"A DEFENSE of FUNCTIONALITY and DIDACTICISM in CONTEMPORARY ECO ART"
Today I posted a new essay entitled "A DEFENSE of FUNCTIONALITY and DIDACTICISM in CONTEMPORARY ECO ART". This defense was necessitated because contemporary eco artists, unlike those celebrated by the star-studded 'artworld', are inventing new definitions of progress, health, success, and productivity. Such values necessitate including factors that have long been alien to fine art values - functionality and didacticis.This essay is offered to loosen grips upon the cultural ideals that comprise the status quo.
INTRODUCTION
If society was envisioned as a living organism, artists would serve as its sensory receptors (gathering inputs issuing from their surroundings) and its brain (bringing key concerns into consciousness and filtering out extraneous data). That is how the history of art came to be a rich repository of cultures as they evolved through the history of civilization. This ongoing account reveals if people, at a particular time and place, were captivated by the afterlife, or a new technology, or social inequity, etc.
What issues will the brain and sensory receptors of art select to embody the current era? Health care, privacy, gay marriage, gun control, missile threats from Korea, nuclear weapons from Iran, unrest in the Middle East are contenders, but they seem trivial compared to super storms, water shortages, pandemics, depleted aquatic populations, bee colony collapse, climate change, and the numerous other environmental predicaments that have arisen in recent times. Environmental issues seem primed to represent the current era in future annals of art. Beyond expanding the legacy of art by introducing new themes, eco artists are introducing two strategies that originate in the imperative to protect the planet from human indiscretions:
– Functionality devises solutions and performs tasks to remediate soils, create habitat, recycle litter, cultivate food, produce
energy, and conduct a myriad additional environmentally responsible acts.
– Didacticism provides reasons to replace responsibility for neglect, and incentives to substitute reverence for apathy. Otherwise functional solutions do not remain hypothetical.
The global scope of the Earth’s faltering ecosystems is reflected in the swelling rosters of international artists who are joining this initiative. How could it be otherwise when fate of life on Earth depends upon strategic approaches and the dissemination of pertinent information?