Art, Complexity and Sustainability in the Anthropocene

A Case Study

Abstract

This paper explains the thinking behind the exhibition The Complete Entanglement of Everything. The curators’ premise was that, taken as whole, the exhibition would demonstrate the emergence of an understanding of the Anthropocene as it is playing out in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, New Zealand. The term “entanglement” was drawn from Donna Haraway’s argument that the wicked problems of our present predicament will only be intelligible if we understand that categorical distinctions are a problem in themselves (Haraway 2016). While some works were didactic, others, less obvious, drew on the power that art has to enable conceptual understanding in such a way that it is experienced by each viewer as their own. The genre of conceptual art offers such experiences: theorist and art historian Gregory Minissale in The Psychology of Art characterizes it as a kind of bundling of affect, cognition and emotion that extends the development of understanding. (Minissale 2013). Curatorial projects can in themselves operate as conceptual art. The argument that culture is the fourth pillar of sustainability is strengthened when artworks are viewed as holding patterns, containers or vehicles, for emergent and complex scenarios. In that way, artworks can assist as much with ac-knowledging the forces - such as grief and the sense of impotence - that restrain us from action, as with gaining new approaches and new strength for engagement.