Art and Sustainability: Connecting Patterns for a Culture of Complexity

Description

What is the cultural dimension of sustainability? This book offers a thought-provoking answer, with a theoretical synthesis on cultures of sustainability. Describing how modernity degenerated into a culture of unsustainability, to which the arts are contributing, Sacha Kagan engages us in a fundamental rethinking of our ways of knowing and seeing the world. We must learn not to be afraid of complexity, and to re-awaken a sensibility to patterns that connect. With an overview of ecological art over the past 40 years, and a discussion of art and social change, the book assesses the potential role of art in a much needed transformation process. Cover Art and Sustainability Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Sustainable Development and Sustainability The ‘cultural dimension’ of sustainability Overview of the following chapters Methodological considerations 1. The Culture and Art of Unsustainability Introduction Section 1: The culture of unsustainability Section 2: The art of unsustainability Conclusion 2. Toward Culture(s) of Sustainability, Step One: Systems Thinking and the Limits of Holism Introduction Section 1: Some basics of Systems Thinking Section 2: The Systems View of Life Section 3: The Systems View of Society Section 4: Ervin Laszlo’s “Systems View of the World” and the limits of Holism Section 5: Cybernetic apparatuses and the risk of a technological drift 3. Toward Culture(s) of Sustainability, Step Two: From the ‘Big Picture’ to the Culture of Complexity Introduction Section 1: Complexity: Edgar Morin’s ‘method’ Section 2: Transdisciplinarity Conclusion to chapters 2 and 3 4. Aesthetics of Sustainability Introduction Section 1: From Aesthetics, environmental aesthetics and ecological aesthetics to aesthetics of sustainability Section 2: From Bateson’s sensibility to the pattern which connects, to a sensibility to patterns that connect Section 3: The sensibility to complexity Section 4: The transdisciplinary sensibility Section 5: The phenomenological and animistic sensibility to a more-than-human world Conclusion 5. Ecological Art Introduction Section 1: Land art, environmental art, ecological art Section 2: Precursors and pioneers Section 3: Exemplary directions in environmental/ecological art Section 4: The “Reenchantment of Art” according to Suzi Gablik Section 5: The Monongahela Conference on Post-Industrial Community Development Section 6: The exhibition Ecovention Conclusion 6. Sustainability and Ecology as keywords: a decade of contemporary art Introduction Section 1: “Eco-centric topics” in contemporary art Section 2: Exhibitions on art and sustainability Section 3: Post-environmental art: The exhibition Greenwashing Conclusion 7. Fostering Change: Art and Social Conventions Introduction Section 1: Double entrepreneurship in conventions Section 2: Polity Conventions: The political setting for double entrepreneurship in conventions Conclusion Conclusion Appendices Appendix 1: The subconscious and the ‘eco-’ in autoecopoïesis: a speculative excursus Appendix 2: Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Kunst und (Nicht-)Nachhal igkeit Bibliography