Editorial - Vânia Rodrigues

Embracing complexity

Researching climate change and the wider ecological emergency from the standpoint of the arts may seem akin to trying to put out a fire with a glass of water. Indeed, ecological disruption is not only one of the most important contemporary collective challenges, but also one of a gigantic scale. It is not only colossal in scale, but pervasive, both constantly in front of our eyes and impossible to fully grasp. It is an ‘hyperobject’ (Timothy Morton), sticky, violent and disorienting. What, then, can an arts-based research platform such as Modes of Production – Performing Arts in Transition contribute that is not utterly irrelevant given the sheer size and complexity of what’s at stake?

There are myriad ways to explain the significance of an interdisciplinary attention to this intersection of the arts and ecology. First, the ecological emergency can be a major disruptor of the arts and culture modi operandi, insofar as it questions the assumptions of cultural policies, the bases of funding mechanisms and the routines of creating, producing, managing, distributing and experiencing art. At CEIS20, the way we have been paying attention to these changes as researchers is influenced by the exciting interaction of different bodies of knowledge, trying to go beyond environmental metrics, and exploring darker shades of green, in a quest to find out whether ecology can turn out to be not an object of our attention, but a wholesale new mode of operation.

However, it is perhaps more important that investigating the ecological imperative in/with/through the arts reconnects us with the uncanny, with complexity – a vital task at a time of societal polarization and populist simplifications. The arts can challenge the limits of our temporal anthropocentric frameworks, create passageways between the close and the distant, connecting our individual lives and feelings with the planetary. Ultimately, bridging the artistic and the scientific regimes of knowledge is of the essence: the environmental crisis being also a crisis of imagination (Amitav Gosh), we need to be able to shift from panic, guilt and anxiety to transformative visions of desirable futures.