2016 Art and Future: Energy, Climate, Cultures

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This Symposium examined the future of art in a changing world. In particular, contributors discussed the agency of art in conditions of ecological threats to the natural world, to climate change and the effects of globalisation, neoliberal economics and mass tourism. Following the lead of Chicago-based Frances Whitehead, some contributors discussed positions on working with local government agencies to embed art-thinking within development projects, going back to the art-thinking at the centre of Kazimir Malevich’s work in Vitebsk one hundred years ago in Russia. Other papers highlighted small-scale art interventions that bring ecological issues to public notice and suggest positive responses, whilst others discussed large-scale problems brought about by the social, economic and laissez-faire history of the emerging Anthropocene with possible dystopic outcomes.

Publication Peter Stupples (ed.), Art and Future: Energy, Climate, Cultures, 2017 (in press, expected early December) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

(image by Marzena Wasilkowska)