habitat threatened by corporate power in a real courtroom.
8. Why is it important to challenge the interpretation of law through art?
As artists, we learn to master but then defy formalist rules. That is the same task activist jurists undertake with different tools. Conventional law sticks closely to established precedent. However, artists are channelled into thinking originally about rules so when we consider the rules of legal systems, we intuitively start testing for weaknesses. In the case of The Blued Trees Symphony, there were a number of inviting weaknesses to explore, such as the question of how we define droit moral in copyright law in the United States, the power of legal standing under ownership law, and the originalist definitions of the “sacred home” in applying eminent domain law. These are all areas being tested in the lower courts as we move toward Earth rights to save the planet from ecocide.
“White supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism concentrate wealth in the hands of a small group of white men without regard to planetary boundaries.“
— Aviva Rahmani
“Art has the power to sway public opinion very quickly but we still need to go through the courts.“
— Aviva Rahmani
“I come from people who defied conventions, survived wars and participated in rebellion.”
— Aviva Rahmani
“As artists, we learn to master but then defy formalist rules… so when we consider the rules of legal systems, we intuitively start testing for weaknesses.”
— Aviva Rahmani