← GO BACK                                                                       OUTRO                                                                                             BIBLIOGRAPHY →  

Art in this Planetary present

 Art is a polyarchic site of experimentation for living in a damaged world, offering a range of discursive, visual and sensual strategies that are not confined by the regimes of scientific objectivity, political moralism or psychological depression. Art can provide a space for dealing with the affective and emotional trauma of climate change, dams and environmental pollution, as it can hold together contradictions.

Heather Davis, Art in the Anthropocene from The Posthuman Glossary (Braidotti and Gilroy, 2008)

Over the past months, I have often thought about the different roles of Art and Artistic Research in relation to our Planetary present. I have noticed that within multiple academic contexts, there is a recurring expectation of "complete coherence" placed on artists and researchers addressing interspecies performances or ecological topics . This demand often stems from a discomfort with ambiguity—especially when navigating the entangled dichotomies of Nature and Culture or confronting narratives that decenter the human. There seems to be a difficulty in accepting that many of these projects, while centered on non-human beings, do not always—and perhaps cannot—offer direct, measurable benefits to the species they involve. Eliasson, Huyghe, and Westendorp are not staging their works for the forest, the algae, or the frogs. Their gestures are not acts of service in a biological sense—they are symbolic, speculative, poetic. Denes is a different case, as her project does directly benefit the pine forest ecosystem. Still, all artists are doing these projects to shift something in how humans perceive the other-than-human —among other personal motivations—. They aim to enhance artistic practices that are not exclusively by humans, about humans, and for humans. In this sense, the value of these projects lie in their potential to influence the human social and symbolic order—which, in turn, could lead to broader systemic transformations. They feed new imaginaries, challenge institutional norms, and ignite conversations that spill outward, quietly pushing toward more interrelated and less hierarchical ways of being.

The development of the concept of Artistic Ecosystems as framed in this exposition is an encouragement to keep on creating on these terms. While the ruins of the world unfold around us more rapidly than expected, these gestures—however modest or contradictory—may plant the seeds for modes of coexistence that are no longer human-first, but multispecies in spirit.