about david maggs’ art and the climate crisis

applause, applause for ‘arts as builders of symbolic infrastructure’ and ‘navigating elusive realms of being… for which the arts are uniquely at home’

David Maggs and I were co-founders of SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, along with 5 other artists and activists, in 2021 and have been exchanging about arts and ecology policy for years, going back to his wonderous art and science gatherings in Gros Morne, Newfoundland (see e30 maggs – art and the world after this).

I wrote to David a few weeks ago to thank him for his work as a Metcalf Fellow on Arts and Society, and I noted in an email that most of his postings had ‘no direct mention of the climate crisis, planetary boundaries or hints that this conversation was taking place in the context of the ecological crisis’.

I was pleased to see that David took my critique in stride and was enchanted to read (and re-read) this art and the climate crisis posting on the relationship between art and climate. This is not David’s first writing about this issue but this is the next step in his thinking and merits our attention. 

As is our tradition, I jotted some notes as I read the posting, which I sent to David. I share some of them below as a calm presence posting.

With warm thanks to David and Metcalf Foundation for this series.

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David,

You start your column by asking ‘what are we asking for when we are asking for art?’ and you quote eco-activist Bill McKibben’s ‘call for more climate art’ from 20 years ago and his subsequent disappointment at being flooded with ‘well meaning’ art.

I can only imagine…

You go on to ask, ‘what the climate crisis needs from art’, which is fair question.

An equally valid question is ‘what does the ecological crisis need from artists?’.

Also, what are the roles and responsibilities of artists?

And, what do artists need as citizens in the ecological crisis?

knowledge vs being

I like the way you point out that ‘right knowledge’ does not necessarily translate into behavioral change, suggesting that being is the missing link.

I agree that more information about climate (what we know) has little impact but that being (in the spirit of Donna Haraway’s ‘staying with the trouble’) is a more productive path.

However, the problem, for me, remains our deep disconnection from the natural and more-than-human worlds and how our fate as a species rest on being nature not dominating it.

I want to be through art but I’m concerned about how we get there, as we are preparing for the end of the world as we know it (that’s quote from an article by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective that I recommend everyone read).

symbolic infrastructure

You go on to identify a ‘form of modal confusion’, which means, I think, that transformation comes by changing infrastructure, including technological, physical, political, financial, knowledge and so on but the missing link is ‘symbolic infrastructure’ which is new term to me, and that you define as ‘the infrastructure that carries meaning, identity, value, belief, belonging, purpose, time, and place from one world to another.’

Personally, I’m tempted to call it spiritual infrastructure, but I think I know what you know mean.

enacted analogies

You go on to talk about ‘enacted analogies’ (the deeper parts of ourselves with a proximate experience of difference) and you quote Antony Auman’s notion of ‘art’s capacity to engage with aspects of ourselves beyond information, beyond propositional knowing’.

To be honest, David, it took me a while to wrap my head around what enacted analogies means. Your writing is clear, but my brain is slow to process. It’s good that you quote John Vervaeke, who gives the example of a couple debating marriage who go on vacation together to experience a similar existential condition, or people wondering if they should have children who get a dog.

I suggest we talk about this one at our upcoming conscient podcast conversation.

putting intuitions to work

You write about ‘an explosion of interest in arts-based interventions for a range of complex problems’ and how we need to harness ‘our ability to actually put these intuitions to work, that is, to enlist the arts to build the symbolic infrastructure needed to close the culture gap.’

This is the crux of the matter.

I know artists are keen to step up (with available resources) to address complex issues - they always have - but my experience is that artists these days are feeling disempowered, in part as the sector recovers from COVID, but also as the sector comes in and out of denial about the poly-crisis.

I wrote about this in my march 13, 2024 a calm presence posting (quoting an arts colleague):

Most people I know are extremely anxious and concerned about the climate emergency but can’t face it. They feel powerless and hopeless, so they just keep going with business as usual by default. So be very gentle with them. Try to help them ‘find a way in’.

How can we find a ‘gentle way in’ to an engagement with being. How do we do that when we are stuck in the myth of modernity, with all the illusions and disconnection it has brought us. That’s quite a dilemma.

And, of course, all of this in very tight timeline, in fact it’s a timeline that should have happened in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

relationship with ourselves and our worlds to come

I applaud your conclusion:

Our job is to inspire a different relationship with ourselves and our worlds to come. The crux of that challenge lies with navigating elusive realms of being, realms so little of our society is equipped to navigate, yet within which the arts are uniquely at home.

I hope the arts community will respond, agree, disagree, jump up and down in excitement or frustration by postings like yours and a similar calls for renewal and revisioning such as: e90 shannon litzenberger – state of emergence : why we need artists right now (BTW there is another episode with Shannon coming up soon on conscient) and e155 sanita fejzic - peasant futurisms, which, I think, is a form of symbolic infrastructure, because a new way of life is being proposed and envisioned through art and this is one of the roles of art. Not a new one but an important one in these times.

one final thought

You did not mention, perhaps out of modesty, the important role your played in the formation of SCALE, in 2021, which continues to this day, including influence from the 3-mode model you developed and refer to in your paper. I’ve always thought there should be a fourth mode (avoiding the controlling concept of ‘authoring’) and thankfully your ‘symbolic infrastructure’ proposal comes very close, so we’re good.

Thanks,

Claude

On the Unceded traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin nations (Ottawa)