CBSSX 2020: Can artists save the world?
We are experimenting again in 2020. The professorship Communication, Behaviour & the Sustainable Society together with the Digital Society Hub and EnTranCe challenged 15 Communicatie and 15 International Communication students to work on graduation assignments connected to sustainability, energy and digital communication, in an innovative living-lab experimental set-up called CBSSX 2020. This is the follow-up to the 2019 CBSS Graduation Experiment. While the students worked hard on their communication products, student artists from Minerva worked on sustainability-focused art installations under the guidance of our second-year IC student, Martina Denegri. Their works will be exhibited at the CBSSX Online Event on 8th July 2020. This post is a preview to the research report Art in the Anthropocene: Participatory art practices to promote sustainability by the same author.
'Can artists save the world?' by Martina Denegri
Does it sound too ambitious? Perhaps. But if you ask me whether the arts play an important role into guiding society towards a sustainable future, my answer cannot be but a resounding yes.
Art and society have been deeply related since the dawn of time. Societal trends are mirrored by shifts in art practices and vice versa. There is nothing particularly groundbreaking in this concept. But what happens when popular culture shifts towards unsustainable practices? Well, it fosters an unsustainable culture, which propagates through the artistic expressions of time. Here is where artists can intervene; they can turn the tide by engaging into art practices that promote a sustainable culture. The evolutionary-revolutionary power of art can be the propeller for society to take the first step in the direction of a sustainable future.
During my research, I investigated how art can reshape modern society through a process of reflexivity. This term, that sounds rather complicated, stands for engaging with the audience at a deeper level, generating effects visible at attitudinal and behavioural level. How? There is no magic formula to create works of art able to change the world. But yet, there are frameworks that can help artists in their task. These frameworks are drawn from the most familiar and yet still obscure system of all: planet Earth. Applying systemic theories to our understanding of biological cycles and ecological principles can lead us forward.
A future shaped by the power of socially-engaged art is a future where man and nature find their long-lost connection, a future where artists are not eremites detached from society, but its active members, a future in which preserving our planet is the first item on the agenda.