metropolis m

It might one day well happen, as the French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky claimed during the Estrella Levante SOS 4.8 sustainability festival in Murcia, Spain in 2008, that the threat of losing the earth will give new impulse to our pathological consumerism. Consumerism works the way doping does, and now there are also green ways of heightening life’s intensity and feeling vigorous.

Green has become a brand, a lifestyle. The fact that the label ‘green’ usually reaches no further than good marketing strategy need not dampen the fun. But this is cynical: excessive consumption puts pressure on energy reserves, not to mention unwelcome by-products such as waste and obesity. Every thoughtful person knows that hyper-consumerism and sustainability are contradictory. Nonetheless, we live in a world in which ecology has become a commodity, with major consequences.

Take the disproportionate distribution of environmental damage, for example. The greatest costs are born by those with the lowest incomes, while wastefulness and eco-luxury reign supreme on the side of wealth: ecology as the perfect condition for a sustainable consumer society. Here, the blinders come free of charge.

In the meantime, there is growing criticism of the essential failure of today’s environmental organizations. There is even a post-environmental movement, to point out our one-sided concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘environment’. In a lecture in Athens and New York in 2007, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek added fuel to the flame by saying that the romantic idea of ‘nature’ as a ‘thing’ that must be cherished in all its purity and goodness, is based more on stubborn faith than on reality.

According to Žižek, the fear of climate-related catastrophes being stirred up by environmental activists is opium for the people. Ecology might well become the dominant ideology of global capitalism, he claims, a ‘post-political bio-politics’ that takes the place of diminishing world religions.

With climate change, threats to the environment, and sustainability on the agendas of every government or multinational corporation, ecology is also a hot theme in the visual arts. There is a marked increase in the number of ‘green’ exhibitions and events. In the Netherlands alone, there were dozens in 2008 and 2009, including Fieldwork 1 & 2 at Smart Project Space in Amsterdam; TransAgriculture at V2 and Ecoscape at TENT, both in Rotterdam; the long-term Foodprint project at Stroom in The Hague; and Portscapes, again in Rotterdam. This year, the amiable The Woods that See and Hear was presented at 13 Hectare in Heeswijk, with inspiring works by Tue Greenfort, Tea Mäkipää and Eve Armstrong, and as part of Foodprint, Stroom opened a dynamic solo exhibition by Raul Ortega Ayala, called Living Remains.

Each month, new ecology-related exhibitions are likewise being presented in other countries. We can therefore justifiably ask how these exhibitions contribute to the debate and whether or not they stimulate change in our knowledge of the challenging relationship between man and nature. A critical look at three extensive exhibitions in London (2009), Copenhagen (2009) and Sydney (2010) offers some insight.

READ FURTHER IN METROPOLIS M No 6 – 2010
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